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The ICT sector is featured by technical progress, convergence and systems integration. This leads to risks of monopolization regimes at the core with higher competition regimes at the periphery. Moreover, some specific component of the system may be essential for its evolution. In particular, networking to some extent creates the system, while software (notably operating systems) is the "glue" which holds it together. In this context, the European ICT industry is potentially smashed between the cost advantages of Asian countries such as China, and the inventiveness and dynamism of the US industry. The way out of this difficult situation is to create in Europe the conditions of restoring knowledge accumulation. By concentrating on an ambitious project of open source software production in embarked and domestic systems, Europe could reach several objectives: to make freely accessible an essential facility of networks, to stimulate competition, to help reaching the Lisbon objectives and to restore the European competitiveness in ICT. ; Le secteur des TIC est caractérisé par le progrès technique, une convergence autour de la numérisation et l'intégration des systèmes. Cela entraîne des risques de monopole au coeur de l'industrie alors que la périphérie est plus concurrentielle. Bien que chaque sous-secteur soit largement autonome, quelques composants du système peuvent devenir essentiels. En particulier, le réseau crée de plus en plus le système tandis que le logiciel est la colle qui fait tenir le tout ensemble. Dans ce contexte, l'industrie européenne des TIC est potentiellement "écrasée" entre les avantages de coûts dont bénéficient les pays asiatiques et plus particulièrement la Chine et la créativité et le dynamisme de l'industrie américaine. Pour sortir de cette situation, il faut restaurer les conditions de l'accumulation des connaissances. Cela passe par l'appui aux logiciels "open sources" qui peuvent permettre à l'Europe de contourner les barrières à l'entrée que constituent aujourd'hui les DRM (droits ...

The ICT sector is featured by technical progress, convergence and systems integration. This leads to risks of monopolization regimes at the core with higher competition regimes at the periphery. Moreover, some specific component of the system may be essential for its evolution. In particular, networking to some extent creates the system, while software (notably operating systems) is the "glue" which holds it together. In this context, the European ICT industry is potentially smashed between the cost advantages of Asian countries such as China, and the inventiveness and dynamism of the US industry. The way out of this difficult situation is to create in Europe the conditions of restoring knowledge accumulation. By concentrating on an ambitious project of open source software production in embarked and domestic systems, Europe could reach several objectives: to make freely accessible an essential facility of networks, to stimulate competition, to help reaching the Lisbon objectives and to restore the European competitiveness in ICT. ; Le secteur des TIC est caractérisé par le progrès technique, une convergence autour de la numérisation et l'intégration des systèmes. Cela entraîne des risques de monopole au coeur de l'industrie alors que la périphérie est plus concurrentielle. Bien que chaque sous-secteur soit largement autonome, quelques composants du système peuvent devenir essentiels. En particulier, le réseau crée de plus en plus le système tandis que le logiciel est la colle qui fait tenir le tout ensemble. Dans ce contexte, l'industrie européenne des TIC est potentiellement "écrasée" entre les avantages de coûts dont bénéficient les pays asiatiques et plus particulièrement la Chine et la créativité et le dynamisme de l'industrie américaine. Pour sortir de cette situation, il faut restaurer les conditions de l'accumulation des connaissances. Cela passe par l'appui aux logiciels "open sources" qui peuvent permettre à l'Europe de contourner les barrières à l'entrée que constituent aujourd'hui les DRM (droits numériques).

AbstractWhile most scholars emphasize the role of prosocial motivations of contributors in building open online communities, we show that mere users also adhere to their norms of behaviour to some extent. To this end we designed an original experimentation protocol. With the help of the French Wikimédia Foundation, we questioned a large sample (n = 13,000) of Wikipedia users (whether contributors or not). They were invited, after having expressing their feelings about Wikipédia, to play a Dictator Game. A large proportion of respondents, including those who were merely users, chose an equal split (66% of the sample). This surprising result suggests that they have adhered to a social norm of sharing. Investigating the determinants of this result, we prove that an involvement measured by usage (intensity and variety), as well as by attachment to, and time spent, on Wikipedia, is correlated with the choice of the 50/50 split in the dictator game (DG). Furthermore, the method of instrumental variables gives an indication that adherence to the social norm of sharing may be endogenously determined by involvement in the open online community. Our result highlights the importance of interactions with the institutional and technical frameworks of the community.

The European Community as a social configuration, with its complex division of competencies and action capacities between EC institutions and national governments, is still difficult to conceptualize. In this context the authors propose the concept of corporate actor networks in order to understand more thoroughly the interaction processes of policy integration by which the European community has accumulated increasing supranational action capacities. A case study on the emergence and development EC telecommunications policy provides the background for a discussion of the scope, structure and operation of such EC policy actor networks. ; Mit ihrer komplexen Verteilung von Kompetenzen und Handlungskapazitäten zwischen den EG-Institutionen und den Mitgliedsstaaten ist das Sozialgebilde Europäische Gemeinschaft immer noch schwierig zu konzeptualisieren. Hierzu schlagen die Autoren das Konzept des Netzwerks korporativer Akteure vor. Dieses soll die Interaktionsprozesse zwischen den relevanten Akteuren in den Europäischen Gemeinschaften, welche der Integration verschiedener Politiken (policies) dienen, genauer fassen. Mittels einer Fallstudie über die Herausbildung und Entwicklung der EG-Telekommunikationspolitik wird ein Einblick in die Reichweite, Struktur und Operationsweise dieser transnationalen Politiknetzwerke auf EG-Ebene gegeben.