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ABSTRACT. How producers of free digital goods can be compensated for their labour is a major topic of debate and controversy in Free Software and related fields. This paper analytically disentangles the multiple modes of remuneration in operation in Free Software and presents the implications from a political economy perspective. The outlook of autonomous commons-based production in information goods is situated in relation to capitalism. In the process, certain conceptual contributions are made regarding the nature of information goods and the commodity form.
Keywords: Information society, free software, digital production, commons, capitalism
It is often asserted that since the seventies capitalism has entered into a new stage, variously described as "postindustrial", "informational", or "knowledge-based". This economy is characterized by an increasing emphasis, in terms of value-added, on the input of high-quality knowledge produced by high-skill labour in the production process. Qualitatively, it is also an era where the creation of a significant amount of wealth comes about through what Manuel Castells has dubbed "knowledge acting upon knowledge" (Castells, 1996), in the sense that intellectual effort applied to existing information and previous knowledge results in a new, highly sought-after, higher composition of knowledge. This knowledge, to various extents, can either be privately monetized in commodity form as intellectual property and used as a means of rent-seeking, or become part of the new, digitally representable commons which is shared, immaterial and inexhaustible, distinct from the classical, exhaustible commons like land and water. Under contemporary conditions, the profit principle dominates for the most part, and the distinguishing characteristic of knowledge-based capitalism has been that knowledge and information are transformed into a restricted, monopolized, commodified factor of production. The fruits of knowledge-based labour as embodied in works of science, software, literature and art are monopolized via an expansive regime of intellectual property (IP). IP maximalism is legitimated on the individual level by reference to romantic notions of authorship (which is then assumed to be alienable and therefore transferable from the author to an intermediary such as the publisher), and on the collective level by assuming that strong IP protection promotes development by offering the only viable course for compensation.
It must be noted that once produced, knowledge and knowledgeembedded goods in turn act as the materials of labour...