As highlighted by the Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Connect Initiative, internet access is key to national and global development. Governments and others are ramping up efforts in favour of universal access. But access is nothing without content. Our history – via migration, wars and other movements – is global. So too is the future, with international scientific collaboration breaking new boundaries. We can increasingly celebrate our cultures and heritage with people globally, rather than just purchasing access to a monoculture. In short, the internet creates new and exciting opportunities to access, share and create. However, there are fierce discussions, notably around liability for copyright infringements, whether digitisation creates new rights, how far laws should change to reflect the digital age, and Sci-Hub, an internet-based repository of academic papers. Underneath this is the fact that digital tools have the potential both to increase the availability of knowledge and culture, but also to restrict and control its use. This debate will explore these tensions, and the different potential scenarios for access to heritage, knowledge and culture in the future. In particular, it will look at: - What stands in the way of using digitisation to make heritage truly common? - How is the internet affecting the information supply chain, and how can or should copyright laws respond? - The rise of Sci-Hub suggests that the current academic publishing model is not meeting demand. Is the potential of the internet being fully harnessed to ensure knowledge flows effectively?
