Free Culture, Global Commons and Social Justice in Information Technology Diffusion

This paper examines the critical role of the global expansion of IP rights in the construction and maintenance of digital inequalities and suggests that the irresolution of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) as well as the struggles for a Development Agenda mark a crucial dimension in the global politics of digital inequalities. It suggests that a pathway to understanding these politics is a critical analysis of the nature of intellectual property rights in the context of a changing societal environment. Relations of production and hence human interaction are being transformed in ways which question the nature of property rights. It also suggests that arguments on this issue in developed countries take a different tenor in the Global South and require rethinking of issues such as sanctity of property, piracy and digital social justice.