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''Digital rights''

Is it even possible to speak of 'digital rights'? Sixty or more years on from 1948 they are certainly third generation rights, since they could not have been envisaged in 1948. The term 'digital rights' has no univocal acceptance, and is generally a reference to rights arising from technological and info-tech developments. Such rights might be: the right to protection of privacy against intrusive information technology; the right to security in transactions; the right to access to information and technology resources.

Debate on the first two (privacy and security) has in fact monopolised discussion, and it is not difficult to understand why. Here are two rights dealing with the private sphere. They are also rights which are more likely to affect people in advanced nations where there is already a more widely-developed network of information resources and the software required to make use of them.

If, instead, we shift our attention to the right to access, we introduce another term which is well-known but not well-understood: the digital divide. The idea is that the most urgent task for poor nations is to have access to information, and the solution generally offered is to provide them with information technology infrastructure.

Does anyone see a problem here? The problem is that 'access to information' often translates into the monetary value of something that can be sold and exchanged. As a consequence, access to information is treated as if it were access to some kind of market. Information ceases to be the fruit of a process of interaction, and becomes a market place for commercial exchange. It becomes something which one can have more or less access to so long as someone makes it available. Should we be surprised, then, if in the name of intellectual property, the information incorporated into software is made artificially scarce? Those excluded from this commercial exchange are not described as victims of any kind but rather as people who are 'info-poor'. The very terminology leads to the idea of technological handouts. Studies on human rights have begun, however, to shift attention from the concept of the individual seen as the recipient of charity, handouts, to a rather more mature concept of the individual as someone with needs and rights which need to be actively promoted. It becomes evident that the info-poor have to be interpreted from a wider perspective. The right of access to information must necessarily translate into an ability to promote, exchange, improve information for the individual and the community which he or she is a part of.

Software and the right to development (:nl:)