Of course, this means that the World Social Forum essentially shares the
metaphysical world-view of its Davos-bred opponents. The difference is that
whereas the Davos crowd wants to enable an exchange-based economy for
"information products," the WSF generally wants to prevent one. To
accomplish this, Davos advocates stronger legal restrictions on the
transmission or use of information, whereas the WSF generally advocates
weaker ones. Davos, in other words, believes that information should be
bought and sold and that artificial scarcities should be introduced by law
in order to make such markets possible. Porto Alegre, on the other hand,
believes that information, which naturally lacks the scarcities inherent in
atom-based markets, should remain completely unrestricted and thus remain
res extra commercium.