ABSTRACT
However one might view the claims about the arrival of the information age, it seems clear that more people than ever before are aware of the existence (and importance) of intellectual property rights (IPRs). In this chapter I seek to briefly establish the context of global governance that underpins the making of knowledge and information into property, and explain the impact these political structures have had on the realm of digital technologies and the internet. This leads me to focus on the development and utilization of free and open source software as a reaction to the attempts by information capitalists to control their knowledge assets through digital rights
management technologies. Although this conflict between openness and ownership is often depicted as taking place predominantly in North America and Europe, its more profound impact can be found in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. More generally, I will suggest that the
attempts at the beginning of this new millennium to continue or even expand control over information through commoditization and digital rights management have engendered a political response that we can call “openness.” While IPRs are unlikely to wither away any time soon, a social balance is being (re)established between property and
openness; these are not unconnected and separate realms, but rather encompass a range of political positions about how we should value and exchange knowledge and information, and the services and products dependent to a large part upon them.
