The Open Knowledge Trail
Monopoly rights such as copyright in artistic works and patents for inventions are often referred to under the common title "intellectual property". But are the sorts of things being protected - pieces of software, the structures of drugs or the words in a book - the same as normal property? Does intellectual property need the same kind of protection as any other kind of property? Of course it does, it's common sense isn't it? Think again!
The current high level of intellectual property rights is by no means the historical norm. And other models exist, models whereby artists or software developers freely distribute their work and allow other people to modify it. And no, they don't go bankrupt, because they sell their support services, or use the free distribution as cheap advertising for revenue-generating activities.
These are examples of how to work with the grain of the information society. This approach has enormous potential for opening up knowledge to new communities, here and around the world (not to mention making vital healthcare more readily available). But openness is everywhere threatened by the owners of lucrative intellectual monopolies, who prefer to defend out-dated business models with crippling levels of protectionism.
Open Source Software: the NHS renews its billion-dollar contract with Microsoft because of fears that a European Software Patent Directive could lay free Linux systems open to litigation.
File-sharing: the Recording Industry Association of America prefers suing children and closing down the possibilities of new technology to rethinking its business models.
Drug patents: millions of people in under-developed countries do not have access to vital drugs because patents make them prohibitively expensive.
Copyright: at least three-quarters of the works protected by copyright are no longer commercially available. A work that is no longer profitable cannot pass into the public domain and be posted for free on the internet, because it is automatically protected for the lifetime of its author, plus another seventy years. With no-one publishing it, and no registry of copyright, you stand little chance of finding it, and you won't be allowed to re-use it if you do.
Open Knowledge Projects: we need look no further than the history of sciences and arts for innumerable examples of the benefits of openness, sharing and collaboration. Moreover in recent times projects such as Wikipedia and the Human Genome Project have demonstrated the even greater possibilities resulting from modern computer and communication technologies. Yet these opportunities receive precious little support from governments and are often threatened by the multiplication of intellectual property rights that seek to fence off the 'commons' of knowledge.
Does that sound like common sense?