Centre for Internet and Society

The Machinistic Paradigm Collapse

anirudh — 2014-04-15T17:03:22Z

Looking at the example of the scientific practices surrounding protein folding study, this blog explores the modern relevance of Thomas Kuhn’s conception of a paradigm. This blog posits that because of the heavy reliance on computational technology and simulation, the philosophical basis of Kuhnian scientific paradigm has ceased to exist and hence science, along with the Digital Humanities has moved into a post structuralist age.

One of the great scientific challenges that have ridden along the furrowed brows of all three branches of natural science’s practitioners is of understanding protein folding. This, to the uninitiated as I am, is the process by which newly synthesized proteins or new born proteins, as random coils are given their biological destinies by their amino acid sequences through folding in three dimensional space into their secondary, tertiary or quaternary structures. [1] It helps me to think of a paper rocket that is a plain sheet of paper, a trapped 2 dimensional figure, limp and physically impotent as if in Abbot’s Flatland until it is introduced to a 3-dimensional space and itself becomes a 3 dimensional entity which can then travel particular distances, velocities and directions based all on the precise folding. Proteins, straying from their destined path of structure, even by the slightest can become toxic, cause allergies and many neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and prion. [2] This immediately places the uncovering of the precise folding pathways in the interest of the whole modern medical enterprise. Indeed, this old scientific problem dates back almost a century to the experiments of Anson and Mirsky in the 1930’s. [3]It is also quite possible that the story of protein folding, in which machine vision replaces theory and mathematics, unveils another story; the erosion of the scientific paradigm itself.

Thomas Kuhn, in his 1962 book called the “Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, gave the word paradigm its contemporary meaning. At a mere definitional level, Kuhn describes the paradigms as “universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners.” [4] In terms of methodology, a paradigm governs what is to be observed, what questions are asked, how they are asked, how the data is interpreted and how the experiments are conducted. However, Kuhn had a greater vision for a paradigm when he characterized it as an emergent system from a revolution which means it is a change in the world order itself. Or to camber the previous sentence, paradigms order the world around them. Commenting on the scientists world view, Kuhn says “in so far as their (scientists) only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution, scientists are responding to a different world…what were ducks in the scientist’s world before the revolution are rabbits afterwards”.

My previous blog on the collapse of the semiotic sphere of capture spoke about the substitution every epoch of the center of the sphere or transcendental signifier that lends meaning to the world upon which it reigned. It, however, (as a consequence of Derrida’s concentration on results more than process) did not lay down the steps that led to the replacement of the center of meaning with a different set of signifiers leading to a different vision of the world. Kuhn, on the other hand, adumbrates the exact process by which this paradigmatic transformation in scientific world order takes place. As a non scientist and a denizen of a post metaphysical age, I’m at a severe disadvantage when trying to comprehend what it must mean to have these seismic shifts in the way the mind is ordered and perceives the world so I tried to meditate De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (on the revolutions of the heavenly sphere) through the Renaissance Astronomer Copernicus to try to understand the process. [5]

[6]

The Ptolemaic earth centric model, his astronomical system, was first developed during the time of Christ. This system worked admirably in the prediction of changing positions of both stars and planets in the ancient world, far outstripping any other system. However, over the fifteen centuries leading upto Copernicus, many holes and problems, what Kuhn refers to as anomalies, started appearing in this system. It could not account for certain planetary positions, equinoxes and these problems kept compounding as astronomical observation became more sophisticated as the theoretical basis grew more antiquated. Almost the whole enterprise of astronomy was involved with the mitigation and reduction of minor discrepancies by adjustments and tweaks made to the Ptolemaic system of concentric circles. Kuhn explains this as a process of resilience where scientists play a game of Whac-a-mole and as the apparatus of discovery complicates the science much further than the accuracy allowed by the existing paradigm, the theoretical stereotypes within the paradigm are loosened to accommodate the discrepancies so much that they bring about their own collapse. As Karl Popper says in “Science as Falsification”, the strength of a scientific theory, or any theory, is its falsifiability or is directly proportional to its prohibition of certain observations. He warns that when a theory, or in this case, a paradigm, has been refuted, its adherents attempt ad hoc auxiliary modifications or reinterpretations of the theory to rescue it from refutation by what he calls a conventionalist twist.[7] This rescuing is possible, but it comes at the price of destroying its scientific status and moving it into the metaphysical or mythical realm. By the time Alfonso X came about in the thirteenth century, looking upon the Ptolemaic model as a scandal, he was claiming that if God has consulted him when creating the universe, he would have received better advice. [8] Finally, in the 16th century the painful process of denial ended with Copernicus’s rejection of the Ptolemaic paradigm in favor of his own heliocentric paradigm as in the diagram above.

One could look to paradigm shifts in the humanities and social sciences and draw parallels to the scientific ones with the birth of deconstruction in the evolution of the text as explored in the previous blog but that would be across purposes as Kuhn himself prohibits this application. In the preface of his book, he explains that he concocted the concept of a paradigm precisely to distinguish the social from the natural sciences. Some like M.L Handa have attempted this concomitance but that sort of endeavor will be beyond the scope of this blog.[9] The windows of the laboratory will, for the most part, be shut out from the outside world in this blog. This argument was, perhaps easier to make under past paradigms as Bertrand Russell, when he sought to disprove the Natural Law argument in “Why I’m not a Christian” says “that (natural law) was a favorite argument all through the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony. People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further for any explanation of the law of gravitation. Nowadays we explain the laws of gravitation in a somewhat complicated fashion that Einstein has introduced…you no longer have the sort of Natural Law that you had in the Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion.”[10] Science may have inherited its ontology from philosophy which inherited its ontology from theology in the past but those dendrites in the past neurological connections seem to have been excised in the present.

Kuhn says that the striking feature of doing scientific research is the attempt to discover what is known in advance, hence identifying the scientific hypothesis as the locus of the human imagination in the scientific praxis. Popper, in “Science: Conjectures and Refutations”, says “At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all--or very nearly all--scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories. Examples are Empedocles' theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides' myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein's block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning).”[11]

If we do run the hypothesis through a philosophical treatment, then as C.S Pierce observed, it is a form of abductive reasoning unlike the deductive and inductive reasoning that may play a more dominant role in other stages of the scientific praxis. Abductive reasoning takes the form of a guess where the scientist looks at a particular phenomenon in nature like a parched, dead tree and ventures a hypothesis that there was no rainfall.[12] While β (the result; i.e the dried up tree) could have been due to a host of causes a (eg forest fire), the scientist decides to propose a cause, α, based on the economy or likelihood of explaining power which is also called the Occam’s razor principle. Pierce said that abductive reasoning is "very little hampered" by rules of logic…Oftenest even a well-prepared mind guesses wrong. But the modicum of success of our guesses far exceeds that of random luck, and seems born of attunement to nature by instincts developed or inherent, especially insofar as best guesses are optimally plausible and simple in the sense of the ‘facile and natural’, as by Galileo’s natural light of reason.”[13]

It is precisely at this juncture that the scientific consciousness, ordered by the paradigm of an age escapes the laboratory and is subject to governance of the transcendental signifier potentates atop the Olympus of the outer world. The Occam’s razor principle of parsimony itself is premised on the theological notion of its time that the simplest explanation conceivable by man is likely the best one because man is made in the image of God. Popper further explicated on Pierce’s postulations in his hypothetico-deductive model in the twentieth century when he called the hypothesis just “a guess”.[14] The guess that the dead tree was brought about by a drought is then one that comes from the epoch of Being in which non-scientists live.

