Andjelkovic - Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Knowledge Models.pdf

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BSIS Journal of International Studies Vol. 3, 2006

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Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Knowledge Models:

Managing Innovation, Public Goods and Private Interest

Maja Andjelkovic*

This paper addresses the tensions in the duality of knowledge in that it is both a public

good in the sense that it is non-rival and non-exhaustible, and that it is a private

commodity in the sense that it is protected, hoarded, valued, and sold. While further

exploring these tensions and the evolution of knowledge dissemination in an increasingly

information-hungry global economy could prove very interesting, the paper stops short in

the pursuit of such topics and sticks to an evaluation of the current structural limitations

on the spread of knowledge.

As the world transitions from a multitude of industrial economies into aninterconnected, knowledge-driven, information society, it faces a looming crisis in

global knowledge management. Relying on a concept from organizational behaviour(OB) theory, this paper argues that a knowledge paradox recognized to exist in thecontext of organizational knowledge, also appears on a global scale in the new economy.The paradox exists in so far as the building and sharing of knowledge is one of thehighest potential sources of growth in the new economy, and yet knowledge is often alsoa carefully guarded and warily traded resource. The paper asks why this is the case, andfinds that current legal regulatory frameworks, specifically those concerning Intellectual

Property Rights (IPRs), as well as restrictive knowledge sharing models, pose importantbarriers to resolving the paradox. IPR protections are found to be associated with two

major interconnected roadblocks to effective knowledge management identified by OBtheory: the lack of incentives to share knowledge, and the lack of a mechanism to make it

easy to organize and access knowledge resources.1 In the new economy, current IPRs areproving inefficient in the balancing the treatment of knowledge as a tradable commodity

and a public good, and, contrary to their original purpose, creating obstacles forinnovation. Instead, IPRs should help resolve the contradiction posed by the dual

treatment of knowledge by economic theory: on the one hand, knowledge is one of thepurest forms of a public good due to its non-excludable and non-rivalrous nature on the

other hand, the development of the knowledge economy presupposes that information

and knowledge are the most highly valued tradable commodities, a status economistsusually reserve for private, appropriable, goods. The purpose of IPRs should be to fosterinnovation and creativity, by allowing for a balance between knowledge as a public andknowledge as a private good. Any solution to the knowledge paradox in the neweconomy must recognize the differences and the overlap between these two types ofknowledge, private and public, so that each can be treated accordingly. CreativeCommons licenses are discussed as an example of a possible solution to some of the IPR

*Maja Andjelkovic attained a LLM in International Law with International Relations in 2006 from theUniversity of Kent in Brussels. She can be reached at [email protected], p. 4.
mailto:[email protected]


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deficiencies. With respect to knowledge distribution models, the paper argues that currentframeworks do not meet the needs of knowledge users and creators, especially those in

the worlds less developed regions, as these models are too restrictive, costly and

inadaptable. There are strong indications that, given the right framework, individuals andgroups are willing to share their knowledge for the benefit of a commons, or the publicinterest, but also for their own private benefit. The paper finds that there are possibilities

for encouraging the sharing of knowledge as both a public and private good, andexamines open access models as a case example.

KNOWLEDGE IN THE NEW ECONOMY

While our ability to produce and share knowledge has experienced unprecedentedgrowth thanks to the technological advancements of the late twentieth century, the abilityof wider society to obtain ideas of learneds has always been crucial for societal and

economic progress. Access to information and knowledge fuels economy it is also oneof the pillars of democracy. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, growing levels ofeducation among the general population, combined with the works of thinkers likeVoltaire, Hume, Rousseau and other philosophers of the Enlightenment, enabled thespread of revolutionary ideas and inspired the end of feudalism in Europe. 2 Thus, forexample, it is believed that Voltaire sent some 20,000 letters to leading thinkers of histime3, and that it was these, and writings of other authors, that impassioned the Frenchtiers tat,or the third estate, leading to the French Revolution.

