http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.

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Special Issue Update

This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue #3: Internet banking, e-
money, and Internet gift economies, published in December 2005. Special Issue
editor Mark A. Fox asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their
articles.

How has the hi-tech gift economy evolved since 1998, when the paper was written?
This article was a product of its time. When I originally wrote The Hi-Tech Gift
Economy, the Net was still a novelty for most people even in the developed world.
Nearly 8 years later, using this technology is no longer something special. This
means that it is impossible to understand my article without remembering the
bizarre moment in the late-1990s when so many pundits believed that the Net had
almost magical powers. Led by Wired, dotcom boosters were claiming that the Net
was creating the free market only found up to then in neo-classical economics
textbooks. Inspired by post-modernist gurus, new media activists were convinced
that humanity would soon liberate itself from corporate control by escaping into
cyberspace. What intrigued me at the time was how these devotees of irreconcilable
ideologies shared a common faith in McLuhan-style technological determinism. The
Net not people was the subject of history. This demiurge promised the final
victory of one and only one - method of organizing labor: the commodity or the
gift. When I was writing this article, my goal was to attack these almost totalitarian
ideologies. The sharing of information over the Net disproved the neo-liberal
fantasies of Wired. The leading role of capitalist businesses within the open source
movement was incompatible with the anarcho-communist utopia. I wanted to argue
that the choice wasnt the commodity or the gift. On the Net, the same piece of
information could exist both as a commodity and a gift.

Nowadays, this conclusion is hardly controversial. My ideological opponents have

long ago left the theoretical battlefield. We wont hear their arguments again until
the next wave of innovation within the information technologies creates the
conditions for another revival of McLuhanist prophecy. In the meantime, it is
common sense to describe the Nets economy as a mixed economy. Information is
shared and sold. Copyright is protected and broken. Capitalists benefit from one
advance and lose out from another. Users get for free what they used to pay for and
pay for what they used to get for free. In 2005, the dotcom commodity economy and
the hi-tech gift economy are at one and the same time in opposition and in
symbiosis with each other.

What are some current examples of the hi-tech gift economy in action?
Over the past decade, the hi-tech gift economy has moved from the fringes into the
mainstream. When I was writing The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, the open source
movement was the iconic example of non-commercial production over the Net. In
the intervening period, blogging has become the public face of this new way of
working. What was once the preserve of a small minority is now a mass
phenomenon. Crucially, just like their techie predecessors, the participants in this
enlarged hi-tech gift economy dont have to think about the political implications of
their method of working together. Free market fanatics can happily give away their
blog-making labor without realizing theyve become cyber-communists! This
ideological inconsistency has hidden the social impact of the hi-tech gift economy.
Allowing people to download your photos for free from Flickr doesnt seem very
radical. Putting up your latest tunes on-line cant really be a threat to the music
moguls. Making your own website doesnt look like attack on the media corporations.
Yet, when large numbers of people are engaged in these activities, commercial self-
interest is checked by social altruism within the mixed economy of the Net. Before
buying information, every sensible person checks whether you can download it for
free.

What are the impediments and what are the driving forces of the hi-tech gift
economy?
Is it possible to distinguish between the two? Long ago, Karl Marx pointed out that
socialists had been forced to define their own political position to counter attacks by
their liberal and conservative critics. It seems to me that we could make a similar
observation today about the two sides in the copyright debate. During the past few
decades, American and European politicians have steadily increased and extended
the legal privileges of the media corporations. Entranced by the neo-liberal version of
the McLuhanist prophecy, theyre convinced that the knowledge economy will be built
around the buying and selling of intellectual property and the state must punish
anyone who threatens this new paradigm. In the digital Panopticon, Big Brother will
spying on you to make sure that you dont have any illegally copied files on your
hard drive.

