Right-wrong; legal-illegal. Such simple binary notions cannot be used to asses issues related to intellectual property and communications. One of the key dilemmas in the field of intellectual property rights today is the need for a system that rewards innovation and creativity while encouraging the social availability and distribution of ideas in the public domain. And this is the balance that this volume sets out to strike. With the ownership of IP becoming a core feature of media/information industries and state policy, issues related to access to knowledge and its use have become a matter of critical concern. While trade regimes, the state and the core cultural and information industries have begun to advocate greater scope for a variety of knowledge enclosures, civil society is increasingly arguing for a people-centred vision of knowledge futures. This vision includes the need for equity-based and flexible licensing regimes; the legitimacy of local solutions to IP-related issues; support for cultural diversity; and access to knowledge based on need rather than the ability to pay for knowledge. The central argument of this volume is that since access to knowledge in a knowledge economy is a passport to a better quality of life, then its fair distribution and universal availability ought to become a standard norm. Hence, given the primary role played by knowledge in the production and reproduction of societies, intellectual property rights need to be considered an essential aspect of human rights and not just another mechanism invoked by global corporations to protect their economic self-interest. The articles in this volume explore the contested nature of the ownership of and access to knowledge and support it with illustrative case studies from the Asian region. Exhaustively discussed from the point of view of the dominant ‘power’ interest as also the ‘margins’ (or indigenous communities), this volume provides emerging solutions supportive of the public domain.
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