Rufus Pollock, an economist from the University of Cambridge, treated the Shaping the Future forum at the British Library on February 19 to a wide-ranging discourse on the benefits to society of Open Knowledge. Along the way he took in a 19th century poet laureate, pirate publishers, medicines in India and the joy of community and sharing. He began: “Copyright plays a role in stimulating creativity but also plays a role in restricting it. Here I will focus on the benefit of more open approaches to knowledge and production…” Read on for more from Rufus.
What is Open Knowledge?
Knowledge is content, code, data – I use the term knowledge because every other terms seems more restrictive. It’s “genes to geodata, statistics to sonnets”.
Open Knowledge is not the same as Creative Commons – by Open Knowledge I mean freedom to use, reuse and redistribute.
The key point is that knowledge is nonrival – it is costless to reproduce, unlike a car or the shoes you wear. If someone came and stole your shoes from you while you were asleep this afternoon, you would suffer from the loss of those shoes when you tried to walk home. But if someone took a cd from your bag and copied it and put it back you will still own that cd and be able to enjoy it.
Nonrival means that more than one person can enjoy it at the same time – my use does not compete with yours.
Intangible property – knowledge – is a nonrival good in a way that other goods are not so IPR is de facto inefficient for society – we are restricting access to a good when we shouldn’t from an optimal point of view. But, of course, the risk is that if we do not have it then creative works will not get made.
But there are also ways in which Open Knowledge is good for society:
1. Access and use
The tale of Southey and Wat Tyler
Robert Southey was a poet laureate from the 19th century. He was young around the time of the French revolution and was quite excited about it although over time the dream turned sour. While still young and idealistic he wrote an anti-authority poem called Wat Tyler (the leader of peasants revolt in 14th c) but as he got older he became more conservative and was embarrassed by his youthful poem. Some pirate publishers got hold of Wat Tyler and printed it, Southey was upset and sued them. However, under the then copyright law, if a poem was deemed subversive then copyright could not apply. So Southey on the horns of a dilemma – he was arguing that the reason he wanted to sue was because his poem was seditious… as a result the judges threw out the case and his copyright.
The pirates sold Wat Tyler at between a fifth and thirtieth of the normal price and increased the numbers sold massively so access to the work increased. This demonstrates that it is not a zero sum game – by introducing copyright you’re getting rid of a whole load of value in terms of the enjoyment of the work. After the Wat Tyler copyright got voided the work sold more than the rest of his work many times over – it was an extraordinary natural experiment in what happens when you reduce the price.
Quinolones in India
Another example is access to medicines and the introduction of product patents on quinolones in India. The producers got $10m more a year – against domestic loss of about $50m because of reduced access – loss is 50 times the gain when giving out these kinds of patents. It is a trade off – when you give a pound to producers via monopoly rights you are then losing more than a pound in loss.
Google is an incredible example of a huge amount of value generated by access to an open set of information – it was built on an ‘open web’.
2. The dictator and the anarchist
Most open source projects are run on some kind of dictatorial lines – if the guy is good then get some really excellent decisions but what happens when dictatorship goes bad?
On the other side we have anarchy which has advantages but runs the risk that possibly do not get a lot done.
With openness we can get the best of both worlds. If someone is making bad decisions then can just leave (fork) which provides a powerful sanction
3. Community and sharing
The story of wealth and happiness
Stats show that over a period of time (1975-1998) Americans became twice as rich but happiness did not increase by twice the amount, especially for the top quarter and bottom quarter.
We don’t just get happiness from material goods – openness allows sharing and community and that’s not so easy to do when engaged in copyright transactions.
An example is the commercial photographer who first resisted putting his photos on the image-sharing site Flickr under Creative Commons because he wanted to protect the commercial value of his work. He was persuaded to try putting just a selection of his least commercial photos on Flickr under a Creative Commons licence. He found that the experience of feedback and interaction he gained from doing that was a different experience to the commercial one and both were incredibly valuable to him.
As we become richer then the experience of sharing becomes more valuable than the value of commercial outcomes.
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