A Universal Digital Library Based on Unimpeded Access (and Some Proposals Based on Information Ethics)

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Introduction
Books are for use: every reader should have the right to get her book, while every book should "have the right to find its reader" 1 .Applying the above traditional "laws" to the digital environment could mean "information is for use: every user should have the right to get her information, while every item of information should have its recipient".This could be further translated into letting digital "shelves" open by abolishing costs for subscriptions, broadening unimpeded access to information, and making it easier than ever to receive information.
Unimpeded access to information is an old subject of scientific discussion 2 and, whether open 3 or free 4 , has been strongly supported not only by scholars but also by libraries 5 , society's last non-commercial meeting places 6 .Scholars have submitted several opinions on guiding principles and values of librarianship and most of them mention intellectual freedom, privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property 7 rights, neutrality, preservation of culture, and equity of access 8 .Economy of Access to Scientific Knowledge, 2015, Springer International Publishing Switzerland.In accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), open access means free and unrestricted online availability of scientific literature.In this context, literature should be freely accessible, meaning that users should be enabled to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or use such literature for any purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers, other than those of gaining access to the Internet itself.See strategies recommended by BOAI, with regard to self-archiving and open-access journals, at http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read.See also Gué don Jean-Claude, Open Access: Toward the Internet of the Mind, 2017, available at http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai15/Untitleddocument.docx.As some authors have observed, potential efficiency gains from open access and zero-profit ownership are greater as advances in technology reduce the costs of delivering information to consumers.Campbell James, Ownership and pricing of information: A model and application to open access, Information Economics and Policy, Vol.33, 2015, pp.29-42, at p. 29 (mentioning that "[…] Information is overpriced and underused under both monopoly and zero-profit ownership, and underpriced and overused under open access […] However, as the costs fall towards zero, outcomes under zero-profit ownership and open access both tend towards the efficient level, and for-profit monopoly ownership is increasingly inefficient […]"). 4See Stallman Richard, Free software, Free society, Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, 2002, Free Software Foundation (edited by Joshua Gay).With regard to software, as Stallman points out, free use, processing and distribution shall mean free as in "freedom", not free as in "free beer".Stallman speaks of four freedoms: Freedom 0 that is the freedom to run the program for any purpose; Freedom 1, which refers to the freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to one's needs; Freedom 2 that means freedom to redistribute copies; Freedom 3, which is the freedom to improve the program for the benefit of the community.See Stallman Richard, id, at pp. 43, 165.As Stallman puts it, "[…] If anything deserves reward, it is social contribution […] If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative products, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs […]" (Stallman Richard, id, at p. 38). 5 Traditionally, a library is a place in which books, manuscripts, or literary and artistic materials are kept for use -but not for sale.See Warr Hanadashisha, Open Source Digital Library Software: A Literature Review, in Proceedings of the National Seminar on "Preservation and Conservation of Information Resources in Knowledge Society: Issues, Challenges and Trends", pp.238-258, Manipur University, Canchipur, Imphal, March 3-4, 2009 (available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1639383or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1639383), at p. 238 (with further references).Today, a digital library can be understood as an environment that brings together "collections, services, and people in support of the full life cycle of creation, dissemination, use, and preservation of data, information, and knowledge".Focusing on intellectual freedom, meaning the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction 9 , it would be fair to claim that, today, innumerous items of information are ready to be shared without any barriers.This has turned everyone into a "digital librarian" and, when everyone is a librarian 10 , then library is everywhere 11 .So, have we created a universal library, where information is freely available to anyone?Have we achieved the ideal goal of global information justice, where information technologies and knowledge are used to free humanity from struggles over scarce resources and enhance human identity within the community?Have we moved from "liberty, equality, fraternity" to "rip, burn, and mix" or even better to "copy, use, and share"?Today, information is consumed as a commodity rather than being used as a tool for personal growth or development of democratic societies 12 .So, we have not yet achieved the above goals, for which many scientists (or, to some, "hacktivists") fought in the past 13 .But information's moral character is of crucial concern and, thus, information should be regarded as something more than an asset 14 .In this context, information and knowledge should be freely circulated for the benefit of humanity, rather than privatized in favor of firms' interests.
