Taipei, Aug. 5 (CNA) In the Internet age, the idea of a "sharing economy" will impact the traditional market economy and a group of amateurs will be able to do phenomenonal things by collaborating with one another, a Japanese internet entrepreneur said on the final day of the Wikimania 2007 international conference.
"The market economy basically tells people to make as much money as possible, but not everything evolves around making money, " Joichi Ito, a Japanese-born, American-educated activist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, told around 400 participants of the annual Wikimedia conference.
The evolution of the Internet has changed the ways people live as well as their perspectives, he said, pointing out that the importance of "happiness, which comes from compassion of giving and receiving, " instead of money, matters more to people nowadays.
The online encyclopedia Wikipedia, a collaboration by a community of so-called amateur contributors all over the world, is a good example, he said. It provides for the needs of some, who have no current means with which to reciprocate: a characteristic of a sharing economy.
As much as everyone likes to share good things with others, it has also given rise to the piracy issue, and despite efforts to stamp it out, illegal reproduction and downloads still exist.
Commercial companies should learn to view things from a different perspective in the light of an ethic of sharing, Ito claimed. For example, he said, a video remix about politics using various television news clips should be considered a "new means of practicing free speech."
Ito, chairman of the board of Creative Commons (CC), also talked about new forms of copyright that the non-profit organization advocates.
"You give away some rights while still remaining the copyright holder, "he said.
CC is devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share. It has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses which, depending on the one chosen, restrict only certain rights (or none) of the work.
CC and Wikimedia are both part of the Free Culture movement, a social movement that calls for the freedom to use the Internet and other media to distribute and modify creative works, including software.