Yochai Benkler

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Yochai Benkler

Yochai Benkler speaking at UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of law on 27 April 2006.
Born 1964
Occupation Professor, Harvard Law School
Spouse(s) Deborah Schrag
Children 2
Website
benkler.org

Yochai Benkler is Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and the author of The Wealth of Networks[1] and the paper Coase's Penguin.[2]

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[edit] Biography

Benkler received his LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University in 1991 and J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1994. He worked at the law firm Ropes & Gray from 1994-1995. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer from 1995 to 1996.

He was a professor at New York University School of Law from 1996 to 2003, visiting at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School (during 2002-2003), before joining the Yale Law School faculty in 2003. In 2007, Benkler joined Harvard Law School where he teaches and is a faculty co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

[edit] Works

Yochai Benkler

Benkler's research focuses on commons-based approaches to managing resources in networked environments. He coined the term commons-based peer production to describe collaborative efforts, such as free and open source software and Wikipedia which are based on sharing of information. He also uses the term networked information economy to describe a "system of production, distribution, and consumption of information goods characterized by decentralized individual action carried out through widely distributed, nonmarket means that do not depend on market strategies."[3]

Benkler's book The Wealth of Networks[4] examines the ways in which information technology permits extensive forms of collaboration that may potentially have transformative consequences for economy and society. Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Open Source Software and the blogosphere are among the examples that Benkler draws upon. (The Wealth of Networks is itself published under a Creative Commons license). For example, Benkler argues that blogs and other modes of participatory communication can lead to "a more critical and self-reflective culture," where citizens are empowered by the ability to publicize their own opinions on a range of issues. Much of The Wealth of Networks is presented in economic terms, and Benkler raises the possibility that a culture where information were shared freely could prove more economically efficient than one where innovation is frequently encumbered by patent or copyright law, since the marginal cost of re-producing most information is effectively nothing.

Benkler coined the term Jalt as a contraction of jealousy and altruism, to describe the dynamic in commons-based peer production where some participants get paid while others do not, or "whether people get paid differentially for participating." The term was first introduced in his seminal paper Coase's Penguin. It is described in more technical terms as "social-psychological component of the reward to support monetary appropriation by others or... where one agent is jealous of the rewards of another."[5]

[edit] Awards

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Benkler, Yochai (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. p. 515. ISBN 0-300-11056-1. 
  2. ^ Benkler, Yochai (2002) "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm." The Yale Law Journal 112(3)
  3. ^ Bekler, Yochai (2006), op cit. 3.
  4. ^ ibid.
  5. ^ Benkler, Yochai (2002). op cit. (page number(s) needed)
  6. ^ [1]

[edit] External links

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