We must remember that a paradigm is a universal belief of scientists that permits the very selection process of the pursuit. The guess that eventually becomes the hypothesis is one that is made robust as many abductions are rejected and modified by better abductions. Although the eventual hypothesis could be one rising solely from the hermetically sealed paradigm, one cannot ignore this process happening behind the scientific consciousness. Methodologically distinct though the paradigm remains from cultural pursuits, its ontologies remain the same. Derrida, while analyzing Levi Strauss’s Elementary Structures: The Savage Minds says “On the one hand, he will continue in effect to contest the value of the nature/culture opposition. More than thirteen years after the Elementary Structures, The Savage Minds faithfully echoes the text I have just quoted: “The opposition between nature and culture which I have previously insisted on seems today to offer value which is above all methodological.” And this methodological value is not affected by its “ontological” non-value…: “It would not be enough to have absorbed particular humanities into a genera humanity; this first enterprise prepares the way for others ... which belong to the natural and exact sciences: to reintegrate culture into nature, and finally, to reintegrate life into the totality of its physiochemical conditions””[15]

If then there is this neurological connection that exists as a fast multiplying parasite that is a different species by the time it enters the laboratory then it must be true that the paradigm is vulnerable to extinction when that mutated parasite, the postmodern idea, comes from an alien world of no ontological or transcendental fixity. In other words, along with the collapse of Gebser’s integral sphere of semiotic capture, the structure of the scientific paradigm as Kuhn saw it should have also collapsed. Kuhn preempts this thought, unintentionally perhaps when he says “Once a first paradigm through which to view nature has been found, there is no such thing as research in the absence of any paradigm. To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself.” This is evocative of Heidegger when he laments that with the end of the metaphysical age where there are no more universal structures of consciousness, comes the death of real art. To test the validity of Kuhn’s challenge, we come back to our initial foray into the world of protein folding discovery.

Recently, there was a multi-player online game called Foldit where players have to collaborate and compete to create accurate protein structure models. Foldit player solutions started to create waves in the scientific community when player solutions began to outperform the most state-of-the-art methods including the other computational methods. Two particular “recipes” became particularly famous and a paper on this discovery called “Algorithm Discovery by Protein Folding Game Players” says “benchmark calculations show that the new algorithm independently discovered by scientists and by Foldit players outperforms previously published methods. Thus, online scientific game frameworks have the potential not only to solve hard scientific problems, but also to discover and formalize effective new strategies and algorithms.”[16]

This is not a typical example of a state of affairs but an extreme example illustrative of a larger technological shift in the business of science. As Pierce said about the “attunement to nature by instincts” the computer game is a case of this instinctual visual acuity being harnessed by machine intelligence. This mode of scientific production, I would posit at a fundamental level, is completely incompatible with the Kuhnian conception of a paradigm.

The paradigm is not merely a set of rules and shared assumptions but a rigid system of inherited dogma that draws the horizon of exploration universally but is limited in scope and precision at its inception. Therefore normal science (science conducted at non-revolutionary times within paradigms) is a mop-up operation or “an attempt to force nature into the pre-formed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies”. Normal, non-revolutionary science is a relatively linear, cumulative process whose horizon is defined by the inherited beliefs, theories, methods and the mental labor of the mop-up crew. The moment when computer modeling began to provide the fineness of observation that it currently does, it replaced the physical, dynamical modus vivendi of mathematical science and started to determine the horizon of the scientific endeavor.

Dr. Bengt Nӧlting’s book, Protein Folding Kinetics: Biophysical Methods, begins with a quote from Faust, which in my opinion is innocent, if not naïve.

Then shall I see, with vision clear,

How secret elements cohere,

And what the universe engirds,

And give up huckstering with words.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He says, with the advent of computational modeling and experimental advances in technology, “the pathways and structures of early folding events and the transition state structures of fast folding proteins can now be studied in far more detail…which… allows fast processes that would normally be hidden in kinetic studies to be revealed.”[17] He is then able to see, with vision clear, how elements cohere on screen, he thinks. However, if we are to recall Kuhn, seeing in science is a sense given by the paradigm that allows the scientist to observe nature but truly see it in coherence with the paradigmatic ordering of her world view. Therefore, Nӧlting is not really seeing at all (unless he programmed the computer simulation which brings him a little closer). He merely has “the notion that the quantitation of kinetic rate constants and the visualization of protein structures along the folding pathway will lead to an understanding of function and mechanism and will aid the understanding of important biological processes and disease states through detailed mechanistic knowledge” (italics mine). “Beyond this, protein structures along the folding pathway can now be visualized at the level of individual amino acid residues in nearly any biologically relevant time scale. This detailed mechanistic knowledge will further aid the understanding of biological processes and disease states, and will eventually help us to find rational ways for re-designing biological processes, and to find cures for diseases.”

In “Protein Folding, Misfolding and Aggregation Classical Themes and Novel Approaches”, Victor Muῆoz furthers the notion of science’s boundaries being drawn by technology when he says “prevailing views about the mechanisms of protein folding have closely followed the idiosyncrasies in the catalog of available proteins and experimental approaches.” Although computational simulation is distinct from experimental techniques, one can interpret this statement, based on the rest of book, that the approaches include predictive simulation. The history of the development of protein folding study has been a technologically determined one of serendipity. When new experimental data on folding and unfolding rates emerged, Muῆoz says that “theoreticians immediately saw this avalanche of new experimental results as an opportunity to test results from theory and computer simulations, leading to the first de facto connection between the worlds of experiment and theory in protein folding.”[18] Therefore, the world of experiment and theory, a process that was previously mediated by the paradigm is now mediated by computer simulations. The structure of scientific pursuits is now determined by the randomness of programming and computer engineering.

This phenomenon of computational capabilities exceeding the mathematical conception is not contained to the world of biophysics but extends to material sciences like nanotechnology, ecology and many others. As was postulated in my previous blog, this is probably another symptom of the techno-capitalistic regime that demands to be spoken to through images rather than the esoteric language of mathematics. When Fred Whipple’s wanted to test his “dirty snowball” theory, he proved it by pointing towards Haley’s Comet, when Einstein wanted to prove his theory he pointed again to a light dance in the heavens. When the cosmic magic shows can no longer enthrall the science funding entity, computer simulations are all that are left in the midden heap. Remember that the success of a paradigm rests in its propagation and its appeal to future generations of scientists. Therefore, even if the atypical scientist is still carrying out research under a dogmatic rubric, it cannot gain the fervor and universal sense of order when big pharmaceuticals fund only the technological science and the Intellectual Property regime spurs the individual scientists to work at breakneck speeds allowed only by computers.

According to David Berry in “Understanding Digital Humanities”, one of its main objectives is to use computational methods to answer existing questions or challenge theoretical paradigms to generate new questions.”[19] The emergence of the non-human computational methods in the business of natural sciences has certainly generated new questions around an observation; meaning in the sciences has eerily followed on the destructive path of the Digital Humanities, slaying the Kuhnian paradigm in a twin collapse with the integral sphere of semiotic capture.

[1] Nolting, Bengt. Protein Folding Kinetics Biophysical Methods. Berlin: Springer, 1999. eBook.

[2]ibid

[3] Munoz, Victor. Protein Folding, Misfolding and Aggregation Classical Themes and Novel Approaches. The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2008. eBook.

[4] Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1962. Print.

[5] ibid

[6]Picture taken from http://tofspot.blogspot.in/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-down-for.html

[7] Popper, Karl. "Science as Falsification." Conjectures and Refutations. (1963): n. page. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.