4Today it is reasonable to

assume that easier access to knowledge around the globe could lead to a more equitableworld, one in which global economic disparities are reduced. As we witness the so-calledinformation revolution, the number of people who can access information and

knowledge of all kinds is increasing exponentially, thanks in no small part to theproliferation of the internet, availability of individual blogs and online journals,creation of independent broadcast services like pod-casts, and other non-traditional

information sources. Coupled with new technologies that enable easier reproduction ofdigitized information in a variety of formats, these new channels of knowledge

dissemination are supportive of the free use of knowledge as a public good,5

and areseriously challenging models of knowledge distribution characteristic of late twentieth

century, which were dominated by large media conglomerates, for-profit scientificpublications, and business-like institutions of higher learning. In our postindustrial,

information world, there appears to be a need to reevaluate the system of knowledgeregulation and management inherited from the industrial age and adapt it to current

needs. The idea of a knowledge paradox is useful in considering what these needsencompass and how they might be met.

2McIver, p. 3.

3Tallentyre cited in McIver, p. 4.

4McIver, p. 4.

5Pinto, p. 36.


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THE KNOWLEDGE PARADOX IN THE NEW ECONOMY

Sajda Qureshi and Peter Keen recognize a knowledge paradox in the field of

organizational behaviour.6 Namely, Quershi and Keen find a contradiction in that thebuilding and sharing of knowledge is one of the highest sources of advantage for anorganization, but also the most guarded resource7 and posit that resolving this paradox is

the core challenge for effective management in an organization.8

An application of theknowledge paradox to the new global economy involves an assumption that there exists

a global market sufficiently dependent on its parts so that it can be treated as a singleorganizational entity whose functioning is comparable to that of an organization. The

assumption is based on the interconnectedness of national economies andinterdependence of different markets across the globe which, for example, led to and isreinforced by, the formation of the WTO, to which most of the worlds countries belong.9

In the new economy the knowledge paradox exists because of a certain tension between

our ability and need to improve our collective well being through providing affordableaccess to various kinds of knowledge, and our ability and the need for economiccompetition and innovation.10 The collision between the opposing drives for sharingknowledge and withholding it from others has been the reason for rather slowimprovements in knowledge and information sharing in the knowledge economy.11

The World Bank Institute defines the knowledge economy as one that makeseffective use of knowledge for its development, including tapping foreign knowledge aswell as adapting and creating knowledge for its specific needs.

12Among others, Walter

Powell and Kaisa Snellman hold that a knowledge economy is more reliant on itsintellectual potential than on its capacity to produce physical goods or extract naturalresources.13 The factors necessary for the subsistence of a knowledge economy include

an educated and creative workforce, an effective system of innovation, a strong andadaptive information infrastructure and incentives for the efficient use of knowledge.14

The application of knowledge as manifested in areas such as entrepreneurship and

innovation, research and development, software and design, and in peoples educationand skills levels is now recognized to be one of the key sources of growth in the global

economy.15

Countries like Chile, China, Finland and Malaysia show that significantadvancements can be achieved in the short and long run, through implementation of

comprehensive strategies for increasing a countrys ability to generate, obtain, and applyknowledge.16 Evidence that knowledge is not being effectively shared can be seen at

national and international levels, in developed and developing countries alike. Indeveloped countries, access to knowledge is often restricted on the grounds of threat to

6 Qureshi, p. 2.7 Ibid., p. 3.8 Ibid.9 Currently, 149 governments are WTO members, and another 39 are WTO observers see www.wto.org10Human Development Report 2005, p. 17.11

Ibid.12Dahlman, p. 4.13Powell1, p. 21.14Dahlman, p. 6.15

World Bank Institute16Chen, p. 14.


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profitability for the knowledge-creator and the risk of insufficient quality control. Forexample, scientific journals, the traditionally dominant service for delivering new

scientific knowledge to scholars, fear that authors may opt to publish their works

themselves online, at a very low cost and with the opportunity to reach a much wideraudience compared with the subscriber base of a journal. They tend to argue that

publishing in scientific journals provides protection to authors from misuse, as well as the

peer reviewing service, which are essential for quality control and for maintaining a highreputation of the journals and authors whose works they publish. 17 Neither of these

arguments holds in light of the innovative tools available today, such as open accessjournals and Creative Commons licenses, discussed in the second part of this paper.

In developing countries, reduction of poverty, child mortality and diseasepandemics, as well as improvement of education, gender equality, maternal health andenvironmental protection are the priorities articulated by the Millennium DevelopmentGoals. There is wide recognition,18 that the world possesses the knowledge necessary to

meet these goals the gap between the production and the use of knowledge in policy andpractice, however, is also widely acknowledged. The Netherlands DevelopmentAssistance Research Council finds, for example, that the gap exists due to weak linkages

between knowledge producers and knowledge users, and between knowledge productionand innovation.19 For instance, due to the high prices of medication, there is an apparentgap between HIV/AIDS sufferers in need of life-sustaining treatments and themanufacturers of pharmaceutical products who demand large profit margins for the use oftheir patented drugs.

