Techdirt's 'Plagiarism Collection': A Plagiarized Set Of NFTs About Plagiarism

from the figure-this-one-out dept

As we noted last week, I'm going to be writing a deep dive paper, similar to my Protocols, Not Platforms paper, that explores the ins and outs of NFTs -- looking at the legal, cultural, economic, environmental issues related to NFTs. The idea is to explore the ways in which digital scarcity could prove to be different and interesting -- and also the many ways in which it may not be interesting at all. If you're at all interested in supporting this project, our crowdfund to back the paper (and to get a piece of the resulting NFT of the paper) is still going, though not for much longer.

As we're exploring these issues, however, we're also going to be doing a bit of experimenting with NFTs ourselves, to better understand how everything works. And the first thing we're doing is plagiarizing works by law professor/conceptual artist Brian L. Frye. You can now see our Techdirt Plagiarism Collection of eight NFTs, plagiarized (but, if I say so myself, vastly improved) from Brian L. Frye (you can see them all in the iframe below, but it's better to click through and see the whole thing). Those NFTs are now up for auction in an auction that will run for the next 10 days, ending on October 7th at 6pm PT (9pm ET).

I imagine that some of this will require some level of explanation -- though, I'm somewhat wary of killing the frog in the process.

If you're unfamiliar with Prof. Frye's work, you're missing out. You may recall us writing about his "OK, Landlord" project last year (which also became "OK, Landlord 🙄" Techdirt gear).

You may also recall that earlier this year, Frye wrote a piece for Techdirt criticizing the process of legal scholarship. Towards the end of that piece, he mentioned and linked to a recent Law Review piece he had written entitled Deodand, which as Frye describes it:

This article is a work of conceptual art reflecting on the concept of doing conceptual art in the medium of legal scholarship. It is also an homage to Yoko Ono's work Grapefruit.

The paper itself is well worth reading, explaining what "deodand" means, exploring the nature of common law, our understanding of common law, and explaining what Yoko Ono and her book Grapefruit have to do with all of this (I won't spoil all of it). I will include this tidbit that explains the structure of the paper, however:

As Ono observed, art is everywhere. But there’s still more of it in some places than others. Unfortunately, legal scholarship usually contains very little art. Or at least, legal scholarship has a hard time seeing itself as an art form. It’s a shame because legal scholarship is as good a medium as any for art—especially conceptual art. After all, every genre has aesthetic qualities, even legal scholarship. If it’s a struggle to make legal scholarship aesthetically pleasing, all the better! Artists have always had to struggle, and there’s no own like a self-own. What’s more, legal scholarship is all about concepts. Usually the concepts are boring and scholastic, but they still matter. There are a lot of mediocre genres. Even if legal scholarship is a mediocre genre, it’s entitled to a little representation, isn’t it, and a little chance? We can’t have only painting, sculpture, and music. Conceptual art is promiscuous. It loves the genre that loves it back.

So, this article is an homage to Ono’s Grapefruit in the genre of legal scholarship. It consists of a number of “pieces” intended to encourage reflection on the nature and practice of legal scholarship. Of course, it reflects my own particular interests, inter alia discussing the concept of plagiarism, especially as articulated in the context of legal scholarship.

Notably, this is the first article in which I have (intentionally) plagiarized anything. At a certain point, you just have to jump in. For what it’s worth, a considerable part of the plagiarism in this article is self-plagiarism, which is really just plagiarism for plagiarists without the courage of their convictions. But many of the pieces in this article plagiarize other legal scholars. Like any self-respecting plagiarist, I only plagiarized the legal scholars I love the very most. See if you can spot their work. I hope I added something to it.

And then, within the piece, are a long list of "instructions" regarding various topics, including eight such instructions regarding plagiarism -- a topic that Frye has also written about extensively, calling into question why plagiarism is considered "the ultimate academic crime," and suggests that we rethink plagiarism entirely. As he writes in that paper:

Plagiarism norms are primarily an extralegal, inefficient, and illegitimate way for academics to claim property rights in the public domain. Copyright cannot and should not protect ideas, and plagiarism norms are simply copyright by other means. Attributing ideas should be voluntary, not mandatory. Academics should provide citations because they are helpful to readers, not because they are an obligatory form of obeisance. We should encourage people to attribute ideas whenever helpful and appropriate, but we should refuse to recognize the self-interested and unreasonable claims of those who seek to enforce plagiarism norms for their own sake and in their own interests.

