Digital enclosure: the privatization of standards and standardization

The concept of property rights and notions of public and private are social constructions with a long history. In western society, the term "enclosure" dates from 16/sup th/ century Britain, where the enclosure movement was used to describe the political economic process of the privatization of "pubic" or "common" land. This term has been recently appropriated in legal discourse as the 2/sup nd/ enclosure movement to describe the increasing privatization of knowledge and information as "intellectual" property in a new electronic information environment. We further apply this notion of digital enclosure: enclosure in the digital age, to a particular form of knowledge that has an inherently quasipublic nature, technical standards and the standardization process. Standards and the practice of standardization are vital to an industrial and technological society. Standardization practice has been institutionalized on a global basis over the past century and a half, but is undergoing significant challenge and change. It exists in the political economic environment of capitalism and market economics where there is a basic tension between competition and cooperation, resulting in an interweaving of three elements: standardization, intellectual property rights (IPR) and antitrust/competition policy. We explore current trends in standardization from the perspective of digital enclosure, including the rise of the consortia movement, IPR policy, business and commercial strategies, the open source movement, and technical innovation.