Commodifying Collaborative Research

Abstract

The commodification controversy is posited as a conflict between the users and creators of information products over modifying intellectual property law in the face of technological change. Commodification is said to help creators because it establishes a market for their work - a market that generates monetary incentives to innovate, measures consumer demand for new works, and facilitates information exchange. Since modern technologies of reproduction and dissemination make the public-goods character of information products more salient, it is argued that a new law is needed in order to maintain the level of exclusivity creators previously enjoyed. At the same time, however, commodification is thought to harm users because it makes it more difficult for them to acquire knowledge. Enhancing legal and technological means for privatization is therefore questioned as going beyond the mere maintenance of exclusivity, instead allowing rights holders to charge for works that formerly fell into the public domain, price discriminate, and impose all sorts of new restrictions on use. Lost in this debate is the effect of technology on the ways that information and cultural goods are actually produced, particularly on the extent to which individual creativity has been replaced by collaborative effort. In fact, the artist starving in a garret, the scientist madly experimenting in the garage, and the reclusive professor burning midnight oil are all rapidly becoming myths. In a world of increasing technical complexity and intensifying specialization, interdisciplinary investigation has become crucial to progress. With the globalization of the marketplace comes a need for multicultural input into product development. As private financing for technological start-ups increases (and public funding of basic research withers), economic factors prompt new alignments within the innovation industries. At the same time, digitization and the Internet facilitate interchange and present fresh artistic and scholarly opportunities. This new world is characterized by such phenomena as chain art, interactive websites, multi-authored scientific articles, as well as corporate joint ventures and university distance learning initiatives. As production methods have become increasingly complex, claims for creative recognition have also blossomed. By drawing attention to their contributions, graduate students, dramaturgs, statisticians, reviewers, editors, and the like have transformed social understanding of information production. Works that might once have been seen as individually created must now be viewed as the product of collaboration. This essay looks at the special challenges that commodification presents to participants in collaborative projects and examines the disjuncture between current U.S. intellectual property law and the issues of importance to collaborators. It ends with suggestions on the ways in which the law might be improved.