Information Convergence : At the Boundaries of Access: Introduction

According to Lawrence Weschler, in Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, convergence is a process of the familiar arising in unexpected situations, what he refers to as "bizarre associations, eerie rhymes, whispered connections -sometimes in the weirdest places." Convergence in the area of information protection and access in the Digital Age includes Weschler's eerie resonances, particularly where convergence has caused previously unrelated areas, such as copyright and privacy, to share their domains, and, in consequence, their public policy spaces in new and untested ways. But information convergence is moving beyond cross- pollination. Instead, it is creating a radical change in how we think about information - its public nature, its ownership, even its access boundaries. From battles over the “innovative” nature of copyrighted software, to ownership fights over indigenous knowledge and patented medicines, present information convergence has become the critical linchpin in today's concerns over the extent to which any type of information can or should be subjected to restricted access. Old boundaries that defined protectable "property" rights in terms of the originality or novelty of one's creative contribution seem wholly inappropriate in the post-9-11 digital world, where even the boundaries for the scope of protection afforded such information converges with a broad array of security concerns. Yet as information access demands converge with social justice, access to information and rights protection concerns, the resulting debates not only diverge from what we have seen before, they have the potential for establishing new principles to be applied in resolving issues as complex as access to patented drugs. Such convergences do not admit of simple solutions. But they promise to provide new insights into how we can resolve these critical future normative issues