Given the above ethical issues, this paper examines the potential to move towards an ideal Universal Digital Library that would allow unimpeded 15 access to information.After observing that there is the technology to achieve this, but several barriers do not allow people to reach this utopia anytime soon, a more realistic approach, based on Information Ethics16 , is undertaken to support both physical and digital libraries' role as equalizers of access to knowledge.Finally, further discussion is conducted to draw conclusions and support that laws could in the future turn ideal scenarios into realities.

Towards a Universal Digital Library?
The goal pursued by the Library of Alexandria was to get a copy of every book in the world.Today, technologies enable us to do the whole thing all over again.But why make it happen in one place, when we can make information available to people all over the world 17 ?Many years ago, some authors envisioned a time when everyone would access all information that is thought or known 18 .In the end of the 20 th century, others imagined an environment, where world's knowledge would be available to anyone with a computer and there would be a single global information space 19 .Last year, such proposals were brought back to the discussion table 20 .
After having digitized law and the news in the 1980s 21 , we moved on to the next generation: the digital libraries of books and journals.Such libraries enabled scholars and students to save time and space and deepen their dialogue 22 , albeit they legal, or technical barriers (including those of gaining access to the very Internet itself).So, "unimpeded access" should be regarded as broader than "open access".charged licenses for their services 23 .At the beginning of the 21 st century, digital libraries went one step further towards the creation of free-to-read collections of books that would be available to everyone over the Internet 24 .Namely, the Internet Archive included collections of e-books and Web pages25 , while Amazon26 and Google27 built their own libraries to provide elegant platforms that enabled "digital patrons" to search through multiple pages or whole chapters.
But could we create a Universal Digital Library, which would offer unimpeded access to all stored knowledge28 , based on existing models and tools?
Open-Source29 models and tools could enable works to be distributed free of charge in a commons-based peer30 production31 that would be strongly supported by Open Archives32 .Since we are systematically bad at understanding and improve access to research.JSTOR currently provides more than ten million academic journal articles, fifty thousand books and two million primary source documents in seventy five disciplines.See https://www.jstor.org/. 23See -amongst others-Guthrie M. Kevin, JSTOR: The Development of a Cost-Driven, Value-Based Pricing Model, 1997.Available at https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED414924.pdf.
-and predicting-the power of the so-called "open" or "commons-based" systems of development or innovation 33 (and, thus, we tend to re-invent encyclopedia Britannica again and again -and again), let us provide a simple example to better understand the modus operandi of such systems."English" could be regarded as an "open" or a "commons-based" system.Indeed, one does not have to pay to "use English" and we are all "running same version" -there is no version incompatibility 34 .Furthermore, no permission and no end-user-license agreement are required for a person to formulate a sentence, while she can produce new sentences, new words and this is how languages work 35 .So, for instance, use of open source software could be promoted, as it is freely modifiable and redistributable, while, at the same time, the standard open source license prohibits restricting access to or transformation of the code 36 .Independent Web publishing could also be taken into account, as it would guarantee not only equality of Internet speakers, who would engage in many-to-many communications, but also diversity of speech, accompanied by the removal of several intermediaries between authors and the audience 37 .Finally, lessons could be learnt from Wikis, as they aim to offer everyone free access to the sum 38 of all human knowledge 39 .So, based on open source tools, commons-based peer production and independent publishing and inspired by "Wikis' philosophy", the desirable Universal Digital Library could be constructed to include all information, from science and ext=lcp. 33Boyle James, Keynote (June 16, 2006), CALI Conference for Law School Computing, Learning By Design and other Fallacies: What Behavioral Economics, Serendipity and Procrastination Can Teach Us About Educational Technology. 34One could argue that this may not be true between parents and children (but this is just an example to understand the basic concept). 35Other scholars have mentioned "gossip", "punk rock communities" or "religions" (like Judaism) as good examples of peer-to-peer systems, as they are "anarchistic", while they create new communities, close the gap between creators and consumers, democratize elements of cultural production, and demand a new set of theories.See Vaidhyanathan Siva, The Anarchist in the Library, id, at pp. xvi, xvii, 18 (where anarchy is regarded as "radical democracy").Indeed, one could fairly argue that gossip is uncensored, unmediated, and unfiltered communication, and, thus, may be regarded as a peer-to-peer system. 36Lessig Lawrence, The Architecture of Innovation, Duke Law Journal, vol.51, 2002, pp.1783-1801.Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol51/iss6/2.See also Warr Hanadashisha, Open Source Digital Library Software: A Literature Review, id.For some basic definitions see Daley John, Insecure Software Is Eating the World: Promoting Cybersecurity in an Age of Ubiquitous Software-Embedded Systems, 2016, 19 Stanford Technology Law Review, pp.533-546, at p. 539, defining "source code" as the human-readable representation of the set of instructions that control the operations of a computer.Available at https://law.stanford.edu/publications/insecure-software-is-eating-the-world-promoting-cybersecurity-in-an-age-of-ubiquitous-software-embedded-systems/. 37Travis Hannibal, Pirates of the Information Infrastructure: Blackstonian Copyright and the First Amendment, Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 2, 2000, pp.777-864, at pp. 851-857.Available at https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/btlj/vol15/iss2/7/. 38 See Mesgari Mostafa, Okoli Chitu, Mehdi Mohamad, Nielsen Finn Årup, Lanamäki Arto, "The sum of all human knowledge": A systematic review of scholarly research on the content of Wikipedia, in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2014, (postprint version available at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.726.596&rep=rep1&type=pdf). See also Stone Brad, It's Like a Blog, But It's a Wiki, Newsweek, 31.10.2004,available at http://www.newsweek.com/its-blog-its-wiki-129317. 39Although wikis' reliability has been questioned, many of their articles are considered to be more informative and timely than corresponding articles in other encyclopedias.As some have argued, Wikipedia provides a "rich example" of a successful collaboration on an open source project that can achieve a highbrow quality.But in the traditional environment we used to be allowed to browse through a book before deciding whether to buy it, or photocopy an article to share with a friend, and it is extremely doubtful whether such actions, when undertaken in the digital environment 51 , are allowed 52 .Maybe, what we do not see today is that instead of the digital world becoming more like the real world, the real world is becoming more like the digital environment.It may seem awkward to talk about the Internet 53 as a "new technology" these days 54 , but it has undeniably changed the rules.Namely, reproduction is no longer an appropriate way to measure copyright infringement 55 , while users have become active participants in a brand new "bastard" 56 culture.File-sharing is not only a vital element of communication but also an important tool used by Adaptation to Technological Challenges towards an Intellectual Property System for the 21 st Century, 42 Scandinavian Stud.L. 83, 2002, pp.83-93, at pp. 83, 84.Levin observes that we are experiencing an unprecedented commodification of research findings, where even components of human beings are eligible for patent protection (Levin Marianne, id, at p. 85).As others have argued, copyright law reproduced the rules of the physical world into the digital reality and, thus, furthered the interests of the rightsholders while it completely ignored the needs of the users.See Gracz Katarzyna, Bridging the gaps between social and legal norms concerning protection of intellectual and artistic creations: On the crisis of Copyright Law in the Digital Era, The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Vol. 16, No. 1-2, 2013, pp.39-57, at p. 41. 50Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003), at 243, mentioning that "[…] The economic effect of this 20-year extension-the longest blanket extension since the Nation's founding-is to make the copyright term not limited, but virtually perpetual.Its primary legal effect is to grant the extended term not to authors, but to their heirs, estates, or corporate successors.And most importantly, its practical effect is not to promote, but to inhibit, the progress of "Science"-by which word the Framers meant learning or knowledge […]". 51For example, a personal computer stores, retrieves, or copies data, while all Internet communications are generated by a combination of the above activities.The very act of storing or retrieving demands or involves copying, which in most cases is prohibited by law. 52As some scholars have argued, the regulation of reading or listening raises deep constitutional concerns; if the day ever comes when we have to apply for a license to listen or read, content producers will be cops and judges in matters of copyright.See, in general, Vaidhyanathan Siva, Copyrights and Copywrongs, The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, New York, NYU Press, 2001, Project MUSE. 53Some authors have declared the Internet the most important human advancement since the printing press or even the most important discovery since fire.See, amongst others, Barlow P. John, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Feb. 9, 1996.To others, the Internet is a cynical cosmos, designed along cynical principles (i.e."borderlessness", "unregulatability", peer-to-peer openness and peer-review accountability that also belong to realms of science and the academy) to serve cynical ends better than any others.See Vaidhyanathan Siva, The Anarchist in the Library, id, at pp. 26, 27, where the author brilliantly argues that Diogenes of Sinope was a hacker, expressing his freedom by masturbating in the marketplace; and nothing represents the overall nature of the Internet better than "masturbating in the marketplace".See also Branham Bracht Robert, Goulet-Caze Marie-Odile, The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy, Hellenistic Culture and Society, No. 23 (Berkley, University of California Press, 1996). 54Omer Tene, Privacy: The New Generations, in International Data Privacy Law, 2011, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 15-27, at p. 16. 