Special Projects
The Information Commons
Nancy Kranich
Senior Research Fellow
Free Expression Policy Project

CHALLENGES TO INFORMATION ACCESS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The writers of our Constitution assumed a role in shaping the nation's information policy. By empowering the Congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" in the Constitution's Copyright Clause, they recognized the power as well as the economic value of information, and attempted to reconcile the principles of free and open access with the profit incentives of authors, by giving them limited monopolies over their works. Along with copyright restrictions, they also, in the First Amendment, forbade government interference with free expression. The scholars Jorge Reina Schement and Terry Curtis argue that the tendencies and tensions of the information society stem directly from these competing visions of the founders, which were later played out as organizing principles of industrialization and capitalism.1

In the post-industrial era, the inherent tensions between information as a public good and as a commodity have given rise to a highly contested policy environment. The competing priorities - to guarantee equal access for citizens to participate in public discourse; to enable consumers to choose among products and services; and to protect the public from government intrusion into the free flow of ideas - have placed intolerable strain on American institutions like schools, libraries, and data collection and delivery agencies that are devoted to information and communication. By the 1990s, when the ever-expanding, deregulated telecommunications industries began to dominate access to information, entertainment, and ideas, these powerful stakeholders also began to dominate information and communications policy, drowning out the voices of the public interest community.

In case after case involving copyright, media consolidation, Internet censorship, and more, civil libertarians, librarians, educators, and other public interest advocates have struggled to counter attempts to control and limit the free flow of ideas. But although they have mounted an impressive effort, they have had fewer opportunities to influence outcomes, pushed aside by communications and media industry giants that are concerned more with consumer than citizen behavior. The result is that the promises and guarantees of citizens' rights found in such concepts as equitable access, free expression, and fair use of copyrighted works totter on the verge of extinction as the free flow of ideas is enclosed by the profit-making corporations that dominate the marketplace.

America's information and communications infrastructure must ensure physical and virtual public spaces that are filled by educational and research institutions, libraries, and other nonprofits dedicated to free speech and open intellectual discourse, unhampered by the marketplace, and disconnected from the dominant political forces. These spaces must facilitate public interest and nonprofit needs if democracy is to exist in the new electronic landscapes. Faced with formidable obstacles to achieving these goals, many public interest advocates now believe that it is time to change the terms of the discourse by applying new metaphors and models for access that emphasize a fair and just information society.

To meet the challenge of access to information in the digital age, proponents of free expression propose that public interest advocates band together to amplify their voices and extend their reach. They believe that only collective action under a single uniting umbrella, with shared decision-making, can address their common concerns. In short, they are calling for a new movement comparable to the movement for environmental protection in the last two decades of the 20th century. As the legal scholar James Boyle observes:

In one very real sense, the environmental movement invented the environment so that farmers, consumers, hunters, and birdwatchers could all discover themselves as environmentalists. Perhaps we need to invent the public domain in order to call into being the coalition that might protect it.2

This concern for concerted action has prompted a new language centering on the commons. According to David Bollier, a pioneer in the development of this concept:

· The commons helps underscore the fact that we the American people collectively own certain public resources, such as the airwaves, the Internet and public spaces.

· The commons brings into focus phenomena and values that are otherwise vague and diffuse. The framework of the commons lets us see that control over the assets we own, citizen access to information and freedom of expression, are at stake in all of these areas.

· The commons is not just a reactive critique, but a positive vision. The commons helps showcase "the market" as a distinct force with its own limitations - while opening up a new vector of discussion that focuses on democratic and social values.3

In short, the information commons concept provides an opportunity to spell out what we want for future generations and to take collective action and share decision-making to achieve our goals. Like the environment, an information commons is a dynamic ecological system. It is open and accessible, a public sphere where creativity and information flow, and a resource that complements both the market and the public sector.

NEXT: THE EMERGING INFORMATION COMMONS

NOTES

1. Jorge Reina Schement and Terry Curtis. Tendencies and Tensions in the Information Age. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995.

2. James Boyle. "A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?" Law in the Information Society, http://www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/intprop.htm

3. David Bollier. "Saving the Information Commons," Remarks at the American Library Association conference panel on Piracy on the Commons, June 15, 2002, http://www.ala.org/acrl/copyright/bollier6-15-02.html