From jeebesh at sarai.net Tue Jan 6 03:38:57 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 03:38:57 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Free Software and Market Relations Message-ID: <200401060338.57951.jeebesh@sarai.net> http://www.oekonux.org/texts/index.html Free Software and Market Relations Raoul Victor The Economic Reality of Free Software Free Software and Market Society Free Software and the Law of Value, or the Revolutionary Possibilities of Free Software The Ideology of the Founders of Free Software Germs of Non-market Relations What Marx and History Say "Germs"? Insufficiency and Validity of Marxism New Questions The following is a translation (amateur) of one part of a debate that took place on a Francophone internationalist communist listserv. Marx quotes are taken from standard English translations. There is only one other note on translation: the use of the word gratuite and its derivations. There is no direct translation for it, because it is more than ?gratuity,? which sounds like restaurant lingo, and more than ?freedom,? which sounds bourgeois-revolutionary. The idea is of a principle to replace exchange value; as exchange value is to commodities under capitalism, gratuite is to products of use value in communism. In the text "Germs of non-commercial relationships in the midst of the most modern capitalism", I attempted to show that the specificities of software, in particular the capacity of being reproducible at an insignificant cost, thus also the more and more important and determinant place which it is called to take in practically all the processes of production, are constitutive of material conditions that open new perspectives for the possibility of a society of abundance, and thus of a post-capitalist society. I also tried to show in evidence the "non-market" character of the principles and relations which rule free software, thus also the crucial role that this reality could play in the elaboration and diffusion of the revolutionary project. In his contribution of June 29, 2002, JC [another participant on the listserv] raises a series of interesting objections to these ideas. The object of this text is to respond to them. JC tackles two principal questions. The first, he summarizes as follows: "I want to attempt to establish that 'free software' does not avoid, in its economic reality and in the ideology of its founders, market relations"; the second: "I wonder about the idea that, in the midst of capitalism, by way of new technological developments, 'the germs of non-market relations' could be born." To respond, I will attempt to follow JC in his questioning. To tackle the specific question of free software, JC begins by making some remarks of a more general order. In posing a riddle--"From whom are these lines?"--in order to prepare his surprise, JC cites a researcher and manager of the French government (Bernard Lang), who makes statements analogous to those I made. {Informatics programs," wrote Lang, "immaterial in essence, tend to reverse the traditions of commerce. Conception and development aside, their production and distribution costs can be marginal, quasi-zero.... Free software announces a major change in civilization: the advent of a society of abundance." JC does not follow this explicitly to its conclusion. But what could he conclude? That such a statement is false because it's made by a man of the establishment? For Lang, "the major change in civilization" of which he speaks is evidently not the surpassing of capitalism, but an amelioration of the same (we revisit further below the defenders of free software as a means of renovating capitalism). That does not prevent one making a statement of evidence, of a reality that "tends to reverse the traditions of commerce." The intrinsic tendency of software to escape the laws of the market is a reality that the new market-makers (practically industrialists), of illegal copies of informatics products (business software, video-games, music discs, or films, etc.) confirm and exploit daily...or the agents of the state charged with suppressing this sort of attack on the market laws. That which is surprising is not that establishment types could confirm the anti-market nature of certain characteristics of software. This nature is evident as soon as you think a little about it (we shall come back to this, also). That which does not cease to surprise me is the resistance of numerous Marxists to this fact. It goes back to Marx, though, to have well established the mechanisms of market exchange and the possibility of its surpassing by the appearance of conditions of abundance. Making a second general remark, JC takes up on his account an argument often employed by Marxists to deny the fundamentally new character of contemporary technological evolution. "I share," writes JC, "the remark made by RGF at the June 15 conference, which signaled that this capacity of reproduction, not only quasi-gratuiticity, but gratuiticity period, already existed in the domain of the results of scientific research. And thus free software, however much it corresponds to this ideal (sometimes for harm, as, for example, with the military) of free reproduction and gratuiticity of the results of scientific research, bring nothing very new onto the terrain." The "free and gratuitistic reproduction of the results of scientific research" is not a so generalized reality; in part, that which one calls "the hacker ethic" of the creators of the first free software forged itself in combat in the universities against the pressure of the administration to commercialize the products of their research. And one knows, at such a point, patents constitute a true barrier against the universality of scientific knowledge. But it is true that the essence of this knowledge, under the form of texts, theorems, rules, equations, etc., finds itself in the public domain, and that anyone can draw from it at will. In this sense, effectively, there is something in common between the qualities of free software and that of scientific knowledge. But science is not useful, does not have a direct use value, but for a very narrow part of society. Generally, it does not enter except indirectly into the process of production or consumption. Software can, on the contrary, take the form of means of production or consumption, directly useful on the assembly line, or for the manager of an office, for example. It can also constitute a means of direct consumption, like with films or games. That to which software permits everyone to have access, by rendering them freely and gratuitistically reproducible, is not only equations or laws, but direct instruments of production and goods of common consumption. The number of goods, or the part of goods, capable of being an object of this gratuitistic reproduction is limited only by the scale and measure in which the capacity to digitalize the process of production and goods of consumption develops itself. That which is "new" is not little. That is the possibility of the gratuiticity, not only in the area of the university and the laboratory, but in the heart of social production, there where, daily, economic and social relations create themselves. Constantly, in the perspective of establishing that software and informatics in general "do not bring anything very new," JC echoes the questions of Henri S on "whether the fundamental industrial revolution was not that of today, that of informatics, but that of yesterday, electricity." Independent of the question of the definition of the term "industrial revolution," one can always say that without electricity there would have been neither electronics nor informatics, and there can be no doubt that the generalization of the use of electricity transformed also the process of production as much as modes of social life. That is not to denigrate what was perceived by Kropotkin and Lenin (socialism is the soviets plus electricity) as an element which would contribute qualitatively new methods to the creation of the conditions of a society of abundance. But that does not remove any of the importance of the novelty contained in the new technologies. Electricity remains a good submitted to scarcity. It cannot be "freely reproducible." Once produced and consumed, a kilowatt-hour is no more. On the contrary, the means of production which take the form of software could, themselves, be "consumed" and reproduced indefinitely without any significant cost. The contribution of the electronic revolution is not situated solely on the terrain of the exceptional growth of the productivity of labor. It also places itself on a qualitative level, at the base of the economic edifice itself, that of market exchange, of the law of value, rendered futile when confronted by goods that intrinsically tend to escape from shortage. In this sense, the contribution of the new information and communications technologies cannot be reduced to that of electricity. But, JC's principal critique is, justly, about the reality of this questioning of exchange. In taking the most "advanced" case, that of free software, he attempts to show that it "does not escape from market relations." For that, he develops his arguments firstly at the level of their "economic reality," and secondly, at the level of "the ideology of the founders." I tackle these two levels in the same order. The Economic Reality of Free Software Free Software and Market Society On the economic level, the arguments proposed by JC essentially concern the relations of free software with the capitalist environment. He shows how, around free software like Linux, a series of commercial companies gravitate, who live from the sale of services facilitating the installation and the use of the software, those that lead to "what one could call sometimes a pretty high invoice for a Linux installation." JC illustrates again the influence of the market environment on free software in citing examples of its use by state institutions: for national French education, for research into the reduction of "costs of formation of the workforce"; by the French and American armies, which "are wary, for security reasons, of software over which they don't have complete control." He also invokes the existence of a "group lobbying in favor of Linux and free software," very active among circles of the French political class. He states that certain of the creators of free software are paid for this task by commercial enterprises, and thus that those who "benevolently" made it, often with "lost hours," get a salary. And last but not least, JC puts in relief the support provided free software by certain enterprises: "But," he writes, "free software is supported by a series of enterprises involved in the information market, that have an interest in the destruction of Microsoft's monopoly over software, and in the first ranks of them: IBM." In concluding, JC says: "Free software is not a "freely" reproducible good; if there is a contradiction in the kingdom of market laws, it is the very classical one between the position of the monopoly acquired by Microsoft and the other enterprises in the same sector; it is not a revolt of the productive forces against the relations of production which they have engendered, but the revolt of information enterprises against a monopoly situation that is contrary to the general interests of capital." However, all these facts show, not that free software does not possess a non-market character, but that it is immersed in a market world. Any of the aspects of economic reality cited by JC do not concern the non paying, gratuitistic nature of free software itself. They show how merchants are able to make a profit in selling products connected with free software. But, it improper for JC to deduce that "free software is not gratuitistic software." The paying character of that which can be connected to Linux does not remove any of the perfectly gratuitistic character of Linux itself. JC states also that recourse to free software is interesting economically to commercial enterprises or state administrations because it is synonymous with the reduction of costs. But that does nothing but show the reality of its gratuiticity (or quasi-gratuiticity), denied by JC, because it is just because they are gratuitistic that they entail a diminishment of costs. As for to the argument citing the use of free software by armies, it only gives evidence of the effectiveness of certain of its technological advantages, without dealing with the gratuitistic nature of the software. Finally, the idea that the development of free software would be essentially the product of "the revolt of information enterprises against a monopoly situation [Microsoft] that is contrary to the general interests of capital," is also excessively reductionist, and ignores the importance that some free software are taking. It is true that if IBM and other computer manufacturers participate in the development of free software, and prescribe Linux as the OS for certain of their machines, that is, in large part, to emancipate themselves from their dependence vis a vis Microsoft. But, the same fact, that the top global information enterprise should be forced to have recourse to free software translates into the superiority of this type of product and the inevitability of its development. The still small world of free software evidently does not escape the commodity environment in which it lives. Why would the merchants who dominate the society deprive themselves of the technical and economic advantages of this new type of product? What would forbid it from becoming like a weapon in the permanent war among them, on the military level or that of the struggle for control of the market? The question that poses itself is that of knowing whether this market environment extinguishes the non-market character of free software and condemns it to being nothing more than a tool of reinforcement of the dominant system, of "regularization of market relations," like JC says. History furnishes examples of the coexistence of two types of economic relations, in particular during the course of the period in which a new mode of production is developing in the midst of the old society, as in the case for capitalism in the midst of feudalism, or of feudalism in the midst of ancient slavery. In these two cases, like I have implied in the text criticized by JC, "there is a phenomenon which sees the ruling class of the old system being forced to have recourse to products of a mode of production which is antagonistic to its own. " In the ancient Roman slave empire, the colonat, a first form of feudalism in which the slave is emancipated and transformed into a free colonus but subordinated to new economic obligations, progressively develops itself up to the point of becoming the most important mode of production in the late Roman Empire of the 3rd century. The slave state drew its profits, not always easily, from the growth of productivity that the new economic relations brought, by levying ever-heavier taxes on their production and even in transforming some of their own slaves into coloni. In the coexistence between feudalism and capitalism, recourse by the old dominant class, the feudal masters, to the means furnished by the new relations, capitalism, which had developed themselves in the cities and by commerce, is even more spectacular. The feudal crusades, which led to the extension of the European fiefdoms all the way up to the Orient, of the 11th to the 13th century (creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, of the principality of Antioch, etc.), would not have been possible but for recourse to the forms of capitalist production, which, in cities like Venice, produced the boats which transported the feudal armies and Oriental booty. It was in using the capitalist financial wealth developing particularly in the cities of Genoa and Venice that the European masters found the means of financing their imperialist enterprises in the Holy Lands. In France, since the 12th century, the monarchy extended its power at the expense of the large regional feudal masters by leaning on the cities, in which the bourgeoisie and capitalist relations would develop, and to whom the king granted specific privileges. The feudal masters o f all Europe could, during centuries, continue to draw their profit from the capitalist commerce which was developing, not only in procuring goods otherwise unattainable, but also in withdrawing innumerable taxes of passage for the commerce that crossed their fiefdoms. What can one deduce in relation to the debate that concerns us? Firstly, that the fact that the old dominant class draws profit from the products of new social relations does not remove their novelty, their antagonistic character. Secondly, that the economic and political power of the old dominant class inevitably constitutes a restriction of the development of the new relations: There had to be the bourgeois political revolutions to clear the feudal taxes of passage for the development of commerce, for example. But, thirdly, that, because of the fact that the new relations contain a new productive capacity, the old dominant class is forced to have recourse to them, even if it is nothing more than as a partial means, marginal at first. In so doing, that class stimulates their development. (The feudal crusades, for the Italian cities that contributed to them, were a source of the first capitalist prosperity.) Even today the use of free software by commercial enterprises or by state administrations does not destroy its non-market nature. The states multiply new legislation and repressive bodies to stop the attacks on copyright and other foundations of property and capitalist profit, put in harms way by the logic of free software. But the same states, like all capitalist enterprises, are at some point obliged to have recourse to it. And this can do nothing but stimulate its development. Free Software and the Law of Value, or the Revolutionary Possibilities of Free Software JC's arguments have led us to the terrain of the relations of free software with the market milieu. But the central question, on the economic plane, is to comprehend by what "internal" logic free software is by nature non-market, non-capitalist, and contains revolutionary possibilities. JC, unfortunately, does not tarry at this point, except to reject it as an illusion, and send the problem back to the reality of market competition: "My initial argument," he writes, "portrays mostly as an illusion that in free software there could be seen new 'revolutionary' possibilities, beginning with their reality in the play of market competition." It suffices to remember what the market relations are, and their specificity in capitalism, to understand how free software is their negation. Market relations rest on exchange. Exchange is to acquire or to cede something by means of a counter-party. The barter is in the most elementary form of it. A good or a service is directly furnished in exchange for another. The market relationship establishes that this exchange must follow the rule of equality, the good furnished must possess a market value, exchange value, equivalent to that of the good received. The law of value measures this value by means of the labor time socially necessary to produce the good exchanged. The use of a particular commodity as a universal equivalent, money (livestock in certain ancient societies, in which the term "pecuniary," of or regarding pecus, which in Latin means cattle; eventually metallic pieces, notes, bank money, etc.), thus authorizes a flexibility unlimited by exchange, and offers the possibility of accumulating value, dead labor. Capitalism constitutes the most fully achieved form of exchange and of market relations, thus it extends its domination to all domains of social life, in the first place to labor power, which it transforms into a commodity by means of wage-relationships. But the logic of free software situates itself outside of exchange itself. When someone "takes" free software off the Internet, even if its production required millions of hours of labor, there is nothing given in exchange. One takes without furnishing any counterpart. The software furnished is not exactly "given," in the classic sense of the term, since the provider still has it after the taker has helped himself. (In this sense, the term of "economy of the gift" that certain people use apropos free software is incorrect.) There is indeed the transmission of a good, but with neither loss of possession nor counter-party. The foundation of capitalism, exchange, is absent. In this sense already, free software has an intrinsically anti-capitalist, potentially revolutionary nature. But it does not suffice to be "anti-capitalist" to be revolutionary historically, as shown by the nostalgic anti-capitalist thought of a less dehumanized past. If free software possesses a revolutionary nature, that is also because its method rests on the concrete will to liberate the powers contained in the new techniques of information and communication. This method is the result of the simple acknowledgment on t he part of several universities that certain aspects of market relations gravely impeded their utilization. If this happens with electronic techniques and not with other techniques of production, that is not only because the scientific ethic contains non-market aspects but also because, and above all, in this domain it is very easy, and costs nothing, to ignore the market laws. In this sense, the method of free software situates itself inside the movement of history (in the measure in which the development of society's productive forces constitutes the only dimension that, "in the last instance," permits one to detect a direction in it), in the direction of the surpassing of capitalism. The Ideology of the Founders of Free Software The creators and defenders of free software-are they aware of this reality? For JC, the question doesn't come up : ?The texts of the founders of the FSF [Free Software Foundation],? he writes, ?confirm that they place themselves entirely in the context of market capitalism.? And, to defend this thesis, JC gives some citations: Stallman [founding member of the FSF] exposes the ideological and social references of free software: ?The free software movement was founded in 1984, but its inspiration comes from the ideas of 1776: liberty, community and voluntary cooperation. That is what leads to free enterprise, to the liberty of expression and to free software. Like in the case of "free enterprise" and "freedom of expression," the term "free" in the term "free software" makes reference to liberty, not to price...? Against Microsoft, Stallman writes: ?But the absence of defense is not the American way. On the grounds of courage and freedom, we defend our liberty with the GNU GPL [the GNU General Public License],? and goes on to conclude that: ?Property rights were conceived in order to advance the well- being of mankind.? 1Scroll downwards JC thus presents one of the more well-known creators and defenders of free software as an advocate of prices and private property. The reality of the hacker's conceptions is much more complex and contradictory. To be convinced, it just requires putting some of the citations JC gives into context. Thus, at the end of the phrase, ?the term "free" in the term "free software" makes reference to liberty, not to price,? Stallman wrote : ?More specifically, it signifies that you have the liberty to study, to modify, and to redistribute the software that you use.? But, having the right to redistribute software is to have the right to transmit it gratuitistically, without price, ignoring property rights and copyright; studying and modifying software expresses that it's not to be secret, protected, like all ?proprietary? software. Some lines further, the same Stallman wrote: ?We cannot establish a community of liberty in the world of proprietary software, in which each program has its master. We will constitute a new world in cyber-space...? And the tidbit JC cited on property rights are in the following context: ?My opinions on copyright would take an hour to explain, but a general principle applies: One cannot justify the negation of important public liberties. Like Abraham Lincoln put it, 'each time there is a conflict between the rights of man and the rights of property, the rights of man must prevail.' Property rights were conceived in order to advance the well-being of mankind and not as an excuse to scorn them.? Stallman effectively defends property rights, but on the condition that they do not hurt ?the rights of man?... which is not very simple: If the right not to starve, for example, is a right of man, the right of property over the means of production must be abolished. In another more well-known text by Stallman, The GNU Manifesto, he writes: ?Extraction of money from the users of a program by restraining their use of the program is destructive, because, for the sake of cash, it reduces the amount of wealth humanity can draw from the program. When choice is deliberately restrained, the harmful consequences are a deliberate destruction.? 2Scroll downwards The defense of the use and generalization of free software leads logically to the defense of non-market, thus non-capitalist principles, such principles as gratuiticity, non-property. But this does not imply that one would obligatorily deny the validity of market principles in all domains. The founders of free software do not pretend to destroy the capitalist world. They want to create, in the world of communications and information, a ? cyberspace...a community of liberty,? to use Stallman's words, on the side, outside, ?the world of proprietary software, in which each program has its master.? From this inevitably flow contradictions, like when Stallman demands simultaneously capitalist free enterprise and a community of liberty with neither masters nor market exchange. That expresses a contradictory reality which already exists and develops itself within society because of the coexistence and interpenetration of the world of free software with modern capitalism. The Internet is a striking illustration. The principal software on which it depends for functioning is free software. Without it, the ?network of networks? could not function. However, the Internet has not ceased to become an indispensable instrument for capitalist, commercial, financial, administrative, police, etc., transactions, and that on a planetary level. The question of the relation to capitalism is at the heart of the divisions that split the world of the defenders of free software. 