Knowledge as a Public Good

Some food for thought...

Knowledge as a Public Good
One of the most durable arguments for Open Access is that knowledge is and ought to be a public good. Here I don’t want to restate or evaluate the whole argument, which is complex and has many threads. But I do want to pull at a few of those threads.

What is a public good? In the technical sense used by economists, a public good is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. A good is non-rivalrous when it’s undiminished by consumption. We can all consume it without depleting it or becoming “rivals”. Radio broadcasts are non-rivalrous; my reception doesn’t block yours or vice versa. A good is non-excludable when consumption is available to all, and attempts to prevent consumption are generally ineffective. Radio broadcasts are non-excludable for people with the right equipment in the right area. Breathable air is non-excludable for this purpose even though a variety of barriers, from pollution to suffocation, could stop people from consuming it.

Knowledge is non-rivalrous. Your knowledge of a fact or idea does not block mine, and mine does not block yours. Knowledge is also non-excludable. We can burn books, but not all knowledge is from books. We can raise the barriers to knowledge, through prices or punishments, but that only creates local exceptions for some people or some knowledge.

When knowledge is available to people able to learn it, from books, nature, friends, teachers, or their own senses and experience, attempts to stop them from learning it are generally unavailing.

http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/articles/knowledge-public-good.shtml
SOURCE: Copyright & A2K Issues, 19 November 2009 (part 2)