Earlier this year, Frye began exploring NFTs, and (among other things) how they fit in under existing law -- specifically securities law. He has similarly published another paper, entitled an SEC No-Action Letter Request, in which he explores whether or not selling shares of ownership in the No-Action Letter Request itself is an illegal unregistered security. In order to sell those shares, he has created NFTs associated with the No-Action letter.

Separately, Frye created a bunch of NFTs out of the different "instructions" in the Deodand paper, including the Plagiarism Pieces. This resulted in Josh Lamel, from Insight Public Affairs suggesting that someone should sell plagiarized NFTs of Frye's NFTs. We have now stepped up to do so.

Because it is plagiarism, and a key point that Frye highlights is that you shouldn't need to ask for permission, we have not done so -- though it certainly appears that Frye endorses this plagiarism, that's really neither here nor there.

We've written plenty about how people overreact to plagiarism in the past, and have noted that plagiarism can often lead to even greater creativity. Often, good plagiarism takes one work and does something else to it, to make it better, or more widely known. We believe we have done that with Frye's work. His paper, and his NFTs, were fairly boring, typical law review typeface of black letters on a white background. While using his text, we have spiced up all eight of the plagiarism pieces, adding color and (most importantly) animation. Each of the eight NFTs is different, but they are currently being auctioned off, so feel free to own a piece of conceptual art / legal scholarship / plagiarized / case study about plagiarism, ownership, digital ownership and more. Again, the auction will remain live through next Thursday evening.

Filed Under: abundance, brian frye, conceptual art, culture, nfts, ownership, plagiarism, scarcity

Mirror Crowdfund: Our New Paper On NFTs And New Scarcities

from the exploring-new-spaces dept

Over the last year or so there has been tremendous hype around the concept of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). In my experience so far, people tend to fall into one of three camps surrounding NFTs. There are the "true believers", who are obsessed with the space and believe it is going to change everything about creativity and culture (and, according to some, "ownership"). There are the skeptics, who insist that it's a scam or the new tulip-craze bubble, and that NFTs are helping to burn down the planet with wasted energy usage. Finally, there's a very large camp of people who insist that they just don't understand NFTs at all and have completely blocked out the possibility that they could matter. I've been following the whole concept for a while now and I put myself in a weird place, potentially straddling multiple camps. I think there is a lot of nonsense in the space, and jargon meant more to confuse than to help -- but at the same time, I think there really is something interesting in the potential of NFTs, though the real value may be in a different place than even NFT-boosters believe.

The thing that's interesting to me, mainly, is how NFTs have found a way to productize a new scarcity -- one that may be really interesting (even as many of the current uses are missing that). Long term Techdirt readers may recall the series of posts I wrote back in 2007, exploring "The Economics of Free," in which the core point was about understanding what was scarce, and what was not just abundant but infinitely available -- something I refer to as "infinite goods." One of the points raised in that series was how new infinite goods not only completely upended traditional business models, that they also created new scarcities, and the really interesting business models were in finding those scarcities and leveraging the infinite goods connected to them to make them more valuable.

At the time, many of the new scarcities I was talking about were things like time and attention. But NFTs are actually highlighting a new set of potentially interesting scarcities related patronage and support, which previously had been amorphous concepts but which can actually be quantified to some level today. At the very least, I think this presents some interesting possibilities that go way beyond the state of the current NFT market (which, no doubt, is filled with significant hype, fluff, and nonsense). Just because there may be some level of exaggerated frenzy around NFTs, which turns some people off, that does not mean we should completely ignore and dismiss some of the underlying ideas that make NFTs so interesting.

That's why today we're launching a crowdfund on Mirror.xyz, a decentralized publishing platform with built in crowdfunding tools, to write a deep-dive paper entitled Newly Finite Themes that will explore the ins and outs and details of NFTs. The paper is not going to be an unfettered boosterism of NFTs, nor will it be condemning the entire concept. The plan is to explore every aspect of NFTs -- including the the economic, legal, cultural, and (yes) environmental implications -- and produce a thorough paper that will highlight which parts of NFTs are actually interesting and have real potential. In some ways, this will be a follow up to my 2019 Protocols, Not Platforms paper that helped inspire Twitter's Bluesky initiative.

