Human rights have never received more attention than at present. All around the world there is new vigor in dealing with gross human rights abuse. As a result, the last ten years have seen major developments in international criminal processes to deal with these issues. Accountability for these violations, a major problem in the past, has improved to some degree. This is true at both international and domestic levels. With the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), the prospects for prosecuting those responsible for gross human rights violations are more likely than before.

In spite of being signatories to the United Nations Charter and the African Charter on Rights, human rights abuses are rife in African countries. The democratic wave that swept across Africa in the early 1990s and witnessed the demise of many authoritarian regimes only minimised the practice of human rights violations; it did not abate it. There are still reports of opposition activists being jailed without trial for daring to seek level playing fields in politics; journalists being detained or sometimes forced into exile for daring to expose corruption in high places; academics being threatened with arrests for daring to write about mis-governance; workers being dismissed for attempting to unionise or to ask for better remuneration in the face of currency devaluations and inflation. There are countless instances of gross human right abuses, which cannot be recounted here because of time constraints. In some instances, the state has completely failed to promote peace, welfare and private property. Perhaps it is appropriate to describe these states as “failed states.” They are failed states because in spite of maintaining law and order, they are unable to perform their traditional functions, including the protection of human rights.

When the organizers of the IALL Course on International Law Librarianship asked me to speak on resources on the World Wide Web related to the theme of the Course, “New Rights – New Laws: Legal Information in a Changing World,” I spent some time thinking about the theme. What do we mean by “new rights – new laws?” Do we really mean “changing rights, changing laws?” And what do we mean by a “changing world?” Are we talking about societies in the process of transition or that have undergone transition? Are we really talking about post-Communist Eastern Europe? Post-apartheid South Africa? The U.S. after September 11 – post-attack America? Post-conflict Iraq? The mega-changes in these societies can present threats to human dignity and rights. Times of upheaval, conflict, and political instability endanger basic human rights such as the rights to freedom of opinion, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and freedom from arbitrary detention.

This conference of law librarians is convened around the theme of “New Rights — New Laws.” I want to argue that, with regard to information, while there are new laws aplenty, there are in fact no new rights. Worse, we are presently witnessing a steady erosion of even the existing public rights of access to and use of information content, whether of a legal nature or not. In fact, there is mounting evidence that the idea of the public domain itself is under serious attack both as a concept and as a collection of practices. The global privatization of cultural and intellectual content in ways unimaginable only a few decades ago is actively threatening the established structures of scholarly communication, to the increasing disadvantage of the less-developed South. Intellectual property (IP) rights are being extended into new areas, as the patent system, for example, expands into biotechnology, agriculture and medicine, while copyright, patent and trade secret protection is claimed even for computer software, mathematical algorithms, and business methods. IP protection is under discussion for indigenous knowledge, and not necessarily for altruistic reasons. And as the useful shelf life of such content shortens, the protection afforded to it lengthens disproportionately in a disturbing pattern that nearly always favors rights holders and their claims above even the most rudimentary forms of public good.