The Internet offers unprecedented possibilities for human creativity, global communication, and access to information. Yet digital technology also invites new forms of information enclosure. In the last decade, mass media companies have developed methods of control that undermine the public’s traditional rights to use, share, and reproduce information and ideas. These technologies, combined with dramatic consolidation in the media industry and new laws that increase its control over intellectual products, threaten to undermine the political discourse, free speech, and creativity needed for a healthy democracy.
Authored by former American Library Association President Nancy Kranich, this report is the first comprehensive, easy-to-read summary of a new movement that offers exciting alternatives to today’s increasing restrictions on access to information, scholarly research, and other resources so necessary for democracy.