The Economist über die Ökonomie des Tauschens

Sehr interessant ist ein Artikel in The Economist über die neue Ökonomie des Tauschens. P2P, SETI und Freie Software kommen vor:

…The characteristics of information—be it software, text or even biotech research—make it an economically obvious thing to share. It is a “non-rival” good: ie, your use of it does not interfere with my use. Better still, there are network effects: ie, the more people who use it, the more useful it is to any individual user. Best of all, the existence of the internet means that the costs of sharing are remarkably low. The cost of distribution is negligible, and co-ordination is easy because people can easily find others with similar goals and can contribute when convenient…..