Chapter 24 The Media and the public sphere (Garnham)

Again, in this chapter Garnham talks about the shift of public information as public good to "privately appropriate commodity", which immediately reminded me of Schiller's "deregulation, privatization, and the expansion of market relationship" and the privatization of science information and government information (chapter 17). In particular, he critisizes libraries' shift from open access to accessing proprietary databases on a payment-by-use basis. I think there is a misunderstanding of the library services because libraries are trying so hard to fight for the open access. However, this does show people's concern about this issue. So librarians are not alone in fighting for free, open access against information as proprietary, private, and commoditized.

This issue is also related to the project of my group - Digital Millennum Copyright Act. When digital information get particular protection from the law, the content became more and more proprietary, then where is the place for the public sphere?