The imaginary politics of access to knowledge: whose cultural agendas are being advanced?

• Jane Anderson, Kathy Bowrey
• Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre

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08 June 2007This paper explores the humanitarian promise contained in advocacy for broader access rights to knowledge, and, the notion that access is a precondition to the public good of invention. This politics is explored from three perspectives: the Commons as a product of a history of Empire; the Commons as a byproduct of intellectual property law; the Commons as the embodiment of the machine logic of the network society. Discussion is informed by critical readings of the archive, commodification and information technology theory and draws on examples regarding current access to, and the digitisation of, Australian knowledge pertaining to Indigenous life and lore. The paper invites critical reflection upon the cultural agendas produced through networks of power and imaginary politics. What or where, is the public interest in the production of an information commons? Is there scope for recognising that the public is not all of one kind?

Documentary projects cannot move away from the fundamental issues that raised in this paper: who is the public we are rallying around? How did it come about? What is the difference between free information, and that which is common? Common to whom? Who decides what becomes accessible? Who is speaking for Indigenous interests? What exactly are the benefits for the changing Indigenous public? Whose cultural agendas are advanced in this process?