The Uk has seen a wave of internet-enabled consumer activism lately. High street banks, although cheap by international standards, have been particularly vunerable. They have faced a mass revolt where over a million customers have downloaded forms from activbist websites to reclaim the some 4.5 billion pounds that banks charge in punitive overdraft fees each year. Utilities and roads are next in line. These mass revolts are not only an outcome of the new possibilities for social activism that information tehcnologiy provides. Argueably they also stem forma an emerging popular consiousness, a moral economy if you will, that states that things like money transfers (essentially a communications medium), roads, energy and utilites should be free, or close to free, and that it is unethical to make money out of these necessities, as this means taxing the necessary infrastructure of contemporary life. Given that so many companies make money form precisley this (what is a succesful brand, if not a way of taxing social interaction?) this spells hard times for the business model of contemporary informational capitalism

original post at P2Pfoundation.