55 Litman Jessica, Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age, 75 Oregon Law Review, 19, 1996, at p. 37, available at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jdlitman/papers/revising.htm.Given that, today, innumerous minors download a huge volume of copyrighted works, one could argue that we have to deal with a whole new generation of criminals.Indeed, youth has been recognized as the majority of unauthorized downloaders and uploaders.See Krawczyk Michał, Tyrowicz Joanna, Kukla-Gryz Anna & Hardy Wojciech, Piracy is not theft!Is it just students who think so?, in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol.54, 2014, pp.32-39, at p. 33 (with further references).As some had predicted, in the future new technology will allow government to solve 100% of all crimes, but the bad news is that we will realize that 100% of the population are criminals.See Adams Scott, The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Stupidity in the 21 st Century, NY, HarperCollins, 1997 (making the hilarious extrapolation that every human on the planet will land in jail, apart from the world's smartest person who, since she was too clever to get caught, has to, thereafter, bear the tax burden of supporting everyone else in prison, forever).See also Brin David, The Transparent Society, id, at p. 23. 56Mirko Tobias Schä fer, Bastard Culture!How user participation transforms cultural production, 2011, Amsterdam University Press, pp.1-256, at p. 11, who uses the term "bastard" to describe a new culture where multiple participants and practices blend together.For limited protection that copyright may provide with regard to social networks, see Georgiades Eugenia, The limitation of copyright: sharing personal images on social networks, Sweet & Maxwell and its individuals to understand themselves, their society and their place in the world 57 .However, people's participation in constructing culture is not only denied but also criminalized 58 by laws 59 that -to some-choke creativity 60 .So, our approach -and proposal for a Universal Digital Library-needs to go further and think beyond laws (or perhaps just remember laws' original goals) to re-shape current conceptualization of copyright.
Ideas should freely spread from one to another over the world for the moral and mutual instruction of people and the improvement of their condition 61 .Knowledge should be regarded -not only as power but also-as a common property, created by and for people to communicate, advance learning and benefit culture 62 .Besides, the main goal of Intellectual Property laws was to stimulate creativity for the general public good 63 .It was to make sure that knowledge was openly shared, as quickly as possible, while profits were of secondary concern and were regarded as a mere vehicle to achieve the above goals 64 .
By thinking beyond the current regime and by remembering original goals of the above rules, proposals on the amendment (or even the abolition 65 ) of copyright laws could be submitted to achieve the goals of a Universal Digital Contributors, European Intellectual Property Review, 2018, Vol.40, No. 4, pp.230-242. 57Cantillon Sinead, Property for Free: An Analysis of Music and Copyright in the Digital Age, 11 Hibernian L.J. 35, 2012, pp.35-62, at p. 39 (with further references).Cantillon argues that copyright is the most important corporate asset for the entertainment industry, while 90% of authors receive insufficient reward.See Cantillon Sinead, Property for Free, id, at pp. 52, 56. 58As Vaidhyanathan questioned some years ago "[…] What does it mean for the future of democracy when a nation prosecutes someone for opening up the electronic text of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World?[…]".See Vaidhyanathan Siva, The Anarchist in the Library, id, at p. x. 59 For instance, the DMCA's (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) anti-circumvention provisions limit the ability to actively participate in the construction of meaning.See Jackson Matt, Using Technology to Circumvent the Law: The DMCA's Push to Privatize Copyright, Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2001, pp.607-646, at p. 638.Available at https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_comm_ent_law_journal/vol23/iss3/5. 60See, in general, Lessig Lawrence, Free Culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity, The Penguin Press, 2004.Available at http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf. 61As Jefferson put it many years ago, this seems to have been "[…] peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property […]". in some cultures precise imitation of the master is a must for several arts, such as folk music, dance or painting).Mazumder mentions that knowledge is not just power but also the source of profit in modern economies and that any attempt to regulate the access and use of information can be counterproductive.See Mazumder Anirban, id, at pp. 661-662. 63See Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151 (1975), at p. 422 (U.S. 156); Melamed Douglas, Picker Randal, Weiser Philip, Wood Diane, Antitrust Law and Trade Regulation, id, at p. 901. 64Brin David, The Transparent Society, id, at pp. 93-94 (mentioning that Intellectual Property law was originally meant to foster public disclosure and dissemination of new ideas).Stallman argues that copyright's role has been completely reversed: copyright law was set up to let authors restrict publishers for the sake of the general public, albeit digital technology has turned it into a system that lets publishers restrict the public in the name of the authors.See Stallman Richard, Let's Share, 30.05.2002, openDemocracy.net,available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/media-copyrightlaw/article_31.jsp. 65See, amongst others, Lessig Lawrence, The Future of Ideas: The fate of the commons in a connected world, NY, Random House, 2001, available at http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com/download/lessig_FOI.pdf.
