Fighting ‘cyberlords’

Civil society groups are stepping up opposition to a market-based vision of communication being promoted and sustained by ‘cyberlords’.

Stefania Milan

AN information rights activist has warned against the growing power of the ‘landlords’ of cyberspace.

‘They are the landlords of cyberspace, the property owners of the emerging information economy,’ Roberto Verzola from the Filipino environmental and information association Philippines Greens said at the European Forum on Communication Rights.

The forum was held as a parallel event to the European Social Forum in London in mid-October.

‘They control the resources - the software, the content, the hardware and the infrastructure,’ Verzola said at a debate on the effects of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on everyday life.

‘IPRs are a form of information ownership we have today in the information economy,’ Verzola told IPS later. Cyberlords who control the information business are not just people like Microsoft owner Bill Gates but also media corporations and companies holding communication infrastructure, he said.

‘Their tendency to maximise profit at the expense of the need of people to share information in the community interest creates problems for civil society,’ Verzola added.

But civil society groups are stepping up opposition to a market-based vision of communication.

The right to share information freely ‘includes the freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, but embraces also people’s right to protect their privacy and their cultural and linguistic identity,’ says Cees Hamelink from the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS).

Civil society and media activists have often accused the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a specialised UN body based in Geneva that processes IPR applications, of being profit-driven.

Call for shift in WIPO agenda

Earlier this year, hundreds of researchers and activists signed a declaration on the future of WIPO, calling for a shift in the WIPO agenda from profit-making to defending the needs of developing countries.

The declaration calls on WIPO to ‘take a more balanced and realistic view of the social benefits and costs of intellectual property rights as a tool, but not the only tool, for supporting creative intellectual activity’.

The European Free Software Foundation produced another declaration on 14 October calling for WIPO reform.

‘Instead of an organisation dedicated to maintaining a system of monopolies, we want an organisation finding ways of how intellectual wealth can be generated and shared between all people,’ Georg Greve from the European Free Software Foundation told IPS.

The foundation welcomed the adoption of a proposal submitted by Argentina and Brazil at the WIPO General Assembly for the establishment of a development agenda.

‘It is an impressive step towards the creation of a broad coalition of people, organisations and countries demanding that the international community rethink the goals and mechanisms for awarding monopoly control over different kinds of knowledge,’ the Free Software Foundation said in a statement.

Verzola says that like the fight against landlords for redistribution of land, civil society must today ask for a redistribution of information. ‘People  have  to  share  publicly  and  socially information goods, by using free software as a form of weakening the monopoly of information,’ he said. - IPS