Since the mid-1960s, the ideological appeal of the post-industrial future has
protected the interests of the copyright owners. According to neo-liberal pundits, the
global marketplace is founded upon the North exchanging its information
commodities for the Souths manufactured goods. Economic prosperity now depends
upon the World Trade Organisation imposing copyright protection as a universal
obligation. Ironically, by proclaiming their global ambitions, the media and software
corporations have exposed the weakness of their economic position. Across the
developing world, governments know that copyright laws are unenforceable. Only
the rich can afford to pay Northern prices in the South. If piracy can no longer be
tolerated, alternatives must be found. In Brazil, the ministry of culture is promoting
open source software as not just a more affordable product, but also an opportunity
to create local employment. At the international level, theyre advocating the
replacement of rigid copyright protection with flexible copyleft licenses. Inspired by
this good example, other governments in the South are launching their own open
source initiatives. In the developing world, participating within the hi-tech gift
economy is a necessity not a hobby.

During the last year, the American movie and music industries have forced the
leading file-sharing services to limit unauthorized copying by their users. But, as
soon as one threat is seen off, another arises. In 2005, over three-quarters of online
music is still distributed for free. By forcing the issue, the owners of intellectual
property have proved that the hard-line definition of copyright is as anachronistic in
the North as in the South. Up-and-coming bands long ago learnt that giving away
tunes attracts punters to their gigs and in due course sells their music. Yet, in
contrast with the South, few politicians in the developed world have accepted the
copyright laws need updating for this new dispensation. But, eventually, legislation
must match social reality. The dotcom commodity economy cant displace the hi-tech
gift economy. Miscegenation is the epitome of the Net.

During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-
communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal
gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing
either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian
vision of anarcho-communism has inspired community media and DIY culture
activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method
of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores
of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far
beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift
economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on
listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As
shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the
forefront of software development. Contrary to the purist vision of the New Left,
anarcho-communism on the Net can only exist in a compromised form. Money-
commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist
in symbiosis. The 'New Economy' of cyberspace is an advanced form of social
democracy.

Contents
The Legacy of the New Left
The Net as Really Existing Anarcho-Communism
The 'New Economy' is a Mixed Economy
Notes
References

The Legacy of the New Left

"... when ... [Ben Slivka] suggested that Microsoft consider giving away its browser,
la Netscape, Gates exploded and called him a 'communist' ..." [1].

The Net is haunted by the disappointed hopes of the Sixties. Because this new
technology symbolises another period of rapid change, many contemporary
commentators look back to the stalled revolution of thirty years ago to explain what
is happening now. Most famously, the editors of Wired continually pay homage to the
New Left values of individual freedom and cultural dissent in their coverage of the
Net. However, in their Californian ideology, these ideals of their youth are now going
to be realised through technological determinism and free markets. The politics of
ecstasy have been replaced by the economics of greed [2].

Ironically, the New Left emerged in response to the 'sell-out' of an earlier generation.
By the end of the Fifties, the heroes of the anti-fascist struggle had become the
guardians of Cold War orthodoxies. Even within the arts, avant-garde
experimentation had been transformed into fashionable styles of consumer society.
The adoption of innovative styles and new techniques was no longer subversive.
Frustrated with the recuperation of their parents' generation, young people started
looking for new methods of cultural and social activism. Above all, the Situationists
proclaimed that the epoch of the political vanguard and the artistic avant-garde had
passed. Instead of following the intellectual elite, everyone should instead determine
their own destinies.

"The situation is...made to be lived by its constructors. The role played by a

passive...'public' must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be
called actors but rather... 'livers' must steadily increase.' [3]

These New Left activists wanted to create opportunities for everyone to express their
own hopes, dreams and desires. The Hegelian 'grand narrative' would culminate in
the supersession of all mediations separating people from each other. Yet, despite
their Hegelian modernism, the Situationists believed that the utopian future had
been prefigured in the tribal past. For example, tribes in Polynesia organised
themselves around the potlatch: the circulation of gifts. Within these societies, this
gift economy bound people together into tribes and encouraged cooperation between
different tribes. In contrast with the atomisation and alienation of bourgeois society,
potlatches required intimate contacts and emotional authenticity [4]. According to
the Situationists, the tribal gift economy demonstrated that individuals could
successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. After the
New Left revolution, people would recreate this idyllic condition: anarcho-
communism [5].