As part of this process, we want to experiment with the very technologies we'll be writing about -- something we are enabled to do by Mirror (and yes, to back the project on Mirror, you have to use ETH). When the paper is complete, it will be minted as an NFT. Backers of the crowdfund will get a token that will entitle them to some of the proceeds when that NFT is sold. In addition, backers who support us at a level above 1 ETH (up to a total of 15 such backers) will get a separate NFT showing their support for a protocols over platforms approach to the internet. Finally, Mirror has a very cool new feature, enabling the top three backers to be rewarded with individual NFTs commemorating their key role in enabling this paper, and giving them Executive Producer, Producer, or Associate Producer status for the paper -- though this is only available to those who back within the first few days of the crowdfund.

All of the details can be seen on our Mirror crowdfund page.

Filed Under: abundance, crowdfund, infinite goods, newly finite themes, nft, nfts, scarcities

China's Home-Grown Version Of Spotify Shows How To Make Money In A World Of Digital Abundance

from the removing-obstacles dept

The fact that the best-known music streaming service, Spotify, is still struggling to turn a profit despite its huge popularity, is often held up as proof that making money in a world of digital abundance is almost impossible. Of course, here on Techdirt, we've published many posts about people and companies that have adopted various innovative strategies to get around the problem. But what about music streaming as a mass medium: will it ever be possible to make money in this sector?

A fascinating article on Mashable shows that it is already happening, but perhaps not where most people are looking. QQ Music is part of the extensive digital empire of the Chinese giant Tencent, best known for its messaging app WeChat, and now the largest Internet company in Asia. Last year, its turnover was $15.8 billion (pdf). As the Mashable article explains, QQ Music's general manager revealed last week that the service is now profitable. One reason is the sheer scale of Tencent's user base:

As one of China's biggest dotcoms -- WeChat has 762 million active users -- the company has far better negotiating power at the table with record labels. Back in 2014, Tencent already used this to its advantage, striking exclusive Chinese distribution deals with large music producers the likes of Sony, Warner Music and South Korea's YG Entertainment.

Similarly, QQ Music is itself large compared to Spotify:

QQ Music reports 100 million daily active users, and 400 million monthly actives.

Spotify, in comparison, has about 100 million monthly actives, although it has 30 million paying subscribers -- three times QQ's 10 million paying subscribers.

The secret to QQ Music's profitability seems to be the following:

Chinese analyst iResearch estimates that over half of [QQ Music's] users in China would have paid for something on their music apps this year. That could be a one-off purchase like an album or concert tickets, even if it's not an ongoing subscription.

Moreover, beyond the 57% that already buy ancillary items, a further 20% said they were willing to do so at some point. That means over three-quarters of QQ Music's users have or will buy other goods. Crucially, Tencent makes that as easy as possible by offering its own payment system as standard. That emphasizes a key point about making money in a world of digital abundance: success flows from removing as many barriers as possible, so that people can pay you for things they want at the moment they want them.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: abundance, add-ons, business models, china, music industry, streaming
Companies: qq music, spotify, tencent, wechat

Blasting Off With The Copia Institute: Creative Solutions To Big Innovation Challenges

from the swap-ideas dept

A week and a half ago, we launched the Copia Institute, our new business network/think tank. The two day event was really quite amazing, and tons of great ideas came out of the discussions. We'll be sharing some videos and some ideas from all of those discussions as we go forward, but wanted to start out by sharing the presentation I gave at the kickoff, explaining just what we were trying to do, inspired by the Homebrew Computer Club forty years ago. You can see the opening presentation here: As mentioned in the presentation, one of the things that we're focused on is bringing together lots of smart people to think through creative approaches to big challenges, that don't require waiting for bureaucrats and policymakers to make some big decision -- and the number of great ideas that came out of the summit directly, and in a series of conversations since then, has been astounding. In fact, there are probably too many good ideas. However, in the coming days, weeks and months, we'll continue sharing with you the followup on some of these discussions, including additional gatherings, new research and new projects, all designed to help drive innovation forward.

I know that many of you who were unable to make the inaugural summit have expressed interest in staying informed and helping out as we launch various initiatives. Please, stay tuned, as there will be plenty of opportunities to join in the discussions and to help accomplish some amazing things.

Filed Under: abundance
Companies: copia, copia institute

To Abundance: The Cause Of, And Solution To, All Of Life's Problems

from the information-in-abundance dept

A month ago, I gave a little preview of the news that we, the team behind Techdirt, were launching a new think tank and network of innovators called the Copia Institute. That launch is happening today, with our event in San Jose, and I wanted to just provide a short post on why we're doing this, and why it's so important.

