Access to Knowledge

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See A2K Access to Knowledge for the concept, A2K Movement for the movement.


Access to Knowledge: A Guide for Everyone

  • Book
  • By Jeremy Malcolm et al.
  • Consumers International, 2010.

URLs: various, e.g. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc33297/

Description

"Access to Knowledge: A Guide for Everyone" Access to Knowledge (A2K) is the umbrella term for a movement that aims to create more equitable public access to the products of human culture and learning. The ultimate objective of the movement is to create a world in which educational and cultural works are accessible to all, and in which consumers and creators alike participate in a vibrant ecosystem of innovation and creativity.

These goals are of interest to a broad coalition of consumer groups, NGOs, activists, Internet users and others. However for many of them, coming to grips with the issues involved in the A2K movement can be daunting. These issues, including copyright and patent law reform, open content licensing, and communications rights, often involve legal and technological concepts that even specialists find difficult.

The purpose of this book is to provide an accessible introduction to the A2K movement and the institutions, concepts and issues involved in it, for those who would like to become involved but don't know where to start. In a truly collaborative exercise, information from various freely-licensed sources has been combined with text especially written for this book, and the whole has been made available for you to freely copy, share and modify." (http://a2knetwork.org/handbook)

Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property

Description

"A movement emerges to challenge the tightening of intellectual property law around the world.

At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of “access to knowledge” or “A2K.” They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new “free culture” movement to defend the digital commons.

Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. " ( https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/access-knowledge-age-intellectual-property )