Access to Knowledge 2008

Closing the Knowledge Gap

Anil Gupta

The first panel of day 2 will discuss closing the knowledge gap. The panel will be moderated by Madhavi Sunder of the University of Chicago Law School and the panelists include Miriam Nisbet of the Information Society Division, UNESCO, Anil Gupta of the Honey Bee Network, Alan Story from the University of Kent and Copy South Research Group, and Padmashree Gehl Sampath of the Open University and UNU-MERIT.

The “knowledge gap” refers both to a disparity in access to information and tools by the poor and to the gap in accessing, recognizing, and promoting the creativity of the developing world. How can A2K close this knowledge gap? To address this question, the panel will present a sampling of innovative new models emerging from civil society for promoting development through free and open knowledge networks in developing countries.

The Honey Bee Network in India searches high and low for grassroots innovations and helps to link rural innovators together, modeling ethical knowledge extraction and distribution. UNESCO has been working in the education field for many years and has various projects including those linked to open access publishing all aimed at closing the knowledge gap within countries in the South. The Copy South Dossier more broadly asks whether the access issues of Boston and Berlin are the same as those in Bangalore, or the villages outside of it. These and other case studies will serve as a springboard for considering the larger question of how A2K can promote human capacity and knowledge production in the developing world.

The questions to be addressed will include:

* What is the relationship between access to Western knowledge and innovative indigenous industry in developing countries?
* How can the A2K movement promote access to knowledge tools to empower creation in the South?
* Given that the poor are not only consumers of knowledge but also producers of it, how can their knowledge be accessed in ways that promote both sharing and fair remuneration?
* Do these goals require new frameworks outside the traditional IP paradigm? How should these frameworks function?
* Is the preoccupation with accessing knowledge over the Internet the most relevant access issue to the Global South or should A2K advocates also pay heed to other issues, such as access to knowledge in local languages?

Panel Discussion

Madhavi Sunder
Access to Knowledge is a social movement and a family. All the panelists today are new – and it is exciting to have them here as they are on the front lines of access to knowledge. This is the Dream Team!

We will learn what needs to be done – and importantly what is being done.

What do we mean by closing the knowledge gap?
Closing the disparity in access to information, especially where this is exasperated by lack of accessibility to information technologies. We don’t want people to fall behind – so we need to talk about how people process and transform information.

Today we are talking about many aspects of closing the knowledge gap, some of which include:
-    Different languages and illiteracy
-    Closing the gap in the capacity to produce knowledge
-    Whether preexisting inequalities effect access to knowledge

We will get introspective and question what policies legal, technological, and social will bring access to knowledge not just in theory but in fact. We must theorize new methods of sharing that do not exasperate but rather reduce disparities.

These panelists are promoting ethical models to share information – alternatives to traditional IPR models.

The first two speakers will elaborate on the knowledge gap and the last two will present models for ethical sharing of knowledge.

Padmashree Gehl Sampath: Closing the Knowledge Gap – Innovation, Access to Knowledge and Uneven Development
•    “Nearly there!”  — Padmashree Gehl Sampath began her talk by quoting from Alice and Wonderland. The main point of the quote was that in some places you have to run and run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.
•    Padmashree Gehl Sampath works on how the knowledge gap impedes access to and the promotion of creativity in the developing world.
•    Innovation, development and knowledge relate to all aspects of the economy from traditional forms to new technologies. But they all have to take into account local culture and local change.
•    When we use or process innovation we rely on both formal methods (through laws etc) and informal (cultural norms etc).
•    As opposed to the dominant view in economics – we need the state to interfere with new technologies in the developing world so that people can actually gain access to and use these new technologies.
•    There are several models about how regions around the world can get knowledge and access and use information.
o    One of these is Research and Development (North America spends more than anyone else – Second is Asia)
Model 1: R and D – North America spends the most, then Asia
•    Patterns of Knowledge networks
•    Patterns of formal and informal education and prevalence of particular kinds of knowledge domains
•    Patters of innovation systems

The importance of education can not be stressed enough

Four kinds of knowledge domains
•    R and D
•    Engineering
•    Production
•    Traditional artisan

Looking at ranking of countries by knowledge index, you get three groups of countries; frontier countries, fast followers and late followers. These lists might surprise you as South Africa is considered a fast follower and India and late follower. Yet these lists are made by judging things according to our old traditional indicators of what knowledge is. What matters is how people collaborate, access and use the knowledge available to them – and this is not captured with traditional indicators.

