ABSTRACT
This contribution originated from a presentation at the March 2005 international conference Can Knowledge be Made Just? Is Knowledge Justiciable? The title of this volume, Who Owns Knowledge? suggests that ownership of knowledge may be an interesting way to achieve just knowledge (or a just distribution of knowledge?) or, at least, to make claims to knowledge justiciable. In the field of profiling technologies, Lawrence Lessig (1999b:518–521; 1999a:159–162) has argued that the creation of ownership of personal data could initiate a new technological framework that will empower individual citizens to regain control over their personal information. Others, however, have expressed serious doubts regarding this so-called commodification of information. For instance, Prins (2004:7) argues that attributing property rights to individuals regarding their personal data misses the point, precisely because it is not the data in themselves that are of interest, but the knowledge constructed on the basis of these data, and the impact of this type of knowledge on “position, social ordering, roles, individual status and freedom.” In the following I will develop a similar line of thought, leaving the “ownership” of knowledge to other authors, and I 266will plead a different approach to the nexus of knowledge and information in our knowledge society.