[8] See citation 4

[9] Handa, M. L. (1986) "Peace Paradigm: Transcending Liberal and Marxian Paradigms". Paper presented in "International Symposium on Science, Technology and Development, New Delhi, India, March 20–25, 1987, Mimeographed at O.I.S.E., University of Toronto, Canada (1986)

[10] Russel, Bertrand. "Why I am Not a Christian an Examination of the God‐Idea and Christianity." England. 06 03 1927. Address.

[11] See citation 7

[12] Peirce, C. S. "On the Logic of drawing History from Ancient Documents especially from Testimonies" (1901), Collected Papers v. 7

[13] ibid

[14] Popper, Karl (2002), Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London, UK: Routledge

[15] Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, J Derrida, 1966.

[16] Khatiba, Firas, and Seth Cooper. "Algorithm discovery by protein folding game players." PNAS. (2011): n. page. Web. 13 Apr. 2014. .

[17] See citation 1

[18] See citation 3

[19]Berry, David. Understanding Digital Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Web.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/the-machinistic-paradigm-collapse

Paradigm Shift

anirudh — 2014-04-14T09:27:53Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/protein.png

Fishing is the New Black: Contemporary Art Imitates the Digital

anirudh — 2014-03-28T12:51:40Z

Marshall Mcluhan once said, “Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.” Philosophers, on the other hand, think about things in retrospect and hence, as much as Derrida’s writings about the collapse of the semiotic structures of capture and meaning say about the Digital age, Mark Rothko’s art, a generation ahead of Derrida in depicting this collapse, can say about the future that it saw in visceral and energetic forms. To understand Rothko’s paintings we must sit through a short history of the different epochs of Being and their epistemological shifts before we get to the Digital Age about which Rothko had violent and destructive premonitions.

According to Heidegger, the metaphysical age is one that lasts from Plato, where we began to explore the fundamental nature of being through ultimate, transcendental forms that show us diaphanous glimpses of themselves through earthly, imperfect forms to Nietzsche or Heidegger himself.[1]

Hans Belting, in his book Likeness and Presence talks about the transcendental signifiers during the Medieval Age as being transferred to the West by the Byzantines. These signifiers existed as iconotypes such as the Last Supper, the Resurrection, the Cross and the decapitation of John the Baptist which are not just treated as “art” by European cultures that inherited them but as objects of veneration that held in them the Holy itself.

	A whole system of beliefs, superstitions, hopes and fears and, indeed, Being, is constructed by the people’s responses to this cathedral of a semiotic structure. While God creates primordial forms, the artist in this age is a cosmocrator who imitates God and creates ideal forms of these iconotypes that anchor meaning for everybody.[2] Ranging from Da Vinci’s perfect depiction of the Last Supper, the boundaries of the Byzantine dome of meaning is depicted through Michelangelo’s interior of the dome of the Sistine Chapel. While the curtains close on the Middle Ages, they drape with them, the iconotypes of Christianity.

A whole system of beliefs, superstitions, hopes and fears and, indeed, Being, is constructed by the people’s responses to this cathedral of a semiotic structure. While God creates primordial forms, the artist in this age is a cosmocrator who imitates God and creates ideal forms of these iconotypes that anchor meaning for everybody.[2]

Ranging from Da Vinci’s perfect depiction of the Last Supper, the boundaries of the Byzantine dome of meaning is depicted through Michelangelo’s interior of the dome of the Sistine Chapel. While the curtains close on the Middle Ages, they drape with them, the iconotypes of Christianity.

With the coming of the perspectable age of art, as Gebser puts it, three dimensional space is discovered through science and Copernicus where the world is shifted into a heliocentric system, the iconotypes permanently lose their centrality and as Derrida puts it, are substituted. While the sculptors like Brunelleschi were creating three dimensional art and the interiors of the Protestant Churches were vacant of iconotypes, artists like Bernini, by clinging on so deeply to the iconotypes that were dead, infused melancholy into their swansong.[3]

According to Heidegger, the aesthetic that follows is called “World Picture” which in art is similar to Oswald Spengler’s idea of infinite space. The transcendental signifier is that of infinity and the works of Dutch painters like Hobbema depict this metaphysical center of the age through their endless skies. Then the impressionists like Manet and Van Gogh break this three dimensional space further. During the modern age, Gebser’s integral sphere of consciousness is created through the paintings of Cezanne and Picasso who painted their archetypes on what he saw as its curved walls.[4] The archetypes, in a Jungian sense, are part of the universal subconscious and hence pervasive through all cultures unlike the Christian iconotypes of the Middle Ages.

According to Heidegger, the aesthetic that follows is called “World Picture” which in art is similar to Oswald Spengler’s idea of infinite space. The transcendental signifier is that of infinity and the works of Dutch painters like Hobbema depict this metaphysical center of the age through their endless skies.

Then the impressionists like Manet and Van Gogh break this three dimensional space further. During the modern age, Gebser’s integral sphere of consciousness is created through the paintings of Cezanne and Picasso who painted their archetypes on what he saw as its curved walls.[4] The archetypes, in a Jungian sense, are part of the universal subconscious and hence pervasive through all cultures unlike the Christian iconotypes of the Middle Ages.

Mark Rothko, however, in his 1946 multi-forms, was busy orchestrating the Skywalkerian collapse of this integral sphere and taking the Jungian archetypes-myths, Gods, heroes- with him. Peter Barry argues in “Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural (1995)” that in the twentieth century, through a complicated sequence of historical and political, technological and scientific events, “these centers were destroyed or eroded”. The Great War destroys the notion of steady material progress and the Holocaust destroys the notion of Europe as the epi-center of human civilization. As a second coming of Copernican destruction of being, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity destroys the idea of time and space as fixed and central absolutes.

Rothko stopped naming his paintings because they unnecessarily curtailed the horizon of meaning so we will call it the sequence of the next three paintings, which depict the melting down of the modernist archetypes into blurred, overlapping chunks of colour.[5]

Gradually, these amorphous blobs of color congeal into squares and rectangles of intense light. These gradually intensifying shapes of light depict the semiotic vacancy and the absence of transcendental signifiers.

Rothko’s self-luminous squares and rectangles, however, perform an added function from dramatically enacting the past destruction which is to show premonitions of a future that will be dominated by the luminous screens of televisions, cell phones and digital constructions of meaning.[6]

	In the famous Seagrams Murals like the Black on Maroon, the paintings are no longer emanating light, standing as Cassandra like, diaphanous premonitions of a distant future but consist of colored rectangles engulfed by a menacing black band that gravitate the viewer into this world of semiotic vacancy, into what will become the digital world.

By the time he is commissioned to do artwork for a Chapel in Houston that is dedicated to him (Rothko Chapel), all the transcendental signifiers that anchor any sort of meaning have been deconstructed and his canvases depict a triumph of the nothingness. When Hans Belting, in "The End of the History of Art?" ponders as to why "artists today often decline to participate in an ongoing history of art at all", it is precisely because of this rupture that Rothko and Derrida after him observed.

They almost set the stage for contemporary art, which is a private art of the particular artist who constructs her own meta-narrative by taking destroyed forms, dead batteries from the debris of previously ruptured spheres and attempts to stitch them together into a temporal Frankenstein’s monster of an art form.

