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Economics of Open Content: Wealth of Networks

1,066 views · Published 17 April 2014 · 58:47 · Indexed 10 November 2026

Channel: GBH Forum Network · 2014 · Education

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Yale University Law School Professor Yochai Benkler explores the new economies and the powerful transformative potential of decentralized social production.

The Wealth of Networks:  How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Yochai Benkler, Yale Law School

On January 23-24, 2006, Intelligent Television hosts the Economics of Open Content symposium at MIT to bring together representatives from media industries, cultural and educational institutions, and legal and business minds to discuss how to make open content happen better and faster.

With the support of the Hewlett Foundation and MIT Open Courseware, Intelligent Television brings representatives of commercial media industries (publishing, film, music, television, video, software, education/courseware, gaming) together with representatives of cultural and educational institutions who are innovative in this area and legal and business minds in the academy who are studying how to make this happen faster and better. New Yorker economics columnist and bestselling author (The Wisdom of Crowds) James Surowiecki keynotes at the Cambridge meeting, with a presentation entitled 'Openness as an Ethos.'

Intelligent Television has been conducting a year-long investigation into the economics of open content.  This project is a systematic study of why and how it makes sense for commercial companies and noncommercial institutions active in culture, education, and media to make certain materials widely available for free, and also how free services are finding new (sometimes commercial) ways of becoming sustainable. The project builds upon written work that Intelligent Television recently completed with the support of the Mellon Foundation and Ithaka on Marketing Culture in the Digital Age, and also upon work now being completed as part of the Mellon Foundation-supported Commission on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The project also informs new economic models that Intelligent Television is establishing for its documentary work.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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