Collaborative Authorship in a Network Society

Abstract

This essay identifies shared commonalities underlying the organizational structures of successful online collaborative creation. Online collaborative cation involves individual Internet users and communities that work together to generate and produce works online by contributing to, creating, and reusing and modifying each other’s works. Successful online collaborations have produced a variety of socially-valuable works, including viral Internet urban legends, open software, and knowledge repositories. These collaborative works not only serve important roles in the growth and development of public knowledge, but they also contribute to cultural growth and creativity. The commonalities that successful online collaboration share are: (1) fair and equal access to the Internet; (2) modularity and granularity of each individual’s contributions; (3) pseudonymity of contributors; (4) online community norms and policing; and (5) lack of exclusive ownership of online creations. This essay explains how each of these contributed to the successes of various online collaborative creative projects. As we begin to live more of our lives online, we tend to form more connections online and join online communities based on similar politics, professions, or interests. Many of these online communities have the ability to collaborate and create valuable works of authorship. Understanding the organizational structures that foster online collaboration allows us to recreate structures that encourage online collaboration. More importantly, it helps guide us in examining or reexamining our legal systems in order to optimize rules and regulations that promote rather than impede online collaborative creation.