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).