Panel 6: IP and the Knowledge Commons: The politics of new technologies

Luc Soete

UNU-MERIT, University of Maastricht

The Netherlands

TACD Conference The Politics and Ideology of Intellectual Property, Brussels, March 20-12, 2006.

Dramatic “creative destruction” nature of ICTs

• A very dynamic area in terms of technology: – speed of change linked to rolling out of broadband,

declining prices– impression of being on the verge of major change no

longer associated with IT but CT– digital content industry characterized by few barriers

to entry, continuous renewal of new talent – on digital distribution and access side, variety of new

players emerging from other sectors with sometimes radically different aims and missions

• All characteristics of “creative destruction” phase of new technologies; past and future mixed, involving variety of private-public interactions

A different form of “creative destruction”?

• Known ICT features of “creative destruction”: – Digital infrastructure: speed, broadband-led – Broadening of opportunities for exchange of digital

content goods and services (“information goods”)– De-(re-)intermediation, reducing transaction costs in

existing value chains (“goods information”)• New features of “creative destruction”

– Less capital but more organizational destruction– Less of a “creative destruction” than of a “creative

activation” kind – Major implications about ownership

Creative “activation”

• Broadcasting has made “consumption” of creative content a passive, lazy activity: a coach potato activity

• Unlocking access, activating users: discovery of incredible diversity of creativity by activating content consumption

• Goes beyond commercial interests but commercial opportunities are not eliminated

• “Creative amateurism” contains positive externalities of culture “consumption” associated with non-rivalry. Explains readiness to invest so much amateur time

• Remember Tibor Scitovsky and the joyless economy• Strong political interest in such activation, can go hand in

hand with commercial interest

Property Rights and physical space

• Biggest kept economic secret…• Granting of property rights to what were

physical public goods (classic example of the fish pond); today a condition of sustainable development, still relevant in many developing countries (McCullagh).

• Questions about inequality (see e.g. Marx in 1842 in the Rheinische Zeitung about the “new” inequality of poor people depending for their heating on collecting wood in now privatised forests).

Property Rights and time

• Second biggest kept economic secret… • Expansion in the direction of the

externalisation of household tasks also as a consequence of double income earners. Importance of opportunity costs of time (Gary Becker), enlargement of division of labour to traditional non-commercial but nevertheless valuable household activities.

• New inequality in (in)voluntary nature of work and “free” time.

Property Rights and information

• A new opportunity for monetizing value? • Obviously not a new phenomenon. Information

and communication have been of all times, but thanks to ICT there is now a radical increase in codification, access and tradability of information and communication.

• Digital divide: “socialisation” of information and communication is not the same as “socialisation” of knowledge.

But can one...

• The appropriation of value out of information and knowledge depends in the first instance on the degree of “exclusiveness”. There are however clear limits to intellectual exclusion

• Good fences make good neighbours in physical property, but much less in time – time registration illustration of mistrust and even much less with respect to information and knowledge

• “Free servicing” or “free offering” are much more common than “free riding” in information and communication

• Movement in direction of open science, even open innovation (complexity of science, role of users, trial and error, open standards)

New behavioural economic Insights on collaboration

• “That most of us assume creativity as necessarily individual, private and subject to the creative inputs of others only under commercial conditions, is a symptom of the conversion from knowledge and art to intellectual property” (R. Ghosh)

• “Homo oeconomicus” behaviour seems rather a sign of lack of development (the Indian tribe Machiguenga in the Peruvian part of the Amazone forest)

• Altruistic behaviour and in particular the behaviour of “altruistic punishment” characteristic of economic development and increases in welfare

• From an evolutionary perspective, humans are a maladaptation which has succeeeded in developing itself more than other species thanks to collaborative action and in particular altruistic behaviour See Fehr, E en U. Fischerbacher, The nature of human altruism, Nature, 425, 2003, pp. 785-91