Information Feudalism: Who Owns The Knowledge Economy? A Book Review

Abstract

In Information Feudalism: Who Owns The Knowledge Economy?, Peter Drahos and his collaborator John Braithwaite reprise and expand upon the themes first developed in that article in 'The Information Society'. The authors contend: "Information feudalism is a regime of property rights that is not economically-efficient, and does not get the balance right between rewarding innovation and diffusing it. Like feudalism, it rewards guilds instead of inventive individual citizens. It makes democratic citizens trespassers on knowledge that should be the common heritage of humankind, their educational birthright. Ironically, information feudalism, by dismantling the publicness of knowledge, will eventually rob the knowledge economy of much of its productivity." ...In this engaging and accessible book, Drahos and Braithwaite trace the deal-making at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that led to intellectual property becoming a part of the World Trade Organization.