Yochai Benkler
Yochai Benkler, law professor at the Yale Law School, is the pioneering thinker, who has introduced the concept of Commons-based peer production, and is specialising in the development of a 'sharing economy'
Photo link: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Yochai_benkler_boalt_high-res.JPG ; http://flickr.com/photos/joi/536642630/
Bio
Benkler's book The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom examines the ways in which information technology permits extensive forms of collaboration that may potentially have transformative consequences for economy and society. The Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Open Source Software and the blogosphere are among the examples that Benker draws upon.
(bio from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yochai_Benkler )
Contact Info Yale Law School P.O. Box New Haven, CT 06520 yochai.benkler@yale.edu
Teaching subjects: Information law and policy in the digital environment; communications law; intellectual property.
Education LL.B., Tel-Aviv University, 1991 J.D., Harvard, 1994
Professional Positions Editor, Harvard Law Review
Associate, Ropes & Gray,
Law Clerk for the Honorable Stephen G. Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court,
Assistant Professor, NYU,
Associate Professor, NYU,
Professor, NYU,
Professor, Yale, 2003- ((bio from http://www.law.yale.edu/outside/html/faculty/yb32/profile.htm )
Citation on the political positioning of Yochai Benkler:
"None of this is to say that nonmarket and decentralized production will completely displace firms and markets. That is not the point. The point is that the networked information economy makes it possible for nonmarket and decentralized models of production to increase their presence alongside the more traditional models, causing some displacement, but increasing the diversity of ways of organizing production rather than replacing one with the other.This diversity of ways of organizing production and consumption, in turn, opens a range of new opportunities for pursuing core political values of liberal societies -- democracy, individual freedom, and social justice."
(http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?52+Duke+L.+J.+1245/)
Interview of the author Yochai Benkler by Business Week, at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938902.htm
Interview in Open Democracy, by Christian Ahlert, at http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-copyrightlaw/benkler_3487.jsp
Podcasts of Yochai Benkler
Berkman Center http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/audio/uploads/12/58/benkler_2006-04-24.mp3
Yochai Benkler's writings on peer production
Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm.
URL = http://www.yale.edu/yalelj/112/BenklerWEB.pdf
The Political Economy of the Commons
URL = http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2003/3/up4-3Benkler.pdf
The concept of Information Commons is defined by Yochai Benchler in "The Political Economy of Commons", in Upgrade, juin 2003, vol. IV, n° 3
Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production.
URL = http://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/114-2/Benkler_FINAL_YLJ114-2.pdf
"The paper offers a framework to explain large scale effective practices of sharing private, excludable goods. It starts with case studies of distributed computing and carpooling as motivating problems. It then suggests a definition for “shareable goods‿ as goods that are lumpy and mid-grained in size, and explains why goods with these characteristics will have systematic overcapacity relative to the requirements of their owners. The paper then uses comparative transaction costs analysis, focused on information characteristics in particular, combined with an analysis of diversity of motivations, to suggest when social sharing will be better than secondary markets to reallocate this overcapacity to non-owners who require the functionality. The paper concludes with broader observations about the role of sharing as a modality of economic production as compared to markets and hierarchies (whether states or firms), with a particular emphasis on sharing practices among individuals who are strangers or weakly related, its relationship to technological change, and some implications for contemporary policy choices regarding wireless regulation, intellectual property, and communications network design." (http://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/114-2/Benkler_FINAL_YLJ114-2.pdf )
Freedom in the Commons: Towards a Political Economy of Information
URL = http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?52+Duke+L.+J.+1245/
"None of this is to say that nonmarket and decentralized production will completely displace firms and markets. That is not the point. The point is that the networked information economy makes it possible for nonmarket and decentralized models of production to increase their presence alongside the more traditional models, causing some displacement, but increasing the diversity of ways of organizing production rather than replacing one with the other.This diversity of ways of organizing production and consumption, in turn, opens a range of new opportunities for pursuing core political values of liberal societies -- democracy, individual freedom, and social justice." (http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?52+Duke+L.+J.+1245/)
Print Versions
Selected Articles "Coase's Penguins, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm," 112 Yale Law Journal)
"Freedom in the Commons, Towards a Political Economy of Information," 52 Duke L.J.)
"Overcoming Agoraphobia: Building the Commons of the Digitally Networked Environment," 11 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology)
Key Books
Yochai Benkler. The Wealth of Networks. Yale University Press, 2006 [1]