However, the Situationists could not escape from the elitist tradition of the avant-
garde. Despite their invocation of Hegel and Marx, the Situationists remained
haunted by Nietzsche and Lenin. As in earlier generations, the rhetoric of mass
participation simultaneously justified the leadership of the intellectual elite. Anarcho-
communism was therefore transformed into the 'mark of distinction' for the New Left
vanguard. As a consequence, the giving of gifts was seen as the absolute antithesis
of market competition. There could be no compromise between tribal authenticity
and bourgeois alienation. After the social revolution, the potlatch would completely
supplant the commodity [6].
In the two decades following the May 1968 revolution, this purist vision of anarcho-
communism inspired community media activists. For instance, the radical 'free radio'
stations created by New Left militants in France and Italy refused all funding from
state and commercial sources. Instead, these projects tried to survive through
donations of time and money from their supporters. Emancipatory media supposedly
could only be produced within the gift economy [7]. During the late-Seventies, pro-
situ attitudes were further popularised by the punk movement. Although rapidly
commercialised, this sub-culture did encourage its members to form their own
bands, make their own fashions and publish their own fanzines. This participatory
ethic still shapes innovatory music and radical politics today. From raves to
environmental protests, the spirit of May '68 lives on within the DIY culture of the
Nineties. The gift is supposedly about to replace the commodity [8].

The Net as Really Existing Anarcho-Communism

Despite originally being invented for the U. S. military, the Net was constructed
around the gift economy. The Pentagon initially did try to restrict the unofficial uses
of its computer network. However, it soon became obvious that the Net could only be
successfully developed by letting its users build the system for themselves. Within
the scientific community, the gift economy has long been the primary method of
socialising labour. Funded by the state or by donations, scientists don't have to turn
their intellectual work directly into marketable commodities. Instead, research
results are publicised by 'giving a paper' at specialist conferences and by
'contributing an article' to professional journals. The collaboration of many different
academics is made possible through the free distribution of information [9].

Within small tribal societies, the circulation of gifts established close personal bonds
between people. In contrast, the academic gift economy is used by intellectuals who
are spread across the world. Despite the anonymity of the modern version of the gift
economy, academics acquire intellectual respect from each other through citations in
articles and other forms of public acknowledgement. Scientists therefore can only
obtain personal recognition for their individual efforts by openly collaborating with
each other through the academic gift economy. Although research is being
increasingly commercialised, the giving away of findings remains the most efficient
method of solving common problems within a particular scientific discipline [10].

From its earliest days, the free exchange of information has therefore been firmly
embedded within the technologies and social mores of cyberspace [11]. When New
Left militants proclaimed that 'information wants to be free' back in the Sixties, they
were preaching to computer scientists who were already living within the academic
gift economy. Above all, the founders of the Net never bothered to protect
intellectual property within computer-mediated communications. On the contrary,
they were developing these new technologies to advance their careers inside the
academic gift economy. Far from wanting to enforce copyright, the pioneers of the
Net tried to eliminate all barriers to the distribution of scientific research. Technically,
every act within cyberspace involves copying material from one computer to another.
Once the first copy of a piece of information is placed on the Net, the cost of making
each extra copy is almost zero. The architecture of the system presupposes that
multiple copies of documents can easily be cached around the network. As Tim
Berners-Lee - the inventor of the Web - points out:

"Concepts of intellectual property, central to our culture, are not expressed in a way
which maps onto the abstract information space. In an information space, we can
consider the authorship of materials, and their perception; but ... there is a need for
the underlying infrastructure to be able to make copies simply for reasons of
[technical] efficiency and reliability. The concept of 'copyright' as expressed in terms
of copies made makes little sense." [12]

Within the commercial creative industries, advances in digital reproduction are feared
for making the 'piracy' of copyright material ever easier. For the owners of
intellectual property, the Net can only make the situation worse. In contrast, the
academic gift economy welcomes technologies which improve the availability of data.
Users should always be able to obtain and manipulate information with the minimum
of impediments. The design of the Net therefore assumes that intellectual property is
technically and socially obsolete [13].

