Knowledge is essential for so many human activities and values, including freedom, the exercise of political power, and economic, social and personal development.
The A2K (Access to Knowledge) movement takes concerns with copyright law and other regulations that affect knowledge and places them within an understandable social need and policy platform: access to knowledge goods.
The recent consolidation of various local and global social movements working towards greater access to knowledge builds on previous and ongoing efforts by citizens' groups working for access to information and education rights in general. The movement's stance on intellectual property rights owes as much to the quest for free and open source software as to public health activism around patents and medicines.
While the A2K movement is concerned about fairness and access to knowledge, it also is supportive of creative and inventive communities. To reconcile these interests, we promote new paradigms for the creation and management of knowledge resources.
Knowledge goods are also fundamentally different from physical goods and services. They can be copied. They can be shared. They do not have to be scarce.
The rich and the poor can be more equal with regard to knowledge goods than to many other areas.