Why are patents and locked-up science seen as the way forward for growth and innovation? | Open Knowledge Foundation Blog

"These past few weeks have highlighted the crossroads that we as a society are facing: Whether non-open data, siloed knowledge and patented ideas make up the best way for growth and innovation? Or whether the logic of the Internet with it’s open data, open knowledge sharing, open sourcing and remix-culture is the right path for the modern society? A couple of weeks ago we saw the premiere of 'The Internet’s Own Boy', the documentary of Aaron Swartz, the now world-famous young Internet prodigy that despite enormous success with his start up business chose to throw himself actively into the battle to secure everyone free access to the large academic database JSTOR: An access that is normally only granted to the few that can afford a university degree. Appalled by the unproportionally high fees charged by JSTOR for access to (often tax funded) scientific journals Swartz set up a computer in the basement of the American MIT university, and started to download all the journals in the database. His scheme was unravelled when caught by a security camera, and contrary to all legal precedence, in order to make an example of Swartz, the federal government chose to charge him with a felony: Something that would likely send Swarz behind bars for up to 35 years. The pressure from the government and the FBI hurled Swartz into a depression and he ends up taking his own life. A horrible and tragic story ... As an entrepreneur and Danish translator of some of Swarz’ texts I had the pleasure of being invited to participate in a panel at the Danish premiere event for the film in Copenhagen earlier this month. In this panel was also Director for the Danish National Library, Pernille Drost, who explained to the audience that even Denmark, with our free educational system, have similar draconian rules for access to our scientific journals (and cultural heritage as well). Science and culture is held systematically locked up behind technical and legal iron gates and is thereby closed off for the general public – both domestically and abroad – unless you are wealthy enough to pay huge sums of money. This goes even for journals that are a 100 years old! ... Additionally, we recently had a referendum in Denmark to determine if we were to join the unified European patent court. The result was a resounding ‘yes’ (roughly 70% of the votes in favor of joining), which sent a clear signal – mainly inspired by the majority of the Danish political parties, both left and right – that we as a society believe ideas are developed best by being locked up and protected ..."