Art now imitates the digital space as it isn’t an activity of vision and the artist isn’t a cosmocrator. In the Digital Humanities, knowledge isn’t practiced as in old academia which is a legatee of the Romantic conception of the genius as standing on the vanguard of society. Art in the contemporary age is simply anything that is taken out of its context of banality and knowledge in the digital age is simply any data set with commentary. Big data is the unacknowledged legislator of our time and not poets, as Heidegger would lament. John David Ebert likens the contemporary artist like Anselm Kiefer or Gerhard Richter to a fisherman of forms who has to hybridize old forms and discarded signifiers and re-territorialize them into new semiospheres. Nishant Shah, in a lecture on the ‘Histories of the Internet’, said that the best characterization of the Digital he knew was that of its etymology. The Latin Digitus signifies fingers, toes and perhaps the individual phalanges that, useless on their own, come together to make up the whole appendage like the functioning of Bit Torrent which takes apart a file into hundreds of pieces which it downloads individually from seeders around the world and stitches them back together. Indeed, it seems as if the ontology of the digital itself is imitated in the ontology of contemporary art which stitches together individually discarded and functionless, archaic forms. These radical vagaries of art forms caused by the collapse of the transcendental signifiers and the semiotic vacancy, seems to also be mirrored in the multi-forms that the Digital Humanities take in the mind of the Digital Humanists who have vastly differing conceptions of what the Digital Humanities really are/is. Just as art in the contemporary age is not anchored in a metaphysical center of meaning, Digital Humanists also lack an ontological fixity about their discipline which leads to the larger issue with digital humanities as a domain itself, wherein there is a concern about the rather diffused nature of the space, an invisible or missing locus; a critical or political standpoint.

[1]. Art after Metaphysics, John David Ebert, 2013

[2].Ibid.

[3].Ibid.

[4].Ibid.

[5].Ibid.

[6].Ibid.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/fishing-is-the-new-black

Access to Knowledge

anirudh — 2014-05-22T04:48:41Z

Unit 4 of Module 2 discusses the right to access knowledge, patents and copyright. There is also a case study of Oxbridge Textbooks.

Introduction

In the middle of the 16th century, Queen Mary was faced with a difficult question that was brought to her by none other than most powerful publishing house in England at the time. The Stationers, like any other craft guild in the business of printing and producing books loved a monopoly in the profits of their books and terribly feared competition.[1] Therefore, they went to Queen Mary with the request of a royal charter. This charter would allow them to seize illicit editions of their books and bar the publication of books unlicensed by the crown. The Queen suddenly thought that this could indeed be a more efficient way to squash sedition and dissent through censorship by puppeteering this craft guild than previous, perhaps less subtle means like torture and death. In 1557, she granted them this early form of a copyright. Notice how the author or the creator of the work has no place in this agreement and the origins of intellectual property in English law are based on privilege, namely power and profit. This rhetoric, however, changes with the coming of the 18^th century and the passing of the Act of Anne in 1707 to one of creativity and learning. The concern for the author has a steady positivist rise after this in the tug of war over intellectual property. In the case Miller v Taylor in 1769, the author sought to extend copyright to common law. Three judges ruled in favor of this motion and two judges ruled against.[2]

A closer examination at the reasoning provided by the three assenting judges will tell us almost all the philosophical justifications of intellectual property. The first judge called upon his notion of justice and said it is just that the author control the destiny of his work as it is a product of his labor. The second judge said that extending the copyright would encourage creativity by making the work the creator’s property. The third judge said it is the authors natural right as the work wouldn’t exist if not for the mental labor of the author. Together, justice, incentives and natural rights are the cornerstones of the justifications of intellectual property.

Although history is littered with theories on property, there have been only sparse discussions on intellectual property. The question then arises, can intellectual property be accommodated within normal property. The similarity is in the fact that intellectual property is also a relationship between people but the difference lies in the fact that the object is an abstract one.[3]

This leads many to believe that it cannot be subject to the same rules of property. The first dissenting judge in Miller v Taylor, for example, said that abstract ideas cannot be occupied like corporeal objects so they cannot be property. He said the author deserves a reward which the Act of Anne provides in the form of limited monopoly but that’s about it. In fact, an idea is almost the perfect example of a resource like the air or light that is not zero sum and inexhaustible in that my use of it doesn’t take away from your use of it. Neither air nor light can become personal property which leaves ideas in a property limbo. This leaves room for very interesting discussions and debates over the existence of intellectual property and the place it should occupy in society. This discourse has largely taken two forms: the deontological and the consequentialist. Deontological justifications for IP come from a priori reasons like rights or duties which can be established in many forms. There is the ontological basis for rights which answers questions like whether rights exist and if so, where they come from. One of the preeminent figures in this discourse has been John Locke, an English philosopher whose argument for individual property as “natural rights” remains relevant even today when applied to intellectual property. Locke’s major assumptions in his claim were:

God has given the world to people in common.
Every person owns his own personality.
A person’s labor belongs to him.
When a person mixes his labor with something in the commons he makes it his property.
The right of property is contingent upon its being good for commoners.[4]

In order to extend this argument, Locke says that exclusive ownership of a resource is a precondition for production. Ideas before labored upon by people, however, are not exclusively owned which resists the cross application of his ideas to intellectual property. Another impediment in extending the natural right to intellectual property is the 5th assumption. Intellectual labor, in annexing an idea, stops it from becoming a part of the intellectual commons. If this labor, armed with the property of becoming property is doing a disservice to society, then it may not be a natural right at all. The notion that ideas are a part of the intellectual commons is also one that needed evidence and Locke found that in scripture as Judeo-Christian philosophy clearly advocates the idea of all worldly resources being part of the commons.

Hegel, on the other hand, took the route of personality theory. He argued that if individuals have claims to anything, they had to be considered an individual first. He states that in order to be individuals, people must have a moral claim to things like their character traits, feelings, talents and experience.[5] The definition of these aspects or the process of self-actualization requires an interaction with tangible and intangible objects in the world. The external actualization process requires property that includes intellectual property for Hegel as he sees the works as an extension or an establishment of the self in the external world that embody the person’s personality in an inseparable and even immortal way.

Another form is in linguistics, where we ask questions like what we mean when we say rights and property. Skinner said that in the history of intellectual property law, the social context of its use and the matrix of assumptions involved in reference is the determining factor. This is why the history of intellectual property is as important as and to the philosophical underpinnings.

The consequentialist justifications of IP assume that the specious connection between IP and creativity is fact and warn of a chilling effect on creative activity in the absence of IP. History shows us that the relationship between IP and creativity is local and contingent rather than necessary and universal. Imperial China, for example, was a creative and inventive empire that gave rise to many technologies and artistic subcultures without any promise of IP. Indeed, Marx’s historical materialism could be seen as condemning IP as a superstructural phenomenon in the industrial development phase of capitalist societies and one that a future society can function well without.[6] If one was interested in the consequentialist debate over IP, then historical empirical data would be more important than an a priori analysis.

The lack of a definitive philosophical, ethical or normative justification for the existence of Intellectual Property rights unlike those for free expression or equal treatment under the law shows us that its application needs to be tempered with other considerations. If, as Rawls suggested, we hide behind the veil of ignorance and tried to form an ideal society, then IP may not feature within it as it tends to create social stratification and further marginalizes the least advantaged in social life and democratic culture.[7] Since IP’s are liberty intrusive privileges that do not “allow the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all.” or “benefit the least advantaged.” or are “open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.”, their utilitarian claims of creativity have to answer to the injustices that manifest from them before they get a carte blanche in society.

The access to knowledge has been a yearning of society to shift and dilute the concentration of this most precious of resources because of the old adage “knowledge is power”. This concept, however, can be understood from many lenses including the sociological and the legal. At first, in order to understand the importance of the legal entities under access to knowledge, we must explore its saliency in society.