Library that would, in turn, guarantee unimpeded access to all knowledge.So, a radical and, to some, extreme alternative to copyright could be to establish a regime, under which all intellectual products would remain non-owned66 .To some, this "information socialism" 67 could expand intellectual commons 68 and foster creativity, while, at the same time, it would lead to a greater political and economic equality 69 .If this were the case, the utopian Universal Digital Library could be built without any legal obstacles.
But some might argue that this is far from simple and we are far from being there.Thereafter, a less straightforward alternative would be a registration system 70 , under which authors would be required to declare by a clear affirmative action their wish to protect their works.This could be strongly supported by current technologies 71 : flexible mechanisms, which would better comply with the digital environment and today's uses of works, could be activated to build a more equitable, accessible and innovative world 72 .In such a scenario, flexible licenses would be the default.The ideal Universal Digital Library could, thus, make e.g.musical or scientific works available under open licenses that would foster creation and cultural diversity 73 .Free-of-charge access would be promoted and library resources could be free; there would be no registration fees to limit access or contribute to discrimination.Social networks 74 could also be used to share links to content or report new uploads 75 .
But only mathematicians can prove things using pen and paper.The rest of us have to take ideas pragmatically into the real world and see what works 76 .In fact, it is extremely doubtful whether, for example, artists would choose to teach their art, instead of selling it 77 .And since such -not that dangerous-utopias would most probably not "find" their lobbyist 78 let us move on to further -more doable-proposals, based on Information Ethics, to support the potential of today's physical and digital libraries as equalizers of access to information.

Libraries' Potential to Promote Information Ethics and Bridge the Digital Divide
"Information ethics" 79 deals with moral dilemmas and ethical conflicts arising from interactions between humans and information (e.g.creation or organization), Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and information systems 80 .It is concerned (amongst others) with choices and decisions that have to be made in several topics, including access, ownership, privacy, security or community 81 .
As some authors have argued, information professionals should take responsibility and action for information policies in both professional and public settings 82 .In this context, human freedom should play a key role as a principle of openness of human beings to each other and to the world 83 .Thereafter, technology and humans could be united in harmony to ensure that the benefits of information technology are, not only distributed equitably but also, used by people to shape their own lives 84 . 75Gisolfi Peter, New trends that define the 21 st -Century-Library, Advances in Library Administration, pp.173-195 (published online: 16 Jun 2015; https://doi.org/10.1108/S0732-067120150000033005), at p. 183. 76Brin David, The Transparent Society, id, at p. 18. 77 With regard to major recording labels, they perform four basic tasks: production, distribution, price fixing, and gate-keeping (Vaidhyanathan Siva, The Anarchist in the Library, id, at p. 48).But bands, today, can use home computers to record music, put up their websites, and give away MP3s on peer-to-peer systems.Since they can -and do-make money through live performances, commons-based production and distribution may not seem so hard.Besides, music distribution has been all about "decorporatization" and "deregulation", while music corporations no longer control the flow, the prices, or the terms of access.Vaidhyanathan Siva, The Anarchist in the Library, id, at p. 106. 78Lessig Lawrence, Free Culture, Jan. 31, 2008, Speech at Stanford University (mentioning that the reason why copyright term was extended was that Mickey Mouse had a lobbyist, whereas the public domain did not). 79Information ethics has grown out of the interaction between traditions of librarianship and new technologies.Respect for privacy, defense of intellectual freedom, and devotion to collections were some of the main concerns of librarianship before the emergence of computers.See Asheim Lester, Not censorship but selection, Wilson Library Bulletin, September 1953, pp.63-67, available at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/NotCensorshipButSelection. 