20The recognition of the need for a revaluation of knowledge

management internationally is evident in international negotiations processes such as therecently completed series of meetings within the UN World Summit on the InformationSociety (WSIS)21 the drafting of documents like the WIPO Broadcasting Treaty, 22

which has have the potential to affect IPRs globally and the debate around a pendingcrisis of the intellectual property protection system in the US, especially with respect tosoftware, information and communications technologies, and formulae of pharmaceutical

drugs. Innovation in IPRs and knowledge distribution channels, however, may providesome tools for resolving the knowledge paradox.

It is worth noting here that, in the context of a global economy, cross culturaldifferences play another significant role in creating a lack of incentive to share and strong

reasons to protect and hoard knowledge. Since a single expression carries multiplepotential meanings, the creator of a piece of knowledge may understand it differently

than its user.23

Language differences and lack of tacit knowledge to use necessarycommunications technologies also contribute to this barrier. While it is important to

recognize cultural and linguistic differences hinder the production, sharing and use of

17Halsted, p. 23.18See, for example, Human Development Report 2005, p. 17, the official UNDP website, and the official

World Bank Group website www.worldbank.org.19Rawoo, p. 8.20May 2005, p. 123.21Brown, p. 524. See Paragraphs 24-28 of the Geneva Declaration of Principles, adopted at the Geneva

World Summit on the Information Society (Phase I), December 2003, available at http://www.itu.int/wsis.

Relevant paragraphs of the WSIS Declaration of Principles are included in Appendix A to this paper.22Megumi, p. 11.23 Bechky, p. 4 et passim.


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knowledge around the world, a detailed discussion of these factors is outside of the scopeof this paper.

KNOWLEDGE COMMODITIES AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

Unlike private goods, public goods are considered non-rivalrous in nature, since

their concurrent usage does not result in exhaustion of the resource.24

In economic terms,knowledge and information can be considered public goods, in that consumption of

knowledge and information by one individual does not reduce the amount of the goodavailable for consumption by others. Public goods can be contrasted with traditional

products and services which are often classified as private goods (since they are rival andexclusive25). Knowledge and information can be used by many people at once, withoutreducing their value, quantity or utility in any way. This non-rivalrous nature, and thefact that concurrent usage does not result in exhaustion of the resource, is what

distinguishes knowledge and information from private goods. Except in certaincircumstances, such as when knowledge is somehow intentionally protected or madescarce, knowledge does not behave in the way material property would, which poses adifficulty for producers of knowledge looking to profit from their activity. Intellectual

property rights are the most important legal tool for converting knowledge into acommodity, so that it can be treated more like palpable goods. This transformationallows for the laws applied to things like real estate and labour in the industrial society toremain relevant in the information society. In effect, in the information society, IPRsallow for knowledge to turn into the means of production and, some authors claim, forthe owners of IPRs to become the new economys ruling class.

26As Peter Drahos writes,

The most important role that IPRs play generally, and specifically of importancein an information society, is the formal construction of scarcity (related toknowledge and information use) where none necessarily exists. Where there are

information asymmetries, advantage may be gained by keeping informationscarce (i.e. reducing its circulation).27

Once a legal form of scarcity is established through IPRs, a price can be determined and

knowledge can be traded and sold. Just as it would be nearly impossible for an economywithout intellectual property right protections to maximize innovation and creativity,28 an

economy with excessive levels of IPR protection would undoubtedly create inefficienciesand societal costs that surpass the advantages.29 Figure 1 illustrates the idea that at a

certain point the strength of IPRs take on a negative correlation with benefit to society.

24Ibid.25Keohane in Maskus, p. 6526

Hogge, p. 4.27Drahos 2005d, p. 144.28Landes and Posner 2003 in Drahos 2005d, p. 139.29Drahos, 2002, p. 2.


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Figure 1: Benefits and strengths of IPR protection30

To understand how knowledge can be overregulated, Drahos considers the case of thelaws of arithmetics. Mathematicians, students and even computers can use the samearithmetic formula at the same time for eternity, without the utility of that formulachanging for any one of them. The cost of sharing the formula is virtually zero, and the

benefit to society of these multiple users accessing the formula may be significant. Onthe other hand, it would be expensive to try and stop users from sharing the formula witheach other, especially given the information and communications technologies availabletoday, not to mention that doing so would infringe on human rights such as freedom ofexpression31 and right to education.

