Who supports those who support the commons? Technology and free culture in facing informational capitalism

Abstract

Since the expansion of its individual use in the nineties, the Internet has experienced a process of increasing commodification and concentration. However, the Net has also proposed new forms of peer production with voluntary contributions from Internet users, which are positioned as an alternative to informational capitalism economic model. Using a combined methodology, we explore the modes of financing of free culture communities in Spain. We also reflect on the remuneration for the contribution to these projects. The results show the determination of the groups to maintain their organizational and strategic independence through self-financing. They consider reinvesting their economic resources in the project, without pretending to maximize the economic benefit. These communities show tensions between remunerating those who participate in them in order to avoid their precariousness or operating with voluntary contributions, which allow the progress of their projects outside the logic of the market system.