by Peter Kahl, 2025-11-06
This dissertation examines how law and policy can respond to the multi-layered enclosures emerging in AI governance. It introduces two conceptual tools: the Third Enclosure Movement, situating AI within historical logics of exclusion, and the Taxonomy of Restricted Knowledge, distinguishing legal, technical, epistemic, and state-enforced enclosures.
The comparative analysis of the UK, EU, US, and China, alongside case studies in healthcare, agritech, and consumer AI, shows that no single strategy suffices. Abolitionist critiques expose the structural injustices of intellectual property, but treaty lock-in under TRIPS and entrenched domestic frameworks make wholesale abolition infeasible.
By contrast, partial commons reforms can be pursued within current legal architectures. Examples include compulsory licensing under TRIPS (arts 30–31), disclosure and audit obligations under the EU AI Act (arts 16–29), interoperability duties under the Digital Markets Act (arts 6(4)–(9)), and open-licensing conditions for publicly funded AI outputs. These tools embed openness, auditability, and equitable access while preserving incentives for innovation.
The dissertation’s contribution is to reframe AI governance as the defence of shared epistemic agency. It argues for a legally realistic middle path: treaty-compliant reforms that constrain recursive enclosure while sustaining democratic legitimacy in the age of AI.
AI governance, fiduciary duty, epistemic justice, knowledge regulation, restricted knowledge, intellectual property law, artificial intelligence law, epistemic ethics, information enclosures, legal philosophy, law and technology, governance and regulation
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Kahl, P. (2025). The Third Enclosure Movement: Rethinking AI Regulation through a Taxonomy of Restricted Knowledge. Lex et Ratio Ltd. GitHub: https://github.com/Peter-Kahl/The-Third-Enclosure-Movement DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17542062
v1 published in London by Lex et Ratio Ltd, 2025-11-06.
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