3Scroll downwards For some of them, like the partisans of the Open Source Initiative, founded in 1998 by Eric Raymond, free software could be one of the instruments for ameliorating and reinforcing capitalism. Stefan Merten, of Oekonux, says that he would have called it ? 'Free Software for Business'-or something like that.? 4Scroll downwards Bernard Lang, one of the authors of the book Free Software, cited many times by JC, is part of this tendency. He goes up to the point of defending recourse to free software as a means of reinforcing and defending European capital confronted with American competition. The frame of spirit of the partisans of Stallman's FSF is quite different. Even if one found a number of differences according to their degree of opposition to the market world, there are general approaches more interested in developing a ?space of liberty ? than in cooperating with market enterprises. It is true that opposition to Microsoft, which has become a diabolical symbol of the will to monopoly, attacked even by the justice of the American state, plays a very important role and sustain the illusion of the defense of a market world without trusts. But there are also tendencies that go much further. Marx said that Protestantism could not make a radical critique of Catholicism without making a self-critique. It is the same with the critique of Microsoft : It cannot be radical without a critique of capitalism itself. In a book prefaced by Linus Torvalds, the creator of the famous program Linux, the Finnish philosopher Pekka Himanen attempts to define an ethic of the hacker community, of which the most elementary definition is of a ?passion for programming?. The book is titled The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Era [in English it is published as The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the New Economy -Translator] 5Scroll downwards, in reference to Max Weber's book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, written at the beginning of the century, which developed the Marxist thesis according to which Protestantism is a product of and a factor in the development of capitalism. For Pekka Himanen, hackers, even if generally they do not claim to destroy capitalism, are leading to the development of a series of general conceptions which are the opposite of the Protestant ethic and thus that of capitalism. In this manner, he writes: ?The radical nature of hackerism consists in proposing an alternative spirit for networked society, a spirit that puts the dominant Protestant ethic in question. In this context, it is the only time when all hackers are crackers [programmers who introduce themselves into big corporate sites and institutions to cause trouble, often improperly called hackers]. They attempt to crack the steel safe. (...) There is an inherent contradiction in the cohabitation of hackerism with a very traditional capitalism. To begin with, the terms capitalist and hacker are of very different senses. In harmony with the hankering of the Protestant ethic after money, the supreme goal of capitalism is the accumulation of capital. The hacker ethic of work, for its part, puts the accent on the activity, centered around a passion and the free management of time.... The hacker work ethic is a melange of passion and liberty. It is this aspect of the hacker ethic that has had the most influence.? Or again: ?We have explained that hackers oppose themselves to hierarchical management for ethical reasons, because that could lead to a culture in which people are humiliated, but also because they think that a nonhierarchical model is more effective.? The author outlines in this manner, across a number of examples, the tableau of a conception of development leading by its own logic-altruistic and eager for effectiveness-to the direct detriment of the dominant, Protestant, capitalist ideology. Himanen recognizes at the end of his essay that not all hackers recognize themselves in his portrait. But he is certain that many would. As we have already said, this thinking inevitably contains contradictions, product of the relations with the market world in which it germinates. And few are the hackers who push the logic of this thinking to its final subversive conclusions. But it is false to say, like JC claims, that this logic places itself "entirely in the context of market capital." The critique of market exchange and of money, the rejection of hierarchy and borders, the critique of contemporary work and the revindication of passion and freedom as primary motivations, of cooperation and of sharing as the foundations of new relations, all this is found, to a degree more or less elaborated and coherent, in the "hacker ethic." Now these are elements that form part of the foundation of the communist project. The idea of such a statement shocks many "Marxists," wrongly. The fact that communist principles (even if incomplete) can be rediscovered from a scientific approach confronted with the possibilities of new technologies, without any explicit reference to Marxism and to communist theories of the past, constitutes a spectacular verification of the Marxist idea according to which communist ideas are not the product of the benevolent brains of certain thinkers, but the fruit of the development of capitalist society itself. Instead of them enclosing themselves in scornful ignorance of this reality, consistent Marxists should get excited and encourage the tendencies that lead hackerism to a radical critique of capital. Rosa Luxemburg said "the objective logic of the historical process precedes the subjective logic of the protagonists." It is urgent that coherent Marxists take note of the real historical process which unfolds under their eyes, and that they assume their responsibility of accelerating the subjective logic of the protagonists. Before concluding this part on "the ideology of the founders of free software," I want to say a word on a remark by JC, who wrote: "These proclamations [of Raoul] are very close to those of certain free-software activists. Like the members of Oekonux." 6Scroll downwards I have not had the occasion to read all the documents on this site, unfortunately because most of them are in German. I do not know up to what point Stefan Merten, the most well-known of the members of Oekonux, could be considered on the same level as most of the "free-software activists," as JC says, in the measure in which he situates himself in an explicitly Marxist optic. But, as far as I know,, it is certain that I share certain important points of view with them, like the context of Marxist theory and the idea that free software constitutes a germ of a new society: "In Oekonux there is the idea that free software could be exactly that: an embryonic form of a new society materialized in the midst of the old." 7Scroll downwards But that leads into the second part of JC's critique and questions. Germs of Non-market Relations In the last part of his text, "by way of conclusion", JC poses "a general question": "I wonder about the idea that, in the midst of capitalism, by way of new technological developments, 'the germs of non-market relations' could be born." And he responds in the negative. His argument is the following: This idea that the economic (thus social) form of the future society could develop itself in the interior of capitalist society is given by Raoul with reference to Marx: ?new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.? I understand this phrase in the following sense: The experience of forms of self-organization of the proletariat (workers' councils) is the anticipation of the forms of organization of the future society; and it is in the class struggle that the material conditions of ?superior relations of production? will constitute themselves, blossoming ?within the framework of the old society.? As for that, we have learned through experience that these forms cannot be permanent in the midst of capitalist society; they are, if they do not win, only transitory and fleeting. Now, that which Raoul affirms seems to me to resemble the following: the creation, not of forms of self-organization spawned by the class struggle, but of non-market economic (thus social) forms in the midst of capitalism, which, furthermore, tend to eternalize themselves. I think that what characterizes the proletariat in comparison to the insurgent classes of pre-capitalist periods, is precisely its extreme weakness, the fact that it cannot support itself in the midst of capitalist society (contrary to the bourgeoisie under feudalism) by its own economic forces. If I respond negatively to this possibility of ?germs of non-market relations in the midst of advanced capitalism,? via the particular example of free software, I would tend to give a negative response, in general, to all analogous possibilities of finding non-market (even as germs) relations in capitalism. What Marx and History Say We begin by examining JC's interpretation of the famous citation in Marx's preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political EconomyRemote link, before attempting to see what history itself says about the passage from one social system to another. JC thinks, when Marx speaks of "material conditions" that begin to "mature within the old society" to permit the existence of "superior relations of production," that it has to do with the more advanced social practice of the proletariat in struggle in the midst of capitalism: the workers' councils. We remark, first of all, that when Marx wrote these lines, neither workers' councils - appearing for the first time in 1905 in Russia - nor even the first form of that type of organization, such as that which surged forth during the Paris Commune in 1871, existed. Of what "forms of self-organization spawned by the class struggle" had Marx spoken? Note that Marx did not seek to define a law concerning the passage from capitalism to communism. He treated the succession of different modes of production, "Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and bourgeois-modern," of which he said, "reduced to their broad outlines," they "appear as progressive epochs of the economic formation of society." What, for JC, are the "material conditions" in the case of the other historical transitions? When Marx, in the same text, treated the "disruptions" which characterized these transitions, he wrote: "In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." Without wanting to lose ourselves in exegetical exercises, one could, if need be, say that JC's interpretation of the "material conditions" as the practice of the struggle in "workers' councils," could be linked to the need to "become conscious of this conflict" that must "be fought out". But, besides the fact that this would mean a reduction of the "ideological" dimension of reality, this interpretation ignores its economic dimension, "the material transformation of the conditions of production." For Marx, as he explained it, some lines before, in the same text, "the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy." JC's interpretation of Marx's thinking on this question is, at the least, very narrow. It is clear that when Marx spoke of the necessity that the "material conditions" begin to mature in the midst of the old society, it had to do essentially with the development of the material conditions of production, in particular, the productive forces. If one observes the history of two transitions in mode of production that one knows the best: from ancient slavery to feudalism, and from feudalism to capitalism, it appears clearly that the material conditions had unfolded in the midst of the old society. What is more, this development permitted that the new relations of production appeared, although in an embryonic form, by taking their place in the midst and at the side of the old dominant relations of production. The development of the colonat, had under the Roman empire, in the 2d century, an important acceleration, but it had to do with an already-ancient phenomenon. In the 3d century, this mode of production, which established the economic basis of feudal relations between exploiters and exploited, had become a normal form of production on the great properties. The growth of capitalism in the midst of feudalism also took place during centuries. Since the 11th century, through the development of commerce, in particular in the north of Western Europe and in the Mediterranean, capitalism had become an economic reality in Flanders and in certain Italian cities. It took, however, above all, a mercantile form, but not uniquely: By the 12th century, "the arsenals of Venice constructed ships at a pace unknown till then." It was, nevertheless, not until the 16th and 17th century, in England and France, that the bourgeois, new masters of the economy, had the power to sever the feudal kings' heads, allowing them to expand their affairs more freely. When the bourgeoisie definitively conquered political power, it had for a long time already had the power to economically dominate society. The political revolution came at the end of the process of implantation of the economic base of a new system in the midst of the old society. In the case of past transitions, Marx's theory is easily verified and comprehensible: Before the new society affirms its definitive domination, it has already effectively affirmed that of its material base, economic in the first place; this has blossomed in the midst of the old society. But it's much more complex when it has to do with envisioning the transition from capitalism to communism. For the past, at least in the cases we have seen, the coexistence of the two modes of production is facilitated by the fact that they both have to do with systems based on the exploitation of one part of society by another. In the late Roman empire, the slave-masters and the masters of the coloni were often the same people. In feudalism, the relations between the seigniors (nobles, ecclesiasticals) and the bourgeoisie were often bloody. The wars of religion - which, behind the confrontation between the new Protestant "ethic" and Catholicism, set tendencies favorable to the new capitalist-market values in opposition to old feudal structures - were a murderous and dramatic instance. In spite of that, the coexistence between the new system and the old was facilitated by the fact that it concerned modes of exploitation, with the dominant classes always ready to get along on the backs of the exploited. In numerous cases, the aristocratic powers of the old regime would easily metamorphosize themselves into rich capitalists, not even losing any of their old [feudal] privileges. The political revolutions that marked the accession of the bourgeoisie to state power did not always and everywhere have to take the radical forms they did in England and France. But, in the case of the accession to communism, it has to do with passing from a system of exploitation to a new society without classes or exploitation. For Marxists, the class that bears the new society, the proletariat, is the class that produces most of economic wealth, but it produces them according to relations of production that subordinate it. This class cannot engender new social relations of production in accord with its essential interests, the elimination of all exploitation, without destroying the political framework that reduces it to impotence. Contrary to revolutionary classes of the past, its political revolution does not come at the end of a process of economic implantation, but must, on the contrary, constitute the initial act permitting the transformation of the material conditions of production. When Marx spoke of the material conditions that have to mature under capitalism to permit the proletariat to introduce communist relations, it's not about the germs of these relations but fundamentally about a sufficient degree of development and deployment of the productive forces under capitalist relations of production. That is, or has generally been, up to the present, the Marxist view of the question. On that level, it's also what JC reproduces in his text, at least when he writes: "I think that what characterizes the proletariat in comparison to the insurgent classes of pre-capitalist periods, is precisely its extreme weakness, the fact that it cannot support itself in the midst of capitalist society (contrary to the bourgeoisie under feudalism) by its own economic forces." I myself have always defended this position in the past. However, the new technological reality and the appearance of the world of free software, which was driven by it, weaken, in my opinion, this point of view. It is certain that the idea that germs of new relations of production of a non-market type, containing communist elements, could arise and "eternalize themselves," to use JC's term, in the midst of capitalism, contradicts a part, an aspect, of Marxist theory. "Germs"? But, before going further, it is indispensable to explain what one means by "relations of production" and by "germs" of relations of production. Because one could object that the relations that link the creators of free software to one another and then them to the users - who participate or not in its creation - cannot be considered true social relations of production, that is to say, relations that could be generalized to the whole of productive social activity, as was the case for feudalism or capitalism in the past. The material capacity of being freely reproduced is possible only for goods that are digitizable, transformable into a line of numbers and characters. We have seen already how that is the case for a number of means of production, like software to run machines, or consumption goods, like films, games or music. But, for the moment, we don't know how to digitize alimentary goods, nor raw materials, for example. How can such relations, which touch only a very narrow part of society and materially concern only a very specific category of goods in means of production and consumption, be considered social relations, or even germs of social relations? The creators of free software cannot nourish themselves with software, nor turn them into products for sale, because by definition it is free. How to socialize relations that don't nourish their people? If one looks at past history, though, in particular the birth of capitalist relations during feudalism, or if one attempts to project history into the future, and, more specifically, the place that digitizable goods could be called to take in the process of social production, two conclusions impose themselves, which permit a glimpse of how relations introduced by free software could become socially dominant relations of production. Venetian merchants, who had made their fortunes in the midst of feudalism by selling arms or luxury goods from Asia to European feudal seigniors, did not constitute the heart of social production. Even if they brought to the narrowness of feudal life - centered around the fief and its village church - an opening to world commerce (the courtesans of the European courts could wear robes made of Oriental products), the relations among the merchants and between them and the rest of the feudal world remained marginal, and would appear to be purely subsidiary. The production of essential, indispensable goods for the subsistence of men (agricultural goods and artisan ones, principally), was performed under feudal relations. This marginal, secondary aspect of capitalist relations in the midst of feudal society was so self-evident that even in the 18th century, the first bourgeois economists, the French Physiocrats, could, without laughing, pretend that merchants and manufacturers should not pay taxes because they do not create any true "net product": They do nothing but transport it or modify its form. What do we want to deduce? That from their birth, in the midst of the old society, the superior relations of production, were not obligatorily born with a complete form, capable of managing the totality of social production, nor even its most vital part. The fact that, today, free software and, more generally, digitizable goods concern no more than a part, again, marginal, of social production and consumption, does not constitute any argument showing the impossibility that the economic relations that they induce will not one day become the dominant social relations. That which has permitted capitalist relations to become dominant after centuries of existence is not only the ideological, military, and political victory of the bearers of the new capitalist values against the old feudal regime, even if they have played a determining role, but the material, concrete fact - which demonstrates daily and by methods more and more evident - that the new relations were the only ones that could permit the use of new productive forces engendered by the opening of commerce and the development of production techniques. "In the last instance," it is the economic imperative, the irreversible historical tendency to the development of labor productivity, that finishes by imposing its own law. That which today permits one to envision the possibility that relations of production founded on the principles of free software (production with a view toward satisfying the needs of the community, sharing, cooperation, the elimination of market exchange) could become socially dominant is the fact that these relations are the most able to employ the new techniques of information and communication, and that the recourse to these techniques, their place in the social process of production, can only grow, ineluctably. The world of free software does not constitute a microcosm of truly complete new social relations. Certain of its products begin to take a significant place in the social process of production: the informatics infrastructure of the Internet, recourse by the most important producers of computers and state institutions to Linux, etc. However, the producers of free software are not nourished by their own product. The "gratuitistic" logic is not generalized yet to the goods that assure the material subsistence of the producers. Those who work for free or are paid by an enterprise to create free software remain dependent on the revenues provided by the market world. In this sense, just like the capitalist relations in in their time, the relations induced by the logic of free software can be nothing but the "germs" of social relations. Insufficiency and Validity of Marxism Marx and Engels could not have foreseen such a reality. Even under the form of "germs", they would have dismissed all possibility of the appearance of new economic relations in the midst of capitalism without a revolutionary transformation. At most, to temper this statement, one could cite Marx's considerations in the International Workingmen's Association, ? propos the cooperatives that expressed the spirit of a great majority of the workers' movement regrouped within the First International. In a resolution adopted by the first congress in Geneva in 1866, edited by Marx, it is written: "(a) We recognize the cooperative movement as a transformative force of the present society, founded on the antagonism of classes. Its great merit is to show practically that the current system of subordination of labor to capital, despotic and pauperizing, could be supplanted by the republican system of the free and equal association of the producers." However, the same resolution, against all illusions, questioned that: "(b) But the cooperative system, limited to the form of minuscule results of the individual efforts of wage slaves, is impotent to transform capitalist society on its own. To convert social production into a large and harmonious system of cooperative labor, general changes are indispensable." 