Vol. 14 No.11 (November 2004), pp.874-877

KNOWLEDGE POWER: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, INFORMATION & PRIVACY, by Renée Marlin-Bennett.  Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004.  274 pp. Paperback.  £16.50 / $23.50.  ISBN: 1-58826-281-2.  Hardcover. £45.95 / $59.95. ISBN:1-58826-256-1.  

Reviewed by Debora Halbert, Department of History and Political Science, Otterbein College.  Email:  Dhalbert@otterbein.edu.

Intellectual property, information and privacy are of increasing importance in today’s information society. While each subject has its own interdisciplinary literature, few books combine these areas in the way KNOWLEDGE POWER does.  Renée Marlin-Bennett’s book is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on intellectual property, information and privacy from an international studies and political science perspective.  One of the important contributions KNOWLEDGE POWER makes is the attempt to link these three areas of scholarship into one interconnected subject.  Marlin-Bennett wants readers to ask “who benefits” from consolidation of property rights in the information society.  The book is a balanced investigation of each subject, and, if there is a flaw, it is that at times the question of who benefits is obscured by examples and case studies.  At the end of the book, examples have been presented to demonstrate how ownership of knowledge contributes to control of power, but the political impact of this ownership has not been theorized. 

KNOWLEDGE POWER is divided into three sections.  The first deals with intellectual property; the second, with information; and the final section discusses privacy issues. In the Introduction, Marlin-Bennett establishes the underlying argument that ties the book together. The common theme relevant to intellectual property, information, and privacy is “the role that ownership and control play” (p.4).  The central question, as outlined in the Introduction, is: “How do the ability to own intellectual property and information and the ability to control how information flows become a source of power” (p.4)? As intangible properties are privatized, power relationships are established because property is a form of power (p.11).  The connection between intellectual property, information, and privacy as they relate to power and the construction of knowledge are not elaborated in more detail until the Conclusion.

Chapter Two provides a brief, but thorough, survey of intellectual property laws.  Chapter Three outlines the internationalization of intellectual property, including a well-written description of the role of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the numerous international treaties that constitute the global IP environment.  The final chapter in this section (Chapter Four) describes the problems associated with contemporary global intellectual property law.

While many scholars of contemporary intellectual property are critical of the expansion of property rights, [*875] Marlin-Bennett remains fair-handed in her treatment.  The intellectual property examples used in Chapter Four call into question the appropriate balance between public and private goods. Given that the book addresses the construction of power through knowledge ownership, a clearer analysis of the way intellectual property law constructs power relationships would seem warranted in this chapter.  Instead, there is no conclusion on the importance of public and/or private goods, where the balance between the two should be placed, or the negative aspects of strong intellectual property laws.  Marlin-Bennett concedes later in the book that, while some protection is important, too much protection is harmful, but her discussion in Chapter Four tends to be descriptive, not analytical. Thus, while outlining some of the problems with intellectual property, the reader has no clear sense of the central question – who benefits and at what expense?

The final section in Chapter Four suggests that a lack of consensus on intellectual property matters has lead to piracy and counterfeiting (p.91).  Given the intellectual property conundrums raised throughout the chapter, it would have been useful if this last section had grappled with the implications of the examples that were offered.  Intellectual property problems, ranging from access to pharmaceutical products, controversies over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ownership of the human genome, and ownership and control over domain names in cyberspace, are not easily reduced to a commentary on the role of organized crime in creating counterfeit products.  While Marlin-Bennett makes an argument for balance, it is unclear what the right balance might be.

An alternative perspective on understanding how power operates is to clarify how intellectual property is used to generate outsiders who are labeled deviant and criminal.  In other words, the very existence of intellectual property law creates a line, on the other side of which are those who fall outside the law – this seems to be an important aspect of the power of intellectual property law discussed towards the end of the book. In the Conclusion, one key point is that the law is socially constructed.  However, the analysis of how social construction of the law provides some people with benefits and defines others as deviant is absent from the discussion of intellectual property problems in Chapter Four.

The second part of the book deals with information.  There are clear links between information and intellectual property.  Information is increasingly considered a form of property that must be protected by some type of legal regime.  Chapter Five assesses the territory of information and its relationship to the law.  As with the initial chapter on intellectual property, this chapter does a nice job of laying out the issues related to information protection.

