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12 Soc. & Legal Stud. 285 (2003)
Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite, Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy

handle is hein.journals/solestu12 and id is 281 raw text is: BOOK REVIEWS 285 PETER DRAHOS and JOHN BRAITHWAITE, Information Feudalism: Who Owns The Knowledge Economy? London: Earthscan, 2002, 272 pp., £12.00. The book on Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy? by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite is a landmark contribution to the discourse on the role of intellectual property rights in perpetuating inequalities between different states and actors, as information is critical for participation and effectiveness in the international arena in the era of globalization. The critical role that information plays in development ensures that the owners/ holders of information impact significantly on development paths. The trends in information ownership currently are such that the owners comprise organized business based in the North. Even in areas where actors from the developing world would be the majority of the owners as in the case of knowledge and information relating to genetic resources, rules on intellectual property refine and entrench inequalities to the detriment of actors in the developing world. The authors convincingly argue that intellectual property rules are being used to lock up vital educational software, genetic and other information. The result is a global property regime that is used to expropriate everything from HIV/AIDS drugs, seeds for developing world farmers to information on the human genome. The authors illustrate how intellectual property rules became part of the global trading rules and how they have altered the knowledge game in favour of international business. They also address the implications of this trend for the ownership of biotechnology, digital technology and access for those who now have to pay for once fully shared information. There are inevitably global winners and losers in this game whom the authors typologize. Through the use of extensive interviews with key players, the authors argue that in the globalized information society, the rich have found new ways to rob the poor. They argue that intellectual property rights should be more democratically defined and shared. In the first chapter, the authors explain the connections between infor- mation feudalism and medieval feudalism. They note that both involve a redistri- bution of property rights. In the case of medieval feudalism the relationship of the lord to the land and vessels was a relationship of great inequality. With information feudalism similarly, redistribution of property rights involves a transfer of knowledge assets from the intellectual commons into the private hands of media conglomerates and integrated life sciences corporations. The analysis of different categories of intellectual property rights to illustrate the monopoly of information holding makes the book an invaluable contribution to the discourse on intellectual property rights. It resonates a theme that has preoccupied scholars for over three decades delving into the role intellectual property rights play in developing countries. This theme has been revisited with vigour from the 1990s with the internationalization of intellectual property rights through the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. While the book is an indictment of the system of rules governing intellectual property rights, there is a ray of hope. The authors in Chapter XII note that it is possible to democratize intellectual property rights to secure the common good rather than advance the private ambitions to enrich the self. They outline hire certain conditions that should guide that process: (1) All relevant interests must be represented in the negotiation of the property rights. (2) All involved in the negotiation must have full information about the consequences of various possible outcomes. (3) One party must not coerce others.

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