8Scroll downwards One knows that Marx did not entertain any illusions about the future of cooperatives as a passage to new social relations, as this resolution itself shows, or his Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen's Association, in which he states that "this cooperation will never be able to stop the monopolies that grow in geometrical progression." History gives good reason. Just like it condemns theories of the possibility of "socialism in one country," the mainstay of Stalinist lies. The reality of free software situates itself on another terrain, or in another dimension. It is not a geographically circumscribed reality. It cannot be reduced to a change in the relations in the midst of or within a given community, since its principal characteristic, the gratuiticity of its products, concerns the entirety of society. Contrary to cooperatives, which must sell their products on the market, and thus sooner or later submit to the imperatives of the market, free software is freely accessible to all. The original character of the relations free software induces are caused fundamentally by the unusual nature of the informatics and informational goods that permit the creation of means of production and consumption freely reproducible on a planetary level. It's about a new reality that neither Marx nor Engels, nor any of the Marxists of most of the 20th century, either recognized or foresaw. What's so surprising about the fact that the Marx's and Engels's vision, defined in an epoch in which mail circulated in large part by means of horses, must be modified, adapted to the age of planetary e-mail? Marx and Engels, who followed, with passion, the very least development of the sciences and techniques of their time in order to research all that could possibly contribute to facilitating the introduction of communist society, certainly could not have acted otherwise, and would, correctly, have been enthusiastic about the development of the Internet and free software. Contrary to the vision of an invariant Marxism that has already foreseen everything and contains no possible shortcoming, whatever the development of capitalism, Marx and Engels always stayed true to their critique of dogmatic religious thought: They knew that the role of theory is not to deny or to ignore facts that contradict it, but to enrich itself with these new elements, knowing to question itself, to better develop its explanatory and revolutionary power. If Marxism has not specifically foreseen the possibility of the appearance of "germs" of non-market relations in the midst of capitalism, and thus finds itself contradicted in a particular aspect, the phenomenon of free software constitutes by that same token a screaming verification of the more general and fundamental aspects of Marxist theory. As one has seen in the first part of this text, the principles that preside over the logic of free software contain important elements of communist theory. And as it has already been implied, the fact that these principles would be able to be rediscovered in the appearance of a new technology represents a confirmation of the Marxist idea that sees in communist principles, not an ideal invented by any big thinkers, but the product of the evolution of society itself. On a more general plane, at the level of the dynamic of history, the fact that the development of production technologies under capitalism has managed to engender an economic sector that intrinsically tends to escape the law of value and that develops itself in the very heart of the process of social production, gives a new material substance to the idea according to which capitalism could not be surpassed by anything but a social organization abolishing market exchange. New Questions Denying the existence of germs of new social relations in the midst of capitalism in the name of Marxism would be to betray the spirit of the same by upholding the letter. I, for one, believe that the Marxist theoretical framework constitutes the best tool to respond to the crucial questions that this new reality poses, and that research in this domain constitutes a priority, if not the priority, for the revolutionaries of our time. The questions are numerous and important. They can be grouped into two, interdependent, dimensions: those of the relations between free software and the capitalist economy, in which it emerged, on the one hand; and those of its relation to the class struggle, on the other. On the economic level: Up to what point could current cooperation between free software and the market economy go, without negative consequences at the level of the profitability and the realization of capital making themselves felt? Up to what point will go the antagonism between the growing desire of government to protect copyright for commercial software and the also-growing tendency toward "piratage" of digital goods? How long will it take before the share of the digitizable means necessary for the production of alimentary goods or raw materials is sufficiently important for the production cost of those goods to be almost completely eliminated by simple recourse to free software? On the level of class struggle, how long will it take for the reality of free software and its principles to be known by all the exploited? Would the defense of these principles end up being a direct object of confrontation with the state? What modifications in the daily class struggle would the knowledge of or participation in a practical model of a new type of social relations entail? The practical example of free software would have a power of conviction incomparably more important and effective than that, in their time, of the utopians of the 19th century, from Owens's New Harmony and Fourrier's phalansteries to the spirit of the cooperatives. 9Scroll downwards How, in these conditions, can "the period of transition" to communism be envisioned? It took centuries for the germs of capitalist relations, in the 11th and 12th centuries, to become the socially dominant mode of production. The history of our time has not unfolded with the same speed, and the historical situations are very different. Barring the self-destruction of humanity (unfortunately, possible) by some sort of skidding out of control of capitalist barbarity, the generalization of the principles of free software to the whole of productive social processes (elimination of market exchange, production as a function of the good of the community, cooperation, and sharing) could take much less time. That depends on the speed and the intensity of an objective material historical process, but also on the consciousness that people have of the existent conflict and the necessity of "fighting it out." For those, like JC, who want to be able to participate in the dynamic of this grasping for consciousness, the recognition of the new historical situation created by the development of "new technology" is an indispensable step. It is inevitable if we want to respond to the important and multiple questions that modern circumstances thrust upon us. 10Scroll downwards Original version written October 2002 1Scroll upwards "The GNU GPL and the American Way," 2001. 2Scroll upwards One can find this text of the GNU Manifesto at http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.htmlRemote link. 3Scroll upwards This reality explains in part the different forms of non-proprietary software that distinguish themselves by the degree of their gratuiticity, or liberty accorded to the user. In the strict sense, the term "free software" designates in reality only one specific type "protected" by the GNU GPL. One can find more details in the book JC cites, Logiciels libres (Free Software) (Edispher), by JP Smets-Solanes and Beno?t Frachon. 4Scroll upwards ?Free Software and the GPL Society,? interview with Stefan Merten, by Joanne Richardson, November 2001. http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/mertentext.htmlRemote link. 5Scroll upwards L'?thique hacker et l'esprit de l'?re de l'information; Exils Editeurs, 2001. 6Scroll upwards www.oekonux.orgLocal link 7Scroll upwards Interview with Stefan Merten, April 24, 2001. 8Scroll upwards Karl Marx, Oeuvres, volume I, p. 1469 (Editions La Pleiade, 1963). 9Scroll upwards In the course of our conference on June 15, in discussion on the theme of technological revolution, Mazagan responded to me: "I think that Raoul, in the current situation of class struggle, seeks a deus ex machina that could bring us comfort". I often wonder about that myself. But this question only concerns an argument about the subjectivity that would form a thought. It has nothing to say about the objective content of the thought. Does an analysis have to be contrary to the subjectivity of whomever defends it in order to be correct? Would, then, the idea of a communist society be false because it "brings comfort" to those who live under capitalism? It is true that, for those who claimed to see the premises of a world communist revolution in the extraordinary development of proletarian class struggle in the course of the period from the end of the 1960s to the beginning of the 1980s, the profound and general recoil of this combativity over the course of the following two decades has constituted an often devastating deception. But instead of lamenting over our situation, which would need of "comfort," it is much more useful to attempt to respond to the question of knowing why, in this struggle which, in certain cases, mobilized a near-totality of the proletariat of certain countries (France 1968, Poland 1980), often attaining a degree of confrontation with the state of a violence unknown for decades, the combatants never joined a movement giving itself, explicitly, the goal of the construction of a post-capitalist, communist society. Historical realities never have a single cause. But among the reasons that explain this "self-limitation" of the class movement must certainly be the difficulty of collectively perceiving what a post-capitalist society could be. The "revolutionary project," as it was discussed at the instigation of the more radical elements, was nebulous, opaque, and sometimes terrifying. The Soviet model, with all its variants, from the Chinese "Cultural Revolution" to the guerrilla centers of Latin America, by way of the sinister Albania, pronounced as a model by some Maoists, haunted all minds and paralyzed many. Even if these struggles marked a historical rupture vis-?-vis the enormous influence of the Stalinist currents on the wage workers in a number of countries, this distance was only the beginning. Inevitably, all discussion of the revolutionary project began with debates on the qualities, or not, of "communist" countries or those "on the way to communism," etc. And when one attempted to go beyond them, the impression that one was spouting pious and abstract dreams weighed on one as a source of doubt. It would be a mistake to underestimate the lack, the crying insufficiency of the revolutionary project to explain the weakness of past proletarian struggles. The new technologies and the logic of free software that they have engendered constitute determinant new elements on which to found this project much more concretely. 10Scroll upwards The question of knowing whether the material conditions of communism existed or not before the current technological revolution is an important question for the analysis of historical dynamics of the past. But whatever one's response to this question, it is a priority to confirm that contemporary technological transformations carry material conditions that facilitate, in a qualitatively new manner, the construction of a communist society. NavigationLocal link | SitemapLocal link | HomeLocal link http://www.oekonux.org/ texts/marketrelations.htmlRemote link Contact: Projekt-TeamMail link, Last Changed: 17.02.03 -- Jeebesh Bagchi Sarai/CSDS 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Ph: 91 11 23960040 From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Wed Jan 7 13:30:18 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:00:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] many davids and one goliath Message-ID: <20040107080018.9354.qmail@web13603.mail.yahoo.com> > Five Giants in Technology Unite to Deter File Sharing > The New York Times > January 5, 2004 > By JOHN MARKOFF > http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/business/05share.html?ex=1074347228&ei=1&en=0376fc19e14b35b7 > > SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 4 - The technology and entertainment industries > have long been at odds over the best way to secure intellectual > property rights as digital technology advances. > > Now, five of what industry executives say are the world's most > powerful computer, cellphone and electronics companies are planning a > new system for protecting digital music, video and software from > illicit file sharing that they hope will at least narrow that gap. > > A global consortium of technology companies is laying the groundwork > for a campaign to convince Hollywood and the recording industry that > it has finally found an acceptable way not just to limit the copying > of music CD's and movie DVD's, but to protect digital content in the > fast-growing market for hand-held devices capable of playing music, > video clips and computer games while wirelessly connected > to the Internet. > > As these groups prepare to converge on Las Vegas this week for the > annual Consumer Electronics Show - by far the biggest trade show for > the makers of digital devices and the shapers of what goes into them - > the fight over what has come to be known as "digital rights > management'' is expected to move to the back burner, at least briefly. > > That way everyone can celebrate the long-awaited recovery > for the consumer electronics and entertainment businesses that > manifested itself in their best holiday buying season since the late > 1990's. But the issue will not go away. The consortium - known as > Project Hudson and made up of Intel, Nokia, Samsung, Toshiba and > Matshushita - plans to announce its new approach in early February to > precede the Grammy music awards and the movie industry's Academy > Awards ceremony, executives say. Unlike the system used to protect > DVD content, an Internet-based wireless protection plan > could permit users of hand-held devices to share movie or > music files on a limited basis or permit files to be shared > for promotional purposes. Users could also hear a song > before deciding whether to buy it. > > For the entertainment industry, the Internet has often been viewed > primarily as a threat because it makes it possible to transmit copies > of just about any original work that can be converted to digital code > to just about anyone in the world. But it is increasingly being viewed > more positively by some entertainment strategists, who recognize that > the Internet's nature as an "always on" medium makes it > possible to refine new "digital leashes" to help ensure > that copy protection plans are not subverted. > > Beyond trying to convince Hollywood and the recording industry that > new technology can prevent illegal sharing of digital content without > unduly restricting use, the consortium's approach represents an effort > to control the standards and garner the rewards from developing a > successful system. Project Hudson pits the new group > against other copy protection systems being advanced by > Sony and Royal Philips Electronics, Apple Computer, > RealNetworks and others. But the most important target is > probably Microsoft. > > "They would say they are anti-Microsoft forces," a > recording industry executive close to the companies said. "The > alternative is to sign up with Redmond." > > Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., is promoting its own plan, known > as the Windows Media Rights Manager. But it has been held back, in > part, by a legal challenge over infringing on software patents > belonging to a smaller American company, Intertrust, which was > acquired in late 2002 by Sony and Philips. > > Fears in Hollywood and the recording industry over Microsoft's > potential control had also stalled the software maker's thrust into > the world of digital media. But those fears have lessened lately, in > part because of the emergence of competing technologies from Apple, > RealNetworks, Roxio and others. Digital content providers > are increasingly finding ways to use some of Microsoft's > technology without giving up control of their content. > > "There had been a general fear that Microsoft would own the entire > security stack," said William Randolph Hearst III, a partner at > Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the prominent Silicon Valley venture > capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif. But companies are starting to tell > Microsoft that they are willing to use only part of its software > protection technologies, he said. > > Another new consortium of companies is engaged in an effort to create > a set of standards that will make it possible to universally > distribute digital content across different platforms and > technologies. That group, known as the Content Reference Forum and > backed by Microsoft, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Universal Music > Group, VeriSign and others, announced its effort last month. > > The group cites an example of a personal computer user who wishes to > share a digital video file with a friend. Instead of sending the file > directly, the file owner would first send a "content reference," a > digital pointer that permits the file to be downloaded tailored to the > receiver's own country as well as the specific computer or other > playback device. If the file needed to be purchased, the system > would perform the commercial transaction before sending the > file. > > The interest in new copy protection approaches has also > been spurred by Apple's successful iTunes music store, > which has shown that consumers are willing to put up with digital copy > protection plans that do not seriously interfere with their ability to > enjoy entertainment products easily when and wherever they want and, > within limits, share what they buy. > > "If you put up the right kind of speed bump people will generally > honor it," said Mike Godwin, a lawyer who represents Public Knowledge, > a group in Washington that advocates giving consumers greater weight > in the struggle with business interests over intellectual property > rights. > > Adding to the interest in developing new copy protection approaches > was Sony's announcement last May that it expects to introduce a new > wireless hand-held device in time for the 2004 holiday buying season. > > Sony, with its Walkman line, was once the leading force in the field > of portable electronics, but it has lost a lot of ground by not > keeping up with innovations from others, particularly Apple's > increasingly popular iPod digital music player. > > To help itself get back in the game, Sony, which controls > its own digital content and technology standards, is also expected to > introduce a smaller audio CD standard. > > Other consumer electronics companies consider the potential popularity > of the format a threat, said Richard Doherty, an industry consultant > who is president of Envisioneering of Seaford, N.Y. > > After years of separate development of various hand-held digital > devices, industry executives expect music and video players, > cellphones, personal digital assistants and hand-held video game > players to increasingly converge on common portable platforms. > Moreover, such devices will have data networking capabilities that > rival personal computers connected to the Internet via high-speed > cable modems and DSL phone lines. > > Sony has a great deal riding on its new hand-held player. > Ken Kutaragi, the Sony executive who created the company's highly > successful PlayStation business, has referred to it as a "Walkman for > the 21st century.'' > > He said the Japanese electronics company was going to great lengths to > create strong data protection plans for what it is now calling the PSP > after facing extensive software piracy of videogame titles designed > for its first generation PlayStation. > > Balancing the proliferation of competing digital > information protection plans is a growing realization that the > industry needs common standards. > > That failure is hampering the growth of digital > technologies, said Leonardo Chiariglione, an Italian electrical > engineer who founded the group that developed the original MP3 digital > audio compression standard widely used to play music on computers and > share it across networks. > > "Content should be as transparent as it is today with MP3," Mr. > Chiariglione said. "It should be movable anywhere and still be > protected. If we stay with digital islands people have a legitimate > excuse to piracy.'' > > -- > Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ > > Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA > Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916 > mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au http://www.xamax.com.au/ > > Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program, University of Hong Kong > Visiting Professor in the Baker Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre, > U.N.S.W Visiting Fellow in Computer Science, Australian National > University _______________________________________________ > Link mailing list > Link at mailman.anu.edu.au > http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From s.gupta at in.pwc.com Wed Jan 7 16:38:37 2004 From: s.gupta at in.pwc.com (s.gupta at in.pwc.com) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 16:38:37 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Open Law Archive... Message-ID: This is my first post on the list though I have been watching this discussion with a great deal of interest. An open access legal information archive is indeed required. The argument that the state should provide this is definitely justified but perhaps not very realistic at the moment. The issue of how such a project is to be initiated and more importantly, sustained needs to be discussed at greater length. In this regard, Karim's email is a good starting point. Though its good to see that Lawrence and Sunil are bringing together their organizational and technical capabilities towards creating a database of research projects done by NLS students, this can only be a pilot project and a comprehensive open access legal archive/ database would require far more resources as well as a firm commitment to keeping it freely available. As a recent alumnus of NLS, I can assure you that the research projects are well researched as NLS has a decent law library as well access to databases such as Manupatra and Westlaw. The challenge does not lie in archiving such projects, it lies in vetting them and perhaps in the tougher task of perhaps classifying and indexing the resources. The going will be tough and I, for one, will be more than happy to help any such open access project. Regards, Satyajit _________________________________________________________________ The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 8 10:20:28 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 20:50:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Invitation from LAW STUDENTS ASSOCIATION OF INDIA for ALF-Sarai on IP Laws Message-ID: <20040108045028.25297.qmail@web13605.mail.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Rahul Ajatshatru" Subject: Invitation from LAW STUDENTS ASSOCIATION OF INDIA for ALF-Sarai on IP Laws Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 21:59:54 +0530 Size: 10542 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040107/9f64525c/attachment.mht From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 8 10:25:38 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 20:55:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Open Law Archive Message-ID: <20040108045538.30721.qmail@web13609.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all two quick responses to Satyajit and rahul's emails: On the open law archive, there has been decent progress and we have been receving some papers from students for the open law archive, which we have tentatively called lex libre. We hope in the next few months to have a complete protot type working which can then be opened to all law students. We are also working on a structure for the browsing portion and the moment this is ready, we wil make it avail;able on the list for commenst and suggestions ( dev and tarunabh, any progress on this?) Lawrence __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From monica at sarai.net Fri Jan 9 14:35:17 2004 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 14:35:17 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] public domain campaign Message-ID: Have any of you seen the campaign for the public domain that is available when you go to www.dict.org? http://www.petitiononline.com/eldred/petition.html I wonder what you all think of its nature and politics. best M -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From patrice at xs4all.nl Fri Jan 9 18:20:06 2004 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 13:50:06 +0100 Subject: [Commons-Law] public domain campaign In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040109125006.GB31529@xs4all.nl> Kits (= instant in Afrikaans) reaction: I think that within the socio-political dispensation as obtains in the US, this is a very reasonable, even unimpeachable proposal. Its non acceptance furthers the impression that the current US administration and majority is deeply inimical to anything but the most reactionnary and retrograde ideological interests. cheers, patricio y los Dinosaures! (in Barcelona) From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Jan 12 22:45:57 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 22:45:57 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] LibreSociety.org Manifesto Message-ID: <200401122245.57915.jeebesh@sarai.net> _From Nettime___________________________________ LibreSociety.org Manifesto David Berry & Giles Moss A constellation of interests is now seeking to increase their ownership and control of creativity. They tell us that they require new laws and rights that allow them to control concepts and ideas and protect them from exploitation. They say that this will enrich our lives, create new products and safeguard the possibility of future prosperity. But this is an absolute disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, free and open conversation between ideas from the past and the present. — In response, we wish to defend the idea of a creative sphere of concepts and ideas that are free from ownership. 1. Profit has a new object of affection. Indeed, profiteers now shamelessly proclaim to be the true friend of creativity and the creative. Everywhere, they declare, “We support and protect concepts and ideas. Creativity is our business and it is safe in our hands. We are the true friends of creativity!” 2. Not content with declarations of friendship, the profiteers are eager to put into practice their fondness for creativity as well. “Actions speak louder than words” in capitalist culture. To display their affection, profiteers use legal mechanisms, namely intellectual property law, to watch over concepts and ideas and to protect them from those who seek to misuse them. While we are dead to the world at night, they are busily stockpiling intellectual property at an astonishing rate. More and more, the creative sphere is being brought under their exclusive control. 