IPRs and Rent SeekingThe history of intellectual property rights includes an extensive account of

political negotiations to reach agreement on how to best find a balance between the socialvalue of information and knowledge distribution and the private rewards sufficient to

encourage profit-seeking individuals and organizations to engage in creative activity32

.However, innovation and creativity do not automatically result for IPR application. At

times, they work in an opposite fashion, preventing innovative ideas or products fromever reaching an audience or consumers.

In Information Feudalism, Drahos and Braithwaithe show how IPRs canprovide powerful incentives for unproductive ends, particularly if they create

monopolies in a market.33

Intellectual property rights holders frequently find that theycan lower costs and increase profits if they invest in extending their existing property

30 From Peter Drahos presentation at the Politics and Ideology of Intellectual Property conference, held

in Brussels, March 20-21, 2006.31Drahos, p. 140.32May, p. 124.33Drahos 2003, p. 199-200.


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rights, like copyrights and patents, instead of engaging in creative, but riskier andcostlier, behaviour with the goal of obtaining new IPRs. Since the boom of the

knowledge economy, many firms, especially in the United States, choose to invest in

resources that enable them to obtain and retain IPR-provided monopolies, instead ofcompeting for customers on the markets. This behaviour is referred to as IPR rent seeking

behaviour and it is increasingly seen in the information society. There is significant

evidence that the use of IPRs for limiting access to knowledge has a limiting effect oninnovation. For example, corporations use software patenting to secure a monopoly and

discourage the entrepreneurial activity of start-ups. The result is to freeze, not foster,innovation the very opposite of patent laws original intention34. An indication of this

trend is the statistic that IPR lawsuits have more than doubled since 1992 in the US,35

andanecdotal evidence indicates that many of these lawsuits pursue the unproductivefunction of IPRs. For instance, the rock band the Planets was recently threatened withlegal action by the estate of John Cage, for allegedly ripping off a 60 second sequence of

his work consisting of 433 of silence.A growing number of companies have gone as far as basing their business model

on the opportunity to charge IPR-rents. A US company named Patriot, having spent 15years trying vainly to commercialize various technologies, has been reported to havegenerated revenue by claiming that a chip widely used in the semiconductor industry is acomponent in its proprietary technology. Specifically, Patriot claimed that a group of

patents it owned covered a computer chip nicknamed Sh-Boom. Patriot maintained thatthe chip represented a fundamental innovation that had been absorbed throughout theindustry, without the industry realizing it. The company filed a series of patentinfringement lawsuits in 2004 against a number of Japanese electronics manufacturersand threatened to sue over 150 other companies over potential infringements on Patriot's

patents. Just on the basis of these actions, the value of the company increased by over100%, its stock price moving from 14 cents to US$1.60 a share.36

Another example is the success of copyright owners in the 1990s to successfully

lobby for a 20-year extension of the term for copyrights close to their expiration date.The effect was that classical works, including Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue, for example,

were prevented from entering the public domain, while providing continuous earnings torights holders.

It is reasonable to believe that many more companies are looking to profit fromthe current IPR laws through unproductive behaviour like rent-seeking, especially

considering the size of the IP industry: US intellectual property alone is valued at $5.5trillion, which amounts to 47% of the countrys GDP and is greater than the GDP of all

other countries except China.37 While the above examples are American, TRIPS, anagreement on trade related aspects of intellectual property rights, effectively globalizes

the issues they illustrate, since most countries are members of the World TradeOrganizations and thus signatories to the TRIPS agreement. In other words, it appears

that current IPRs, applied in an environment of increasing access to knowledge and totechnologies that enable easy and affordable knowledge distribution, are creating barriers

34Hogge, p. 3.

35Merrill, p. 32.36Bigelow, p.1237Hasset, p. 3.