IPR and trade rules apply in very restrictive ways to different countries, especially those like India that do have the ability to produce and create innovation in pharmaceuticals

What seems to come out from all the fieldwork is that knowledge is increasingly convergent and path dependent- new rules reinforce old divisions.

Alan Story
Which knowledge? Which gap?

China: In 2005 China licensed the copyright to thousands of books from the US and UK – that is 6100 books. How many books did the US and UK license from Chinese publishers? 0.05 percent – 35 books! None of the books were Chinese fiction books.

How many serious books were translated into English from other countries? Only 200-250 per year and 60% of those are from five European languages. From Arabic, Urdu, Hindu – only 80 books are translated.

Are we talking about access to global knowledge? Or are we talking about the increasing hegemony of Western information? What kind of access to knowledge are we talking about? What does the A2K movement offer to the global south?

It is a system that maintains groups not a system that is challenging groups. A2K reproduces North American models and is amazingly self congratulatory. People from around the word do not appreciate A2K’s victories.

Yesterday one of the speakers said the movement should focus more on legal issues. But Mr. Story could not disagree more! Any serious movement should face and debate a range of questions – not just platitudes about freedom – this is what George Bush did in Iraq.

What is copyright? We need to critically question our definitions. What about users rights?  Remember: copyright is created by the state.

We have been told how flexible the Berne and TRIPS conventions are for the users – but this is false. It is an iron framework and colonial relic imposed on the globe south.

Mr. Story is not opposed to Piracy but rather sees that there are many social benefits to piracy.

Miriam Nisbet

There are many opportunities but also threats from the increased access to technology.
Opportunities
•    Economy
•    Development
•    Democracy
•    Governance
•    Education, science and culture
Threats
•    Dependence on ICT infrastructure
•    Security
•    Environment
•    Divides (this divide is between the Global North who has access to knowledge, prosperity, globalization and inclusion, and the Global South which can be characterized as having limited access to knowledge, poverty, marginalization and exclusion

Today there is a knowledge and a digital divide.

We are all aiming for knowledge to do several things
•    Provide economic growth
•    Enable social development
•    Allow for cultural enrichment
•    Opportunities for Political Empowerment

Miriam Nisbet continued by describing the UNESCO mission – “As a specialized agency of the UN system, UNESCO contributes to the building of peace, the alleviation of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.” UNESCO’s priority areas include Africa, gender equality, least developed countries (LDCs)‏, small island developing states (SIDS)‏, and disadvantaged and excluded groups, including indigenous populations.

UNESCO is organizing a World Summit on the Information Society, which provides a venue for UNESCO to develop plans on how to increase access to knowledge

Anil Gupta

Whose knowledge: Whose access

Anil Gupta began his talk by stating that he makes no claims to be consistent. Life is contradictory; so in Anil! Sometimes he likes IP — sometimes he thinks it shouldn’t exist – and he doesn’t think this view is contradictory

Inclusive development is imperative. There are institutional failures in development rather than failures of individuals or their communities.

The debate on access is meaningless without discussing local languages. We need to improve resources to use local languages in creating access to knowledge.

Access to knowledge is also access to solutions.

What are the resources in which economically poor people are potentially rich? People can be poor in one kind of knowledge but rich in others. We might have advantages by being on the net – but there are a lot of disadvantages also from relying on this technology. We miss so much because of our desire for and access to technology and the speed that accompanies it.

If knowledge is useful, how do we get people to share it?
Anil Gupta proceeded to list several examples of inventions made by people he has met on his travels from a clay plate that is coated by a special chemical that makes the plate nonstick without making it poisonous and a special windmill the produces power.

Whose knowledge is helpful to whom and how will we share it?

There are 250 million people who live on less than a dollar a day in India – How do we transport knowledge to them and from them and share it? One thing is certain – we need to use local languages. We also need to have exchanges between people and societies.

How do we reduce costs, and creates incentives for people to share knowledge?

We need Prior Informed Consent when we get knowledge from people and this needs to be in their local language

Mr. Gupta does not believe that there should be any restrictions on access to knowledge. Knowledge should be shared.

Answers to Questions
Story – The Beren Convention was itself a colonial relic and was imposed on the global south without an inclusion of their voices

Sampath – It is very important to note that there are a wide variety of institutional failures that limit peoples’ ability to actually use knowledge and new innovative with local access and use. We operate under the idea of “catch up” but what we tend to forget is that countries did not reach where they are today in homogenous ways and these frontier countries did not become who they are today in a global society that blocked their ability to grow.