3. The fact that the profiteers are now so protective of creativity, and jealously seeking to control concepts and ideas, ought to rouse suspicion. While they may claim to be the true friends of creativity, we know that friendship is not the same as dependency. It is very different to say, “I’m your true friend because I need you”, than to say, “I need you because I’m your true friend”. But how are we to settle this issue? How do we distinguish the true friend from the false one? In any relationship between friends we should ask, “Are both partners mutually benefiting?” 4. The profiteers clearly benefit from their new friendship with the creative, when measured by their insatiable thirst for profit. Unlike physical objects, concepts and ideas can be shared, copied and reused without diminishment. However many people use and interpret a particular concept, the original creators’ use of that concept is not surrendered or reduced. But through the use of intellectual property law – in the form of copyright, patents and trademarks – concepts and ideas can be transformed into commodities that are controlled and owned. An artificial scarcity of creativity can then be established. Much money is to be made when creative flows of knowledge and ideas become scarce products to be traded in the market place. And, increasingly, intellectual property law is providing profiteers with vast accumulations of wealth. Indeed, immaterial labour (based on information, knowledge and communication) has largely come to replace industrial factory production as the main guarantor of wealth in the new post-industrial age of technological capitalism. And the social relations codified in intellectual property law, are a core element in this wider structural transformation of the productive processes. 5. For many of us, the thought of intellectual property law still evokes romantic apparitions of a solitary artist or writer protecting their creative endeavours. So it is unsurprising that we tend to view intellectual property law as something that defends the rights and interests of the creative. Perhaps, in some removed and distant time, there was a modest respectability in such a notion. But this romantic vision is now ill at ease with the emerging abuse of intellectual works. Creators have become employees and each concept and idea they produce is appropriated and owned by the employer. The profiteers are using intellectual property law to amass the creative output of their employees and others. What is more, they continually lobby to extend the control of intellectual property law for longer and longer periods. 6. The creative multitude is becoming legally excluded from using and reinterpreting the concepts and ideas that they produce. In addition, this legal exclusion is now being reinforced via technological means. Profiteers’ use technology to enforce copyright and patent law through the technical code that runs information and communication networks and machines. Using digital rights management software, creative works are locked, preventing any copying, modification and reuse. In the current era of technological capitalism, public pathways for the free flow of concepts and ideas and the movement of the creative are being eradicated — the freedom to use and re-interpret creative work is being restricted through legally based but technologically enforced enclosures. 7. This development is an absolute disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing conversation and confrontation between concepts and ideas from the past and present. It is shameful that the creative multitude is being excluded from using concepts and ideas. Creativity is never solely the product of a single creator or individuated genius. As the fusion point of singularities, creativity cannot subsist in a social nothingness. It always owes debts to the inspiration and previous work of others, whether they are thinkers, artists, scientists, teachers, paramours or friends. Concepts and ideas depend upon their social life, and it could not be otherwise. 8. An analogy can be drawn with everyday language — that is, the system of signs, symbols, gestures and meanings used in communicative understanding. Spoken language is shared between us. It is necessarily non-owned and free. But imagine a devastating situation where this was no longer the case. George Orwell’s 1984 dystopia — and the violence done to free-thinking through ‘newspeak’ — helps to illustrate this. In a similar way, the control and ownership of concepts and ideas is an emerging threat to creative imagination and thought, and thus also a grave danger to what we affectionately call our freedom and self-expression. 9. The creative multitude may decide either to conform or rebel. In conforming they become creatively inert, unable to create new synergies and ideas, mere consumers of the standardised commodities that increasingly saturate cultural life. In rebelling, they continue to use concepts and ideas in spite of intellectual property law. But they are now labelled “pirates”, “property thieves” and even “terrorists”, who are answerable as criminals to the courts of global state power. In other words, profiteers declare a permanent state of exception or emergency, which is then used to justify the coercive use of state power and repression against a now criminalised culture of creativity. As we will soon discuss, a growing number of the creative are moving beyond rebellion, through an active resistance to the present and the creation of an alternative creative sphere for flows of concepts and ideas. 10. There will be immediate objections to all we have said. The profiteers will turn proselytizers and say, “If there is no private ownership of creativity there will be no incentive to produce!” The idea that the ownership of knowledge and ideas promotes creativity is a shameful one, however plausible it may seem from the myopic perspective of the profiteers. To say that creativity will thrive when the freedom to use concepts and ideas is denied is clearly upside-down. After giggling a little at this risible absurdity, we should now turn this thinking the right way up. 11. According to this “incentive” claim, there cannot have been any creativity (i.e., art, music, literature, design and technology) before the profiteer’s owned and controlled our concepts and ideas. This sounds like pure fantasy. Historians frequently profess that creativity was alive and well in the Renaissance period, despite this being a time before the advent of capitalist intellectual property. But, even so, we might concede that history weaves enough of a fiction to raise some doubt about the previous incarnations of creativity and the creative. The profiteer’s “incentive” claim, however, must also imply that there cannot be any creativity currently operating outside of the intellectual property regime. Fortunately, in this case, we are our own historical actors and witnesses. We can begin to know what we have always already known — creativity is not reducible to the exploitation of intellectual property. 12. A new global movement of networked groups that operate across a variety of different creative media — e.g., music, art, design and software — is now emerging. These groups produce a panoply of concepts, ideas and art that exist outside of the current intellectual property regime. The creative works of the Free/Libre and Open Source communities, for instance, can all be examined, challenged, modified and improved. Here, knowledge and ideas are shared, contested and reinterpreted among the creative as friends. Like the symbols and signs of language, their concepts and ideas are public and non-owned. Against the machinations of profit, these groups are in the process of constituting a real alternative. Of constructing a model of creative life that reflects the force and desire of the creative multitude and which restores their immanent relation to the works they collectively produce. 13. Through the principles of attribution and share-alike, previous works and ideas are given due recognition in these communities. This means that although a work may be copied, modified and synthesised into new works, previous creative work is valued and recognised for its contribution to creativity as a whole. Attribution and share-alike are constitutive principle of the Free/Libre and Open Source movements, and chromosomes of the new mode of creative life that their practical experimentations intimate. 14. These movements adopt an ingenious viral device, implemented through public licenses, known as copyleft. This ensures that concepts and ideas are non-owned, while also guaranteeing that future synergies based on these concepts and ideas are equally open for others to use. In this way, copyright (all rights reserved) is stood back on its feet by copyleft (all rights reversed). It now stands the right way up for creativity and can once again look it in the eyes. 15. Just as the functioning and violence of the intellectual property regime is seeking to intensify, it is now confronted by a real counter-power in the form of these groups. Indeed, the vision and practice of these movements is everywhere defiantly growing in strength. These groups offer a glimpse in formation of a creative sphere for flows of concepts and ideas that are shared freely among friends. These groups are acting in a way that is ‘counter to our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a possible time to come’ (Nietzsche 1983:60) — Creativity is creating resistance to the present. 16. The creative multitude should everywhere embrace and defend these groups and the untimely model of creative life that they intimate. For it is only the creative multitude, as absolute democratic power, who can determine whether this possible metamorphosis of our times becomes real. Short References Texts: Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M. (1976) The Dialectic of Enlightenment Benjamin, W. (1935) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Deleuze, G, & Gautarri, F. (1999) What is Philosophy? Foucault, M. (1990) The History of Sexuality, Vols 1, 2 & 3 Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2000) Empire Feenberg, A (1991) Critical Theory of Technology Martin, B. (2003) Against Intellectual Property (http://danny.oz.au/free-software/advocacy/against_IP.html) Marx, K. (1974) The German Ideology Nietzsche, F. (1983) Untimely Mediations Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom Schmidt, C. (1995) The Concept of the Political Stallman, R (2002) Free Software, Free Society -- From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Jan 12 23:02:38 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 23:02:38 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] post anti-censorship campaign... Message-ID: <200401122302.38594.jeebesh@sarai.net> This is an interesting development after the anti-censorship campaign launched by documentary filmmakers all over india. A systematic rejection of films from the festival...the ways of the state.....best j ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: MIFF SELECTIONS Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 12:48:46 +0530 From: MIFF CAMPAIGN To: MIFF CAMPAIGN CAMPAIGN AGAINST CENSORSHIP 11/01/04 Dear Friends, Please find below some of the responses received on the selection process at MIFF and a letter addressed to the Minister on behalf of the Campaign. Kindly send in your response to the draft for the Minister at the earliest. This particular edition of MIFF is taking place under special circumstances with the shadow of censorship looming large over the festival. Under normal circumstances none of us bothers about rejections at film festivals but when the selection committee members themselves are unaware of the final list then doubts and misgivings about the selection process will surface. It is therefore the responsibility of MIFF to be transparent and convincing about its selection procedure. After several meetings in Delhi we have a tentative programme ready for the seminar on censorship being organised during MIIF at Mumbai. We will be posting the details regarding the seminar shortly. In Solidarity, Amar, Pankaj, Rahul, Saba, Sameera, Sanjay Response to the selection process : Arun Khopkar , Mumbai : My film Narayan Gangaram Surve, 35 mm, colour, Academy Aperture, Mono sound, 45 min, produced by Khayal Trust was rejected by MIFF 2004. The film won the Golden Lotus for the Best Non-feature film in the 50th National Awards this year. Anjali Monterio & Jayshankar , Mumbai : Our film Naata too has been rejected by MIFF. Practically everyone we know has had their films rejected. We need to think of innovative ways to fight this proto-censorship. Leena Manimekalai,Chennai : I would like to add that my film "Parai" which is on Dalits in India ( suffered 22 cuts in Censor) has been rejected in MIFF selections. I doubt whether they have taken censor clause implicitly. Also I would like to inform that "Urumatram" which won National award for Best Short film has also been rejected by MIFF. The director Mr.sivakumar of the film had won Siver Conch in the Last MIFF Totally confused with the selections Amar Kanwar, Delhi :just to let you know that A Night of Prophecy was rejected by MIFF , got the letter today. Surabhi Sharma, Bangalore : I guess the exclusions from the MIFF selection does not come as huge surprise. We have been anticipating this - but the question is what should be done now? An alternative festival alongside MIFF would make sense. But more importantly, an issue that has been coming up needs to be addressed. We are a large community of documentary and short film makers - i think its time we begin working on our own film festival. The festival needs to be regular, possibly hosted in different cities. but its only through an effort like this- and ofcourse the distribution network that is being discussed on this mailing list - that we can de-legitimise festivals like MIFF etc. Why should we get our vaildation from the state- when most of our films are critical of it? I am sure our own festival might not be at such a grand scale in terms of award moneys, infrastucture etc - but i anticipate that this would be a non-issue for all. A fantastic momentum has been built up by the MIFF campaign - thanks to the delhi gang for sustaining it and raising other impostant issues alongside. Along with the seminar on censorship, can we pencil in time to begin discussing a film festival and the distribution network? And if all of this means that we form ourselves into a loose body/association- so be it! Most of us revel in being independent but i think its urgently required that we begin formulating ideas as a collective. And i think we need to go beyond the informal community that we are at the moment through this campaign. Vani Subramanian ,Delhi : This Miff Campaign is almost becoming a Miff Rejectees Club... add me and my film, New Improved Delhi - a short on the slum demolition programmes in Delhi - to the list... the film was screened at the Yamagata festival, north south media encounters, Geneva, Seoul Independent Documentary Festival. if we also know whose/what work is in, we may be able to see if there is a pattern... Rahul Roy, Delhi : My film The City Beautiful, has been rejected by MIFF. The film has been to the Leipzig festival and is slated to travel to several other festivals. It recently won an award at the Jeevika National Livelihood Documentary Aditya Seth ,Mumbai: My film THE BUZZ OF BETRAYAL, an animated Public Service Announcement on the sexual abuse of children was rejected by MIFF. It was screened at Platforma_03, Athens, Greece.Festival. Saba Dewan, Delhi : My film Sita's Family has been rejected. The film has been shown at the Film South Asia, Zanzibar International Film Festival, The Other World Film Festival.My film Sita's Family has been rejected. The film has been shown at the Film South Asia, Zanzibar International Film Festival, The Other World Film Festival. Letter from Arun Khopkar : Dear Amar, I am absolutely shocked at the report in the TOI about the rejection of your film by the MIFF selection committee. It is one of the most beautiful and significant videos to have come out of India that I have seen in the last five years. Although I have not seen the other films, one knows the quality and commitment of film/videomakers like Vasudha Joshi, Ramani, Rakesh Sharma and Sanjay Kak. I can understand any one of these films not getting the award as I have no knowledge of the other entries, but that they do not even merit selection is difficult to believe. As you must have read from Rajiv Malhotra's mail that my Narayan Gangaram Surve which was selected as the Best Non-feature film in the National Awards in the 50th National Festival has also been rejected in the International Competition section. My only consolation is that I have fallen in good company! As I read the report I came to know the selection procedure which seems equally arbitrary. I am glad to know about the details of the campaign from mail forwarded to me by Gayatri Chatterjee. Could you please keep me posted on the developments? I had received a few of your earlier communications and then I had some serious problems with my computer. I lost touch with all mails for some time. Wishing you and others who are with you in the campaign against censorship a Great 2004, Warmly, Arun Khopkar LETTER BY RV RAMANI (MEMBER, ORGANISING COMMITEE, MIFF) TO THE DIRECTOR OF MIFF : Dear Mr. Babu Ramaswamy, Thanks for your invitation to the MIFF Organzing Committee meeting, on the 6th Jan 04. As I had explained to you earlier over the phone, I am in Delhi for presenting my film and hence am not in a position to attend the meeting. I wish you all a good session. I would like to bring to your notice, that I met a few filmmaker friends, from Mumbai and from Delhi, who feel very disturbed about the fact that their film are not selected, (including mine), in spite of getting tremendous recognition and appreciation elsewhere. Some of the selection committee members who are known to me, have informed that they were not themselves aware of what films are selected for the festival. We were also informed, that the selection committee members were asked to just grade the films and the final selection was made by someone else from FD. This seems tobe a drastic departure from the earlier followed procedures. This gives rise to serious doubts about the selection procedure, amongst the minds of the filmmakers, especially in the back drop of censorship fiasco that happened recently. I would like you take up this observation in tomorrow's meeting. I also would like you to clarify for me about the selection procedures, that was followed in this MIFF. I would like to know, the names of all the selection committee members and why the final selection of films was not made by the selection committee and that it was left to someone in the FD. As an International Film Festival, it is important that there is a total transparency in this area, and this alone would bring the trust of the filmmakers, who are the equal partners in this festival. I eagerly look forward to your reply and would appreciate if this letter is taken up for discussions at the meeting. Thanking you, Sincerely yours, RV Ramani DRAFT OF CAMPAIGN'S LETTER TO THE I&B MINISTER : Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad Ministry Of Information & Broadcasting Government of India New Delhi January , 2004 Dear Shri Prasad, We would like to draw your attention to the inexplicable (and retrogressive) changes introduced in the selection process for films in the forthcoming MIFF. Our request to the Festival Director for a clarification (made on 29/12/03) has not received a response to date. The Joint Secretary (films) has sent us a reply (attached to this letter) asserting that no change has been made in the selection process this year. However our conversations with the selection committee members belies this statement. This has been also pointed out in some of the newspaper reports that have started coming out on happenings at MIFF. Every festival has the right to select its own films, but the rationale or mechanism must be clear and transparent. While earlier editions of MIFF have also suffered from serious shortcomings and there has been no effort on the part of the Films Division at addressing them, it is the completely arbitrary nature of the new "process" that has shocked us. From our conversations with a few members of the selection committee it has become clear that they were only asked to give "marks" to the films, and the final selection was made without their presence, concurrence or approval. A dis-empowered "selection committee" cannot be used as a cover for the inefficiency, chaos and capriciousness of the selection process at MIFF. The Festival is increasingly becoming a focus for discussion and debate within the film making community because we have a stake in improving the festival and would like to contribute towards making it amongst the best internationally, which unfortunately it isn't at the moment. The signatories to the Campaign Against Censorship are committed to addressing this issue. Although this is not a complete or exhaustive list, here are some of the films that have been rejected this year: A Night Of Prophecy By Amar Kanwar - The Museum of Modern Art , New York ; The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art , Geneva ; Lofoten International Art Exhibition , Norway; Art Basel/Miami Exhibiton , USA ; Documenta 11 , International Art Exhibition ,Germany ; Breaking the Codes - Other India's - An exhibition of Indian Cinema - WhiteChapel Art Gallery London; Yamagata International Documentary Festival, Japan Kaya Pooche Maya se By Arvind Sinha - International Documntary Festival of Amsterdam; Sundance Film Festival, USA; International Film Festival of India Narayan Gangaram Surve By Arun Khopkar - Golden Lotus Award Naata By Anjali Monteiro & Jayshankar Prasad - Film South Asia, Kathmandu; Travelling Film South Asia;Flexiff; Sydney; World Social Forum Film Festival, Mumbai. New Improved Delhi by Vani Subramanian and Surajit Sarkar -Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, 2003, North South Media Encounters, Geneva, Seoul Independent Film Festival The City Beautiful By Rahul Roy - Leipzig International Film Festival, Munich International Docuemntary Festival, World Social Forum Festival, Jeevika National Livelihood Documentary Festival. Final Solution By Rakesh Sharma - Fribourg Intarnational FIlm Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Munich International Documentary Festival Nee Engey By RV Ramani - Yamagata International Documentary FIlm Festival, Trivandrum IV Festival. The last edition of MIFF organised a retrospective of RV Ramani's films Sita's Family By Saba Dewan - Film South Asia, Zanzibar International Film Festival, The Other World FIlm Festival. Words On Water By Sanjay Kak - Film South Asia, Locarno International Film Festival, Brazil International Festival of Environmental Film, Trivandrum IV Festival, Slovakia International Environmental Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Durban International Film Festival, World Social Forum Festival, Mumbai. Umarutram By Sivakumar - NationalShort film 2003 award for Best . Although this is not a complete or exhaustive list, we are citing them to pose a simple question: If these films were not good enough to be in the best 60-70 films made in India in the last two years, we are left wondering why they are being accepted at the top international festivals and even being awarded. We are at pains to understand the logic of selections at MIFF which chooses to leave out films that have received the golden lotus and other awards from the President of India. The transparency we seek is necessary if MIFF is to remain the pre-eminent documentary film festival in the country, and justify the vast resources expended on it. To repeat the queries addressed to the festival: What are the criteria for choosing the selection committee? How many of them have been repeatedly on selection committees of Miff ? What is the quorum of attendance? And what discussion precedes the selection? Who draws up the final list - the selection committee or the festival authorities ? These are some of the issues that trouble us and we seek your involvement in getting answers to them. At the last instance, we had to issue an international boycott call for the clause of the CBFC certification to be withdrawn and we hope that the current misgivings about MIFF will be addressed before the issue escalates. On behalf Of the Campaign Against Censorship at MIFF, Yours Sincerely, CAMPAIGN AGAINST CENSORSHIP 11/01/04 Dear Friends, Please find below some of the responses received on the selection process at MIFF and a letter addressed to the Minister on behalf of the Campaign. Kindly send in your response to the draft for the Minister at the earliest. This particular edition of MIFF is taking place under special circumstances with the shadow of censorship looming large over the festival. Under normal circumstances none of us bothers about rejections at film festivals but when the selection committee members themselves are unaware of the final list then doubts and misgivings about the selection process will surface. It is therefore the responsibility of MIFF to be transparent and convincing about its selection procedure. After several meetings in Delhi we have a tentative programme ready for the seminar on censorship being organised during MIIF at Mumbai. We will be posting the details regarding the seminar shortly. In Solidarity, Amar, Pankaj, Rahul, Saba, Sameera, Sanjay Response to the selection process : Arun Khopkar , Mumbai : My film Narayan Gangaram Surve, 35 mm, colour, Academy Aperture, Mono sound, 45 min, produced by Khayal Trust was rejected by MIFF 2004. The film won the Golden Lotus for the Best Non-feature film in the 50th National Awards this year. Anjali Monterio & Jayshankar , Mumbai : Our