Placing Space in Cyberspace : Consequences of Drawing Private Property in Cyberspace An Italian Experience

Even if the term “cyberspace” is nowadays unquestioned, the use is not a innocent one. “Cyberspace”, in fact, implies the notion of “space” where there is not a physical spatiality. That choice stresses that a battle about property (in the Romanist sense of the term) was also going on in the Internet. My paper will tell the story of a privatization of a public space, and it is grounded on the assumption that private property produces more surplus for the owner than public land, and this feature pushes people to set up private properties instead of commons. Similarly, the space metaphor in cyberspace sped up during the late 1980s and first 1990s, i.e. when it was evident to everyone that the Internet was becoming the new Promise Land of economy. At the very same time, and as a legitimization of privatization of the public Internet, hackers’ phenomenon increased and media depicted them as dangerous. While hackers are nowadays various and heterogeneous, the main argument that drives their claims is the freedom of the Internet. This argument is often used and abused by different political parties, with the result of a paradoxical enclosure instead of an opening of hackers’ groups. This paper will explore this problem through the participant observation to a Hacker Meeting held in Pisa (Italy) from September 28th to 30th, 2007