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instead of enabling easier management of knowledge. With the adoption of TRIPS byWTO members, the inefficiencies seen in national contexts are positioned to affect the

global economy.38

IPR ALTERNATIVES

Although overly restrictive IPRs hurt innovation, by restricting the use ofprotected materials as building blocks in research, development and design of new

knowledge products, the protection of knowledge IPRs provide is important toknowledge creators, even in the case of knowledge in the public domain. For example,

the interests of scientists with respect to access to information necessary for their researchmay conflict with their interests as creators of knowledge39 whose livelihoods aresustained based on the sale of their intellectual work. Similarly, countries whosecompetitive advantage in the global economy lies in the production of particular scientific

knowledge would not become better off by dispensing that knowledge freely to countrieswhere it is in short supply. Unsurprisingly, as Christopher May points out, the key toeffective knowledge management in the new economy is finding a balance betweencommoditization and openness.

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Many possible solutions to the problems of the current system of IPRs are beingsuggested, including a more precise application of the fair use

41option for copyrighted

knowledge used for the public interest (such as in documentaries and educationalmaterials), as well as innovative rights management systems, like copyleft andFree/Libre Open Source Software models. One of the most popular alternatives forlicencing knowledge products, the creative commons licenses, is discussed next as anillustration of the potential for reforming existing IPRs management.

The Creative Commons AlternativeWhen the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed by US Congress in 1998,

many IPR experts felt that the law cemented the imbalance in favour of IPR owners, atthe expense of social value and, in this case, potential users of copyrighted works. In

response, James Boyle, Lawrence Lessig and a number of other leading authorities in IPlaw started to work with information technology professionals, film producers, software

programmers and activists with the aim of providing an alternative to existing options ofIP protection.42 They eventually invented Creative Commons, a number of adaptable and

lawful copyright licenses with the aim of increasing the amount of knowledge and

38 While a detailed discussion of TRIPS is outside of this paper's scope, it is important to mention thatTRIPS makes a notable contribution to the lack of balance between safeguarding information as a publicgood and a private good39 Ibid.40May, p. 125.41The term fair use is used primarily in the US common law system, but many other jurisdictions contain

similar notions, sometimes called fair dealings. Fair use is effectively a copyright infringement defense

and its purpose is to enable the use of protected works for purposes that are in the public interest without

first clearing rights with the copyright holders. Due to its imprecise application, it is considered to be oneof the most difficult areas of copyright law. For an example of the difficulty of fair use application in the

context of computer software, see the revised decision the Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation case.42Flew, p. 11.


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creative works available to the public, and decreasing the liabilities and expenses that theprocess of clearing rights usually involves. An important source of inspiration for the

Creative Commons licenses is undoubtedly the Free Software Movement developed by

Richard Stallman, founder of GNU Project and Free Software Foundation and the pioneerof the related concept of copyleft. Another philosophical influence on the work of theCreative Commons group is the open software movement, including projects like Linux,

meant to provide an operating system which could be a free alternative to Microsoftsproprietary product.43 The Creative Commons system relies on concepts first developed

by the GNU projects General Public License (GPL), which, when applied, requires anyadaptations and improvements of free software to also be available as free software.

Effectively, this removes the risk for free software developers of having to compete withmodified and subsequently copyrighted (by others) versions of their own work.According to Terry Flew, the licencing system provided by Creative Commonsstraddles a line between the strong protection models of DRM [digital rights

management] [including] defence in depth through punitive legal sanctions, and theculture of the gift economy which is particularly prevalent in the digital contentenvironment.44 In other words, Creative Commons licenses offer flexible copyrightingsolutions for creative works, which allow authors to both protect their creations and offersome of their rights to any member of the public on specific terms.45

There are four different formats of Creative Commons licences: use withattribution use for non-commercial uses only the no derivative licence (meaning thatonly the use of direct copies of the original is allowed, while the use of those works as a

basis for new ones is restricted) and the share alike licence (meaning that derivativeworks are allowed, but must be released under the same licence). The option to enableauthors to predetermine exactly how their works may be used by others is a major

innovation in comparison to the mainstream copyright model, which requires a legal,often expensive, process of rights clearing each time a work is being used creatively.Another innovation is the triple-format style of licenses, which addresses the need for

licensing software, and for making copyright more comprehensible to non-lawyers: eachlicense comes in a version in simple language, intended primarily for academics, students

and artists, a legal version containing required wording and content which can be adaptedfor the legal system of a particular country, and a machine-readable code version which

enables easier searching for the works through the World Wide Web by embedding thelicence in the meta-data of digital content, which helps prevent inappropriate uses of the

work.46

The very idea behind a knowledge commons or Creative Commons, addresses

the barrier to resolving the knowledge paradox discussed in the introductory paragraphsof this paper: its mission is to provide a large set of publicly available knowledge

resources from which new creative ideas can spurt. Its invention is an attempt to regainbalance between the public interest and the private reward for creativity and comes as a

direct response to the threat that current IPR trends pose: that of creating a culture sorestrictive that it creates a knowledge regression.