film Naata too has been rejected by MIFF. Practically everyone we know has had their films rejected. We need to think of innovative ways to fight this proto-censorship. Leena Manimekalai,Chennai : I would like to add that my film "Parai" which is on Dalits in India ( suffered 22 cuts in Censor) has been rejected in MIFF selections. I doubt whether they have taken censor clause implicitly. Also I would like to inform that "Urumatram" which won National award for Best Short film has also been rejected by MIFF. The director Mr.sivakumar of the film had won Siver Conch in the Last MIFF Totally confused with the selections Amar Kanwar, Delhi :just to let you know that A Night of Prophecy was rejected by MIFF , got the letter today. Surabhi Sharma, Bangalore : I guess the exclusions from the MIFF selection does not come as huge surprise. We have been anticipating this - but the question is what should be done now? An alternative festival alongside MIFF would make sense. But more importantly, an issue that has been coming up needs to be addressed. We are a large community of documentary and short film makers - i think its time we begin working on our own film festival. The festival needs to be regular, possibly hosted in different cities. but its only through an effort like this- and ofcourse the distribution network that is being discussed on this mailing list - that we can de-legitimise festivals like MIFF etc. Why should we get our vaildation from the state- when most of our films are critical of it? I am sure our own festival might not be at such a grand scale in terms of award moneys, infrastucture etc - but i anticipate that this would be a non-issue for all. A fantastic momentum has been built up by the MIFF campaign - thanks to the delhi gang for sustaining it and raising other impostant issues alongside. Along with the seminar on censorship, can we pencil in time to begin discussing a film festival and the distribution network? And if all of this means that we form ourselves into a loose body/association- so be it! Most of us revel in being independent but i think its urgently required that we begin formulating ideas as a collective. And i think we need to go beyond the informal community that we are at the moment through this campaign. Vani Subramanian ,Delhi : This Miff Campaign is almost becoming a Miff Rejectees Club... add me and my film, New Improved Delhi - a short on the slum demolition programmes in Delhi - to the list... the film was screened at the Yamagata festival, north south media encounters, Geneva, Seoul Independent Documentary Festival. if we also know whose/what work is in, we may be able to see if there is a pattern... Rahul Roy, Delhi : My film The City Beautiful, has been rejected by MIFF. The film has been to the Leipzig festival and is slated to travel to several other festivals. It recently won an award at the Jeevika National Livelihood Documentary Aditya Seth ,Mumbai: My film THE BUZZ OF BETRAYAL, an animated Public Service Announcement on the sexual abuse of children was rejected by MIFF. It was screened at Platforma_03, Athens, Greece.Festival. Saba Dewan, Delhi : My film Sita's Family has been rejected. The film has been shown at the Film South Asia, Zanzibar International Film Festival, The Other World Film Festival.My film Sita's Family has been rejected. The film has been shown at the Film South Asia, Zanzibar International Film Festival, The Other World Film Festival. Letter from Arun Khopkar : Dear Amar, I am absolutely shocked at the report in the TOI about the rejection of your film by the MIFF selection committee. It is one of the most beautiful and significant videos to have come out of India that I have seen in the last five years. Although I have not seen the other films, one knows the quality and commitment of film/videomakers like Vasudha Joshi, Ramani, Rakesh Sharma and Sanjay Kak. I can understand any one of these films not getting the award as I have no knowledge of the other entries, but that they do not even merit selection is difficult to believe. As you must have read from Rajiv Malhotra's mail that my Narayan Gangaram Surve which was selected as the Best Non-feature film in the National Awards in the 50th National Festival has also been rejected in the International Competition section. My only consolation is that I have fallen in good company! As I read the report I came to know the selection procedure which seems equally arbitrary. I am glad to know about the details of the campaign from mail forwarded to me by Gayatri Chatterjee. Could you please keep me posted on the developments? I had received a few of your earlier communications and then I had some serious problems with my computer. I lost touch with all mails for some time. Wishing you and others who are with you in the campaign against censorship a Great 2004, Warmly, Arun Khopkar LETTER BY RV RAMANI (MEMBER, ORGANISING COMMITEE, MIFF) TO THE DIRECTOR OF MIFF : Dear Mr. Babu Ramaswamy, Thanks for your invitation to the MIFF Organzing Committee meeting, on the 6th Jan 04. As I had explained to you earlier over the phone, I am in Delhi for presenting my film and hence am not in a position to attend the meeting. I wish you all a good session. I would like to bring to your notice, that I met a few filmmaker friends, from Mumbai and from Delhi, who feel very disturbed about the fact that their film are not selected, (including mine), in spite of getting tremendous recognition and appreciation elsewhere. Some of the selection committee members who are known to me, have informed that they were not themselves aware of what films are selected for the festival. We were also informed, that the selection committee members were asked to just grade the films and the final selection was made by someone else from FD. This seems tobe a drastic departure from the earlier followed procedures. This gives rise to serious doubts about the selection procedure, amongst the minds of the filmmakers, especially in the back drop of censorship fiasco that happened recently. I would like you take up this observation in tomorrow's meeting. I also would like you to clarify for me about the selection procedures, that was followed in this MIFF. I would like to know, the names of all the selection committee members and why the final selection of films was not made by the selection committee and that it was left to someone in the FD. As an International Film Festival, it is important that there is a total transparency in this area, and this alone would bring the trust of the filmmakers, who are the equal partners in this festival. I eagerly look forward to your reply and would appreciate if this letter is taken up for discussions at the meeting. Thanking you, Sincerely yours, RV Ramani DRAFT OF CAMPAIGN'S LETTER TO THE I&B MINISTER : Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad Ministry Of Information & Broadcasting Government of India New Delhi January , 2004 Dear Shri Prasad, We would like to draw your attention to the inexplicable (and retrogressive) changes introduced in the selection process for films in the forthcoming MIFF. Our request to the Festival Director for a clarification (made on 29/12/03) has not received a response to date. The Joint Secretary (films) has sent us a reply (attached to this letter) asserting that no change has been made in the selection process this year. However our conversations with the selection committee members belies this statement. This has been also pointed out in some of the newspaper reports that have started coming out on happenings at MIFF. Every festival has the right to select its own films, but the rationale or mechanism must be clear and transparent. While earlier editions of MIFF have also suffered from serious shortcomings and there has been no effort on the part of the Films Division at addressing them, it is the completely arbitrary nature of the new "process" that has shocked us. From our conversations with a few members of the selection committee it has become clear that they were only asked to give "marks" to the films, and the final selection was made without their presence, concurrence or approval. A dis-empowered "selection committee" cannot be used as a cover for the inefficiency, chaos and capriciousness of the selection process at MIFF. The Festival is increasingly becoming a focus for discussion and debate within the film making community because we have a stake in improving the festival and would like to contribute towards making it amongst the best internationally, which unfortunately it isn't at the moment. The signatories to the Campaign Against Censorship are committed to addressing this issue. Although this is not a complete or exhaustive list, here are some of the films that have been rejected this year: A Night Of Prophecy By Amar Kanwar - The Museum of Modern Art , New York ; The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art , Geneva ; Lofoten International Art Exhibition , Norway; Art Basel/Miami Exhibiton , USA ; Documenta 11 , International Art Exhibition ,Germany ; Breaking the Codes - Other India's - An exhibition of Indian Cinema - WhiteChapel Art Gallery London; Yamagata International Documentary Festival, Japan Kaya Pooche Maya se By Arvind Sinha - International Documntary Festival of Amsterdam; Sundance Film Festival, USA; International Film Festival of India Narayan Gangaram Surve By Arun Khopkar - Golden Lotus Award Naata By Anjali Monteiro & Jayshankar Prasad - Film South Asia, Kathmandu; Travelling Film South Asia;Flexiff; Sydney; World Social Forum Film Festival, Mumbai. New Improved Delhi by Vani Subramanian and Surajit Sarkar -Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, 2003, North South Media Encounters, Geneva, Seoul Independent Film Festival The City Beautiful By Rahul Roy - Leipzig International Film Festival, Munich International Docuemntary Festival, World Social Forum Festival, Jeevika National Livelihood Documentary Festival. Final Solution By Rakesh Sharma - Fribourg Intarnational FIlm Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Munich International Documentary Festival Nee Engey By RV Ramani - Yamagata International Documentary FIlm Festival, Trivandrum IV Festival. The last edition of MIFF organised a retrospective of RV Ramani's films Sita's Family By Saba Dewan - Film South Asia, Zanzibar International Film Festival, The Other World FIlm Festival. Words On Water By Sanjay Kak - Film South Asia, Locarno International Film Festival, Brazil International Festival of Environmental Film, Trivandrum IV Festival, Slovakia International Environmental Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Durban International Film Festival, World Social Forum Festival, Mumbai. Umarutram By Sivakumar - NationalShort film 2003 award for Best . Although this is not a complete or exhaustive list, we are citing them to pose a simple question: If these films were not good enough to be in the best 60-70 films made in India in the last two years, we are left wondering why they are being accepted at the top international festivals and even being awarded. We are at pains to understand the logic of selections at MIFF which chooses to leave out films that have received the golden lotus and other awards from the President of India. The transparency we seek is necessary if MIFF is to remain the pre-eminent documentary film festival in the country, and justify the vast resources expended on it. To repeat the queries addressed to the festival: What are the criteria for choosing the selection committee? How many of them have been repeatedly on selection committees of Miff ? What is the quorum of attendance? And what discussion precedes the selection? Who draws up the final list - the selection committee or the festival authorities ? These are some of the issues that trouble us and we seek your involvement in getting answers to them. At the last instance, we had to issue an international boycott call for the clause of the CBFC certification to be withdrawn and we hope that the current misgivings about MIFF will be addressed before the issue escalates. On behalf Of the Campaign Against Censorship at MIFF, Yours Sincerely, ------------------------------------------------------- From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Tue Jan 13 19:25:12 2004 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (Sudhir) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:25:12 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Call for papers Message-ID: <000601c3d9dc$dd9974c0$eb00a8c0@Sudhir> Hi all, I am writing on behalf of Yale Law School's Information Society Project (ISP) to invite you to attend the CyberCrime and Digital Law Enforcement conference, taking place on March 26-28, 2004 at Yale Law School (registration and further information are available at:http://islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/digital_cops.htm) The ISP, along with the Yale Journal of Law & Technology (YJoLT) and the International Journal of Communications Law and Policy (IJCLP), have organized a writing competition and call for papers in conjunction with the conference. The conference promises to be a great opportunity to discuss issues of CyberCrime, Cyber Security, Digital privacy, Surveillance and Law Enforcement. I would greatly appreciate your help in distributing this message to your colleagues, students and interested friends. The call for papers and writing competition announcement are also attached. Sincerely, Nimrod Kozlovski Fellow, Information Society Project Yale Law School ------------------------- WRITING COMPETITION AND CALL FOR PAPERS: CyberCrime and Digital Law Enforcement Conference, March 26-28, 2004, Yale Law School The Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP), The Yale Journal of Law & Technology (YJoLT) and the International Journal of Communications Law and Policy (IJCLP) are pleased to announce an interdisciplinary writing competition and a call for papers in conjunction with the conference on CyberCrime and Digital Law Enforcement (entitled: " Digital Cops in a Virtual Environment), which will take place on March 26-28, 2004 at Yale Law School. In particular, we encourage experts from all disciplines and nationalities to submit papers: - for the writing competition (deadline: noon, February 15th, 2004). The authors of the two best papers will be invited to present their work in a distinguished panel of the conference. They will also be offered full coverage of their travel and accommodation at Yale. The announcement of the winners will be done by March 1st, 2004; - for publication (deadline: May 1st, 2004). The selection committee, composed of the editorial boards of YJoLT and IJCLP, will review and consider all submissions for publication in a special issue of the journals. The issue will be provided in both digital and paper formats. Authors will be notified of acceptance by June 1st, 2004. All submission and inquiries should be mailed to: Dr. Simone Bonetti {simo.bonetti at tiscalinet.it}, Professor Anil Samtani(ASamtani at ntu.edu.sg), lead editors IJCLP; and Mr. Bryan McGee(bryan.mcgee at yale.edu), Editor-in-Chief, YJoLT. For further information, -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040113/848c1ad0/attachment.html From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 15 02:35:17 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 13:05:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Fissures in Intellectual Property-Call for Student papers Message-ID: <20040114210517.10894.qmail@web13608.mail.yahoo.com> Fissures in Intellectual Property- Call for Papers Alternative Law Forum (ALF) Bangalore is a group of lawyers engaged in a critical practice of law; Sarai is a research initiative on media and urban life, a programme of CSDS, Delhi. ALF and Sarai came together on the cross-disciplinary collaborative research project "Intellectual property and the Knowledge/ Culture Common" in March 2002. Despite our diverse backgrounds, we recognize the central role that intellectual property laws play in the globalised �knowledge economy�, and that in the near future intellectual property will be one of the most significant sites of conflict over the production and control of knowledge and culture. We plan to host a significant international conference in January 2005 in New Delhi called �Fissures in Intellectual Property� which will examine the various conflicts as the global regime attempts to rearticulate the idea of property through the discourse of IPR. This conference will have academics, scholars and practitioners from various disciplines and countries attempting to understand and interrogate the totalizing effect of intellectual property. We hope to bring in some of the leading legal scholars working on the area as well as historians, anthropologists etc to sharply define what the basis of an inter disciplinary interrogation of the area could be. As a run up to this workshop, we are planning to host a student workshop in July 2004 in Bangalore. This student workshop will help foster a networked community of students who will also participate in the January conference. We therefore take this opportunity to invite research proposals from students who are willing to work substantially on an area and present their work in July. Eight research proposals will be accepted and the students chosen will be given a stipend of Rs. 10,000. In addition, the students chosen will also be invited to participate in the conference in January 2005. Based on the presentations in the July workshop, we will also invite three students to present their work as a part of the student panel. We are including below a small write up about the aims / concerns of the IP research project, and we would like you to respond with a research question and proposal that addresses and responds to the issues raised. We are primarily interested in research proposals that seek to critically engage with contemporary conflicts and crises around intellectual property rights. While they may be important in themselves, for the purpose of the workshop we are not interested either in narrow descriptive topics ( for instance �Domain name squatting and WIPO dispute settlement mechanism�) nor in merely technical questions (e.g. �Grounds for revocation of patents�). We are really interested in papers which will throw open the field in a challenging and imaginative manner, and which seeks to respond to the current debate or seeks to redefine the very terms of the debate. You may send your proposals or any queries to ipl at sarai.net Our Concerns It would be a truism to say that the language of intellectual property (�IP�) has entered into the realms of our everyday life both as consumers and practitioners living in the material conditions of globalization. This movement away from the initial description of IP as an esoteric techno legal field into a discourse around property rights, legality and illegality has been facilitated to some extent by the hype created over the importance of IP in the new economy. The emergence of new digital environments and low cost methods of replication and proliferation have transformed contemporary media experiences. Millions of people now have access to some form of communication technology, resulting in serious social conflicts around property rights over films and music in digital formats. Further, the emerging interface between communications technology and software is being registered at the ground level more than ever before: the entire VCD and Mp3 copy industry is software driven. On the one hand, if cheap copy culture has broadened people�s access to communication and media forms, the new TRIPS based international legal regime seeks to restrict and regulate access by stronger laws an increased enforcement with dramatic raids and high profile court cases. In this fast changing scenario there is not a single social science study on the impact of Intellectual Property Law changes on the expansion of media access and the experience of daily life in 1990s India. The discourse on Intellectual Property Law is dominated by consultancy firm reports on piracy, the rhetoric of legal firms committed to an increasingly unsuccessful enforcement regime and dramatic journalism documenting intellectual property violations. As a result the entire debate on intellectual property (policy, legislation and newspaper reports) rests on an extremely thin research base. Not surprisingly this discourse has nothing to say about the complex and unequal social arrangements which shape media and computer cultures and meanings involved in the localities and neighbourhoods of urban India, where so much of media is consumed and distributed. The ALF - Sarai project combines social science, ethnographic and legal research to explore the following issues: >>How intellectual property issues have been shaped by social and cultural practices around communications technologies in contemporary India. These include the new urban networks and markets that allow easy distribution and exhibition of a new constellation of media products: video CDs and DVDs, audiotapes and CDs, media software and cable television. >>The nature of the legal regime emerging around IPL: policy change, law enforcements and piracy debates, dramatic enforcement efforts, emerging jurisprudence in the lower courts, and the lobbying by law firms around IPL. >>Legal innovations to overcome the limits of US style enforcement, and to creatively address the large informal networks of media distribution in India. These include public domain architectures, open licences and registries, and a dialogue with open source practices. We seek to read licenses, not merely as legal documents but as cultural documents documenting the outer domains of the production and dissemination of knowledge? ========== Sarai (www.sarai.net) is South Asia�s first public initiative on urban culture, media and daily life. Established in 2000, Sarai includes both scholars and practitioners, who collaborate with a wider community in generating critical research insights and knowledge in the public domain. The past few years have witnessed the explosive growth of a new urban media culture in India, transforming the terms of popular culture as it is lived at the level of everyday life. Sarai is an effort to understand and creatively intervene in this new media space. Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, one of India�s best-known research centres, with old traditions of dissent and a commitment to public intellectual discourse Alternative Law Forum (ALF), Bangalore is an important reference point for critical legal practice in India. In 2001 ALF organized India�s first Alternative Lawyering Conference in Bangalore that witnessed presentations by leading civil liberties, adivasi rights and feminist lawyers among others. ALF is made up of a team of young practitioners, academics and researchers who engage in a wide variety of legal activism. email: ipl at sarai.net __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus From diana at bootlab.org Thu Jan 15 20:45:52 2004 From: diana at bootlab.org (Diana McCarty) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:15:52 +0100 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Check out this LA Weekly article Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20040115161525.02bf09d0@reboot.fm> > > >I'm curious if any of you know more about this RIAA force, and have >comments on the position of the EFF - which appears to support the >venture. It would also be interesting to hear how similar *private* forces >operate in different countries. It appears that the Bulgarian police are >cooperating closely with Microsoft to crack down on pirated software - >often at the expense of free software based initiatives. > >- diana > > > >>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >>LA Weekly >>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >> >>http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/07/news-sullivan.php >> >>Music Industry Puts Troops in the Streets >>by Ben Sullivan >>Quasi-legal squads raid street vendors >> >>Though no guns were brandished, the bust from a distance looked like >>classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid" vests the >>unit members wore. The fact that their yellow stenciled lettering read >>"RIAA" instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency was >>lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo. From patrice at xs4all.nl Thu Jan 15 21:08:37 2004 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:38:37 +0100 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Check out this LA Weekly article In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20040115161525.02bf09d0@reboot.fm> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20040115161525.02bf09d0@reboot.fm> Message-ID: <20040115153837.GB88928@xs4all.nl> http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/07/news-sullivan.php (not so) Strange indeed. EFF's alleged position is even stranger - you can't see how sending fake cops after car-hood sellers will deflect RIAA from suing peer-to-peer networks. From asimov at vsnl.com Thu Jan 15 22:57:34 2004 From: asimov at vsnl.com (Badri Natarajan) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:27:34 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Check out this LA Weekly article In-Reply-To: <20040115153837.GB88928@xs4all.nl> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20040115161525.02bf09d0@reboot.fm> <5.1.0.14.0.20040115161525.02bf09d0@reboot.fm> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20040115171905.00a13830@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in> At 04:38 PM 1/15/2004 +0100, you wrote: >http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/07/news-sullivan.php > >(not so) Strange indeed. EFF's alleged position is even stranger - you >can't see how sending fake cops after car-hood sellers will deflect RIAA >from suing peer-to-peer networks. "Alleged" position is right. Jason Schultz (the EFF attorney quoted in the article) has gone on record saying that he's been misquoted. Apparently, when the reporter called Jason for a quote, he gave the impression that the RIAA was going after commercial bootleggers instead of individual file-sharers, and naturally Jason said that was the approach they should be taking. He assumed the raids were carried out by real police, not the RIAA's private forces. Jason's own explanation of the misquote is on his blog: http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2004/01/take_this_quote.html Badri From jaynakothari at hotmail.com Sat Jan 17 12:24:53 2004 From: jaynakothari at hotmail.com (jayna kothari) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:24:53 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Check out this LA Weekly article Message-ID: very similar to the RIAA force, is the EIPR (Enforcement of Intelectual Property Rights) force in India...its a private organisation headed by ex-police officers/IAS officers, and they do investigation and conduct raids for companies. they have a very interesing website! http://www.antipiracy-india.com/index.html best Jayna >From: Diana McCarty >To: commons-law at sarai.net >Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Check out this LA Weekly article >Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:15:52 +0100 > > >> >> >>I'm curious if any of you know more about this RIAA force, and have >>comments on the position of the EFF - which appears to support the >>venture. It would also be interesting to hear how similar *private* forces >>operate in different countries. It appears that the Bulgarian police are >>cooperating closely with Microsoft to crack down on pirated software - >>often at the expense of free software based initiatives. >> >>- diana >> >> >> >>>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >>>LA Weekly >>>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >>> >>>http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/07/news-sullivan.php >>> >>>Music Industry Puts Troops in the Streets >>>by Ben Sullivan >>>Quasi-legal squads raid street vendors >>> >>>Though no guns were brandished, the bust from a distance looked like >>>classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid" vests the >>>unit members wore. The fact that their yellow stenciled lettering read >>>"RIAA" instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency was >>>lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo. > >_______________________________________________ >commons-law mailing list >commons-law at sarai.net >https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law _________________________________________________________________ Get head-hunted by 10,000 recruiters. http://go.msnserver.com/IN/35984.asp Post your CV on naukri.com today. From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat Jan 17 03:12:25 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 03:12:25 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] 3rd Oekonux Conference -- Call for Contribution Message-ID: <200401170312.25075.jeebesh@sarai.net> Subject: 3rd Oekonux Conference -- Call for Contribution Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 16:29:09 +0100 From: Stefan Merten Call for Contribution ===================== Wealth by copyleft ================== Creativity in the digital age ============================= 3. Oekonux Conference May 20th-23rd, 2004 Department of Philosophy at Vienna University ______________________________________________________________________ Project Oekonux --------------- In Project Oekonux [http://www.oekonux.org/] and in the neighboring OpenTheory [http://www.opentheory.org/] different people with different opinions and different methods study the economic and political forms of Free Software. An important question is, whether the principles of the development of Free Software (without exchange in the core, self-organized, common and unlimited participation in the production knowledge) may be the foundation of a new economy which is no longer based on the dogma of economic scarcity. New economy may also mean the basis for a new form of society. So Oekonux is not only concerned with Free Software but with the relation of Free Software and transformation of society. From the far ranging Oekonux debate new views on past transformation processes of society and a completely new theory of transformation of society emerge - e.g. the germ form hypothesis. A closely related question is, whether, where and how in the given economic and societal framework a culture of Free Information Goods emerges and thus makes the principles of the development of Free Software fruitful for other areas. Are the principles of the development of Free Software a temporary or integratable phenomenon or do they spread in other areas of society sooner or later. The conference -------------- The motto of the conference "Wealth by copyleft -- Creativity in the digital age" points especially to these questions: o How do the production methods of Free Software affect science, art, education, production? o Does the wealth of the information society come from patents and "Creative Industries"? Or does Copyleft gain legitimization for a more powerful and sustainable source of wealth beyond the logic of money? o Which coalitions do evolve in these processes and on which basis do they work? o Special interest receives the relation of Free Selbstentfaltung and societal agreements: How do self-organized societal relations come into being and how do they grow? How does cooperation and self-organization function at all? Especially: How are conflicts and power handled? Meanwhile for these and similar questions the Oekonux community became an internationally recognized focus point. From the simple mailing list this virtual community slowly develops into a collective research project - without a prior project management. Factual needs and their perception shall determine the next step. A slowly emerging consensus and the work of accepted maintainers are the moving spirit. This is producing theory just as Free Software. After the success of the 1. [http://erste.oekonux-konferenz.de/] and 2. [http://second.oekonux-conference.org/] Oekonux conference the 3. Oekonux conference [http://www.oekonux-conference.org/] takes place in cooperation with the Institute for Philosophy in Vienna. Besides the questions raised above contributions to these topics are welcome. o Free Software Experiences from projects, success stories, but also conflicts, contradictions (for example making money vs. self-unfolding, wage labor vs. Free Doing, etc.) as well as studies about the phenomenon of Free Software. o Technological development Examples of development of technology with a potential similar to Free Software. What significance do Free Standards have? What may such a technological development mean for ecological questions? o Alternative and anti-economy Theoretical models of the abolition of exchange, labor, and money. Practical experiences in projects on the height of the technological and social development. Contradictions of theory and practice. o How can Oekonux become practical? Interesting are suggestions for concrete projects, which try to practice our ideas. Free Licenses for other fields, gratis shops, ... For all contributions the relation to the topic field of Oekonux should be recognizable. The planned conference shall give room to bundle, collectively re-discuss and make fruitful for all, thoughts which developed in different places independently. Besides getting to know one other in talks and workshops the respective current state of the discussion shall be presented. Moreover there will be a concentrated introduction in the content of the Oekonux debate. Speakers wanted --------------- People interested in giving a talk, preparing a workshop or moderate a discussion round please submit a short outline of their intentions to Project Oekonux [mailto:projekt at oekonux.de]. (Mails to this address are archived on the web. Please ask there if there is a problem with this.) If someone wants to add some other kind of contribution please also contact this address. Deadline for such outlines is March 1st, 2004 Decision about the chosen contributions is until March 31th, 2004. The conference languages are German and English. Translators are needed! ------------------------------------------------------- From cra at ip.mpg.de Fri Jan 16 03:44:40 2004 From: cra at ip.mpg.de (Christiane Asschenfeldt) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 23:14:40 +0100 Subject: [Commons-Law] Eldred and Creative Commons Message-ID: <004601c3dbb4$f8b34400$0401000a@jane> Lawrence Lessig still needs more signatures for this campaign. Please sign the petition! http://www.petitiononline.com/eldred/petition.html I'm working with Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons organization in Stanford, but I'm based in Germany. I'm coordinating the translation/adaptation of the Creative Commons' licenses. I'm still looking for an Affiliate Institution in India. This is the project: www.creativecommons.org/projects/international Any ideas? All the best, Christiane Christiane Asschenfeldt International Commons Coordinator Alte Schoenhauser Strasse 35 D-10119 Berlin, Germany +49.163.77.64.828 christiane at creativecommons.org www.creativecommons.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040115/3df13532/attachment.html From jeebesh at sarai.net Sun Jan 18 03:45:43 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 03:45:43 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Notes on Social Knowledge and IP Message-ID: <200401180345.43667.jeebesh@sarai.net> dear All, Sarai/Hivos/ALF hosted a workshop in November to discuss the 'IP and Social Knowledge' question. A detailed report of the workshop will be available soon on the Sarai website. I had made some notes during the workshop trying to tie up the various strands in the discussions. What follows is a version of these notes (primarily engaging with TK). I am sure many of the list members who participated in the workshop will have much more to add and share. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes on Social Knowledge and IP December, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- i) Community based knowledge systems/ practices 'Communities' needs to be understood as `fuzzy` (Lawrence). This fuzzyness refers to not-so-clear boundaries, evolving and layered protocols of creation, sharing and transmission. These knowledges have certain qualities: - They have emerged from collective social practices. - They have a temporal depth that is difficult to quantify. - They are about materials and processes. - The laboratory of innovation and experimentation is the field and, in this sense, open. - They are imbricated in complicated practices of exclusion and heirarchies. - The transmission of these knowledges have been through oral cultural forms, hereditary practices and mediation of local markets. - They have survived as common resource, and without determinate authorship claims. It is important to recognise that a large base of this knowledge has eroded over the last 200 years. It lies scattered, forgotten, out of practice/use; some alive due to hybrid practices, and some alive due to stubborn practices. Its very survival shows that it has a sustainability basis not yet properly appreciated. Here it is also critical to understand that these knowledges have survived through violent histories of dispossesion and inferiorisation; and thus a large number of its practitioners are without much social resources or social representations. ii) Legal Entity : NGOs Many NGOs have, over a long period, been working on local knowledge and practices. These practitioners have over a period of time documented, collected and organised a large number of these practices, proccesses and materials. The processes of collection have not been easy and have had to be done over a long period of gathering information and creating a sense of conservation. Here, it is critical to recognise that a simple practice of collecting varieties of `rice-seeds` is not easy as this is part of a larger politics of seeds that emerged with the Green revolution. This collection and documentation has been achieved within a politics of knowledge that has been in favour of a dominant paradigm of science and technology research. (In this I would request you to see the career of two biologists, Richaria and Swaminathan.) Now. There are very many NGOs with a huge collection of materials and processes and a `goodwill` within communities. Usually they have the consent from the communities about holding the materials and the knolwedge about processes. iii) Enter Multi-lateral global legal instruments. TRIPS onwards. Here the language of intellectual property is introduced into this knowledge space. The space of the IP regimes is made broader to cover huge domains of materials and practices. The critical factor is the protection given to new research that emerges from these earlier knowledges, primarily through patents. Patents are disclosures with strict monopoly over usage. Here we need to recognise the State functionaries as an important player. Like all IP insertions, great dreams of wealth create new constellations and aggregates. The nightmares of dispossesion battles a weak battle, at times emerging as bargaining rhetorics. iv) The Enterprise. New pharma, seed and biotech companies need new knowledges about materials and processes. It is critical for their survival as it will generate more investments and wealth. State gains by getting more revenues out of this `space of production`. The Enterprise needs `rights` to use and modify materials and processes. The Enterprise needs IP protection for its new products and processes. Here the laboratory is a critical mediation. But these are closed laboratories and its knowledge is made public only through the patent regime. That is, disclose and thus retain the rights to its reproduction as an exclusive monopoly. Where will it go in search of these knowledges (materials and processes)? What kind of legal instruments will it use? v) The Transaction The present transaction debate is around: a) Models of `benefit-sharing`. The dominant position as articulated through State and section of the NGOs is `state institution` managing on behalf of the community and then dispensing it back into the `community`. The Enterprise pays an amount for usage and modification and then proceeds with its new products with guaranteed IP protection and enforcement. The State is supposed to distribute the amount into the community. Here it is important to note that from the `fuzzy` community we will move into `enumerated` communities. b) Producer rights. This is a right that keeps for the non-enterprise producers to make their own variety, claim IP on it and proceed. It also guarantees that reselling of enterprise stuff can also be carried by the producers. (Here we need to bear that the players are very unequally pitched). Also, the viscious enforcement legal instrument (speaking like POTA laws) have been put into place to make sure that IP protection is being understood in everyday practice. Critical to recognise here is that the IP protected materials and processes cannot by REPRODUCED by other producers and neither can thay be MODIFIED. This basic value of IP protection goes against the foundation of the protocols in which these earlier forms of knowledges evolved and survived. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- What does Open Source ethos do to this debate? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Open Source movement is a critical vantage point to enter this debate. - It sees the USER as a PRODUCER (immediate or potential). - It sees knowledge as collectively produced, and protects that collective effort. - It ensures that all user have atleast the following minimum rights: Unlimited right to USE and the right to make COPIES and circulate. Some practices make it mandatory that the user retain the right to MODIFY and profit from it. The debate is: What is the status of this new modified version? Some practices (i.e GPL) force the modification to be retained in as a part of the larger code base commons. Some practices (e.g BSD) gives the users the option of not contributing to larger code base. BUT open source is very clear that the `common code base` needs protection and is always to be available to all users to use, reproduce and circulate. I would think that this mode of thinking the USER/PRODUCER as a joined practice will change the fundamentals of many dicussions on biodiversity (these knowledge practices had this built into them) and culture (the language of protection is based on a fixed idea of a frozen `end user`.) This is all for now and I am sure all of you have lot more to say about this. Looking forward to explorations and adventures with ideas... best Jeebesh From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Mon Jan 19 13:54:53 2004 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:24:53 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] the inimitable lessig In-Reply-To: <200401180345.43667.jeebesh@sarai.net> Message-ID: <20040119082453.5176.qmail@web8006.mail.in.yahoo.com> a lessig proposal-and a very interesting one at that. see http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/view.html?pg=5 shamnad ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Mobile: Download the latest polyphonic ringtones. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com From jeebesh at sarai.net Tue Jan 20 04:25:26 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 04:25:26 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Automoblies, Patent and Ford Message-ID: <200401200425.27130.jeebesh@sarai.net> Intriguing reading this on Ford, Automobiles and patent battles.... ---------------------------- http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/articles.cfm?catid=7&articleid=863 Suing Your Customers: A Winning Business Strategy G.Richard.Shell The recording industry has a pricing problem. People do not want to pay $15-20 for a compact disc when they can download the same music for free over the Internet. The industry's solution appears as novel as the technology that is giving it such headaches: launch hundreds of lawsuits against otherwise law-abiding consumers who download music. After all, the music industry has invested billions of dollars in its product and thought it had iron-clad intellectual property protection for these investments - copyrights in recorded songs issued by the United States government. But having a strong legal claim on the merits is only one factor in legal strategy success. Indeed, this factor is often the least important one from a business point of view. Other key strategic considerations include the public legitimacy of an industry's legal attack (i.e. how the move will play in the court of public opinion), the vulnerability of an industry's strategic position in its market, the resources it has available to sustain a legal war, and the access an industry has to important legal decision makers such as regulators and legislators who can make new rules in the industry's favor. The recording industry balanced these factors well in its initial legal strategy - suing online distribution companies such as Napster. Napster was a direct threat with no legitimacy of its own. Its only appeal was whimsy: Average citizens thought its creator, Shawn Fanning, had a neat, new technology. But they also recognized that Fanning was selling the key to somebody else's candy store. Nobody formed a "Free Fanning" committee to bail him out of legal trouble. The recording industry, however, has gone one step too far with its latest legal move. Suing your customers is not a winning business strategy. Industries have a completely different strategic relationship with customers than they do with rivals. And this sort of strategy does not play well in the court of public opinion. But it's hardly the first time an industry has tried to solve strategic problems using litigation against its customers. And the strategy is no more likely to work today for the recording industry than it did 100 years ago, when the leading automobile manufacturers in 1903 tried to put down the threat of cheap, mass-produced cars by suing consumers who bought Henry Ford's automobiles. Napster founder Shawn Fanning may have little else in common with Henry Ford, but both men sparked a wave of innovation that transformed their worlds. And both brought down the wrath of incumbent industry associations which tried to stop their new technologies with litigation. The story of Henry Ford's eight-year legal battle with the "Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers" is a cautionary tale for today's Recording Industry Association of America. In 1903, when Henry Ford launched the Ford Motor Company, his third attempt at making cars, automobiles were high-priced, custom-made playthings for the rich. What's more, the major manufacturers had figured out a way to keep it that way. They had acquired a strategic property right very much like the recording industry's copyrights on recorded songs. It was called the Selden Patent and it gave its owners the exclusive right to sell a very basic invention: self-propelled vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Many people in the car business thought this patent was an outrage - much as some online retailers today are angry that Amazon.com received a patent on its "One-Click" checkout system. But the U.S. Patent Office had issued the Selden Patent and a group of powerful incumbents had purchased it and formed an association to enforce it. Litigation, then as now, was very expensive - especially for start-up companies with limited working capital. Nearly every car company fell into line to pay royalties to the Association for the privilege of making and selling cars. Except Henry Ford. The association did not want another competitor in Detroit and it did not like his idea of driving prices down to where average people could afford a car. So it refused to license him. For Ford, it was either exit the industry or fight the Selden Patent in court. He decided to raise a legal war chest and fight the incumbents. The litigation lasted from 1903 until 1911 and along the way, the association launched hundreds of lawsuits against Ford's customers to scare them away from his showrooms for buying "unlicensed vehicles." Most ordinary people of Ford's era had been content to stand by and watch the automobile makers slug it out over the Selden Patent. It was just an industry cat fight. But when the big "money men" started suing ordinary people who were just trying to buy a cheap car, public sympathy shifted against the incumbents. People rallied to Ford's side against the bullies. Editorials weighed in against the industry's heavy-handed lawsuits, and Ford helped his own case by purchasing litigation insurance for his customers. By the time the patent litigation was over - Ford won on appeal in 1911 when the court ruled that the Selden Patent covered only cars made with a special type of engine nobody was using anymore - Ford was a hero, and the largest car manufacturer in America. What can the Recording Industry Association of America take from Henry Ford's story? First, you will never win your market by suing your customers. Quite the opposite: you will rally ordinary people to your opponents and alienate a generation of buyers. Exactly what has the industry gained by suing, among others, a 12-year-old girl in New York for downloading songs? A raft of bad publicity, a reputation for being a bully, and a new litigation insurance scheme devised by peer-to-peer software companies who can now cloak themselves in Robin-Hood green. Worse still, the RIAA's wholesale use of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to obtain the names of telephone company customers for its lawsuit program has sparked a legislative reaction based on privacy concerns. Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas recently introduced a new bill in the Senate to require judicial review of subpoenas such as those used by the recording industry to fuel its downloading cases. When Kansas Republicans start lining up with liberal Democrats against your industry, you've got a whole new kind of legal strategy problem. Second, no legal rule is strong enough to overcome a radical technical innovation. Courts can delay progress but they cannot stop it. Unlike the automobile cartel that tried to stop Henry Ford, the recording industry's copyrights are perfectly valid. But so are the speed limits on the interstate highway system. The fact that cars are designed to go faster than those speed limits explains why most people do so, regardless of the law. The Internet is designed to transfer data at zero marginal cost, so people want to download all kinds of things, including songs. Ultimately, no copyrights can stop that. Third, innovation always drives the prices of yesterday's technology into the dirt. The way to respond to the demise of the commercial CD is not to sue Internet-users. It is to figure out new ways to make money on music. Maybe concert ticket prices will have to rise. Perhaps groups should be giving more live performances on the web for premium prices. Innovative companies are beginning to sprout up all over the place with new ideas that incorporate digital music - such as selling customized CDs with mixes of a consumer's favorite songs, video clips, and messages for friends. An Indian company called Saregama India is already doing this with music from old Hindi films and classical Indian artists. The U.S. music industry should be leading the way toward such new concepts, not lashing out at its customers like the angry, injured giant that chased Jack down his bean stalk. As Henry Ford once summed it up, lawsuits against new technologies provide "opportunities for little minds ... to usurp the gains of genuine inventors ... and under the smug protest of righteousness, work a hold-up game in the most approved fashion." What the recording industry needs now are new business models, not outdated legal strategies. Published: October 22, 2003 -- Jeebesh Bagchi Sarai/CSDS 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Ph: 91 11 23960040 From jeebesh at sarai.net Thu Jan 22 03:38:54 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 03:38:54 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] FWD: wsis digest no. 5 Message-ID: <200401220338.54809.jeebesh@sarai.net> Apologies for cross posting. But this is a very good compilation and will be helpful for all in this list....best jeebesh ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: wsis digest no. 5 Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 15:08:48 +1000 From: "geert lovink" To: "Nettime-l" World Summit on Information Society Nettime Digest, no. 5 December 18, 2003 1. Allan Liska: More Questions Than Answers 2. WSIS Report by Jo van der Spek 3. Richard Stallman on WSIS 4. OurMedia Clemencia Rodriguez reports 5. Wolfgang Kleinwächter (Telepolis, in German) 6. World Summit of Cities and Local Authorities 7. Official WSIS Press Release 8. Civil Society Representatives Present Declaration 9. WISIS-Award.Org 10. NTK on WSIS -- 1. WSIS Leaving More Questions Than Answers By Allan Liska http://www.circleid.com/article/397_0_1_0_C/ An amazing thing has happened over the last month: People all over the Internet are saying nice things about ICANN. It is difficult to imagine something that would make so many people stand up and defend ICANN, and yet they are. What brought about this sudden change? The change in attitude reflects the idea that an organization even more derided than ICANN might take over the governance of the Internet. That organization, of course, is the United Nations, under the banner of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The WSIS is an attempt by the United Nations to extend the reach of information technology throughout the world and to use the power of information technology to allow people to reach their full potential and improve their quality of life. One of the ways the United Nations proposes to encourage this development is to take the control of the Internet from ICANN and instead place it under control of the United Nations. The WSIS is organized around two different documents, A Declaration of Principles and A Plan of Action. The two documents discuss a broad range of technology issues, but the area that has created the most controversy are the few paragraphs discussing Internet governance. Two things are important to stress. First, nothing was decided in this meeting, and no actions will be taken until the next meeting in 2005. Secondly, and more importantly, as with anything the devil is in the details. Given the vagueness of the documents available, there are few reliable conclusions that can be drawn from the summit. Those who wish to see bad things will see them, those who want to see good things will find them as well. The fact that the documents are so vague actually generates more questions than answers, especially in the area of DNS control. Management of ccTLDs: The final Plan of Action produced by preparatory committee (the December 12th version) encourages governments to "manage or supervise, as appropriate, their respective country code top level domain name (ccTLD)." This implies that the United Nations would take over the management of the ccTLD DNS infrastructure. At one level this is not a bad idea. ICANN is not a political organization -- political in the sense of dealing with the structure or affairs of government -- the United Nations is entirely a political organization. One of the problems Jon Postel, and his staff, ran into when initially setting up country code domains is determining what constituted a country. Rather than make that decision, the DNS forefathers decided to use the country code list from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 3166). Over time, the original list of ccTLDs has become outdated, which results in oddities like the ccTLD .su still being in use, even though the Soviet Union no longer exists. It can also be difficult, not to mention outside the scope of their responsibility, for members of a non-political body to determine who the rightful owner of a ccTLD is. The downside is that precisely because the United Nations is a political organization the delegation of ccTLD authority may not be handled in an equitable fashion. It is possible that one country will unduly influence the delegation of the ccTLD for another country. There is no indication, within the Plan of Action, that safeguards should be put in place to ensure the ccTLD process is not politicized. Management of gTLDs: An obvious omission in both the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action is discussion of generic top level domains (gTLDs). GTLDs account for more than 90% of all registered domains. These domains are not political in nature, and therefore require a different level of scrutiny than ccTLDs. Conspicuous because of their absence, does the United Nations intend to leave the gTLDs under the control of ICANN, or do they intend to take those over as well. If the United Nations intends to take control of gTLDs, what is the justification for that? Also not mentioned in the Plan for Action is what would become of ARIN, RIPE, and APNIC (as well as the smaller registries). Currently, IP Address assignments fall under the control of ICANN, would those move to the control of the United Nations, or would ICANN maintain control? IP Address assignment is currently decided based on need, if the United Nations assumes control, would that remain the same, or would they choose another criterion. Management of Root Servers: The Plan of Action discusses the creation regional root servers: "In cooperation with the relevant stakeholders, promote regional root servers..." Again, the purpose of this is rather vague. As the Internet becomes more internationalized greater amounts of traffic will flow from countries that now have limited Internet access. It appears the United Nations is proposing the extension of the root servers into these parts of the world. This would be understandable if the current root server maintainers were not already aware of, and addressing, this problem. At last count, there were 22 root servers located within the United States and 19 located outside of the United States. Clearly, there is awareness within the root server community of the need to internationalize their presence and they are quickly addressing this. Returning to the political nature of the United Nations, is the idea of government-controlled root servers a good idea? Root servers are a powerful tool that can be used to limit access to information, and, more nefariously, to track the movements of citizens on the Internet. A government with a less than stellar human rights record could use this part of the plan to further limit the rights of its people. In this case, using independent entities to distribute and maintain root servers seems to serve the greater good. The Questions: Before any judgments can be made about the effectiveness, or feasibility of the ideas outlined in the Plan of Action more concrete information is needed. The details of these plans are currently unknown to the Internet community at large, and may even be unknown to the members of the WSIS. Based on the information that is available it appears the Plan of Action needs to be thought through a little more thoroughly. Despite its sometimes justified reputation there is nothing inherently wrong with turning some aspects of Internet governance -- such as it is -- to the United Nations, but based on this initial effort a lot more thought has to be given to the process. In the meantime, I would pose the following questions to the United Nations and the participants in WSIS. Solid, well thought out, answers to these questions will go a long way toward making people more comfortable with the idea of some aspects of the Internet falling under the auspices of the United Nations: 1. What benefits does the United Nations offer over ICANN? 2. If this plan is successful, where within the United Nation's organizational structure would DNS control lie? 3. The Draft Plan of Action specifically mentions ccTLDs as part of this plan, but avoids any mention of Generic Top Level Domains, would those remain under the auspices of ICANN? 4. The Plan of Action also calls for regional root servers. What is the advantage of promoting regional root servers, what benefits will they provide to Internet users? 5. If the plan is successful, how would the new organization impact existing domain name holders? Would there be additional restrictions placed on domain name holders? -- 2. Walking up and down the World Summit on the Information Society By Jo van der Spek (jo at xs4all.nl) It was a global marketplace in the Palexpo of Geneva, especially in Hall 4, ICT for development, where South-Africa had created a great safari environment, with Radio Lora streaming from a cabin. But even in Hall 1, with the media centre and government and company stalls, there was a quite exotic feel to everything. Blond Swiss ladies dressed like Mauritanian women, with posters calling for a closure of the digital gap, a cyberpuzzle from ARS ELECTRONICA offering you a chance to reconfigure your face and a speakers corner of the IFJ. However, one of the first shocks I got was when I (wearing a press accreditation) discovered that you could walk DOWN the stairs to Hall 4, but not UP the stairs to the realm of media, government and private companies. No way, you had to walk all the way back to the entrance hall, go once again through the security check, to go back to your workplace: the media centre. Losing 20 minutes of valuable time and peace of mind. Now the media have been a contentious issue of WSIS. Under pressure from China, Egypt and Mexico the Final Declaration threatened to make freedom of the press subject to limitation by national laws. In other words: freedom for governments to oppress the press. On the other hand a lot of mainly African developing countries had put their hopes on the establishment of a Digital Solidarity Fund, to bridge the digital divide. In the end it was a kind of trade off: the clause that permitted censorship on a national scale was left out, and the Digital Solidarity Fund was put on a low fire. HIGHwayAfrica is, "a vibrant and growing network of African journalists empowered to advance democracy and development through their understanding and use of appropriate technologies". This Highway staged a news agency that produced daily articles from the summit, see:http://www.highwayafrica.org.za/hana/ Here's a handful of headers from their website: The Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) exhibition is a major event running parallel to the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland. The exhibition has more than 200 stands representing governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and companies from 80 countries worldwide. A slideshow of images and events taken at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Geneva, 2003. A new media study launched today at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) shows that little or no media attention is given to issues related to the information society and ICT's by mainstream media in Africa A leading anti-poverty crusader, Palanguni Sainath, today lambasted mainstream media, accusing them of superficial coverage of poverty and playing to the whims of the corporate world. Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, has accused "the rich imperialist northern countries" of using Information Communication Technologies (ICT's) as tools of espionage and propaganda. Funding for information technologies in the least developed countries has proved to be the most difficult obstacle to overcome in the negotiations leading up to the World Summit on the Information Society. Following intense lobbying by media and civil society groups, the declaration to be presented to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has included more progressive clauses on freedom of expression and the role of the media in the information society. Disappointed that initial promises of equal partnerships between governments and civil societies in the WSIS processes have been empty ones, over 300 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) gathered in Geneva have decided to come up with their own separate Civil Society Declaration to WSIS. Open source software is the solution to making information technology accessible to people with disabilities. The jargon and buzzwords bandied about at the World Summit on the Information Society can be somewhat tedious to disentangle. We have put together this mind map to help you understand what it is all about by explaining the some of the more important concepts. World leaders have agreed to set up a workforce early next year to come up with a framework to build the Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF), to be created to finance projects to bridge the digital divide between South and North. The Gender Caucus of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has called for a radical transformation of the ICT sector so that all people, regardless of their gender or socio-economic sector can benefit No doubt the effort to make a concerted stand in Geneva has cemented cooperation between colleagues, and raised awareness of the issues at stake, both challenges and threats. Not to mention all the shoppin', oops sorry, I mean NETWORKING that went on. The Right to communicate is a more fundamental and more clearly defined demand than freedom of expression, or freedom of the press. Freedom can mean anything these days of anti-terrorism and security. Read Orwell! But the right to communicate is just this: the right to send and receive messages, with all possible means. So please remember: media are just one form of communication, and mostly only down to the listeners/readers/viewers. Walking up and down a staircase, without being pushed back by a deaf and dumb security person, is another one. The right to talk back, which is now within reach thanks to ICT, cannot be denied to any human being. But this is still beyond the capacity of the delegates to grapple with, I'm afraid. (Jo van der Spek is an Amsterdam-based free lance journalist and radiomaker, specialized in tactical media in crisis areas. He trained journalist from Baghdad and Teheran covering WSIS. http://www.radioreedflute.net) -- http://www.newsforge.com/business/03/12/16/187234.shtml?tid=110&tid=85 Richard Stallman covers WSIS The World Summit on the Information Society is supposed to formulate plans to end the "digital divide" and make the internet accessible to everyone on Earth. The negotiations were completed in November, so the big official meeting in Geneva last week was more of a trade show and conference than a real summit meeting. The summit procedures were designed so that non-governmental organizations (mainly those that promote human rights and equality, and work to reduce poverty) could attend, see the discussions, and comment. However, the actual declaration paid little attention to the comments and recommendations that these organizations made. In effect, civil society was offered the chance to speak to a dead mike. The summit's declaration includes little that is bold or new. When it comes to the question of what people will be free to do with the Internet, it responds to demands made by various governments to impose restrictions on citizens of cyberspace. Part of the digital divide comes from artificial obstacles to the sharing of information. This includes the licenses of non-free software, and harmfully restrictive copyright laws. The Brazilian declaration sought measures to promote free software, but the US delegation was firmly against it (remember that the Bush campaign got money from Microsoft). The outcome was a sort of draw, with the final declaration presenting free software, open source, and proprietary software as equally legitimate. The US also insisted on praising so-called "intellectual property rights." (That biased term promotes simplistic over-generalization; for the sake of clear thinking about the issues of copyright law, and about the very different issues of patent law, that term should always be avoided.) The declaration calls on governments to ensure unhindered access to the public domain, but says nothing about whether any additional works should ever enter the public domain. Human rights were given lip service, but the proposal for a "right to communicate" (not merely to access information) using the Internet was shot down by many of the countries. The summit has been criticized for situating its 2005 meeting in Tunisia, which is a prime example of what the information society must not do. People have been imprisoned in Tunisia for using the Internet to criticize the government. Suppression of criticism has been evident here at the summit too. A counter-summit, actually a series of talks and discussions, was planned for last Tuesday, but it was shut down by the Geneva police, who clearly were searching for an excuse to do so. First they claimed that the landlord did not approve use of the space, but the tenant who has a long-term lease for the space then arrived and said he had authorized the event. So the police cited a fire code violation which I'm told is applicable to most buildings in Geneva -- in effect, an all-purpose excuse to shut down anything. Press coverage of this maneuver eventually forced the city to allow the counter-summit to proceed on Wednesday in a different location. In a more minor act of suppression, the moderator of the official round table in which I spoke told me "your time is up" well before the three minutes each participant was supposed to have. She later did the same thing to the EPIC representative. I later learned that she works for the International Chamber of Commerce -- no wonder she silenced us. And how telling that the summit would put a representative of the ICC at the throttle when we spoke. Suppression was also visible in the exclusion of certain NGOs from the summit because their focus on human rights might embarrass the governments that trample them. For instance, the summit refused to accredit Human Rights In China, a group that criticizes the Chinese government for (among other things) censorship of the internet. Reporters Without Borders was also excluded from the summit. To raise awareness of their exclusion, and of the censorship of the Internet in various countries, they set up an unauthorized radio station in nearby France and handed out mini-radios so that summit attendees could hear what the organization had been blocked from saying at the summit itself. The summit may have a few useful side effects. For instance, several people came together to plan an organization to help organizations in Africa switch to GNU/Linux. But the summit did nothing to support this activity beyond providing an occasion for us to meet. Nor, I believe, was it intended to support any such thing. The overall attitude of the summit can be seen in its having invited Microsoft to speak alongside, and before, most of the various participating governments -- as if to accord that criminal corporation the standing of a state. -- Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 13:41:13 -0600 From: "Rodriguez, Clemencia" December 13, 2003. I am at the airport in Chicago, still trying to get home to Oklahoma after attending the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland. Here are some highlights of what the summit meant for me. As I come across other reports on the Summit I'll try to circulate them so that we can have a more diverse and complex vision. Please keep in mind that this is a very personal view of the Summit. The Declaration of Civil Society "Shaping information societies for human needs" was, in my view, the most important accomplishment emerging from the Summit. The Declaration is a 21 page document that lays out the vision of civil society for an information and communication society conducive to inclusive, democratic, and fair societies. The Declaration includes key issues, such as community media, gender, indigenous knowledges, the role of media in war and peace, the public domain, open software, and the inclusion of "communication" as equally important to "information." The Declaration is a document we should all become familiar with, and use to trigger discussion, debate, and mobilization around issues of information and communication technologies among our people. Those of us in academia should include it in our syllabi; those of us working with grassroots organizations should disseminate it and facilitate discussions about it in our communities. Not that everyone should adopt the declaration as their own vision, but I truly believe in its potential to trigger local processes of awareness and mobilization. Please let me know if you are using the Declaration in any way, so that we can share potential uses. Endorsements to the Declaration should be sent to ct-endorse at wsis-cs.org and will be archived on http://www.wsis-cs.org. The Declaration is available in Spanish, French, and English at http://alainet.org/active/show_news.phtml?news_id=5118. WE SEIZE: was the alternative summit event organized by Independent Media Centers' and other information and communication activists from different European communities. While the official summit was held in Palexpo, a sterile convention center entirely isolated and militarized where access was strictly restricted (even those of us with the official badge could not enter the rooms where official discussions were taking place), WE SEIZE was organized in the heart of Geneva, in a communal space entirely open to all. Although the Geneva police tried to shot down WE SEIZE, the organizers managed to negotiate with the city and organized a series of technology workshops and open discussions around issues such as infowars, the exploitation of information labor, and open source software. WE SEIZE was incredibly inspiring in its inclusiveness, openness, and technological savvy and beauty. Unfortunately the disconnection between Palexpo and WE SEIZE made it very difficult for academics and activists from the Global South to make it to WE SEIZE. Looking toward the future, those of us in contact with the Global South activists and the Indymedia activists in the North should do more to strengthen links between these two collectives. Information about WE SEIZE in http://www.geneva03.net/. The official summit was a mix between a high-end technology market, gubernatorial deliberations, and parallel panels, roundtables, and forums. Among all these, two forums were impressive: The Forum on Communications Rights and The Community Media Forum. The Forum on Communication Rights was organized by the Communication Rights in the Information Society Campaign (CRIS www.crisinfo.org), the World Association of Christian Communication (WACC http://www.wacc.org.uk/), the Association for Progressive Communcation (APC www.apc.org/english), General Intelligence Group, the Foundation Heinrich Böll (http://www.boell.de/), Panos UK (http://www.panos.org.uk/), People's Communication Charter (http://www.pccharter.net/), and the WSIS' Human Rights Caucus (http://www.iris.sgdg.org/actions/smsi/hr-wsis/). The Forum included panels on communication and poverty, communication and human rights, communication, war and peace, and communication, copyrights and trade. Soon all Forum presentations will be available at www.communicationrights.org . The Community Media Form was organized by Bread for All ( www.bfa-ppp.ch ), the Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund, (www.fastenopfer.ch ), ALER (Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica, www.aler.org.ec ), AMARC (Asociación Mundial de Radios Comunitarias www.amarc.org ), CAMECO (Concejo de Medios Católicos www.cameco.org ), and the Civil Society's Community Media Caucus of the WSIS. (I mention all these organizations because we should keep track of their key role in promoting global and regional mobilization initiatives). From this Forum I came out convinced that despite the incredible potential of recent communication technologies, radio is still the most accessible and therefore most important technology for most people on the planet. I was particularly impressed by the evaluation initiative developed by ERBOL (http://www.erbol.com.bo/) and ALER in Latin America called La Práctica Inspira [Practice that Inspires]. On the basis of 24 case studies plus a comprehensive inventory of community radio in the region, this project reveals when and how community radio contributes to building more democratic, empowered, and fair communities. In January the project will be available in a book and a CD, in Spanish at least. A final comment looking toward the future: I believe it is important to get involved in the second phase of the WSIS, in Tunisia in 2005. At local, national, regional and international levels, we all have a role to play in the WSIS. Personally, I see two types of actions we should all contribute to: first, to connect with others; there are so many different groups, NGOs, and individuals working with overlapping agendas but isolated from each other. So, the community radio folks should connect with the Internet governance folks; the social movements folks should connect with the technology policy folks (people working on governance, standards, open software, technology design, etc). Second, we should all initiate processes of dialogue, discussion, and debate around the WSIS Civil Society Declaration. I hope OURMedia IV in July in Porto Alegre can become a meeting point where we can advance these lines of action (http://www.ourmedianet.org/eng/conferences.html). Clemencia Rodriguez -- 5. Nach dem Gipfel ist vor dem Gipfel Wolfgang Kleinwächter 16.12.2003 Die Genfer WSIS-Deklaration enthält zwar nur vage Grundsätze, aber dennoch fand eine Bewegung in wesentlichen Dingen statt und es wurde zusammen mit einem neuen globalen Problembewusstsein auch ein neuartiges globales Forum geschaffen Die erste Phase des Weltgipfels zur Informationsgesellschaft ( WSIS [1]) ist vorbei. Die 14.352 registrierten Teilnehmer sind nach Hause gefahren. Die angenommenen Dokumente [2] sind ins Internet gestellt. Und die Beobachter fragen sich, was hat die Bergbesteigung denn nun wirklich gebracht? Sucht man nach konkreten Resultaten, wird man kaum fündig. Außer Spesen also nichts gewesen? Oder war da noch was? Schaut man aus der Froschperspektive auf die WSIS-Konferenz, dann ist zweifelsohne die landläufig zu vernehmende Kritik an den verabschiedeten Regierungs-Dokumenten berechtigt. Sie sind vage und unverbindlich. Die Cyberwelt sieht nach dem Gipfel nicht viel anders aus als zuvor. Und der digitale Graben ist nicht flacher geworden. Schaut man aber aus der Vogelperspektive auf den mühsamen Aufstieg zum Genfer Gipfel, dann entdeckt man, dass sich einige wesentliche Dinge zwischen Minneapolis 1998, als die Veranstaltung beschlossen wurde, und Genf 2003 bewegt haben. Neues globales Problembewusstsein Geändert hat sich vor allem das öffentliche Bewusstsein zum Thema Informationsgesellschaft. 