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- Title
AN INFORMATION ENVIRONMENTALISM ALMANAC: AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY GOVERNANCE PRINCIPLES HERE AND THERE.
- Authors
CUNNINGHAM, ROBERT
- Abstract
The regulation of information via Intellectual Property Rights (and other laws) is one of the ancient tools of state power. In the information age of the 21st century, the governance of information remains a critical issue. There is a tendency to think of the information environment as operating in a parallel universe to the physical environment. Yet there are strong interconnections between these environments’. Moreover, there are governance lessons to be learned from the regulation of the physical environment when considering the regulation of the information environment. This paper seeks to flesh out these lessons with reference to four analytical frameworks derived from contemporary environmentalism: welfare economics, the commons, ecology, and public choice theory. The lessons from each analytical framework can be summarised as follows. Welfare economics highlights the need to focus on costs (as well as benefits) when evaluating regulatory structures. The commons encourages us to query the validity of propertisation. Ecology speaks to the importance of diversity and resilience. And public choice theory hazards against the regulatory effect of concentrated interests. The paper explores the applicability of these insights as they relate to both the physical environment and the information environment. In doing so an information environmental governance framework is proposed.
- Subjects
ENVIRONMENTALISM; INTELLECTUAL property; WELFARE economics
- Publication
University of Western Australia Law Review, 2017, Vol 41, Issue 2, p119
- ISSN
0042-0328
- Publication type
Article