Humanity world over is at the cusp of a major shift in the production, consumption, dissemination and distribution of knowledge. This warrants changes in frameworks of looking at knowledge, information and data in the digital era at multiple levels and by multiple players including students, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers, civil society and the State. In order to understand why and how knowledge matters in the world today, we must see how it makes a difference in our world and how it materially changes the world.

Many prominent economists and social theorists have sought to claim that knowledge has affected the organization of society in a manner that is different than in previous eras though knowledge has been an organizing principle of society throughout history. How the exact time of the shift and the nature of the shift are catalogued will depend on what category the basis is. From an economic perspective, Marx said that the capitalist system depends on the constant improvement and dynamism of technology. The real understanding of the role of knowledge in our economy came when Robert Solow posited that the majority of economic growth in the beginning of the 20th century was less due to labor or capital and more due to technological changes. These advances in knowledge came in the form of new machines to new production techniques that made the production process more efficient.[8]

Fritz Machlup stated that in the 1960’s the change in the knowledge intensity of the economy was marked by “an increase in the share of ‘knowledge-producing’ labor in total employment.” The Harvard historian Daniel Bell observed in his study of post-industrial societies that 1/3^rd of the US workers were employed in the service industry at the turn of the century but by the 1980’s almost 7/10^ths of the workers were employed in the service industries.[9]

People who were employed in the industrial sectors were flocking steadily to finance, education, information technology and the cultural industry. The movements of people came as a reaction to the movement of profitability from industrial sectors to finance, biotechnology and information technology. Knowledge basically is a positive feedback loop which means that as more information and communication technologies emerge, it allows more innovation. Manuel Castell categorizes this shift in the place of knowledge as a global one even though it’s concentrated in a few wealthy countries because all the economies ultimately depend on the global one. The disparity between countries is still massive but it used to be just in terms of raw materials and manufactured goods but now at a global level, there is a huge knowledge (high technology low technology, high knowledge services low knowledge services) disparity between wealthy and non-wealthy countries. This claim may seem to imply that knowledge is simply technical and scientific, but there are obviously other important kinds of knowledge like ethical and humanities knowledge. The point here is that the enhanced ability of humans to organize and employ specific kinds of technical and scientific knowledge has created a huge shift in the global economy similar to the effect of the increase in access to knowledge from the invention of printing press. This shift in the importance of knowledge has made our health better as well. The average lifespan has increased exponentially in the past half century and it is our scientific advancement in the mechanisms of disease and medicine that has aided this achievement.

When there is so much integral societal dependence on knowledge, the non market production of knowledge is essential for equality in access to this knowledge. Yochai Benkler stated that the processing power of the modern computers linked together on the internet creates a platform that allows for new kinds of collaboration. Apart from new kinds of political activism, it also leads to decentralized knowledge production like open source/ free software and Wikipedia.

Within this context of the digital turn, openness and transparency are gaining newer significance. On the one hand emerging participatory models of openness like Wikipedia[10] are increasingly pushing us to look beyond the traditional models of the bygone century;[11] on the other hand these models are being thought of to be effective even in governance and policy making. Open data,[12] for instance is becoming a key prerequisite for the State and civil society alike in imagining better governance models. This could potentially create a pre-condition for the transformation of society into a ‘Knowledge Society’, wherein the citizen is increasingly repositioned from a ‘spectator’ to ‘spect-actor’.[13] Eventually, the distinction between a knowledge society and governance could get blurred. However, this process needs strong civil society players to catalyze and cultivate an effective knowledge society. Such work happens at multiple layers of policy coupled with advocacy, research, dissemination and infrastructure creation. The larger policy debate happens in the form of a contest between understandings of knowledge. The two sides are knowledge as property versus knowledge as a common resource. This tension is explored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Right to Access to Knowledge

The discourse around the access to knowledge has been around for a while as it is inscribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted in 1948. Article 27 of the charter attempts to bring about a balance between the right of access and the protection of material interests.

Article 27[14]

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Here, many academics and Access to Knowledge theorists posit that the right to access to knowledge is the more important right. This is because the right to material protection or rather the Intellectual Property (IP) right is ultimately for sale and transferrable so is not inalienable like the right to access to knowledge. Many right to knowledge theorists are of the opinion that the level of IP protection currently in place in the world is too much.

In 1996, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)[15] was adopted by the General Assembly of the UN. As we may expect, the right to free speech has a longer history of acceptance and positivist outlook on it. Article 19 of the ICCPR reads as follows:

“Article 19.

Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
- For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
- For the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals.” (Italics are mine)

The idea that free speech includes the right to seek and receive is something that will be discussed in the chapter on free speech but the important positive externality or reading that one can glean from this wording is that the access to knowledge becomes a right.


Above: Google books Ngram Viewer

However, as you can see in the graph, the discourse around Access to knowledge doesn’t begin to really take off until the early 1960’s when the U.S government was just starting to build a network between computers. In the early stages of the modern internet around the early 1980’s the discourse around access to knowledge becomes even more frequent. This is because intellectual property rights started to eclipse the astronomical increase in the production of knowledge and vast portions of the world’s population remained in the dark. Especially, the production of academic knowledge has increased exponentially in the recent past which has made it essential that the barriers to this knowledge are attenuated as much as possible.Now that we have explored the sociological aspect of access to knowledge and the philosophical debates around it, let us look at how it is codified in law. Specifically we will look at copyright and patents.

Patents

What are Patents?

Of all forms of intellectual property rights (IPR) patents are said to be the most restrictive, granted to inventors of devices or processes on the basis that the invention is novel, can be applied for a useful function, andinvolves an inventive step (and may not be obvious to a professional in the relevant field).

Under Indian patent law, a patent is a statutory right for an invention, giving the inventor the exclusivity to prevent others from making, using, or selling the invention—unless, of course, they are to receive permission from the right holder and pay the necessary royalty fees to do so. For this reason, a patent holder is said to have a monopoly over the invention. [16] In return for this exclusivity, the right holder must disclose a detailed, accurate and complete written description of the invention to be available for the public.[17]

A patent may be a utility patent, issued for the invention of a new and useful process, machine or product; a design patent, for a new and original design to be used in the manufacturing of a product; or a plant patent, for a new and distinct, invented or discovered type of plant.[18] Subject matter that is unpatentable in India includes an invention that is immoral, an invention which claims anything contrary to natural laws (e.g. gravity), the discovery of anything occurring in nature, and the formulation of an abstract theory.[19] That being said, a patentable invention generally must be able to result in a useful, concrete and tangible result, although restrictions of what is not patentable may vary country to country.

Patents are valid for a limited period of time; generally 20 years from the start of the term. A patent’s exclusivity is also limited to the country in which it was granted, meaning that a patent holder may not be able to exclude others from the making, using, or selling of a similar invention in a different jurisdiction that would otherwise infringe upon the their IP right.[20]

Effects on Innovation

There are vast perspectives around the adoption and application of patents, ranging from a strong opposition—by those in favour of free and widespread access to products of innovation and knowledge processes (e.g. medicines and educational materials)—to those in strong support of a more restrictive intellectual property (IP) regime, as a means of protecting the inventor and his or her inventions.

One of the underlying principles for the consideration and enforcement of a patent regime is the claim that this form of IPR serves as an incentive for innovation to take place. By offering a “reward” in the form of statutory recognition, protection, and remuneration, the granting of a patent may encourage innovation. An opposing viewpoint to such a claim, however, may argue that patents do not encourage innovation, but stifle it, by preventing others from being able to innovate through their enforcement. Just as well, a patent is granted after the fact, and the odds of one’s application being approved are quite slim—not to mention expensive!—so a patent would not be an ideal form of incentive, with remuneration only taking place when one’s patent is infringed or one’s monopoly abused.