In France, the nationalised telephone monopoly has accustomed people to paying for
the on-line services provided by Minitel. In contrast, the Net remains predominantly
a gift economy even though the system has expanded far beyond the university.
From scientists through hobbyists to the general public, the charmed circle of users
was slowly built up through the adhesion of many localised networks to an agreed
set of protocols. Crucially, the common standards of the Net include social
conventions as well as technical rules. The giving and receiving of information
without payment is almost never questioned. Although the circulation of gifts doesn't
necessarily create emotional obligations between individuals, people are still willing
to donate their information to everyone else on the Net. Even selfish reasons
encourage people to become anarcho-communists within cyberspace. By adding their
own presence, every user contributes to the collective knowledge accessible to those
already on-line. In return, each individual has potential access to all the information
made available by others within the Net. Everyone takes far more out of the Net
than they can ever give away as an individual.
"... the Net is far from altruistic, or it wouldn't work... Because it takes as much
effort to distribute one copy of an original creation as a million ... you never lose
from letting your product free...as long as you are compensated in return ... What a
miracle, then, that you receive not one thing in value in exchange - indeed there is
no explicit act of exchange at all - but millions of unique goods made by others!"
[14]

Despite the commercialisation of cyberspace, the self-interest of Net users ensures

that the hi-tech gift economy continues to flourish. For instance, musicians are using
the Net for the digital distribution of their recordings to each other. By giving away
their own work to this network community, individuals get free access to a far larger
amount of music in return. Not surprisingly, the music business is worried about the
increased opportunities for the 'piracy' of copyrighted recordings over the Net.
Sampling, DJ-ing and mixing are already blurring property rights within dance music.
However, the greatest threat to the commercial music corporations comes from the
flexibility and spontaneity of the hi-tech gift economy. After it is completed, a new
track can quickly be made freely available to a global audience. If someone likes the
tune, they can download it for personal listening, use it as a sample or make their
own remix. Out of the free circulation of information, musicians can form friendships,
work together and inspire each other.

"It's all about doing it for yourself. Better than punk." [15]

Within the developed world, most politicians and corporate leaders believe that the
future of capitalism lies in the commodification of information. Over the last few
decades, intellectual property rights have been steadily tightened through new
national laws and international agreements. Even human genetic material can now
be patented [16]. Yet, at the 'cutting edge' of the emerging information society,
money-commodity relations play a secondary role to those created by a really
existing form of anarcho-communism. For most of its users, the Net is somewhere to
work, play, love, learn and discuss with other people. Unrestricted by physical
distance, they collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money or
politics. Unconcerned about copyright, they give and receive information without
thought of payment. In the absence of states or markets to mediate social bonds,
network communities are instead formed through the mutual obligations created by
gifts of time and ideas.

"This informal, unwritten social contract is supported by a blend of strong-tie and

weak-tie relationships among people who have a mixture of motives and ephemeral
affiliations. It requires one to give something, and enables one to receive something.
... I find that the help I receive far outweighs the energy I expend helping others; a
marriage of altruism and self-interest." [17]

On the Net, enforcing copyright payments represents the imposition of scarcity on a

technical system designed to maximise the dissemination of information. The
protection of intellectual property stops all users having access to every source of
knowledge. Commercial secrecy prevents people from helping each other to solve
common problems. The inflexibility of information commodities inhibits the efficient
manipulation of digital data. In contrast, the technical and social structure of the Net
has been developed to encourage open cooperation among its participants. As an
everyday activity, users are building the system together. Engaged in 'interactive
creativity', they send e-mail, take part in listservs, contribute to newsgroups,
participate within on-line conferences and produce Web sites [18]. Lacking copyright
protection, information can be freely adapted to suit the users' needs. Within the hi-
tech gift economy, people successfully work together through "... an open social
process involving evaluation, comparison and collaboration." [19]

The hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. For
instance, Bill Gates admits that Microsoft's biggest competitor in the provision of
Web servers comes from the Apache program [20]. Instead of being marketed by a
commercial company, this program is shareware [21]. Like similar projects, this
virtual machine is being continually developed by its techie users. Because its source
code is not protected by copyright, the program can be modified, amended and
improved by anyone with the appropriate programmingskills. When someone does
make a contribution to a shareware project, the gift of their labour is rewarded by
recognition within the community of user-developers.

The inflexibility of commodified software programs is compounded by their greater

unreliability. Even Microsoft can't mobilise the amount of labour given to some
successful shareware programs by their devotees. Without enough techies looking at
a program, all its bugs can never be found [22]. The greater social and technical
efficiency of anarcho-communism is therefore inhibiting the commercial take-over of
the Net. Shareware programs are now beginning to threaten the core product of the
Microsoft empire: the Windows operating system. Starting from the original software
program by Linus Torvalds, a community of user-developers are together building
their own non-proprietary operating system: Linux. For the first time, Windows has a
serious competitor. Anarcho-communism is now the only alternative to the
dominance of monopoly capitalism.

"Linux is subversive. Who could have thought even five years ago that a world-class
operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several
thousand developers scattered all over the planet, connected only by the tenuous
strands of the Internet?" [23]

The 'New Economy' is a Mixed Economy

Following the implosion of the Soviet Union, almost nobody still believes in the
inevitable victory of communism. On the contrary, large numbers of people accept
that the Hegelian 'end of history' has culminated in American neo-liberal capitalism
[24]. Yet, at exactly this moment in time, a really existing form of anarcho-
communism is being constructed within the Net, especially by people living in the U.
S. When they go on-line, almost everyone spends most of their time participating
within the gift economy rather than engaging in market competition. Because users
receive much more information than they can ever give away, there is no popular
clamour for imposing the equal exchange of the marketplace on the Net. Once again,
the 'end of history' for capitalism appears to be communism.
For the hi-tech gift economy was not an immanent possibility in every age. On the
contrary, the market and the state could only be surpassed in this specific sector at
this particular historical moment. Crucially, people need sophisticated media,
computing and telecommunications technologies to participate within the hi-tech gift
economy. A manually-operated press produced copies which were relatively
expensive, limited in numbers and impossible to alter without recopying. After
generations of technological improvements, the same quantity of text on the Net
costs almost nothing to circulate, can be copied as needed and can be remixed at
will. In addition, individuals need both time and money to participate within the hi-
tech gift economy. While a large number of the world's population still lives in
poverty, people within the industrialised countries have steadily reduced their hours
of employment and increased their wealth over a long period of social struggles and
economic reorganisations. By working for money during some of the week, people
can now enjoy the delights of giving gifts at other times. Only at this particular
historical moment have the technical and social conditions of the metropolitan
countries developed sufficiently for the emergence of digital anarcho-communism
[25].

"Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production."
[26]

The New Left anticipated the emergence of the hi-tech gift economy. People could
collaborate with each other without needing either markets or states. However, the
New Left had a purist vision of DIY culture: the gift was the absolute antithesis of the
commodity. Yet, anarcho-communism only exists in a compromised form on the Net.
Contrary to the ethical-aesthetic vision of the New Left, money-commodity and gift
relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. On
the one hand, each method of working does threaten to supplant the other. The hi-
tech gift economy heralds the end of private property in 'cutting edge' areas of the
economy. The digital capitalists want to privatise the shareware programs and
enclose the social spaces built through voluntary effort. The potlatch and the
commodity remain irreconcilable.

