Becky Hogge, Patents for profit: dystopian visions of the new economy, Open Democracy, March 11, 2005. Primarily about software patents, but Hogge connects the topic to wider themes, including OA. Excerpt: 'The success of Open Source underlines the fact that knowledge is a different sort of resource to labour or land. While these are finite resources, knowledge can be infinitely replicated, and never more easily than in the age of the internet. The only tragedy of this commons, it seems, would be to censor it using strong-IP law. Because, as Open Source has shown, a solid commons of knowledge fosters a solid knowledge economy around its edges....Following the success of the Sanger Institute's open funding model in the race to annotate the human genome, question marks are beginning to appear over the direct linking of medical r&d to the balance sheets of Big-Pharma. Arguments are also rippling through the creative industries over the use and misuse of copyright law on the internet. And libraries, academies and archives are finally finding their voice over open access to knowledge....The knowledge economy increasingly touches every area of life – work and pleasure, professional and personal life – in every part of the world. It is vital that decisions over its future are made in a fair, accountable and democratic way. As agencies of governance recognise the value of knowledge as any kind of commons, muscular lobbyists for a strong-IP regime, keen to commodify knowledge for the new economy, will be drawn into the fray. These agencies must arm themselves with well-researched models of how knowledge performs in a commons environment. Software is a crucial part of this new landscape. The story of the EU Directive on Computer Implemented Innovation is closer to centre-stage than it appears.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/11/2005 12:53:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