80Robert Hauptman was the first to use the term "Information Ethics".Hauptman Robert, Ethical Challenges in Librarianship, Phoenix, AZ, Oryx Press, 1988, p. 3; Froehlich Thomas, A brief history of information ethics, bid, textos universitaris de biblioteconomia i documentació, número 13, 2004, Facultat de Biblioteconomia i Documentació, Universitat de Barcelona (available at http://bid.ub.edu/13froel2.htm). 81Smith Martha, Information ethics, id, at p. 32.As Smith aptly puts it, if ethics aims to study how to think with regard to ordering human life and if technology relates to tools and practices to advance human aims, then ICT and ethics must dance together ("even if badly").Smith Martha, id, at p. 40. 82Capurro Rafael, Information ethos and information ethics, id. 83Capurro Rafael, Moral Issues in Information Science, first published as: Report TRITA-LIB-6024 (Royal Institute of Technology Library, Stockholm, Sweden) 1985, also published in Journal of information science, 11, 1985, pp.113-123  (available at http://www.capurro.de/moral.htm).Capurro speaks of the concept of "specialized information" that includes all kinds of scientific, technical, economic and societal knowledge. 84Capurro Rafael, Information Technology and Technologies of the Self, in Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science (ASIS), Pittsburgh, October 25-29, 1992, also in the Journal of Information Ethics, 1996, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp.19-28.Available at http://www.capurro.de/self.htm.Capurro uses the term "technologies of the self" to approach the ethical goal of uniting nature, man and technology in harmony.Others have used the term "technological self" to refer to a human self constructed by technologies and practices of societies.See Margolis Zoseph, The technological self, in E. E Byrne and J. C. Pitt (eds), Philosophy and Technology: Technological Transformation: Contextual and Conceptual Implications, Vol. 5, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1989, pp.1-15; Hoffmann Anna Lauren, Privacy, Intellectual Freedom, and Self-Respect: Technological and Philosophical Lessons for Libraries, in Perspectives on library could be used to encourage people to participate in events, talk and, hence, connect with each other, and share their experience and knowledge.By encouraging such interaction the idea and the sense of the community could be enhanced 99 .
To sum up, making public access to Internet-equipped computers available and introducing training classes, which would include not only "how-to-use-technologies" lectures but an "independent subject" concerning Information Ethics as well, could constitute a good starting point.Thereafter, libraries could act as community cultural centers and, thus, present several events to encourage peoples' interaction and promote the idea of the community.This way, libraries would move from their previous "shhhh-model", which discouraged -talking and-interaction, towards a new "community-based-model" that could very well bridge gaps between haves and have-nots, and minimize or even set aside differences with regard to access to information and appropriate ICTs.

Discussion
It is the very tradition of libraries that unimpeded and equitable access to information is an important element of functioning democratic societies 100 , while, as places where communities get constructed 101 , libraries have always been promoting intellectual freedom 102 .The very philosophy for Web development and the very goal of the Internet is to empower creativity, democratize production and celebrate the individual with the necessary attention drawn to mass collaboration 103 .And it is true that, so far, we have witnessed innumerous economic and social benefits that new technologies not only promise but also do create in multiple fields 104 .
So, the creation of an ideal Universal Digital Library could be proposed to make all knowledge available and enable people to exercise their fundamental right to receive information.This scenario could be (inspired by and) based on current models of commons-based information production and peer production.And, today, we certainly have the technologies to render this idea a realistic act of benevolence and "a-piece-of-cake-task" thanks to existing systems.However, legal obstacles seem to turn such scenarios into a utopia that romantic authors may only dream of.But culture is not a fixed condition; it is the product of interaction and its toughness and resiliency are determined by its ability to react creatively to the realities of new situations, rather than an ability to withstand change 105 .http://bronxvillelibrary.org/lets/attend/.Darien Library in Darien (Connecticut) also uses "community rooms" for lectures, concerts or Friday night movies.See https://www.darienlibrary.org/events/calendar/adults/. 99For instance, the children's room at the Byram Shubert Library in Greenwich welcomes active users and encourages them to engage with each other.
