It's late evening in the northern outskirts of Milan as I stop for a bite to eat in a Chinese take-away. The place is empty aside from a couple of young South Americans that sit in a corner kissing from time to time, oblivious to the naked light above and the rocking floor that simulates a mini earthquake each time a tube train runs below.

I am off to a long-standing anarchist club to listen to Joi Ito speak about Creative Commons. I have an admiration for the guy's boundless energy and hands-on curiosity and, more importantly, a fascination for the fact that he is a rare representative of what I term a border hacker: someone capable of interacting across diverse environments. In this case, a person priviledged enough to engage in discussion with business and political leaders one week and grassroot activists the next.

The place is plastered with political posters and photographs of a mid-spring dream that took place in Paris back in '68. It is fittingly chilly inside and the wine is served on a donation basis. The turnout is rather low - 30/40 people - and the organizer blames it on the crack cocaine of Italian consumer culture: a football match on TV.

The scene however is somewhat right for the topics tackled. After all, the implications of free culture, wikipedia-like projects, open source mentality and P2P all point to a paradigm shift away from competition towards cooperation. The rise of a gift culture and the democratization of the means of cultural production share many of the features found in anarchist philosophies.

This opens a whole series of questions that remain for the most unanswered and are linked to the fact that we cannot live off culture alone. Allow me to explain: among other things Joi talks about the shifting relations between amateurs and professionals. As I point out the common view still invests the latter of more authority and more knowledge. The amateur,
after all, is simply the hobbyist while the professional - and this I believe is a crucial point - gets paid for his/her activities. And yet our perceptions are always subjective. In ancient Rome for example, whoever exchanged their talents/services for financial gain was seen as a slave. The amateur, on the other hand, acts on love.

Which bring us back to gift culture: if we start to find too many benefits in giving away our work, how will we end up paying our bills? Is not a degree of financial security necessary, a priori, to take part in this new culture?

But I digress. Back in more pragmatic terms Joi asks if the widespread practice among Creative Commons adopters to choose a non-commercial module is the right choice: "Wouldn't you be happy to see the New York Times use your content?". Now, I never saw this format as precluding commercial use. What I would expect is some form of financial return from whoever sells my content, some kind of revenue share, an ad-hoc agreement.

In the case of this blog, however, I realize how the expression my content is often tenous and unclear. As regular visitors know full well NFSB is composed of visual quotes and the building blocks of a remix discourse. And with Joi looking for clarifications on the legal status of creative commons in Italy I also realize that my adoption of the agreement has been driven more by moral than regulatory concerns. How bizarre.