Property and Access on the Information Society: Authors, Industry and Users
18.10.2007 19:00h
Place: Medialab-Prado. Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 · Madrid
Fernando Carbajo Gascón, an academic and researcher, analyses the concept of intellectual property in relation to the promotion of culture and open knowledge as a basis for the new Information Society. This conference is part of The Commons or New Approaches into the Public Domain seminar.
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The cyberspace created on the Internet as the paradigm of the information society is at once a space for the free dissemination of all kinds of information and a market or commercial space, one of whose principal objectives is the cultural, informative and entertainment content. And so it is that this enormous virtual space is narrowed due to that very object: the information, protagonist of bitter confrontations between those who consider it a commercial element, based on legitimate intellectual property rights exploited on line under access and usage licenses and those who advocate for the free dissemination of knowledge through open and common systems (procomún), such as general public licenses and “peer to peer (p2p) file interchange programmes.
Starting with an in-depth analysis of the ductile concept of information, the purpose of this presentation is to reivindicate respect for intellectual property not only as a mechanism for guiding authors and a basic instrument for the culture and information market, but also as a tool for the promotion of culture and knowledge for the benefit of all citizens, and consequently, as a cornerstone of the information society. It also strives to refute the presumed polarity between the defence of intellectual property and initiatives favourable to the commons.
From this starting point, the presenter will defend the peaceful co-existence of commercial models and open models in the dissemination of information, without denying that there are situations of conflict, such as the problems surrounding the digital fee for private copies and the imbalances which the massive use of P2P programmes cause to the interests of authors and industries, as well as the development of e-trade and with it the future of an information society with quality contents.