There are five main types of intellectual rights. Intellectual property rights are concerned with the right to profit from one's intellectual endeavours and the right to prevent others from doing so. Data protection and privacy rights are designed to give individual citizens control over the use of information about them. Freedom of information seeks to give individuals the right of access to information held by governments and corporate bodies.
Censorship is the right to be protected from obnoxious information.
Finally, we are likely to see the emergence of a right of access to information and advice services. Along with rights of citizenship it is possible to identify new forms of responsibilities that are being imposed on governments, organisations and individuals. The information sector, in particular, is being held responsible for its actions in ways that were uncommon only a few years ago. These new rights and responsibilities can be held to be defining characteristics of new information societies. This is a Refereed Article published on 27 February 1998.