One’s monopoly may be abused when the right holder of a patent (or thousands!) brings an industry to a standstill by shutting out others from having their new inventions reach the market. Often, patents may prevent the manufacturing and selling of innovations that are not actually relevant, but claim by the right holder to fall within the scope of the patented invention.

The effects of the excessive granting and enforcement of patents may trickle down to the level of the individual when the economic threshold for starting a new business increases, one’s business’s profitability reduces due to the payments of royalties and legal expenses, and the potential for such an entrepreneur to scale beyond national boundaries is undermined.[21]

Case Study: Pervasive Technologies
Because of these limitations placed onto others by patent holders, small-to-medium business and enterprises in India and China tend to ignore existing IPR for inventions they may use within their manufactured products due to the high costs associated to seeking permission and paying royalties to the right holder. For this reason, these businesses may only begin to develop protection and risk-mitigation strategies when they have scaled up and can afford to do so.[22] A phenomenon that has risen out of a restrictive market and resulting repeated efforts to get around such restrictions is the “gray” market, where mobile phone are being manufactured with the likelihood of infringing upon a number of existing patents for inventions used in the manufactures. Mobile phones that are entirely legal may cost well over INR 8000/- (US $120) when gray market devices generally range from INR 3000/- to INR 4000/- (US $48-60), demonstrating the high price of patents on the availability of hardware.[23] The term, pervasive devices, coined by the Centre for Internet & Society, largely refers to sub-$100 communication devices that are becoming near-ubiquitous as a result of their increased availability to reach larger demographics of lesser income brackets. Software Technologies Although software technologies are predominantly protected under Indian copyright law, in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, software is patentable. Unlike American companies, such as IBM which has applied for 5,896 US patents, very seldom do Indian companies apply for software patents, and instead are likely to become at risk for litigation in attempts to penetrate markets elsewhere due to the patents already existing. Most commonly, software producers from India do not own the rights to the IP they have created and instead adopt a “software as a service” (SAAS) business model, within which contracts signed require all IP developed to be signed over to the client. As international players continue to register a multitude of software patents, it becomes increasingly difficult for Indian companies to move away from this SAAS model to developing their own proprietary products due to the increased risk of litigation.[24]

Pre-Grant and Post Grant

Upon signing the Trade Related Aspects Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, India introduced two kinds of patent oppositions, where an individual may write to the Indian Patent Office to oppose the granting of a patent. The first kind, pre-grant opposition, may occur after the patent application has been published by the Patent Office, but has not yet been granted, for the primary purpose of challenging the application’s validity before a patent is granted. One may also give notice of opposition to the Patent Office after the granting of a patent, under post-grant opposition, so long as it occurs within a year of the granted patent’s publication.[25]

Compulsory Licensing

In March 2012, the Government of India granted its first compulsory license ever to Indian generic drug manufacturer, Natco Pharma Ltd. to allow for the manufacturing of Sorateni tosylate, a treatment for advanced kidney and liver cancer. Patent Holder and German pharmaceutical giant, Bayer Corporation, had not been making the drug adequately accessible to the people of India on a commercial scale, and had not imported the drug at all in 2008, and barely in 2009 and 2010. As a result, Natso Pharma Ltd. applied for a compulsory license.

Once granted, Natco was to pay a reduced royalty fee to Bayer quarterly, was required to provide the drug for free to at least 600 needy and deserving patients per year, to sell the drug for a set fee, as specified by the Indian government.

Pharmaceuticals have been an area of fierce debate as drugs for treating serious illnesses, such as malaria, HIV and AIDS, are widely available in the West, and generally too expensive for developing countries due to being protected by patents, where outbreaks are more likely to occur. India’s first compulsory license had been a landmark decision for India, as it is an exemplary case which demonstrates the possibility of a “new” drug under patent to be produced by generic makers at a fraction of the price, compensating the patent holder through royalty payments, while at the same time, enabling access to individuals that would not have otherwise been able to receive this form of treatment.

In the scenario where a government feels a patent holder is abusing one’s monopoly over their patented invention by excessively limiting others to access—and when it could otherwise substantially benefit the public good—a government may grant special privilege to another to use or manufacture such a patented product without the consent of its owner. This is called a compulsory license, and does not take the rights away from the patent holder, but limits them, as to enable increased access. A license fee or royalty payment is still to be paid to the patent holder; however this rate may be negotiated by the government, contrary to a statutory license, where this rate is fixed by the law.

Copyright

Copyright refers to the protection granted, in law, to the expression of some ideas. It is to be noted that the idea itself is not protectable. For instance, if I were to tell you about an ‘idea’ that I had about writing a story about a cat and a mouse, and, a few days later, you wrote a story about a cat and a mouse, the copyright of that story would vest with you, despite the fact that the ‘idea’ for the story was mine. This concept is called the idea-expression dichotomy.

The ‘expression’ that is eligible for protection could be in various forms, including literary, artistic or dramatic works.

Components of Copyright

Copyright recognises the concepts of ownership and authorship of work, and the fact that these might vary in specific instances, when various persons could be involved in the creation of a work. Some may have provided creative input (the author of the book or the director/screen play writer/story writer of the movie), and some may have provided monetary input (the publisher of the book/producer of the movie).

The moral right of ‘attribution’, that is, the right to be recognised for the work vests with the authors. Economic rights associated with copyright vest in the owner of the copyright. The owner could be different from the author. For instance, in case of the book, the owner of the copyright could be the publisher, and in the case of the movie, it could be the producer. In some instances, copyright may be jointly owned as well. Copyright vests in the owner of copyright. It grants the owner the right to exclude all others from making use of/exploiting the work in question commercially. This would essentially prevent others from adapting, copying, distributing, or making any other use of the protected work, unless authorised by the owner.

Copyright and the Law

Copyright law is territorial in nature, that is, copyright granted by law in one nation state is only enforceable in the said that grants the right. One aspect of territoriality could be the term of copyright. Generally, the term is the lifetime of the author (creator/owner) (plus) fifty to hundred years from the death of the author. Anonymous works, or works owned by corporations have a fixed term of copyright, usually between fifty and hundred years. The exception to this general rule of territoriality is if the state in question has entered into any international agreement to the contrary.

Other aspects of copyright regulated by law include subject matter of protection, requirements of registration, term of protection and associated rights. Internationally, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 1886 is the key instrument. Additionally, some other important international instruments include the WIPO Copyright Treaty, 1996 and the WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty, 1996.

While the general rule is that all copying and distribution of the copyrighted work has to be done with the express permission of the copyright holder, some exceptional circumstances allow for this requirement to be dispensed with. These are known as fair use/fair dealing (depending on the jurisdiction).

