In the 1990s, the internet was often regarded as some sort of wilderness, akin to the one discovered by the first American settlers. Howard Rheingold’s 1993 book The Virtual Community had the subtitle ‘Home-steading on the electronic frontier’. The internet appeared as virgin territory, to be shaped, occupied and governed by whoever could get there first.

But the net already had a history, including bodies who designed it, used it and stipulated various rules. So if the analogy was inappropriate then, it is completely redundant now.

New data published last week revealed that Europeans spend an average of 10 hours 15 minutes using the internet every week, and the British considerably more.
The internet is so deeply entwined with our everyday lives that it makes little sense to talk about it as some fantasy world, with its own set of laws and freedoms.

And yet the metaphor of the American West still resonates strongly in one particular area: the battle going on between content industries and open access projects.

As this myth has it, the internet is home to a number of peace-loving communities, who use it to work collaboratively, create amateur cultural artefacts and naively resist the nasty capitalist world outside. But pitched against them are music publishers, proprietary software companies and film distributors, living only according to the laws of the marketplace. This is idealism versus realism; gift cultures versus economics.

Both sides have an interest in sustaining this myth. Open source coders, Creative Commons publishers and the Wikipedia crowd use a subtly anti-capitalist ideology to win grass-roots support and persuade individuals to work for them for free.

Meanwhile, the rights-holders that sit on the other side of the argument do not mind being represented as hard-nosed businessmen, given that this tends to win them credibility with governments. They are quite happy to acknowledge the idealism of their opponents, but can simply shrug and say that economic reality is different.

But does any of this stack up? First, we must look at this notion that open access projects hold the moral high ground, but lack any economic underpinnings.

This is false in both respects. One may have an innate dislike of cash, but it is not entirely clear why gift economies – such as open source coding – are morally superior to their closed access, proprietary alternatives. What do these communities have to say about the digital divide? What are they doing to mobilise IT in support of elderly or disabled people?

Meanwhile, it is quite obvious that open access projects are intimately linked to the marketplace; indeed they are viewed by economists as very beneficial.

Open source is big business, with large numbers of companies choosing to sell services on the back of free software, instead of selling the software itself.
Equally, giving away one’s artistic content regularly proves to be a good way of building reputation and becoming commercially successful. UK band The Arctic Monkeys recently achieved chart success by making their songs freely downloadable online, and only later selling them through shops.

Economists have no problem explaining such phenomena. According to economic logic, the free exchange of information is not a threat to a successful market system, but an important component of it. Only in a culture where people are able to share advice, recommendations and samples does trade ever take place at all.

So what about the second half of the frontier myth? Is it not the case that content industries are the scary face of successful capitalism? Again, not really.
Morally speaking, it is preposterous to stereotype intellectual property (IP) law as a means of promoting the interests of business over those of the public.
There are instances where IP extends too far, and we should ask whether or not businesses have too much protection.

But IP is also what allows artists to be recognised for their work.

There is also an important cultural advantage to having traditional, closed access models. Traditional publishing models – treated with disdain by many open access communities – are not just ways of maximising profit, they also act as a mark of quality. The majority of internet users do not want their content to bubble up through blogs, but like to have it found and collected for them by publishers, be they academic publishers, the BBC or TimeWarner.

And just as the moral case for this business model is stronger than is often recognised, the economic case is weaker. Slogans such as ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘creative Britannia’ have burrowed into our political and economic consciousness, accompanied by vague talk about the emerging Asian threat.

Content industries have convinced the government that the wealth they create is critical to national well-being, and entirely dependent on IP.

This is only as true as you want it to be. Creative industries contribute eight per cent of the UK GDP; whether or not this is enough to justify a wide-reaching legal and industrial policy depends on your perspective.

Economists are widely agreed that extending the copyright term for sound recordings, for example, has no justification whatsoever.

This does not mean that it is of no benefit to the record companies – clearly it is – but that it is of no benefit to the economy or society. There may be other areas of IP protection where there is an economic justification for stronger IP.

Things vary from industry to industry, but what we should not tolerate is the idea that economic logic points invariably to stronger protection, while moral logic to weaker protection. As difficult as it may be to accept, nothing in this terrain is black and white.

William Davies is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research. His new paper, Markets in the Online Public Sphere, is available at www.ippr.org