June 09, 2006

posted by Jason Mazzone

I think that there's potentially great utility in using the public's engagement with this issue to help resolve it. Along the same lines, I'd been toying around with the idea of suggesting the creation of a private cause of action to supplement 8 U.S.C. §1324a, such that even if the government is unwilling to deal with employers who hire illegals, private citizens could still sue.

It's funny, Yochai Benkler's book mentions a structurally similar project by NASA "clickworkers" to help map the surface of the moon in his book "The Wealth of Networks." I guess your example shows that "peer production of information" is not always emancipatory!

It's funny, Yochai Benkler mentions a structurally similar project by NASA "clickworkers" to help map the surface of the moon in his book "The Wealth of Networks." (Similar only in the sense that a distributed group of amateurs are producing information.) I guess your example shows that "peer production of information" is not always emancipatory!

I guess your example shows that "peer production of information" is not always emancipatory!

What's surprising is the idea that mapping craters on Mars (not the moon) would be considered emancipatory in the first place. But the context of the remark is this: the peer production of information is seen as an alternative and an antidote to privately-produced and owned information (someone else can own my genes) and to monopoly control of software code (e.g. Microsoft). So to use peer production of information to limit freedom by patrolling borders and spying on people goes against the grain of the peer-production ethos.