43Ibid.44

Flew, p. 13.45Creative Commons website.46Flew, p. 14.


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Economic Divide and Open Access ModelsIPRs, while central to this discussion, are not the only significant barrier to

effective knowledge management in the new economy. The problems associated with theworlds economic divide, between North and South, East and West, and developed anddeveloping countries are another important roadblock. In the countries on the poorer side

of the divide, the high costs of technology and connectivity, and the lack of education andtraining in the use of information and communications technologies are often

insurmountable barriers to accessing knowledgeWe are now at a point where the Internet in particular, and other ICTs in general,

have spread sufficiently around the globe to create real opportunity for a significantportion of the worlds citizens47 to access information and knowledge that, at leasttheoretically, can increase the potential of many to affect their circumstances. Withincreases in connectivity, the models of open access to knowledge, inspired by the

Free/Libre and Open Source Software movement, can provide affordable training andeducation, as well as access to knowledge.

One example of the open access model is Michigan Institute of Technologys(MIT) Open Courseware, accessible to anyone with an internet connection,

48free of

charge.49 Through the service, which supports MIT's mission to advance knowledgeand education, and serve the world in the 21st century,

50 users can access materials for

over 1,250 courses taught at MIT in fields from aeronautics to women's studies. A greatnumber of other projects have been developed to show that academic knowledge need notcome at a high price that restricts, or, in some cases, prevents access to it. 51 These

projects are part of a movement for more open access to scholarly knowledge that hasrisen out of a combination of our new capability to access and distribute information

cheaply and efficiently, through ICTs, and the old custom of publishing scientificknowledge without direct profit to the author and with the broader public interest inmind.52 The hope is that regulation supporting open access, i.e. access which is as non-

restrictive in terms of cost and technical barriers as possible, will reinforce the legitimacyand reliability of new, open access models, which will in turn, the logic goes, encourage

the sharing of knowledge, and by extension, of economic wealth, between the rich andthe poor, the advantaged and disadvantaged.

Proponents of open access models assert that making knowledge available toanyone, anywhere, will lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual

conversation and quest for knowledge.53

The benefits of open access for readers seemobvious: readily available scientific knowledge saves time and money and increases

opportunities for learning. The potential benefit for knowledge creators, authors, funders,

47According to the CIA Handbook, the internet population reached 1.06 billion in 2005.48According to UNCTAD, one third of all Internet users are from developing countries and five countries -

Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Republic of Korea account for over 60% of all Internet users in the

developing world. (UNCTAD Press Release: UNCTAD/PRESS/PR/2005/039)49 For details, see http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/AboutOCW/about-ocw.htm50 MIT Open Courseware Website51

Examples include the Google Print Library Project, Open Content Alliance, the Microsoft-British Library

Project and Project Gutenberg52Veltorp, p. 168.53Budapest Open Access Initiative Declaration.


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scientific association and humanity as a whole is said to lie in decreased duplication ofresearch, and increased accountability of the scientific community to the public. In other

words, the promise of open access advocates is an accelerated pursuit of scientific

answers, through providing the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants - thecompounded knowledge of humanity. Perhaps most dramatically, open access toknowledge is said to have the potential to take those with knowledge out of their ivory

tower isolation, by engendering and stimulating wider understanding of that knowledge.54

Certain issues related to open access remain unresolved, however, including

pricing models, peer reviewing, indexing and impact factors, archiving, and the financialsustainability of this new publishing model for scientific literature.55

THE KNOWLEDGE SHARING ECONOMY?

