Globalisation, Information and Libraries: The Implications of the World Trade Organisation's GATS and TRIPS Agreements

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Globalisation, Information and Libraries: The Implications of the World Trade Organisation's GATS and TRIPS Agreements", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 1, pp. 78-79. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710722050

Ruth Rikowski is the general editor of the “Information professional” series from Chandos Publishing and this is the first she has herself written for and in the series. It is fascinating to notice that her book, like the series, is both exciting in prospect and uneven in delivery. There is no doubt at all that she has identified issues that need much wider debate, and not merely, for information professionals, in the rare domains of IFLA and EBLIDA (incidentally, key players here). Library and information services are being and should be seen on the global stage; public state‐funded services are working more and more within a free market, and being measured and managed and privatized; information as a private good is increasingly seen as an exclusive value‐added commodity underpinned by intellectual property rights (IPR); and all this demonstrates two things – first that information has a critical position in the relationship between trade and IPR, and second that capitalism plays a conspiratorial role in privileging the best from the rest. We have political debate here as well as professional discourse.

World trade agreements like GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 1948) and GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services, 1995), and the work of the World Trade Organisation (1995) provide the backdrop to this book. Rikowski singles out library and information issues, rightly for the series, and, first with GATS and later with TRIPS (the Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, again 1995), she discusses the impact on libraries and information internationally. Her own position is that GATS is an agenda driven by capitalism, seeking to commodify information, and privatize (non‐commercial) library services, as well as offer illusory incentives to developing countries to join the scheme (economics over cultural identity).

She cites familiar public and private good economic arguments early on, rather well in fact, so it comes as a disappointment later that, as a declared Marxist, she leaves rhetoric rather than economic analysis to develop her conclusions. She draws on views from the professional bodies of countries like Canada and Australia to argue that GATS threatens public service provision and exacerbates the digital divide, that private foreign capital can transform state‐funded libraries for the worse (even when the demise of such services is forecast), and that growing managerialism in professional work is selling the pass. TRIPS too, with its emphasis on IPR as an expression of intellectual capital (and capitalism itself, above all in the patents of major pharmaceutical companies), not only shows an irresistible trend towards free‐market economics but also fails to maintain an equitable balance between rights‐owners and user access. This excludes developing countries and impugns freedom of information rights.

These are the arguments in this stimulating book, although the stimulus is a mixed experience. Part impassioned advocacy and part uncontrolled diatribe, it shrilly and repetitiously over‐states its case and could easily have been half as long with real advantage. The commercialization of online information is only partly a matter of micro‐payments (case not made) and seems unaware of Open Archives initiatives (how the internet can be so marginalized in this study remains a mystery). Only some library and information services are vulnerable (in her terms) but the case against GATS and TRIPS, as part of a generalized Marxist critique of capitalism in the information sphere, would falter were that to be acknowledged.

The evidence from IFLA and EBLIDA meetings, which the author attended, is relevant but transient, easily dating, and parochial, particularly because of the anecdotal “I was there” tone of it. There are times when others speak through her (like Martin Khor) and other times when she is concerned more with her own bibliography than the issues. Readers will find the Marxist perspective interesting because it is unfashionable in a world where capitalism dominates and needs teasing through. But, in demonizing capitalism as the cause of the death of the commons, in not working through the alternative consequences legally and economically, in creating simplistic dichotomies (rich/poor, developed/developing), in linking TRIPS to WTO implausibly, in providing only a faltering case for the library and information professional (p. 251‐2), and in simply going on and on at times, Rikowski does the case – one which is needed more in the profession – no good at all. It feels like a dissertation. Very much a book for students and teachers, not one at all for policy‐makers, lawyers, and economists. Given fast movement on the international stage, it is already retrospective.