The word "copia" is Latin for abundance -- and over nearly two decades of following, researching and writing about the innovation industries, over and over again, we see that it's the story of abundance. Of an abundance of information, certainly, but also of the role that abundance plays in everything that we do. Businesses, business models and government policies that were all built for a world of scarcity run into trouble when suddenly plopped into a world of abundance. And we see it happening every day. There are the obvious ones that we talk about all the time around here: music, movies, news and software. But it goes way beyond that. A switch from a world of scarcity to one of abundance is going to impact nearly every other industry as well: manufacturing, finance, healthcare, energy and education among others.

The discussions that we've had in the past about the changes that hit music, movies, news and other industries were really only the beginning. The world is changing in very profound ways, and if you view it all through the lens of scarcity, it looks very, very distorted. The arguments over new business models and copyright laws were just a warmup to what is going to impact basically every industry and every society in the next few decades.

Understanding abundance matters. You cannot understand the world we are moving towards if you continue to view it solely on the basis of scarcity.

And thus, we're building Copia -- to bring together people who think about these issues, and who actually want to get together and do something about them, hopefully preventing crazy messes and lawsuits that we've seen in other arenas. Some of this may certainly involve working on policy issues, but there are lots of groups that are already doing that. Our focus, as an organization in the heart of Silicon Valley, will be on what innovators do best: innovating -- but doing so with an awareness of the policy realities. And that means looking for creative solutions that don't always rely on convincing policymakers to make this decision or not make that decision. We expect to be involved and engaged in those debates, but we're really interested in coming up with other, more innovative solutions as well.

For example, nearly 15 years ago, as people were realizing that copyright law was just not built right to function in an internet era where people wanted to share stuff, a group of very smart individuals came up with Creative Commons. These days, as we sit around waiting for Congress to finally tackle patent reform, we see companies doing creative things like coming up with an Innovator's Patent Agreement to avoid patents becoming tools of trolls. Tech companies came together to create a Defensive Patent License, and you even have companies like Life360 offering free legal support to any startup sued by the same troll that sued it.

These are creative solutions that involve innovation. They don't solve everything, and those working on them still -- quite reasonably -- support policy changes as well. But we need more discussions about creative solutions that don't involve just sitting around and waiting for policymakers to do their thing. We need to bring together the people who understand how the world is shifting, from one where everything was scarce to one where many things are abundant -- and to look for ways to harness that abundance to create more good in the world, rather than to lock it down under rules of artificial scarcity just to make it conform to the way things used to be. That's why, at our inaugural summit, we're discussing a diverse range of things from health data & ethics to privacy to 3D printing to the blockchain to copyright, patents and freedom of expression.

That is what Copia is about. It's about looking at the world through these eyes of abundance. It's not about ignoring the policy world, but working closely with it -- to better understand the impact of the decisions those in government make, and to help guide them along more reasonable paths that embrace and (even better) enable more abundance.

Research into why Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley suggests that it is the free exchange of ideas and information -- brought about through a historical quirk of California state policy that outlawed non-compete agreements -- that resulted in all of this innovation. That sharing of information (an abundant resource) has created so much innovation already. Copia is about continuing that trend, bringing together people to share ideas and come up with creative and innovative solutions to a variety of challenges -- technology, business model and policy -- to see what we can do to help the world transition into greater abundance and less scarcity.

As we make this journey, we expect you, our loyal community at Techdirt, to come along and be a part of the process. We'll be using the discussions on Techdirt as part of this effort, to drum up interesting and unique ideas, new research, new tools and new inspiration. It will be an adventure into the world of abundance.

We'd also like to thank the sponsors that made this launch possible, starting with the MacArthur Foundation, which provided a grant that is enabling us to start this work. We're also thankful for sponsorship from four of the best, most well-respected venture capital organizations in the world today: Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Foundry Group and Spark Capital. Finally, four technology companies have sponsored Copia as well: Google, Automattic (Wordpress), Yelp and Namecheap. We should have additional sponsors to announce soon as well. We're especially excited about the mix of sponsors from different areas. What we're putting together is not a trade group, or an advocacy organization, but rather a group of people focused on innovating and bringing more good into the world through creative means.

* In case you don't get the title reference, click here.

Filed Under: abundance, copia, innovation

Announcing The Copia Institute: A New Business Network & Think Tank Exploring Ideas In Abundance

from the welcome dept

I wanted to drop a note to the Techdirt community about an exciting new project that we're launching one month from today: The Copia Institute, a new network of future-focused innovators. Copia is Latin for "abundance" -- and information abundance is the hallmark of our time, and the source of many of its biggest opportunities and toughest challenges. We're working collaboratively with everyday internet users, business experts and technology policy leaders to focus on the challenges and opportunities we face in this age of abundance.