Case Study: The Oxbridge Textbooks[26]
The Broad Issue: The issue of copyrights when it comes to academic purposes has always been one that has sparked debates and very compelling arguments on both sides. While research that is published in scientific journals is carried out with the pure intent of spreading knowledge that will ultimately lead to broader scientific inquiry and research, in the past few decades it has transformed into a product of “ruthless capitalism” whose profit margins are far too high. The question then arises that how research that is carried out mostly with government funded public money be made available to the general public across the world at reasonable and affordable rates? Don’t students in the developing world have equal rights to access a level of education and research that would enable them to compete with their affluent counterparts? But this issue isn't just a cause for concern in the developing world as one of the world’s richest schools,Harvard University released a memorandum in mid-2012 that the cost of its journal subscriptions has become prohibitively expensive. This forces us to take a moment and think about the world of academic publishing, the accessibility of knowledge, and the flow of information when the richest academic institution on the planet cannot afford to continue paying for its journal subscriptions? According to Thomes and Clay’s report, commercial publishers within the last twenty to thirty years have taken control over many publications that had been controlled by non-profit academic and scholarly societies. The shift took place during the 1960’s and 1970’s as commercial publishers recognized the potential for profitability in acquiring journals from the societies. This has resulted in publishing houses now commanding hefty profit margins up to 40%. The Broad Solution: The Indian Copyright Act, Section 52, provides for a wide educational fair use exception for academic purposes. Yet the publishing houses, demand for the purchasing of a Blanket License under the IRRO (Indian Reprographic Reproduction Organization)[27] which costs Rs 24,000 per annum for 20 copies of a single publication and not more than 10% of each copy being photographed. This clause can be challenged on the grounds of “fair use exception” under Section 52. The cancellation of these licenses is a fair demand as the risks of purchasing the license and complying to the publishing houses norms have many repercussions. Due to the business model of the publishing industry, a steep increase in prices has been seen for the past decade, the Harvard letter being just the tip of the iceberg. In 2012, over 12,000 researchers have signed a statement promising to boycott any publication published by Elsevier (a publication house accused of pocketing 40% of the profits). The increase in the prices of academic works in the international market has a steep impact on the budget of children who attend public universities such as Delhi University where the annual fees is Rs. 5000 per annum. Specific Issue at Hand: The specific issue here is a lawsuit filed by the Cambridge and Oxford publication press against Delhi University and a small photocopy shop for copyright infringement. The store, who they accuse of creating photocopied “course packs” in agreement with the University that include content from their textbooks, is selling these bundles for much cheaper than the original books. The presses are demanding more than US$110,000 in damages. On one hand we have powerful international publishing houses and on the other students who do not have access to study material from these houses due to their impoverished backgrounds. It is unlikely that the publishing houses’ revenues would increase post this suit, as most students cannot afford to purchase the study material unless the university foots the bill. It is also important to note that a previous lawsuit that Cambridge publication house lost was due to the defendant using only 10% of the book. In this case we have: Average percentage of entire book copied = 8.81 %. The breakup of the amount of material used per book can be found here.[28] Out of the 23 books in question, only 5 extracts exceed the 10% threshold(these have been marked in red in the document). To suggest that the photocopy shop and Delhi University should have to shell out Rs. 60,00,000 in damages for this case, is a case of publishing houses flexing their muscle power over students in the developing world who deserve equal access to academic material.

[1]. Peter Dravos

[2]. Ibid

[3]. Ibid

[4]. Ibid

[5]. For more on intellectual property see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/

[6]. Supra note above.

[7]. For more see Darryl J. Murphy “Are Intellectual Property rights compatible with Rawlsian principles of justice?, Springer, available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10676-012-9288-8

[8]. For more see Ashish Rajadhyaksha, “The Last Cultural Mile”, Centre for Internet and Society, available at http://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/last-cultural-mile.pdf, last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[9]. See citation above.

[10]. Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz, Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader, published by CIS and Institute of Network Cultures, available at http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/%237reader_Wikipedia.pdf

[11]. The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) team from CIS has held several workshops and produced more than 50 blog entries in nearly 10 months.

[12]. See Pranesh Prakash, Nishant Shah, Sunil Abraham and Glover Wright, “Open Government Data Study: India” published by Transparency & Accountability Initiative, available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/publications/open-government.pdf

[13]. A term coined by the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal in the context of theatre. This formulation of spect-actor is very useful in reimagining the citizen in the digital era that has created preconditions for the citizen to effectively participate in governance. For more on Spect-actor see Augusto, Boal (1993). Theater of the Oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

[14]. For more see Article 27 available at http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a27, last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[15]. Read the full Covenant at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20999/volume-999-I-14668-English.pdf

[16]. Stephan Kinsella, “Against Intellectual Property”, Journal of Libertarian Studies 15, no. 2 (Spring 2001), available at http://www.stephankinsella.com/publications/against-intellectual-property/, last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[17]. See “Inventing the Funture: An Introduction to Patents for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, World Intellectual Property Organization”, available at http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/freepublications/en/sme/917/wipo_pub_917.pdf , last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[18]. See “Types of Patents”, available at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/patdesc.htm , last accessed on January 31 , 2014

[19]. See “Inventions not Patentable in India”, available at http://www.cazri.res.in/itmu/pdf/Inventions%20not%20Patentable%20in%20India.pdf, last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[20]. Supra note 62 above.

[21]. See Research Proposal on Pervasive Technologies available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/pervasive-technologies-research-proposal.pdf , last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[22]. Ibid.

[23]. Ibid.

[24]. Ibid.

[25]. See Tech Corp Legal http://bit.ly/NBRg1F

[26]. Ariel Bogle, Cambridge & Oxford University Press sue Delhi University for copyright infringement — over course packs, March 18, 2013, Melville House, available at http://www.mhpbooks.com/cambridge-university-press-oxford-university-press-sue-delhi-university-for-copyright-infringement-over-course-packs/,last accessed on January 29, 2014.

[27]. http://www.irro.in/about.php

[28]. Book-wise Percentage Analysis (DU Photocopying Case), available at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnUBa-WkvhlOdDItVENnYkpZZ1ZYYTYwRGVycXVtZ1E#gid=0, last accessed on January 29, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/access-2-knowledge

Internet Governance Forum

anirudh — 2013-12-03T10:29:30Z

Anirudh Sridhar provides an analysis of the creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), its structure, and the importance of IGF in this unit.

Introduction

IGF can be best described as the Forum which brings "people together from various stakeholder groups as equals, in discussions on public policy issues relating to the Internet. While there is no negotiated outcome, the IGF informs and inspires those with policy-making power in both the public and private sectors. At their annual meeting delegates discuss, exchange information and share good practices with each other. The IGF facilitates a common understanding of how to maximize internet opportunities and address risks and challenges that arise.

The IGF is also a space that gives developing countries the same opportunity as wealthier nations to engage in the debate on Internet Governance and to facilitate their participation in existing institutions and arrangements. Ultimately, the involvement of all stakeholders, from developed as well as developing countries, is necessary for the future development of the Internet."[1]

Creation of IGF

As it has been mentioned, IGF was first conceived in the Tunis Agenda. Article 72 of the Tunis Agenda laid the foundation of IGF. Article 72 lays down the mandate of the IGF. It asks the UN Secretary General to put in place an open and inclusive process and to convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue which would be known as IGF.

Past IGFs

The first IGF was organized in 2006 in Athens. Since then it has been held each year in various locations. In has been held in Rio de Janerio in 2007, Hyderabad in 2008, Sharm El Sheikh in 2009, Vilinius in 2010, Nairobi in 2011 and Baku in 2012. The IGF in 2013 is to be held in Bali.

Overarching themes at IGFs so far:

2006 and 2007 – Internet for development"
2008 – Internet for All
2009 – Internet Governance and creating opportunities for all
2010 – Developing the Future together
2011 – Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation 2012 – "Internet Governance for Sustainable Human, Economic and Social Development".

The 2013 IGF has found strong support for two themes, "Building Bridges" and "Enhancing Multi-stakeholder Cooperation for Growth, Development and Human Rights".

