Whenever you rent a video, there is always that bit at the beginning which you fast forward, the have-you-got-what-you-paid-for? copyright and piracy warning. Most people would support the idea that artists and authors deserve reward for their work, and similarly scientists and technology innovators should be encouraged to pursue worthy goals with the prospect of financial recompense for patentable inventions.
According to the original theory, the protection of intellectual property by patents and copyright ensures that the public benefits from the continued invention and creation of useful works and innovations.
However, we now live in the information age, and with the strengthening of copyright and intellectual property protection across the globe, information and knowledge is no longer a public good but patentable private property. Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite argue that we have gone too far in recognising and protecting intellectual property rights. The nadir was the 2001 South African court case that saw 39 pharmaceutical companies suing the South African government in an attempt to prevent the parallel importation of cheap, generic, anti-retroviral AIDS drugs. That case represented the culmination of decades of increasing intellectual property protection which has created a world in which abstract property rights are in direct conflict with human rights and public health needs.
Drahos and Braithwaite have called their book Information Feudalism to draw an analogy with the inequitable distribution of property rights in medieval systems, where lords held ownership over land, and hence the power to control and exploit serfs and vassals. In the modern world, copyright and patent systems have become global in scope. Through the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs) agreement of the Uruguay Round of GATT, multinational companies can gain ownership over information and abstract objects, and thus control and exploit consumers, the developing world and potential competitors.
In addition to consumer welfare and competition concerns, ‘the globalization of intellectual property rights will rob much knowledge of its public good qualities. When knowledge becomes a private good to be traded in markets the demands of many, paradoxically, go unmet. Patent-based R&D is not responsive
to demand, but to ability to pay.’ This phenomenon explains why billions are spent on the production and marketing of drugs such as Viagra and Prozac for the West, while tropical diseases are largely ignored. Indeed, anti-malarial drugs are predominantly developed for Western tourists and military personnel, not the nationals of disease-affected countries.
Information Feudalism is a fascinating tour through