Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2008

Subjects

Internet service providers -- Rate of return, Internet service providers -- Profit, Right of property, Public goods -- Valuation

Abstract

The internet is an interesting case, since it was created entirely with taxpayer's money by DARPA, while the world wide web was created at CERN in Switzerland and placed into the public domain voluntarily in 1993. The internet and web have many features of a commons, and many people refer to the "internet commons". Kubiszewski (pronounced cube- ih-shefski) explores the intricacies of the internet and world wide web to determine if internet companies are extracting economic rent from the public and how it could be recovered. She finds that companies are making a substantial profit by utilizing a resource that was developed by a collective whole and not through their own efforts. In particular, services of ISPs connecting people to the web should be subject to rent as well as the provision of web domain names. Kubiszewski determined that the average profit for Fortune 1000 companies is 7% and everything above that could be considered economic rent. She finds that economic rent from public telecoms to be $17 million, private ISPs to be $3.3 million, and domain names $9.3 million. Totaling up all the economic rent, we find that economic rent owed to Vermonters is approximately $30 million per year. Instead of dividing this money into equal dividend of about $50 per person, which promotes consumption and encourages the investment into private goods, the money would be placed into a trust with the primary purpose of supporting and furthering research and intellectual development in an open forum.

Description

The Green Tax and Common Assets Project appreciates the support of our past and ongoing sponsors: The Orchard Foundation, Alex C. Walker Foundation, Vermont Community Foundation, Schalkenbach Foundation, and Lintilhac Foundation. These collected papers were written by the University of Vermont Public Administration #395 Spring 2008 class: "Valuing Common Assets for Public Finance in Vermont." (http://www.uvm.edu/~gflomenh/PA395- CMN-ASSTS/)

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/8623

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