Introduction

The early vision of the internet as a medium that could be used to develop new economic models and realise freedoms, including overthrowing dictatorships, was perhaps most influentially expounded in John Perry Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.¹ However, the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and the increasing corporate colonisation of what had been labelled an anarchic space led to pessimism by the early 2000s.

This is an edited version of part three of a study that considers the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) through aspects of intellectual property in India, namely, mobile patents, free and open source software, and India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. Through these, it demonstrates the potential of the internet in realising ESCRs. Abraham was a researcher on the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) project “Connecting your rights: Economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) and the internet”.

Nota: existe dispnible una version resumida en español. /  versão resumida em Português.

Introduction

This is a critical time for development, rights and the emerging information society.