Economic, Social and Cultural rights (ESCRs)

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.

Introduction: Cultural heritage on the international agenda

Access to cultural heritage is essential for the development of societies and helps to build resilient communities. It allows for identity building, reconciliation, creativity, innovation, and many other activities that make societies stronger, richer and more peaceful. The need to connect with the past is deeply rooted within people, and it is therefore essential that memory institutions and governments have policies in place to ensure the long-term survival and accessibility of cultural heritage.

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”.

Introduction