Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy

By Peter Drahos

Book Overview

New intellectual property regimes are entrenching new inequalities. Access to information is fundamental to the exercise of human rights and marketplace competition, but patents are being used to lock up vital educational, software, genetic and other information, creating a global property order dominated by a multinational elite. How did intellectual property rules become part of the World Trade Organization's free trade agreements? How have these rules changed the knowledge game for international business? What are the consequences for the ownership of biotechnology and digital technology, and for all those who have to pay for what was once shared information? Based on extensive interviews with key players, this book tells the story of these profound transformations in information ownership. The authors argue that in the globalized information society, the rich have found new ways to rob the poor, and shows how intellectual property rights can be more democratically defined.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1853839175
• ISBN13: 9781853839177
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 272 Pages

Customer Reviews

a lot of information clearly laid out

I was amazed that I had not heard of this book until I picked it up at an academic bookstore.The thesis of this book is (in part) that large corporations and media conglomerates have acquired a near monopoly on patents and copyrights that allows them to exploit the consumer and, more horribly, second- and third-world nations that desperately need drugs that US companies can provide for diseases like AIDS.The book gives an excellent background of the history of these corporate structures and carefully defines its terms. It may be a bit dense and, at times, one wonders when they are going to get to their main point, but I, who was unfamiliar with the history of the "corporation," found the introductory material very enlightening.As with all such problem-solution works, the problem is stated much more clearly than the solution, but I was impressed that the "solution" section wasn't "what you the individual can do to fight big business" but a call to larger organizations and governmental officials to reverse the trend toward patent and copyright monopoly.I was, at times, skeptical of the authors' historical analogies and illusions, but perhaps that is because I study literature for a living and am always "deconstructing" such things.

An important eye opener and a "must read"

I am surprised that this book has not been reviewed previously. It is an extremely important eye opener into the methods used by big business to coopt a system intended for the public good - the intellectual property system - and transform it into a new kind of feudalism whereby large corporations combine to perpetually own and tax information.The history of this effort is delineated in a way clearly understandable by the layman (me) and should be required reading by NGOs and others who are our only bulwark against this movement.The effect of the corporate effort on public health (by the pharmaceutical companies and the biogopolies) and and our rights to the information commons (by the computer and the entrtainment industries) is laid bare.If i have a criticism, it is that not enough is said about how this frightening trend can be opposed.