Via Boing Boing I found this James Boyle piece about open v. closed networks. Boyle has some interesting things to say about why so many policy makers and business leaders don't like open networks.

we still do not understand the kind of property that exists on networks. Most of our experience is with tangible property; fields that can be overgrazed if outsiders cannot be excluded. For that kind of property, control makes more sense. We still do not intuitively grasp the kind of property that cannot be exhausted by overuse (think of a piece of software) and that can become more valuable to us the more it is used by others (think of a communications standard). There the threats are different, but so are the opportunities for productive sharing. Our intuitions, policies and business models misidentify both. Like astronauts brought up in gravity, our reflexes are poorly suited for free fall.

Boyle is right to point out that large numbers of folks don't quite get the kind of property that open networks and open content allows. One thing that Boyle really fails to mention is the fallacy that people only engage in creative activity for exclusively financial reasons. He does start his piece by noting that people do not always act in an "economically rational" manner, unfortunately he doesn't really follow through with the idea.