Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Medical Jurisprudence
'Information Feudalism: Who Owns The Knowledge Economy. A Book Review' (2003) 21 (1) Prometheus 127-132, Matthew Rimmer
'Information Feudalism: Who Owns The Knowledge Economy. A Book Review' (2003) 21 (1) Prometheus 127-132, Matthew Rimmer
Matthew Rimmer
Back in 1995, Peter Drahos wrote a futuristic article called ‘Information feudalism in the information society’. It took the form of an imagined history of the information society in the year 2015. Drahos provided a pessimistic vision of the future, in which the information age was ruled by the private owners of intellectual property. He ended with the bleak, Hobbesian image:"It is unimaginable that the information society of the 21st century could be like this. And yet if abstract objects fall out of the intellectual commons and are enclosed by private owners, private, arbitrary, unchecked global power will become a …