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April 22, 2006
The Political Economy of Access to Knowledge
During a plenary session this afternoon at the A2K conference, Jamie Love of CPTech spoke about the political economy of the A2K movement. Some notes:
US and EU negotiators take a position that the more IP patents you have, the more money you're worth. The red states say this isn't strong enough, while greens take the position that it's too strong.Why "access to knowledge?" It's a common brand for different movements - blogging, open access, creative commons, free software, etc. Developing countries said this is the one term that resonated with them. And we felt that it represented enough of what all these groups were working on that it was a good catch-all phrase for the collection of movements. Like Richard Stallman says, language is important. How can anyone argue against "access to knowledge?" That's a good thing, right?
Stop, resist or modify the setting of bad norms. Change, regulate and resist bad business practices. Create new modes of production of knowledge goods, both commercial and noncommercial. Create new global frameworks and norms that promote access to knowledge.
Some important ideas:
- Challenge prices that harm access. Prices don't have to be zero, as long as people can afford them.
- Challenge poorly conceived or inferior models for intellectual property reform. Why shouldn't there be innovations? Don't tell me you can't improve things like the patent rules.
- Support new business models and incentives that do not enclose knowledge.
- Pay attention to livelihoods. It's a real problem for those of us who aren't tenured. You have to send a signal that it's not about destroying someone's livelihood, but trying to make it work equitably for all of us.
- The theory of local/global (he didn't elaborate on this, though)
And that's it for me... I have to catch a train back to Boston now. Now time for some other blogger to take over the reins for the rest of the conference... -andy
Posted by acarvin at April 22, 2006 3:15 PM
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