The intellectual commons and the market

• Grant number: 08/07504-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2009
• End date: February 28, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Barbosa de Oliveira
• Grantee: Miguel Said Vieira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Educação (FE). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 07/53867-0 - Origins and significance of technoscience: on relations among science, technology and society, AP.TEM

Abstract

This research project aims to investigate the relationships between the intellectual commons and the market, and how they affect the universe of education.Commons is the name given to certain sets of material goods freely accessible to a particular community. Recently, scholars proposed the idea of an intellectual commons: the application of the concept of the commons to sets of intangible goods (works of art, information, software etc.). Assuming the importance that access to intellectual goods has for education, this project aims to evaluate the concept of intellectual commons to investigate what kinds of relationships it can establish with the market.Is maintaining a "public domain" rich and fertile feasible along with the commercialisation of knowledge? In what way commodification can influence that commons? How to ensure the sustainability of that commons without the commodification, and how to prevent it from being privatized once again when their goods are commercialized? How the very concept of intellectual commons, as it has been proposed, already provides the relationships it might entail with the market?Given the context in which we live these days - the rise of intellectual property laws on the one hand; and the expansion of access to information with the progress of the Internet and digitization, on the other hand - the study of such issues is fertile and important to reflect on access to educational materials.