Research

=== Influence of the open-access movement ===
The open access movement assumes that all information generally deemed useful should be free and belongs to a "public domain", that of "humanity".<ref name="Christen">{{Cite journal|last=Christen|first=Kimberly|date=2012|title=Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness|url=http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1618|journal=International Journal of Communication|volume=6|access-date=7 June 2017|archive-date=15 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170715032503/http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1618|url-status=live}}</ref> This idea gained prevalence as a result of Western colonial history and ignores alternative conceptions of knowledge circulation. For instance, most indigenous communities consider that access to certain information proper to the group should be determined by relationships.<ref name="Christen" />

There is alleged to be a double standard in the Western knowledge system. On the one hand, "digital right management" used to restrict access to personal information on social networking platforms is celebrated as a protection of privacy, while simultaneously when similar functions are used by cultural groups (i.e. indigenous communities) this is denounced as "access control" and reprehended as censorship.<ref name="Christen" />