Think of it as a think tank for the information era.

While following and writing about issues related to innovation, business models and policy, we've seen up close the amazing power of innovative startups and pioneering technologies to change the world in powerful ways. It's hard to remember what things were like just a decade ago -- before Facebook, iPhones, YouTube, Twitter, Airbnb and more. Our lives have changed in profound and exciting ways -- and such change will continue to advance rapidly in the future. It's inspiring, exhilarating and wonderful. But it also presents unique challenges. Innovation can upset existing industries. It can collide with outdated regulations that were originally designed to protect us but now serve as roadblocks that slow progress and weaken the innovative spirit. And, sometimes, it creates ethical challenges and questions that deserve deeper levels of consideration.

With Copia, we'll bring together innovators, internet users, policymakers and experts with diverse and distinct perspectives to discuss these issues. But we won't just talk, we'll act. We will work to resolve the issues of today while preparing to address the issues of tomorrow. We want to help innovators tackle issues early on -- and look where we, as a group, can develop creative ways to embrace opportunities that make the world a better place while minimizing downsides or negative consequences.

We're launching Copia with an Inaugural Summit on March 12-13th at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. We'll host stimulating brainstorming sessions on disruptive innovations and policy challenges, as well as a special tech industry General Counsels' roundtable to discuss principles of innovation.

We have an ambitious agenda, so stay tuned. We will share more details as the summit approaches, but until then, I look forward to seeing some of you there!

Filed Under: abundance, copia, copia institute, disruption, innovation, network, think tank
Companies: copia institute

The FLOK Society Project: Making The Good Life Possible Through Good Knowledge

from the free,-libre,-open dept

One of the most striking and important developments in the world of technology over the last two decades or so has been the rise of an alternative mode of production that is open, collaborative and global. This began in the world of software, with Richard Stallman's GNU project, but has now been extended to the realms of text, data, science and hardware, among others. The free sharing of information to form a kind of digital commons, which lies at the heart of these projects, has also been applied to business, albeit in the modified form of collaborative consumption -- things like Airbnb. These different manifestations of fundamentally similar ideas have sprung up in a largely uncoordinated way, but an interesting question is whether they could be drawn together into a unified approach, applied to a whole country, say. That's what Ecuador's FLOK Society (original in Spanish) has been exploring. "FLOK" is derived from "free", "libre" and "open knowledge"; here's how David Bollier, an expert on the commons, describes the project:

The FLOK Society bills its mission as "designing a world for the commons." The research project will focus on many interrelated themes, including open education; open innovation and science; "arts and meaning-making activities"; open design commons; distributed manufacturing; and sustainable agriculture; and open machining. The research will also explore enabling legal and institutional frameworks to support open productive capacities; new sorts of open technical infrastructures and systems for privacy, security, data ownership and digital rights; and ways to mutualize the physical infrastructures of collective life and promote collaborative consumption.

There is a detailed research plan, "Transitioning to a Commons-Based Society", and numerous texts providing more detailed information. But probably the best introduction to FLOK Society and its ideas is an interview with the project's research leader, Michel Bauwens, conducted by Richard Poynder, best known for his unmatched profiles of key figures in the world of open access. Bauwens describes the background to the FLOK Society project as follows:

The legitimacy and logic of the project comes from the National Plan of Ecuador, which is centred around the concept of Good Living (Buen Vivir), which is a non-reductionist, non-exclusive material way to look at the economy and social life, inspired by the traditional values of the indigenous people of the Andes. The aim of FLOK is to add "Good Knowledge" as an enabler and facilitator of the good life.

That sounds inspirational, but how will it work in practice? In particular, how will those participating in the "Good Life" earn a living through this "Good Knowledge"? Bauwens explains:

Think of the core model of our economy as the Linux economy writ large, but one in which the enterprises are actually in the hands of the value creators themselves. Imagine this micro-economic model on the macro scale of a whole society. Civil society becomes a series of commonses with citizens as contributors; the shareholding market becomes an ethical stakeholder marketplace; and the state becomes a partner state, which "enables and empowers social production" through the communication of public services and public-commons partnerships.