Yet, on the other hand, the gift economy and the commercial sector can only expand
through mutual collaboration within cyberspace. The free circulation of information
between users relies upon the capitalist production of computers, software and
telecommunications. The profits of commercial Net companies depend upon
increasing numbers of people participating within the hi-tech gift economy. For
instance, Netscape has tried to realise the opportunities opened up by such
interdependence from its foundation. Under threat from the Microsoft monopoly, the
company has to ally itself with the hacker community to avoid being overwhelmed. It
started by distributing its Web browser as a gift. Today the source code of this
program is freely available and the development of products for Linux has become a
top priority. The commercial survival of Netscape depends upon successfully
collaborating with hackers from the hi-tech gift economy. Anarcho-communism is
now sponsored by corporate capital [27].

""Hi there Mr CEO [Chief Executive Officer] - tell me, do you have any strategic
problem right now that is bigger than whether Microsoft is going to either crush you
or own your soul in a few years? No? You don't? OK, well, listen carefully then. You
cannot survive against Bill Gates [by] playing Bill Gates' game. To thrive, or even
survive, you're going to have to change the rules ..."" [28]

The purity of the digital DIY culture is also compromised by the political system. The
state isn't just the potential censor and regulator of the Net. At the same time, the
public sector provides essential support for the hi-tech gift economy. In the past, the
founders of the Net never bothered to incorporate intellectual property within the
system because their wages were funded from taxation. In the future, governments
will have to impose universal service provisions upon commercial
telecommunications companies if all sections of society are to have the opportunity
to circulate free information. Furthermore, when access is available, many people
use the Net for political purposes, including lobbying their political representatives.
Within the digital mixed economy, anarcho-communism is also symbiotic with the
state.

This miscegenation occurs almost everywhere within cyberspace. For instance, an

on-line conference site can be constructed as a labour of love, but still be partially
funded by advertising and public money. Crucially, this hybridisation of working
methods is not confined within particular projects. When they're on-line, people
constantly pass from one form of social activity to another. For instance, in one
session, a Net user could first purchase some clothes from an e-commerce
catalogue, then look for information about education services from the local council's
site and then contribute some thoughts to an on-going discussion on a listserver for
fiction-writers. Without even consciously having to think about it, this person would
have successively been a consumer in a market, a citizen of a state and an anarcho-
communist within a gift economy. Far from realising theory in its full purity, working
methods on the Net are inevitably compromised. The 'New Economy' is an advanced
form of social democracy [29].

At the end of the twentieth century, anarcho-communism is no longer confined to

avant-garde intellectuals. What was once revolutionary has now become banal. As
Net access grows, more and more ordinary people are circulating free information
across the Net. Crucially, their potlatches are not attempts to regain a lost emotional
authenticity. Far from having any belief in the revolutionary ideals of May '68, the
overwhelming majority of people participate within the hi-tech gift economy for
entirely pragmatic reasons. Sometimes they buy commodities on-line and access
state-funded services. However, they usually prefer to circulate gifts amongst each
other. Net users will always obtain much more than will ever be contributed in
return. By giving away something which is well-made, they will gain recognition from
those who download their work. For most people, the gift economy is simply the best
method of collaborating together in cyberspace. Within the mixed economy of the
Net, anarcho-communism has become an everyday reality.

"We must rediscover the pleasure of giving: giving because you have so much. What
beautiful and priceless potlatches the affluent society will see - whether it likes it or
not! - when the exuberance of the younger generation discovers the pure gift." [30]

This article is a remixed extract from The Holy Fools: a critique of the avant-garde in
the age of the Net which will be published by Verso Books early in 1999.

About the Author

Dr. Richard Barbrook was educated at Cambridge, Essex and Kent universities.
During the early Eighties, he was involved in pirate and community radio
broadcasting. He helped to set up Spectrum Radio, a multilingual station operating in
London, and published extensively on radio issues. In the late Eighties and early
Nineties, Richard worked for a research institute at the University of Westminster on
media regulation within the EU. This research was later published in Media Freedom:
the contradictions of communications in the age of modernity (London: Pluto Press,
1995). For the last few years, Richard has been coordinator of the Hypermedia
Research Centre at the University of Westminster and was the first course leader of
its MA in Hypermedia Studies. In collaboration with Andy Cameron, he wrote "The
Californian Ideology" which was a pioneering critique of the neo-liberal politics
of Wired. At present, Richard is completing The Holy Fools: a critique of the avant-
garde in the age of the Netfor Verso Books. A selection of his writings is available on
the Hypermedia Research Centre's Web site.