Apart from the over-arching themes, it focuses on certain themes which have been discussed across all the IGFs:

Human Rights/ Freedom of speech
Security, Cybercrimes
Spam
Data protection and privacy
Consumers Rights, Network Neutrality
Intellectual Property Rights
Development (issues related to digital divide)
Open Standards
Capacity Building
Issues related processes and principles
E-commerce and e-governance

Structure of the IGF

The Secretariat of the IGF is based in the United Nations. The main function of the IGF is to coordinate with and assist the work of the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG). The MAG was first set up by Kofi Annan, Secretary General of UN in 2006. The main function of the MAG is to decide upon issues and themes which need to be addressed in each IGF. The MAG comprises of representation from all stakeholders and all regions.

The forum organizes and accommodates plenary sessions, workshops, open forums and best practices forums.

Dynamic Coalitions: The concept of dynamic coalitions was conceived in the first IGF in Athens, which are informal and issue-specific. It comprises of members from different stake holder groups. Currently there are ten active dynamic coalitions, for example, Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability, Internet Rights and Principles, and Child Online Safety, etc.

Importance of IGF

One of the main critiques of the IGF is that the outcomes of the IGF do not have any binding effect on the participating governments, industry, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations. But such a process is said to discard the involvement of multi-stakeholder through use of coercive power which is the main feature of government regulation. In this regard, Jeremy Malcolm notes:

"The IGF’s output is explicitly “non-binding,” which means that the participation of states in the IGF process does not involve the use of coercive power as is a typical feature of government regulation. In fact since the process is to be “multilateral, multi-stakeholder, democratic and transparent” with “full involvement” of “all stakeholders involved in this process,” governments do not, at least in principle, enjoy any position of pre-eminence in policy formation through the IGF. Neither should they, if the IGF’s legitimacy and effectiveness are to be assured."[2]

[1]. What is Internet Governance Forun available at http://bit.ly/IIwXNu.

[2]. Jeremy Malcolm, Multi-stakeholder Governance and the Internet Governance Forum, Terminus Press, 2008 at pp. 3.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/internet-governance-forum

World Summit on Information Society (WSIS)

anirudh — 2013-12-01T03:12:27Z

The United States had the control over internet resources and its administration was controlled by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. This was the principle agency in the US dealing with telecommunication and information policy and the ICANN managed the internet domain names and IP addresses.

ICANN and indirectly the US government having control over the domain name system and the internet registry was an issue of concern for the rest of the world as well international organizations. The proposal for the WSIS by the United Nations was the reaction to such a concern.

Origins of the WSIS

The World Summit on Information Society was first proposed by the International Telecommunication Union in 1998. The main focus of the WSIS was to address issues related to the global digital divide. However, the scope of the WSIS was broadened later to include internet related public policy issues. The UN General Assembly approved the Summit in 2001[1] which was to be held in two phases. The first phase was held in Geneva from December 10-12, 2003 and the second phase was held in Tunis from November 16-18, 2005. The main aim of the Geneva Summit was to lay down a road map to building an information society accessible to everyone. The Tunis Agenda was more on the lines of developing a mechanism or framework which would be effective in dealing with management of the internet public policy issues.

Main Goals of the WSIS

At the beginning the main objective of the WSIS was to discuss issues on building better telecommunication and information infrastructure in the developing nations to bridge the digital divide. The self adopted purpose of the WSIS was, "to harness the potential of knowledge and technology to promote the development goals of the Millennium Declaration."[2] However, during the meetings the focus of the WSIS was broadened and it covered not only issues related information infrastructure but also various issues related to communication and other public policy issues such as freedom of speech, privacy, etc.

Geneva Summit

The Geneva Summit saw overwhelming participation from the government, civil society, industry, international organizations and media. Nearly 11000 participants attended the Summit. The Geneva Summit of WSIS was supposed to mainly focus on principles and the Tunis Summit was envisioned to deal with implementation of principles and follow-up mechanisms. Though the Geneva Summit failed in reaching a consensus on the issue of the future of internet governance, there were two major outcomes of the Summit; the Geneva Declaration of Principles and Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG).

Geneva Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action

The Plan of Action focused on information and communication infrastructure and recognized it as the essential foundation of the information society. It also emphasized on the importance of access to knowledge, capacity building and building of an enabling environment. It was also cognizant of cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and development of local content.

One of the key features of the Geneva Summits was that it recognized the principles of multi-stakeholderism. The Geneva Declaration of Principles while recognizing the principles of multi-stakeholderism stated,

"Governments, as well as private sector, civil society and the United Nations and other international organizations have an important role and responsibility in the development of the Information Society and, as appropriate, in decision-making processes. Building a people-centered Information Society is a joint effort which requires cooperation and partnership among all stakeholders."

The Geneva Declaration of Principles also laid down principles related to role of ICT in development, access, human rights and international and regional cooperation.

WGIG

The main functions of the WGIG included:

To “develop a working definition of Internet Governance
Identify the public policy issues that are relevant to Internet Governance
Develop a common understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of governments, existing international organizations and other forums, as well as the private sector and civil society in both developing and developed countries.”

The final report of the WGIG divided issues related to Internet Governance in four sections:

Infrastructure
Privacy, security and safety on the internet
Intellectual property and international trade
Development

Tunis Summit

The Tunis Summit resulted in the agreement on the Tunis Commitment, Tunis Agenda for the Information Society and the birth of the Internet Governance Forum. The Tunis Agenda and Tunis Commitment were the consensus statements at the Tunis Phase of WSIS whereas the Internet Governance Forum was created as a multi-stakeholder platform for policy dialogue on internet related public policy matters.

The Tunis Commitment confirmed the agreement on Declaration of Principles among the stakeholders as well as reaffirmed the Plan of Action.

Tunis Agenda

The Tunis Agenda recognized the need to, "move from principles to action, considering the work already being done in implementing the Geneva Plan of Action and identifying those areas where progress has been made, is being made, or has not taken place."[4]

It also reaffirmed the, "commitments made in Geneva and build on them in Tunis by focusing on financial mechanisms for bridging the digital divide, on internet governance and related issues, as well as on implementation and follow-up of the Geneva and Tunis decisions."[5]

The two other important parts of the Tunis Agenda were sections on:

Financial mechanisms for meeting the challenges of ICT for development
This part of the Tunis Agenda generally focussed financing infrastructure and equipment for providing better access to the internet in the developing areas.
Internet Governance
The section on Internet Governance dealt with management of the internet in a multilateral, transparent and democratic process with full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations.

Article 35[6] of the Tunis Agenda reaffirmed that the management of the internet shall take place in an inclusive and consultative process.

The third and the most important outcome of the Tunis Summit was the creation of the Internet Governance Forum. It was set up under Article 72 of the Tunis Agenda. The next section will deal with the Internet Governance Forum.

[1]. UN General Assembly Resolution 56/183 (December 21, 2001) available at http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/background/resolutions/56_183_unga_2002.pdf

[2]. See more at http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/wsis-themes/UNMDG/index.html

[3]. Château de Bossey, Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance at pp. 3 available at http://www.wgig.org/docs/WGIGREPORT.pdf

[4]. Introduction, Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, WSIS-05/TUNIS/DOC/6(Rev. 1)-E, November 18, 2005 available at http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html.

[5]. "Policy authority for Internet-related public policy issues is the sovereign right of States. They have rights and responsibilities for international Internet-related public policy issues. The private sector has had, and should continue to have, an important role in the development of the Internet, both in the technical and economic fields. Civil society has also played an important role on Internet matters, especially at community level, and should continue to play such a role. Intergovernmental organizations have had, and should continue to have, a facilitating role in the coordination of Internet-related public policy issues. International organizations have also had and should continue to have an important role in the development of Internet-related technical standards and relevant policies."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/world-summit-on-information-society