Central to the success of Linux has been the adoption of the GNU General Public License, which allowed code to be shared widely but in a way that prevented the software commons being enclosed by companies taking and using that code without contributing back. Building on the GNU GPL's ideas, Bauwens and his team have drawn up a new license, tailored to the needs of the FLOK Society project and the people of Ecuador:

traditional communities have suffered from systematic biopiracy over the last few decades, with western scientists studying their botanical knowledge, extracting patentable scientific results from it, and then commercialising it in the West.

So fully shareable licenses like the GPL would keep the knowledge in a commons, but would still allow full commercialisation without material benefits flowing back to Ecuador. So what we are proposing is a discussion about a new type of licensing, which we call Commons-Based Reciprocity Licensing. This idea was first pioneered with the Peer Production License as conceived by Dmytri Kleiner.

Such licences would be designed for a particular usage, say biodiversity research in a series of traditional communities. It allows for free sharing non-commercially, commercial use by not-for-profit entities, and even caters for for-profit entities who contribute back. Importantly, it creates a frontier for for-profits who do not contribute back, and asks them to pay.

Although the license and FLOK Society are very consciously geared to the needs of the Ecuadorean nation that has sponsored them, the long-term goal is much more ambitious, and has at its heart ideas that have often been discussed here on Techdirt:

To work for a sustainable society and economy is absolutely crucial for the future of humanity, and while we respect the freedoms of people to engage in market dynamics for the allocation of rival goods, we cannot afford a system of infinite growth and scarcity engineering, which is what capitalism is.

In other words, today, we consider nature infinite and we believe that infinite resources should be made scarce in order to protect monopolistic players; tomorrow, we need to consider nature as a finite resource, and we should respect the abundance of nature and the human spirit.

Bauwens himself admits that FLOK Society is unlikely to transform an entire nation overnight, or even in the foreseeable future, but sees it as a crucially-important step towards that larger goal of global change:

the publication and the dialogue about the plan itself, and some concrete actions, legislative frameworks, and pilot projects, are the best we can hope for. What this will do is give real legitimacy to our approach and move the commons transition to the geo-political stage. Can we hope for more?

Personally, I believe that even if only 20% of our proposals are retained for action, I think we can consider it a relative success. This is the very first time such an even partial transition will have happened at the scale of the nation and, as I see it, it gives legitimacy to a whole new set of ideas about societal transition.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: abundance, commons, culture, david bollier, ecuador, flok, flok society, free, knowledge, libre, open knowledge, sharing, society

How To Solve The Piracy Problem: Give Everyone A Basic Income For Doing Nothing

from the welcome-to-the-Star-Trek-economy dept

Here on Techdirt we often discuss economics in the absence of scarcity -- how the ability to make any number of digital copies for vanishingly small cost creates new business opportunities for creators. But could a kind of abundance exist in the physical world too? That's the question raised in a fascinating post on Salon about a vote that will take place in Switzerland:

By gathering over 100,000 signatures -- which they delivered last Friday along with 8 million 5-cent coins representing the country's population -- activists have secured a vote by Switzerland's parliament on an audacious proposal: providing a basic monthly income of about $2,800 U.S. dollars to each adult in the country.

As the article explains, that $2,800 is unconditional:

If you're rich you get it, if you're poor you get. If you're a good person you get it, if you're a bad person you get it. And it does not depend on you doing anything other than making whatever effort is involved to collect the money.

The rest of the post is a great discussion with John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who explores this idea from various angles. The whole thing is well-worth reading, but I think one section in particular will be of interest to Techdirt readers:

So if we were a very rich world, which I think we are to a certain degree, [universal basic income of the kind being discussed in Switzerland] would be a remarkable way to make sure that people could maximize their ability to express themselves but also maximize their ability to participate in the communities that they live in in a full way. Stay home and take care of kids if that's what you want to do. Take care of your parents when they're old and sick.

This feeds into discussions about how creators could live and thrive in a world where it was legal to share copies of their work. A society that provided them -- and everyone -- with a basic wage would not need to rehearse today's sterile arguments about piracy. Artists would have the option of living on the basic wage while they created, or of making more money by building on the fact that their work is freely available, as Techdirt has advocated. Some might dismiss this as a utopian dream, but as Schmitt points out, it's not:

People sometimes refer to this as a kind of "Star Trek" economy -- you just said, "Replicator, make me a ham sandwich." There wasn't any social conflict around production and consumption. And that, I think, is that kind of ideal in which this kind of a thing could play out. We are probably there in terms of the economics. We are very, very wealthy -- we could afford to do this. But we are not there in terms of the politics.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: abundance, basic income, economics, switzerland