E-mail: richard@hrc.wmin.ac.uk
http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/

Notes

1. James Wallace, Overdrive, p. 266.

2. For a critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired, see Richard Barbrook and Andy
Cameron, "The Californian Ideology."

3. Guy Debord, "Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International

Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organisation and Action," p. 25.

4. The Situationists discovered the tribal gift economy in Marcel Mauss, The Gift.
5. For the historical antecedents of New Left anarcho-communism, see Richard
Gombin, Les Origins du Gauchisme, pp. 99-151. For its later influence on the new
social movements, see George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left, pp. 204-
212.

6. For instance, in their famous analysis of the 1965 Los Angeles Watts riots, the
Situationists praised looting as the revolutionary supersession of money-commodity
relations: "... instead of being eternally pursued in the rat race of alienated labour
and increasing but unmet social needs, real desires begin to be expressed in festival,
in playful self-assertion, in the potlatch of destruction." Situationist International,
"The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy," p. 155.

7. See John Downing, Radical Media.

8. DIY stands for 'do-it-yourself'. This slogan is used to emphasise the need for
people to tackle social problems through collective direct action rather than to wait
for someone else to solve them. See Elaine Brass, Sophie Poklewski Koziell and
Denise Searle, Gathering Force.

9. See Warren O. Hagstrom, "Gift Giving as an Organisational Principle in Science,"

p. 29.

10. This is why the increasing role of private funding can hamper as well as help
academic research. See David Noble, "Digital Diploma Mills."

11. See Mark Geise, "From ARPAnet to the Internet," pp. 126-132.

12. Tim Berners-Lee, "The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future," p. 11.

13. See Neil Kleinman, "Don't Fence Me In: Copyright, Property and Technology."

14. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, "Cooking Pot Markets," p 10.

15. Steve Elliot of Slug Oven quoted in Karlin Lillington, "No! It's Not OK, Computer,"
page 3. Also see Andrew Leonard, "Mutiny on the Net."

16. For instance, one of the major components of the 1993 Uruguay Round of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was increased protection for patents
and copyrights, especially with agriculture and medicine, see John Frow,
"Information as Gift and Commodity."

17. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, pp. 57-58.

18. Tim Berners-Lee, "Realising the Full Potential of the Web," p. 5.

19. Bernard Lang, "Free Software For All," p. 3.

20. Keith W. Porterfield, "Information Wants to be Valuable," p. 2.

21. Shareware is also often known as freeware or open source software. All these
names emphasise that the program is a gift to anyone on the Net, especially those
who have the skills to improve its code. See the use of these terms in Douglas
Rushkoff, "Free Lessons in Innovation"; Free Software Foundation, "What is Free
Software?"; and Eric S. Raymond, "Homesteading the Noosphere."

22. See Andrew Leonard, "Let My Software Go!."

23. Eric S. Raymond, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," p. 1.

24. See Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History and the Last Man."

25. "Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in
populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival
goods." Eric S. Raymond, "Homesteading the Noosphere," p. 9.

26. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, p. 700.

27. See Netscape Communications Corporation, "Netscape Announces Plans to Make

Next-Generation Communicator Source Code Available Free on the Net."

28. Eric Raymond describing his pitch on behalf of shareware to commercial software
companies in Andrew Leonard, "Let My Software Go!," p. 8. Bill Gates doesn't just
believe that free software is 'communism', but even allowing other companies to
have access to Microsoft products before their release date! See James
Wallace, Overdrive, p. 57.

29. Wired uses 'The New Economy' as a synonym for its neo-liberal fantasies about
the Net. See Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy."

30. Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, p. 70.

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