Chapter Six provides a fascinating case example regarding weather data and private ownership.  Marlin-Bennett uses this example to highlight the balance between public access and private and/or state ownership.  She argues that the privatization of weather services has had an impact on the way information related to the weather can be used (pp.130-131).  [*876] The same trend towards privatization may also impact the ownership of information about the planet that can be gathered through remote sensing devices and GPS.  This chapter provides an important case study that helps highlight the concerns over private control of information.  As with her conclusions on intellectual property, Marlin-Bennett asks us to understand the way power operates through controlling information either as a public or private good. 

Chapter Seven investigates ownership of information about people and data mining. Marlin-Bennett outlines some of the more controversial data mining operations such as the U.S. Government’s Carnivore and Echelon projects.  She also spends considerable time on Iceland’s decision to license the population’s genetic and medical information to deCODE Genetics (pp.160-161) and uses the Icelandic example to explore the “who benefits” question in relation to information” (p.161).  However, she makes limited use of this example to develop normative claims.  The conclusion of Chapter Seven is that, despite the numerous ways in which information can be owned, control over information may have an impact on privacy (p.166).  The section on information does not offer any conclusions regarding the normative aspects of who is gaining ownership of this information.  It does, however, set up the discussion of privacy in the final part of the book.

Chapter Eight begins the analysis of privacy.  Marlin-Bennett argues that intellectual property, information, and privacy compose a “knowledge triad” related to who controls power (p.169).  Privacy is defined as boundaries that reduce the amount of information made available to third parties about the individual (pp.175-183).  The boundary between public and private knowledge must be negotiated by each individual and is, of course, permeable (pp.179-185).  Chapter Nine discusses ways in which privacy boundaries might be violated, without suggesting that violations occur in significant numbers or elaborating on the future implications of these violations. 

Chapter Ten concludes the discussion of privacy by outlining the many ways an individual may attempt to protect her privacy from unwanted intrusion.  These methods are based on social norms, the law, and technology. Marlin-Bennett discusses the role of unwritten rules in protecting us from gossip (p.218) and evaluates how individuals can use encryption technology to protect computer information (p.227).  The privacy section is primarily descriptive, without linking to larger arguments regarding knowledge and power in the information age. 

The Conclusion is designed to pull together the topics discussed throughout.  However, these final pages seem a bit disconnected from the overall narrative.  It is argued that, “information, and who controls its flow from one person, group or institution to another, is the theme that unites these three concepts” (p.239).  However, rarely throughout the book, do we confront an argument about why who controls the flow of information should be a matter of concern. 

Marlin-Bennett would like to leave the reader with four key points, each of which represents an important insight into the way knowledge and power [*877] combine in the information age.  The first point is that knowledge is socially constructed, a fact crucial to understanding how power in a knowledge economy is distributed.  This is indeed an important message and one that could have been better elaborated upon throughout the book.  The three other key points, that history matters, globalization matters, and that controlling the flow of information is a form of power, are all equally important lessons to learn from the study of intellectual property, information, and privacy.  Particularly, the insight that “once something becomes property in the minds of people, it is difficult to take away its propertyness” (p.242) is worthy of consideration, given the current expansion of property rights.  The book would be stronger if these final insights were integrated more fully throughout the text. 

In conclusion, Marlin-Bennett’s book breaks ground by linking intellectual property, information and privacy into a network of power and knowledge.  The book covers the historical background in great detail, as well as providing interesting and important contemporary case studies of privatization.  As the back cover suggests, it is a “superb and comprehensive introduction to the issues and controversies surrounding intellectual property, information, and privacy.” However, the normative claims regarding the construction of knowledge power are lost within the descriptive details of each chapter.  

I recommend this book as an introduction to the issues.  It opens the door to a discussion of how power is constructed in the information age.  However, Marlin-Bennett stops short of answering the question central to the text – “who benefits?”  Instead, the book calls for a more public discussion about further privatization. Given the importance of this question, perhaps applying it more directly to the examples in the book might help shed some light on the best path. 

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© Copyright 2004 by the author, Debora Halbert.