Towards a Political Economy of Information
Book by Roberto Verzola and essay by Yochai Benkler
The Book
* Book. Roberto Verzola. Towards a Political Economy of Information: Studies on the Information Economy, Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 2004
URL = http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/infoeconomy-verzola.pdf
The book analyzes the social impacts of new information and communications technologies (ICT).
Contents
The following is the table of contents of the book:
Part I. Information and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
1. The miracle of the loaves
2. A new offensive against the Third World
3. U.S. piracy in the 19th century
4. The “piracy" of intellectuals
5. GATT: Free Trade or Monopoly Growth?
6. IPR: a clash of value-systems
7. Towards a political economy of information
Part II. ICTs and the Internet
8. Expanding market for information economies
9. A hierarchy of access
10. ICT: job creator or destroyer?
11. A poor learning environment
12. An interactive idiot box
13. Private space controlled by rentiers
14. Perverse subsidies
15. Internet cafes: connectivity for the masses?
Part III. Genetic Information And Genetic Engineering
16. Turning farmers into “pirates"
17. Pirating genetic resources
18. Beware of modern vampires
19. Biosafety and genetic contamination
Part IV. Monopolistic Information Economies
20. Information monopolies and the WTO
21. Globalization: the third wave
22. Cyberlords: rentier class of the information sector
23. Testing the political strength of a cyberlord
24. Globalization: poor design?
25. What could be more important than efficiency?
Part V. Alternatives: A Non-Monopolistic Information Sector
26. A well-kept IT secret
27. IT or AT?
28. Community rights over biological material: property or moral rights?
29. Low-cost strategies for ICT deployment in developing countries
30. Greening the information sector
31. Alternatives to globalization
Excerpts
- Chapter 23: Reliability vs Efficiency
The Essay
- Article: “Freedom in the Commons, Towards a Political Economy of Information,” Duke Law Journal 52 (2003):1249