18th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture
Libraries Advocating for Access to Knowledge:
our role in the global A2K movement
Teresa Hackett
17 September 2008
• Brief overview of eIFL.net
• Access to Knowledge movement (A2K)
• role of libraries in A2K
• librarians as advocates
About eIFL.net
• Negotiating affordable subscriptions
• Best terms and conditions of use
• Supporting national library consortia
• Knowledge sharing network
Programmes
• Open access publishing
• Institutional repositories for local content
• Free and open source software for libraries
• Copyright for libraries
About eIFL.net
Guiding Principles of eIFL
• Access to information is essential in education and
research and has a direct impact on the development
of societies;
• combined purchasing and negotiating power of
libraries can lead to affordable and sustainable access
to electronic resources in developing and transition
countries;
• the empowerment of citizens and the spread of
democracy depends on equal access to information
and knowledge worldwide: eIFL.net is committed to
levelling the playing field.
What is Access to Knowledge (A2K)?
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No single definition, includes;
international development;
communications;
technology;
education;
intellectual property (IP) policy.
What is Access to Knowledge (A2K)?
Principles
1. Knowledge has a special importance in the well-being of
people and societies;
2. A2K perspective is concerned with the accessibility of
knowledge;
3. promotion of A2K is a task of government.
Source: Defining and Measuring Access to Knowledge:Towards an A2K Index. Lea Bishop
Shaver I/S Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society
http://isp.law.yale.edu/files/folders/public/entry46.aspx
What is the movement known as
Access to Knowledge (A2K)?
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Loose coalition of like-minded groups;
share a common concern;
ownership & control of information intellectual property
(IP);
no formal membership, shape or structure;
dynamic and organic;
effective in influencing international IP policy.
History of A2K movement
“More than 50 years ago, environmentalists taught us to see beyond a
disconnected set of problems in the natural world - polluted streams
and air, disappearing wetlands - to a larger interconnected system
called the environment. Successful development could only proceed if it
were sustainable; the environmental impact must be part of the
analysis. Similarly, both nationally and internationally, we need to
recover the traditional insight of our intellectual property laws; that it is
not rights that generate progress, but the balance between
rights and the public domain, a balance that is highly context
dependent. One size cannot fit all.”
A Manifesto on WIPO and the Future of Intellectual Property, James Boyle
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2004dltr0009.html
History of A2K movement
• Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
NGOs campaigned at WHO and WTO on negative
impact of increasing IP protection on public health in
developing countries
• A2K began its campaign at World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO)
WIPO administers international IP treaties and
negotiates new treaties
“Intellectual property laws are the legal sinews of
the information age; they affect everything from
the availability and price of AIDS drugs, to the
patterns of international development, to the
communications architecture of the Internet.”
James Boyle, Professor of Law at Duke Law School and the cofounder
of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World
Intellectual Property Organization (2004)
moratorium on creation of new treaties that expand
monopolies and restrict access to knowledge;
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WIPO should address the civil society concerns e.g.
consumer rights, libraries, blind and visually impaired
people;
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support for WIPO Development Agenda and a Treaty on
Access to Knowledge.
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WIPO Development Agenda
proposal by Brazil and Argentina to WIPO General Assemblies to
establish a “development agenda” for WIPO (2004);
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• Group of Friends of Development: Egypt, Kenya, Sierra Leone,
South Africa, Tanzania, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Iran, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela;
• first public opportunity to debate work of WIPO;
• re-orient WIPO to promote intellectual creativity, rather than IP
i.e. IP is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
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Copyright, libraries and A2K
• Libraries have a key interest in copyright;
• copyright governs ownership, control and
distribution of knowledge;
• role of libraries is to provide access to knowledge;
 copyright is a professional issue for librarians
and library organisations.
Digital technologies transforming libraries
i2010: Digital Libraries Initiative
Europe's Cultural and Scientific Heritage at a Click of a Mouse
New opportunities, fewer rights for users
• longer terms of protection, shrinking the public
domain;
• new layers of rights on digital information e.g.
database right;
• inadequate user rights (exceptions & limitations);
• licences that override copyright laws.
IFLA World Library Congress, Oslo (2005)
• limitations in the use of audio-visual formats;
• failure of digitisation projects due to copyright
restrictions;
• technological protection measures that prevent
libraries from making lawful uses of works
 need to counter-balance a system that
increasingly acts as a barrier to librarians and our
patrons
Achievements of A2K
• Awareness raising and harnessing opinion globally to
improve legal framework for enabling A2K;
• A2K “brand”;
• support from prominent people e.g. Joseph Stiglitz Nobel
prize for economics (2001), Sir John Sulston, Nobel prize for
medicine (2002), Larry Lessig, Creative Commons;
• new technologies to communicate e.g. wikis, blogs, skype
chats.
Achievements of A2K
(civil society and governments)
• WIPO General Assemblies (2007) agreed on a
Development Agenda;
• 45 recommendations for action;
• includes access to knowledge, exceptions and limitations,
public domain;
• Committee on IP and Development;
• proposals for broadcast treaty shelved;
• WIPO copyright committee to discuss E&L;
• WIPO study on library E&L (2008).
Widening the appeal of A2K
• George Washington Law School;
• Information Society Project, Yale Law School;
• A2K3 conference, Geneva, 8-10 September 2008;
• student research and thesis;
• From Intellectual Property Rights to Access to Knowledge.
Eds Gaelle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski. Zone Books
(forthcoming 2009).
Librarians: from stakeholders to advocates
“One of the most important developments in library work in
recent years has been a change in the role of the librarian
from that of an asset manager to an advocate for access”,
Arnold Hirshon eIFL Envisioning the Future, 2008.
Advocacy is “the process of turning passive support into
educated action by stakeholders”.
http://www.ala.org/ala/issues/gettingstarted.cfm
Professional librarians have a role to protect library interests
when national copyright laws are amended or when new
international treaties are introduced
Librarians: from stakeholders to advocates
What do we need?
• Core group of librarians with knowledge and advocacy
skills;
• future library leaders who will become copyright
champions  curriculum in copyright with Berkman Center;
• advocacy for many issues e.g. library development and
funding, consortium building, national education and ICT
policies, freedom of expression and access to knowledge.
From WSIS to A2K
• WSIS Internet Governance Forum (IGF);
• multi-stakeholder groups called “dynamic
coalitions”;
• A2K@IGF
 governments and policy makers need civil
society
“Knowledge goods are fundamentally different
from physical goods and services. They can be
copied. They can be shared. They do not have to
be scarce. The rich and the poor can be more equal
with regard to knowledge goods than to many
other areas.”
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/
Thank you for listening!
Any questions?