Editing Guild (section)

=== Quasi-guilds in the information economy ===
In 1998, [[Thomas W. Malone]] championed a modern variant of the guild structure for [[independent contractor]]s and [[remote work]]ers. [[Insurance]] including any professional [[legal liability]], [[intellectual capital]] protections, an [[ethical code]] perhaps enforced by peer pressure and software, and other benefits of a strong association of producers of knowledge, benefit from [[economies of scale]], and may prevent cut-throat competition that leads to inferior services undercutting prices. As with historical guilds, such a structure will resist foreign competition.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=SCHWARTZ |first=PETER |date=July 1, 1998 |title=Re-Organization Man |magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |url=https://www.wired.com/1998/07/malone/ |url-access=limited}}</ref>

The [[open-source-software movement]] has from time to time explored a guild-like structure to unite against competition from [[Microsoft]], e.g. [[Advogato]] assigns journeyer and master ranks to those committing to work only or mostly on free software.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=METZ |first=CADE |date=September 16, 2014 |title=How Medieval-Style Guilds Will Remake the Tech Behind Facebook and Google |magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |url=https://www.wired.com/2014/09/medieval-style-guilds-will-remake-tech-behind-facebook-google/ |url-access=limited}}</ref>

Patents loosely serve as a form of guild privilege in that they restrict potential newcomers to a field of service. The idea of a patent being applied to intangibles (e.g. intellectual patents) has been called to question by various authors. In ''Capital and Ideology'' (2000) Thomas Piketty questions the validity of patents being granted to agricultural corporations who claim to have 'invented' certain GMO seeds. According to Piketty, the falsity of such claims is that the specific breakthrough which allowed for the development of these GMO seeds was in fact only the outcome of generations of ''public'' investment in education and research.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Piketty |first=Thomas |title=Capital and Ideology |publisher=Galaxy Books}}</ref>