Law Commons^™

What Is Feminist About Open Access?: A Relational Approach To Copyright In The Academy, Carys J. Craig, Joseph F. Turcotte, Rosemary J. Coombe

Carys Craig

In a context of great technological and social change, existing intellectual property regimes such as copyright must contend with parallel forms of ownership and distribution. Proponents of open access question and undermine the paradigm of exclusivity central to traditional copyright law, thereby fundamentally challenging its ownership structures and the publishing practices these support. In this essay, we attempt to show what it is about the open access endeavour that resonates with a feminist theory of law and society - in other words, we consider what is “feminist” about open access. First, we provide an overview of a relational feminist critique …