Skeptics may point out that even with effective IPR management and widespread

open access models, humans still have a tendency to hoard knowledge,56believing thatsuch behaviour will give them power. There are strong indications, however, thatindividuals and groups are willing to share their knowledge for the benefit of a commons,or the public interest, given the right framework. In certain contexts, sharing isencouraged, rewarded and effectively facilitated. For example, in The Cathedral and theBazaar, Eric Raymond mentions that knowledge sharing between software

programmers, especially in the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)community is a cultural norm, and that sharing is associated with admiration andsatisfaction that ones creation is being put to use and further improved by known andunknown colleagues. While skeptics may respond that this example may be an exceptionin the natural tendency of human beings to hoard knowledge and other assets for their

own use, there is anecdotal evidence of the notion that humans like to share.57" Whilesuch studies should by no means be taken as conclusive, they indicate that furtherresearch into the role of structural elements, like regulatory frameworks and

infrastructure, to allow for more effective knowledge distribution could help activateknowledge sharing in the global economy.

The knowledge economy rests on a dual nature of knowledge, and theframeworks that allow it to be treated as a public good in certain circumstances and a

54Velterop, p. 169.55For a discussion of economic viability, see for example, John Willinskys Article entitled Scholarly

Associations and the Economic Viability of Open Access Publishing where he discusses the need for

management of journal print versions, curbing the loss of membership, and settling contractual obligationsto corporate and university presses among other issues.56Lichtenstein, p.27.57For instance, see Yoshai Benkler's discussion on commons-based approaches to managing resources innetworked environments in his book The Wealth of Networks.. Benklers term, commons-based peer

production refers to collaborative initiatives like the free and open source software movement and the

Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, which depend on information sharing without direct profit or obviousincentive. For a different angle, consider the 2002 study at the Emory University in Atlanta, in which MRIimages were used to detect brain activity of subjects who were posed with making choices in a typical

Prisoners Dilemma game. The findings were surprising in that the longer the subjects behaved in

cooperative activities, the more active were the pleasure pathways in their brain. The lead researcher of

the study, Dr. Gregory S. Berns, states that the results suggest a conclusion that we're wired to cooperatewith each other. See Angier, p. 20.


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private good in others. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the new knowledgeeconomy is the old notion of finding balance between the two. A combination of

knowledge as a public good, and a tradable knowledge commodity seems inevitable:

while it is unlikely that all information will ever be free, as the most enthusiasticproponents of open access would wish, it is equally unlikely that all knowledge andinformation can ever be perfectly commodified and shared through market-based

mechanisms.58

This paper has suggested several, among many possibilities forencouraging the sharing of knowledge as both a public and private good, including the

use of open access distribution models, reevaluating the current intellectual propertyregimes and the use of creative commons licenses for knowledge users and creators.

The conclusion that there is a need for innovation in global knowledge management isunsurprising: as technology changes, causing deep social changes, there appears a need toreevaluate legal systems, regulatory frameworks and economic instruments. Informationand communications technologies (ICTs) have enabled typical knowledge users,

traditionally on the receiving end of knowledge, to simultaneously act as its authors,creators and distributors. In other words, the previous tradition of a small number ofknowledge and information sources broadcasting to the masses is being replaced by manymore sources accessed by many more groups and individuals. As a result, more peoplefrom all walks of life and from around the world are aware of the so-called informationrevolution, and able to understand the importance of access to knowledge in the neweconomy. Hence, there are many international and local non-governmentalorganizations, business associations and groups of individual citizens (or users-at-large)59 who try to, and do influence, negotiations processes around the regulation ofaccess to knowledge. Each of these groups is pursuing different, if overlapping, interests.On one end of a long range are the views of big business, which favours stringent

regulation of knowledge distribution under the premise that strong intellectual propertyrights and prevention of knowledge leaks are crucial for a healthy economy. Theirclaims may be valid, but it appears that such stringent rules can create a dangerous

tendency to halting innovation. On the other end are the radical open access advocates,some of whom believe that information wants to be free60 and that all knowledge

belongs in the public domain. Their actions may be well intentioned, but they sometimesfail to account for the real need of knowledge creators to make a living. Neither of these

extreme approaches can be pursued independently of the other: a knowledge economydoes require an effective method of knowledge commodification, with clearly defined, if

flexible, boundaries. While the knowledge economy by definition depends on the abilityto sell and trade knowledge, some of it must remain in the public domain, if we are to

foster innovation and economic growth as well as advance our understanding of theworld.

58Hogge. p. 3.59For example, the At-Large-Advisory-Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and

Numbers.60This expression was first recorded in 1984 by Steward Brand. It is now considered largely nave andutopian, although many still argue along the same line. See for example the article by the same title byJames Boyle, published February 24, 2005 in the Financial Times.


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Documents

Andjelkovic - Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Knowledge Models.pdf