Digital Divide or Unequal Exchange? How the Northern Intellectual Property Rights Regime Threatens the South

Abstract

This conference of law librarians is convened around the theme of “New Rights — New Laws.” I want to argue that, with regard to information, while there are new laws aplenty, there are in fact no new rights. Worse, we are presently witnessing a steady erosion of even the existing public rights of access to and use of information content, whether of a legal nature or not. In fact, there is mounting evidence that the idea of the public domain itself is under serious attack both as a concept and as a collection of practices. The global privatization of cultural and intellectual content in ways unimaginable only a few decades ago is actively threatening the established structures of scholarly communication, to the increasing disadvantage of the less-developed South. Intellectual property (IP) rights are being extended into new areas, as the patent system, for example, expands into biotechnology, agriculture and medicine, while copyright, patent and trade secret protection is claimed even for computer software, mathematical algorithms, and business methods. IP protection is under discussion for indigenous knowledge, and not necessarily for altruistic reasons. And as the useful shelf life of such content shortens, the protection afforded to it lengthens disproportionately in a disturbing pattern that nearly always favors rights holders and their claims above even the most rudimentary forms of public good.