Commons-Based Peer Productions are companies where not one person owns the company and group of people collaborated to start the business. Commons-Based Peer Production is a term formed by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler, and he compared commons-based peer production to firm production and market-based production. (Wikimedia, 2010) The term "commons-based peer production" was first introduced by Yochai Benkler in his paper "Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm". (Russell McOrmond, 2005) Commons-Based Peer Productions are not widely known however are used every single day. I believe people use Commons-Based Peer Production more than they think they do. The majority of products and services can be advertised using commons-based peer productions. The most reasonable explanation for this is a contribution to the information giving process then it can be used on any product, as long as there are willing participants to. There should be no excuse for these companies to not use Commons-Based Peer Productions because there are some really good features to it. The challenges of commons-based peer production and how these challenges must influence digital library system design for a successful result are described next. One example of Commons-Based Peer Productions is Wikipedia, because it is not owned by one entity, but rather controlled by a group of people. I actually use Commons- Based Peer Production websites like Wikipedia a lot; you can find information about almost every single topic you can think of. Granted due to the many people who can add a wiki page the information is not always accurate. This method of Commons-Based Peer Productions will most likely expand throughout the ages. Commons-Based Peer Productions are great because they are open access. Open-access means literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. (Russell McOrmond, 2005) One of the biggest features is that you do not have to pay money to visit these websites. (Aaron Krowne, 2003)
References
Aaron Krowne, 2003. Building a Digital Library the Commons-based Peer Production Way. Retrieved November 2, 2010. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october03/krowne/10krowne.html
Russell McOrmond, 2005. Introducing "commons-based peer production". Retrieved November 2, 2010. http://www.flora.ca/floss.shtml.
Russell McOrmond, 2005. Open Access. Retrieved November 2, 2010. http://www.flora.ca/floss.shtml.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2010. Commons-based peer production. Retrieved November 2, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production.
