Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- PART I International Provision of Public Goods under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime
- 1 The Globalization of Private Knowledge Goods and the Privatization of Global Public Goods
- 2 The Regulation of Public Goods
- Comment: Norms, Institutions, and Cooperation
- 3 Distributive Values and Institutional Design in the Provision of Global Public Goods
- 4 Koyaanisqatsi in Cyberspace: The Economics of an “Out-of-Balance” Regime of Private Property Rights in Data and Information
- 5 Linkages Between the Market Economy and the Scientific Commons
- Comment I: Public Goods and Public Science
- 6 Sustainable Access to Copyrighted Digital Information Works in Developing Countries
- 7 Agricultural Research and Intellectual Property Rights
- Comment II: Using Intellectual Property Rights to Preserve the Global Genetic Commons: The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
- PART II Innovation and Technology Transfer in a Protectionist Environment
- PART III Sectoral Issues: Essential Medicines and Traditional Knowledge
- PART IV Reform and Regulation Issues
- Index
4 - Koyaanisqatsi in Cyberspace: The Economics of an “Out-of-Balance” Regime of Private Property Rights in Data and Information
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- PART I International Provision of Public Goods under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime
- 1 The Globalization of Private Knowledge Goods and the Privatization of Global Public Goods
- 2 The Regulation of Public Goods
- Comment: Norms, Institutions, and Cooperation
- 3 Distributive Values and Institutional Design in the Provision of Global Public Goods
- 4 Koyaanisqatsi in Cyberspace: The Economics of an “Out-of-Balance” Regime of Private Property Rights in Data and Information
- 5 Linkages Between the Market Economy and the Scientific Commons
- Comment I: Public Goods and Public Science
- 6 Sustainable Access to Copyrighted Digital Information Works in Developing Countries
- 7 Agricultural Research and Intellectual Property Rights
- Comment II: Using Intellectual Property Rights to Preserve the Global Genetic Commons: The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
- PART II Innovation and Technology Transfer in a Protectionist Environment
- PART III Sectoral Issues: Essential Medicines and Traditional Knowledge
- PART IV Reform and Regulation Issues
- Index
Summary
ABSTRACT
Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word that translates into English as “life out of balance,” “crazy life,” “life in turmoil,” all meanings consistent with indicating “a way of life which calls for another way of living.” While not wishing to suggest either that the international regime of intellectual property rights protection of scientific and technical data and information is “crazy” or that it is “in turmoil,” this chapter argues that the persisting drift of institutional change towards a stronger, more extensive and globally harmonized system of protection has dangerously altered the balance between private rights and the public domain. In this regard, we have embarked upon “a way of life which calls for another way of living.”
High access charges imposed by holders of monopoly rights in intellectual property have overall consequences for the conduct of science that are particularly damaging to programs of exploratory research, which are recognized to be critical for the sustained growth of knowledge-driven economies. The urgency of working towards a restoration of proper balance between private property rights and the public domain in data and information arises from considerations beyond the need to protect the public knowledge commons, upon which the vitality of open science depends. Policymakers who seek to configure the institutional infrastructure to better accommodate emerging commercial opportunities of the information-intensive “new economy” – in the developed and developing countries alike – therefore have a common interest in reducing the impediments to the future commercial exploitation of peer-to-peer networking technologies that are likely to be posed by ever-more stringent enforcement of intellectual property rights.
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- Chapter
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- International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology Under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime , pp. 79 - 120Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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