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Re: [ox-en] WikiLeaks and peer production?



This is very interesting and seems to be more general. Often the leaders and in-groups of the free culture movement (thanks Alistair for the wikileaks/marx essay! I just translated it into Finnish) are less than transparent and less than ideally democratic (one thinks of Stallman, Wales, Assange, even Torvalds to an extent; can you name Linus' lieutenants?). This is, up to a point, sad for the individuals concerned, especially when compounded by fame & potentially fortune. However, as Alistair points out, on the level of the community or the movement the poison is diluted if not completely removed by the possibility of forking. (In some cases the personalities and in-groups do have considerable pull and forking is not a realistic option.)

Scott Lash has described (in the Critique of Information and other places) how the disorganisational nature of hacker communities nurtures or even necessitates charismatic leadership. Organisational, institutional leadership would be too rigid and without a foundation; therefore charismatic leadership is all there is. Maybe we have here another fortunate side-effect of post-scarcity: like free-riders, narcissistic leaders are not anymore a problem. They may even be an asset, because they get people involved.

On 2/9/11 4:24 AM, Alistair Davidson wrote:
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Is this essential, though? Linux lacks formal democracy, but remains
democratic in character due to the political economy - the communal nature
of the output (eg the ability to fork and patch prevents non-consensual
rule). And as we all know formal democracy can disguise tyranny. The
emergence of other leaks sites suggests that in the medium-term, something
similar will be true of these, and the ability of members to leave the
organisation at will suggests that those who remain must be okay with what's
going on. A project manager or editor is not a dictator.

The one real harm WikiLeaks could do to the working class is refuse to
publish a beneficial leak. I don't think they are likely to do so, but the
emergence of a few more sites should hedge against that becoming a problem.

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 11:19 PM, Mathieu ONeil<mathieu.oneil anu.edu.au>wrote:

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Does this change the character of being peer-production?

Apart from the money/governance angle it is not clear to me how they
actually operate - how democratically or openly decisions are taken, apart
from the fact that the reason openleaks forked off was because "Schmitt"
contested the autocracry of the WL founder - see the Wired-leaked IRC chat
logs etc.
cheers,
Mathieu

----- Original Message -----
From: Stefan Meretz<stefan meretz.de>
Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2011 10:49 pm
Subject: Re: [ox-en] WikiLeaks and peer production?
To: list-en oekonux.org

On 2011-02-08 21:56, Mathieu ONeil wrote:
(...) raised the question of the deal
with the newspapers: does it cover expenses, legal fees etc?
No-one
knows. So while they may be producing transparency externally the
same cannot be said for their inner operations.

Concerning WikiLeaks that's true and commonly criticized. We
will see if
OpenLeaks will do better. Is every free software project
transparent in
this regard (serious question, I don't know)?

Does this change the character of being peer-production?

Ciao,
Stefan

--
Start here: www.meretz.de
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****
Dr Mathieu O'Neil
Adjunct Research Fellow
Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
College of Arts and Social Science
The Australian National University
email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au
web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php





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_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
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_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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