In this context, culture is a process.But so is law.Culture should be allowed to change.And so should law be.In fact, legal knowledge is a process, not a corpus.It is strategic and negotiable106 .Courts require truth within given times, meaning the best kind of legal point is the one that works and gets the job done persuasively and efficiently 107 .Law facilitates the flow of information from the governing to the governed, but also allows information to flow from the governed to the governing, incorporating new data from legal disputes 108 .The life of law is not logic, but experience, the felt necessities of the time and the prevalent moral and political theories, the intuitions of public policy, or even the "prejudices that judges share with their fellow-men" 109 .Law, as a social process, and legal practice, as a productive power of creativity that is used to satisfy needs, produce social norms 110 , imposing purpose over texts, data, or tradition 111 .
So, laws might someday encourage policies to build information regulation systems that reflect users' needs, instead of Disney's.Laws might someday create no (or at least low) barriers of entry to creative processes and cheap access to cultural materials through networks, libraries, universities, or any other institution built for sharing.Maybe, this same day, policies about who gets to own networks or about how long should copyright protection last may be subject to public debate, instead of being dictated by lobbyists.Perhaps, that day, lawmakers might understand the way culture works and grows.And the truth is it works best when content is cheap and easily distributed.It would be hard to name a cultural development that made a difference and that was not, at the same time, about communities sharing their ideas.
And if no lobbyist appears to submit such proposals, let us remember that, when drums became illegal in the American South to stifle communication across distances 112 , slaveholders outlawed the tools, but they never stopped the beat.
Perhaps, to some, the above proposals might not work in practice, but to others current copyright rules are creating a whole generation of thieves and terrorists 113 .Although it has been argued that without copyright (or without the alleged financial incentives to create), humanity would face the worst-case scenario of a cultural Dark Age, albeit, the "property talk instrument" could be regarded as a closed-system ideology that hopes to shut conversation down; who could argue for "theft"?So, what we probably need is an open and balanced discussion on openness and enclosure, protocols 114 and controls, or distribution and centralization.But what we have, so far, had were nasty battles among competing interests 115 .
In any case, the era when these laws will be re-conceptualized -to truly benefit "learning and knowledge", i.e. the good-old-fashioned meaning of "science", rather than granting rights to authors' heirs, estates, or corporate successors 116may not come anytime soon.Thereafter, what could be more realistic and achievable today would be initiatives focused on information ethics to equalize access to information and knowledge.And such acts could, indeed, be undertaken by the very bodies, which are active in the fields of culture.Both physical and digital libraries could very well perform their role as equalizers of knowledge and community cultural centers and, hence, make public access to Internet-equipped computers available, encourage interaction, and promote the idea of the community.This way community-based-models could be implemented to bridge existing gaps and abolish current differences.
The heart of this paper's argument is that there is a strong need for a universally accessible collection of "the sum of all knowledge" in restrictions-free formats that would ensure that information would be free, rather than locked up behind corporate pay-walls.This -technologically achievable-idea would be a moral act to address the access to knowledge issues.But since acts of benevolence do not happen that frequently these days, a more copyright-friendly approach could be brought to the discussion table to focus on equality and achieve fair distribution of information.At least, this way, information would flow, creators would be encouraged and we would all get to share in whatever is going on.
See Kapidakis Sarantos, Introduction to Digital Libraries, Disigma Ed., 2 nd Edition, 2014, at p. 84 (with further references).See also Fogarty Vivianne, Libraries and Human Rights, Working Together to Reach Our Full Potential, in Perspectives on Libraries as Institutions of Human Rights and Social Justice (published online: 26 Feb 2016; pp.71-90, available at https://doi.org/10.1108/S0065-283020160000041004), at p. 72 (mentioning that the library is a room full of resources that people can borrow or look at). 6Danish Agency for Libraries and Media, The Public Libraries in the Knowledge Society, Summary from the Committee /slks.dk/fileadmin/publikationer/publikationer_engelske/Reports/The_public_libraries_in_the_knowledge_society._Summary.pdf).As others have claimed, libraries symbolize society's best idea about itself.See Conner Matthew, The new university library: four case studies, Chicago, ALA Editions, 2014, at p. 148. 7Intellectual Property refers to intangible interests in commercially valuable products of the human intellect.See Garner Bryan, Black's Law Dictionary, 10 th Edition, 2014, Thomson West.The interests are intangible, meaning that one does not possess intellectual property in the same way as one possesses tangible property, such as land or a chair.See Melamed Douglas, Picker Randal, Weiser Philip, Wood Diane, Antitrust Law and Trade Regulation, Cases and Materials, 7 th Edition, 2018, Foundation Press, at p. 891.