1998, im Sog des Dot-Com-Booms, war das Thema primär auf die Faszination der technologischen Revolution, auf die kommerziell verwertbaren Aspekte und die digitale Spaltung fixiert. Ein Thema für Experten, Techniker, Risikokapitalinvestmentbanker und niedere Beamte in Wirtschafts- und Entwicklungshilfeministerien. Der Genfer Gipfel hat das Thema in den großen weltpolitischen Kontext des 21. Jahrhunderts gestellt. In Genf ging es nicht um die "Informationsrevolution", es ging um die Gesellschaft, die sich darauf zu konstituieren beginnt. Zu den politischen und wirtschaftlichen Interessen, die sich 1998 abzeichneten, kamen gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Werte. Das machte die Verhandlungen so schwierig, weil es eben leichter ist, einen Interessenausgleich zu erreichen als sich über Wertvorstellungen zu verständigen. Das rückte aber das Thema auch vom Rand der globalen Politik mehr ins Zentrum. Die WSIS-Deklaration sagt in ihrem ersten Paragraphen, welche Informationsgesellschaft man denn aufbauen wolle. We, the representatives of the peoples of the world, declare our common desire and commitment, to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Den Menschen in den Mittelpunkt und das Schaffen, den Zugang und den Austausch von Informationen und Wissen ins Zentrum zu rücken, sind sehr noble, aber leider auch sehr allgemeine Zielsetzungen und Formulierungen. Sie haben es aber dennoch in sich. Der hohe Abstraktionsgrad bietet ein nicht zu unterschätzendes Referenzpotential. Man denke nur an die langfristigen Wirkungen von ähnlichen Dokumenten wie der UN-Menschenrechtsdeklaration von 1948 oder der KSZE-Schlussakte von 1975. Erst Jahre später merkte man, was solche allgemeinen Formeln tatsächlich bewirken. Die Zivilgesellschaft hatte sich vom ersten Tag der PrepCom1 (Juni 2002) gegen eine technokratische oder bürokratische Informationsgesellschaft gewandt und eine "Informationsgesellschaft mit menschlichen Antlitz" eingefordert. Der stete Tropfen aus den unendlichen Quellen der globalen Zivilgesellschaft höhlte offensichtlich den Stein, der nun ein Meilenstein ist, an dem sich zukünftige Entwicklungen messen lassen müssen. Neues globales Verhandlungsforum Ein zweites, nicht sofort sichtbares Resultat, ist die Tatsache, dass WSIS einen Prozess in Gang gesetzt hat, der die Grundfragen der Informationsgesellschaft zum Thema globaler Verhandlungen für das nächste Jahrzehnt gemacht hat. Bei allen fünf WSIS-Themen geht es um Grundsätzliches. Beim "Digitalen Solidaritätsfonds" geht es ums Geld, bei "Internet Governance" um Macht, beim "geistigem Eigentum" um Wissen, bei "Cybersicherheit" um Kontrolle und bei Informationsfreiheit und Datenschutz um Menschenrechte. Die Organisation und Verteilung von Geld, Macht, Wissen, Kontrolle und Menschenrechte im Cyberspace aber ist eine gigantische langfristige Herausforderung. Genf 2003 ist nur eine Zwischenstation. Es folgt Tunis 2005. Und der Aktionsplan zielt auf das Jahr 2015, also Tunis 10+. Zwar enthält die Genfer WSIS-Deklaration zu den fünf Themen nur vage Grundsätze. Das Interessante daran aber ist, dass diese Themen, die natürlich alle miteinander verquickt sind, bislang global entweder gar nicht oder völlig isoliert voneinander behandelt wurden. Mit WSIS haben diese Themen nun ihre globale Verhandlungsheimstatt gefunden. Der Europarat, Depositar der "Cybercrime Convention", wird sich die Prinzipien der WSIS-Deklaration anschauen müssen, wenn er das Konzept der Cybersicherheit weiter entwickeln will. WTO und WIPO werden nicht umhin kommen, sich mit der von der WSIS-Deklaration eingeforderten Balance zwischen Schutz des geistigen Eigentums und freien Zugang zu Wissen zu befassen. Die Weltbank wird sich mit der Idee des "Digitalen Solidaritätsfonds" auseinandersetzen müssen. Und bei "Internet Governance" wird ICANN prüfen müssen, inwieweit ihr gerade beendeter Reformprozess dem von WSIS geforderten "multistakeholder approach" entspricht. Während vor dem Genfer Gipfel Europarat, WTO, WIPO, Weltbank und ICANN so gut wie nichts miteinander zu tun hatten, werden sie jetzt in ein entstehendes globales institutionelles Netzwerk hineingezogen, in dem nicht nur Regierungen, sondern auch die private Industrie und die Zivilgesellschaft eine von der WSIS-Deklaration bestätigte "bedeutende Rolle" spielen. Wie weiter mit "Internet Governance"? Die Globalisierung der WSIS-Themen wird sich vor allem bei der weiteren Diskussion über Verwaltung der Kernressourcen des Internet zeigen. Die Kontorverse "ITU vs. ICANN" und der dahinter liegende Konflikt über die Zukunft des Internet zwischen der chinesischen und der amerikanischen Regierung einerseits, sowie zwischen Regierungen, Privatwirtschaft und Zivilgesellschaft andererseits hatte WSIS zeitweise an den Rand des Scheiterns gebracht,. Der schließlich erreichte Kompromiss ist die Auslösung eines neuen Prozesses. Nun soll UN-Generalsekretär Kofi Annan mittels einer Arbeitsgruppe bis 2005 einen funktionsfähigen und akzeptablen Vorschlag aus dem Hut zaubern. Das Internet wird damit zu einem eigenständigen globalen Verhandlungsgegenstand. WSIS holt das Thema praktisch aus der Ecke der technischen Expertengremien mit unklaren politischen Zuständigkeiten und transportiert es auf die große politischen Bühne der globalen Politik. Was dass im Einzelnen bedeutet, ist momentan schwer abzuschätzen. Möglicherweise ist Paragraph 50 der WSIS-Deklaration, der Zusammensetzung und Mandat der neuen Gruppe definiert, das weitreichendste Ergebnis von WSIS I. Die Gruppe soll, so der Text von Paragraph 50, aus "Vertretern der Regierungen, der privaten Wirtschaft und der Zivilgesellschaft aus entwickelten und Entwicklungsländer und unter Einschluss bestehender zwischenstaatlicher und anderer relevanter Institutionen und Foren" gebildet werden. Den Regierungen wird dabei primär ein Mandat für die mit dem Internet zusammenhängenden Aspekte öffentlicher Politik zugewiesen. ("rights and responsibilities for international Internet-related public-policy issues"). Der privaten Wirtschaft und der Zivilgesellschaft wird eine "wichtige Rolle" bescheinigt. Zwischenstaatliche Organisationen, wie die ITU, sollen eine "fördernde Rolle" spielen. Bemerkenswert darin ist nicht nur, dass erstmals in einem offiziellen UN-Dokument der Zivilgesellschaft eine "bedeutende Rolle", ähnlich wie der privaten Wirtschaft, zugewiesen wurde, sondern vor allem der konzeptionelle Ansatz, der auf einem neuen "trilateralen Politikmodell" basiert, bei dem Regierungen, private Wirtschaft und Zivilgesellschaft mit unterschiedlichen Rollen und Verantwortlichkeiten, aber praktisch weitgehend gleichberechtigt, Hand in Hand arbeiten sollen. Das ist neu. Wie das funktionieren soll und kann, ist noch unklar. Aber es wird spannend werden zu beobachten, wo diese Reise hingeht. Die neue "Kofi Annan Gruppe" soll zunächst definieren, was man denn überhaupt unter "Internet Governance" versteht. Dann soll sie herausfinden, welche politischen Aspekte davon tatsächlich einer staatlichen Regulierung bedürfen. Und schließlich soll sie der zweiten Gipfelphase im November 2005 in Tunis einen Mechanismus vorschlagen, wie die unterschiedlichen Themen durch unterschiedliche Akteure global und effektiv gemanagt werden können. Dieser WSIS-Beschluss enthält möglicherweise mehr Dynamik, als man sich heute noch vorstellen kann. Schon hat die Diskussion begonnen über das "Wer", "Wie", "Wann" und "Wo" der Gruppe. Nitni Desai, Kofi Annans WSIS-Botschafter, will erst einmal zuhören, was denn die einzelnen "Stakeholder" zu sagen haben. Das erste Vorbereitungstreffen für die zweite Gipfelphase findet im Juni 2004 statt. Bis dahin will er seine Gedanken sortiert haben. Einige Regierungen haben bereits vorgeschlagen, die neue Gruppe schon Ende März 2004 in New York zu gründen, wenn sich die UN ICT Task Force [3], die auch unter der Schirmherrschaft von Kofi Annan steht, trifft. Der zivilgesellschaftliche "Internet ICT Governance Caucus" hat noch in Genf einen Vorschlag zur Zusammensetzung der Gruppe in die Debatte gebracht. Man solle den Text von Paragraph 50 wörtlich nehmen und eine 18köpfige Gruppe bilden mit je sechs Vertretern von Regierungen, der privaten Wirtschaft und der Zivilgesellschaft, jeweils drei aus dem Norden und drei aus dem Süden. Der private Sektor wird sich bei seiner routinemäßigen ICANN-Tagung Anfang März 2004 in Rom positionieren. Neue Rolle für Zivilgesellschaft Ein drittes langfristig wirkendes Resultat ist die neue Rolle der Zivilgesellschaft im globalen Verhandlungsprozedere. 1998 in Minneapolis spielte die Zivilgesellschaft überhaupt keine Rolle. Dann meldete sich im Dezember 1999 in Seattle die Zivilgesellschaft auf der Strasse zu Wort. Die Kritiker der WTO waren von den verhandelnden Ministern durch einen schwer bewaffneten Polizeikordon getrennt. Die Staats- und Regierungschefs mussten sich durch die Hintereingänge den Weg zum Plenarsaal und zum Konferenzdinner erschleichen. US-Präsident Clinton, der die "Dinner Speech" in Seattle hielt, machte damals einen süß-sauren Scherz. Das Winken mit der Serviette von WTO-Generalsekretär Moorer bei seinem verspäteten Eintreffen im Ballsaal des Konferenzhotels, so Clinton, hätte ihn an das Hissen der weißen Flagge erinnert. Manche der vorwiegend jungen Leute draußen, so Clinton weiter, hätten aber ein durchaus legitimes Anliegen, dem man drinnen zuhören sollte. "Wir sollten sie in den Verhandlungsraum einladen", sagte der US-Präsident damals. WSIS-Genf war nicht WTO-Seattle. Die Zivilgesellschaft hat hier nicht Steine geworfen, sondern Papiere produziert. Noch bei PrepCom1 gab es tumultartige Szenen vor geschlossenen Konferenztüren. Zwar öffneten sich später die Türen ein wenig, aber das "Rein oder Raus" zog sich durch den gesamten Vorbereitungsprozess. Beim Gipfel waren aber immerhin bei den drei offiziellen Round Tables neben Staatspräsidenten und Ministern auch jeweils vier Vertreter der Zivilgesellschaft als Redner eingeladen. Im Plenum konnten zehn zivilgesellschaftliche Repräsentanten ihre Meinung sagen. Und nachdem die Regierungen ihre Dokumente am Freitag Nachmittag per Akklamation verabschiedet hatten, trat Bill McIver ins Rampenlicht und ans Rednerpult und präsentierte im Namen des "Civil Society Plenary" die zivilgesellschaftliche WSIS-Deklaration [4]. Sie sei keine Anti-Deklaration, sagte McIver, sondern eine auf das Morgen ausgerichtete Vision, die das sage, was Regierungen, die zum Konsensus auf dem kleinsten gemeinsamen Nenner verpflichtet seien, nicht sagen könnten. Die Tatsache, dass sich im WSIS-Prozess die Zivilgesellschaft in zahlreichen "Familien", "Caucusen" und "Arbeitsgruppen" organisiert und sich handlungsfähige repräsentative Gremien wie die "CS Plenary" (CS-P), die "CS Content and Themes Group" (CS-C&T) und das "CS Bureau" (CS-B) geschaffen hat, gaben ihren Aktionen ein bisher kaum vorhandene Legitimität. Der Schritt von "Turmoil" zu "Trust" wurde zwar noch nicht mit einem signifikanten Schritt von "Input" zu "Impact" belohnt, aber sieht man sich die Regierungsdokumente genauer an, dann haben schon einige Buchstaben den Weg von den zivilgesellschaftlichen Einlassungen in die regierungsoffiziellen Auslassungen gefunden. Die übliche Frustration der zivilgesellschaftlichen Gruppen hielt sich denn am Abend des 12. Dezember 2003 daher auch in Grenzen und mischte sich mit einer Hoffnung, dass sich engagierte und konstruktive Einmischung, wenn sie mit Substanz und Hartnäckigkeit vorgetragen wird, am Ende doch irgendwie lohnen kann Für die Zivilgesellschaft gilt daher in besonderer Weise die alte, einst von Sepp Herberger formulierte Fußballweisheit, dass "nach dem Spiel immer vor dem Spiel" ist. Links [1] http://www.itu.int/wsis/ [2] http://www.itu.int/wsis/geneva/docs.html [3] http://www.unicttaskforce.org/ [4] http://www.worldsummit2003.de/download_en/WSIS-CS-Decl-08Dec2003-en.pdf Telepolis Artikel-URL: http://www.telepolis.de/deutsch/inhalt/te/16333/1.html -- 6. From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org Subject: The world Summit of Cities and Local Authorities on the information society ends today The world Summit of Cities and Local Authorities on the information society has just released a final Declaration of principles and an Action Plan that is to be discussed in the following part of the summit. It might be worth to take a look on the documents, which are, for Guy Olivier Second, the Special Ambassador for the WSIS, of " superior quality than those debatted in Geneva". Declaration of principles: http://www.cities-lyon.org/en/uploadfiles/27/download Plan of action: In line soon Official site: http://www.cities-lyon.org/ -- 7. Official WSIS Press Release Geneva, 12 December 2003 - The World Summit on the Information Society closed on an optimistic note of consensus and commitment, but Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union and Summit cautioned that the meeting was only the start of a long and complex process. "Telephones will not feed the poor, and computers will not replace textbooks. But ICTs can be used effectively as part of the toolbox for addressing global problems. The Summit's successes now give us the necessary momentum to achieve this," he said. "Building the inclusive information society requires a multi-stakeholder approach. The challenges raised - in areas like Internet governance, access, investment, security, the development of applications, intellectual property rights and privacy - require a new commitment to work together if we are to realize the benefits of the information society." Seeing the fruits of today's powerful knowledge-based tools in the most impoverished economies will be the true test of an engaged, empowered and egalitarian information society, he added. Over 54 Heads of State, Prime Ministers, Presidents, Vice-Presidents and 83 ministers and vice-ministers from 176 countries came together in Geneva to endorse a Declaration of Principles - or a common vision of an information society's values - and a Plan of Action which sets forth a road map to build on that vision and to bring the benefits of ICTs to underserved economies. The three-day Summit is the first multi-stakeholder global effort to share and shape the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for a better world. But the Summit was groundbreaking in other ways too. It offered a genuine "venue of opportunity" in a unique meeting of leaders, policy-makers, ICT business people, voluntary and non-governmental organizations of every possible kind, and top-level thinkers and speakers. Alongside the three-days of Plenary meetings and high-level roundtables, nearly 300 side-events helped bring the dream of an inclusive information society one-step closer to becoming reality. Partnership announcements included a USD 400,000 grant by the US Government for ICT development in low-income countries. Cisco and ITU also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to open 20 more Internet Training Centres in developing countries. As well, Hewlett-Packard will provide low-cost products that will help overcome the illiteracy barrier to ICT. Handwritten texts for example will be recognized for e-mail transmission. Microsoft, working with UNDP, will provide a billion dollar programme over 5 years to bring ICT skills to underserved communities. One innovative initiative announced to bridge the digital divide is the Bhutan E-Post project. For faster, cheaper and more reliable communication to remote, mountainous areas of Bhutan, the Government of India will deliver e-post services to the Bhutanese Postal Service via a USD 400,000 a V-satellite network and solar panels power system. The partners include ITU, Bhutan Telecom and Post, Worldspace and Encore India. And at the very close of the Summit, the cities of Geneva and Lyon and the Government of Senegal have announced contributions totaling about 1 million euros to fund information technology in developing countries. The contributions will represent the first three payments towards the Digital Solidarity Fund, the creation of which is to be considered by a UN working group for the Tunis phase. The second phase of the Summit takes place in Tunis in 2005 and will measure ambitious goals set this week. With WSIS phase I over, the hard work begins and hard work lies ahead in the two years before Tunis, to show that the information society is on the right path. The overarching goal of the Summit has been to gain the will and commitment of policy-makers to make ICTs a top priority, and to bring together public and private sector players to forge an inclusive dialogue based on the interests of all. In these two respects, the Summit has been heralded a success. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told delegates "technology has given birth to the information age. Now it is up to all of us to build an information society from trade to telemedicine, from education to environmental protection, we have in our hands, on our desktops and in the skies above, the ability to improve standards of living for millions upon millions of people. Top Summit targets now remain to be achieved, including connecting all schools, villages, governments and hospitals, and bringing half the world's population within ICT reach, all by the year 2015. The Summit has clearly identified national e-strategies as the key vehicle to meet the targets. Connecting public places, revising school curricula, extending the reach of TV and radio broadcasting services and fostering rich multilingual content are all recognized as needing strong national-level governmental commitments. To encourage and assist national and local governments in this work, the Summit also foresees the development of international statistical indicators to provide yardsticks of progress; exchanges of experience to help develop "best practice" models, and the fostering of public-private partnerships internationally in the interests of sustainable ICT development. Indeed, collaboration across the complex information society chain - from the scientists that create powerful ICT tools, to the governments that foster a culture of investment and rule of law, to the businesses that build infrastructure and supply services, to the media that create and disseminate content and - above all -human society which ultimately employs such tools and shapes their use -lays the foundation for an inclusive knowledge-based world on which the riches of an information society can flourish. The Summit's most notable achievement was across-the-board consensus earned for a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action wording around several contentious issues, and the spirit of cooperation that permeated the Summit. Internet governance, and financing ICT investments in underserved economies were two of the issues which called for long negotiations. On the issue of Internet management, the involvement of all stakeholders and intergovernmental organizations to address both technical and public policy issues has been underscored although global Internet governance is set to be the subject of deeper talks up to Tunis in 2005. An open and inclusive working group will be set up on the topic, in order to review and make proposals for action by the 2005 Summit. Similarly on the issue of financing for underserved economies, a task force will be established to undertake a review of existing ICT funding mechanisms and will also study the feasibility of an international voluntary Digital Solidarity Fund. On the areas of intellectual property rights and the need for enabling environments, universal access policies, and multilingual, diverse and culturally appropriate content to speed ICT adoption and use -particularly in the world's most underserved economies - government-level commitment to follow a set of common values and principles has been attained. Although these achievements fuel hope and may stoke further collaboration, Mr. Utsumi, together with many world leaders, appealed to all stakeholders keep the spirit of cooperation alive well beyond the two years to Tunis, and to back up universally agreed principles with concrete actions to spark more peace and prosperity across the planet. "The realization of the Plan of Action is crucial to the long-term success of the Summit. We need imagination and creativity to develop projects and programmes that can really make a difference. We need commitment - on the part of governments, the private sector and civil society - to realistic targets and concrete actions. We need the mobilization of resources and investment," he said. "With the unique occasion of a World Summit, we have the chance to scale up our ambitions to the global level, which is equal to the size of the challenge. Let us not miss this opportunity." To access the Declaration and the Plan of Action go to: http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/listing-all-en-s|1.asp -- 8. Frustrated by UN summit civil society representatives present their own declaration Geneva, Switzerland, 11 December 2003 -- At a conference this afternoon, civil society representatives presented an 'alternative' declaration to the official Declaration expected to be approved by the world's governments tomorrow at the final day of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva. The civil society declaration -called Shaping information societies for human needs- was needed because the process has constantly been disillusioning and frustrating said representatives at the heavily-attended conference. They recognised that some impact was made on the official WSIS Declaration especially involving the vision and the principles, which were previously technocratic and have become more human-centred. However, the civil society declaration goes further, calling for information societies that are free from discrimination, violence and hatred, and based on a framework of social, political and economic justice and a more equitable distribution of resources. The civil society declaration has been written over a number of months based on inputs from a working group on content and themes and the various regional working groups, known as caucuses and families. The final compilation was made over the past few weeks and was unanimously approved by the decision-making body-the civil society plenary- on December 8. Representatives from each regional caucus -including three speakers from APC and APC members in the Philippines and Brazil- outlined the regions' main concerns. Alice Munyua of APC's Africa ICT policy monitor initiative and African caucus representative highlighted the areas of human development and social justice, the right to communicate as a human right and Africans' disappointment that a proposal made for a digital solidarity fund has not been included in the official Declaration. Carlos Afonso of RITS, Brazil, speaking for the Latin American and Caribbean caucus emphasised the diversity of the world's people and the need to refer to 'information societies', not one 'information society'. LAC representatives criticised what they referred to as a simplified concept of civil society included in the official Declaration, claiming that themes of importance have been marginalised, distorted and contexts have been ignored. Latin Americans and Caribbeans complained that the primary focus of the official WSIS documents continues to be on infrastructure and does not sufficiently include the social use of ICTs especially for education. Asian-Pacific representative, Al Alegre of the Foundation for Media Alternatives, Philippines, focused on the themes of culture, knowledge and the public domain. He pointed out that there are hundreds of languages in Asia, many using writing scripts that are not roman-based (the principal script used in internet). He called for cultural and linguistic diversity to be protected from homogenisation or the over-privelige of one language. He also referred to the need to support community media to encourage and strengthen freedom of expression as well as linguistic diversity and stated that intellectual property rights should serve to develop societies and meet the public interest and not to serve corporate interests. Jane Johnson of WFUNA, representing the Europe and North American caucus stressed the need for equal, fair and open access to be a guiding principle of the information society. Shaping information societies for human needs was based on the Essential Benchmarks which outlined what civil society representatives wanted to see in the official WSIS documents and was presented to government delegates in the resumed third preparatory committee meeting in November 2003. Civil society representatives will use the benchmarks to measure the actual impact of the official Declaration and Action Plan to be approved tomorrow by UN member states and to be implemented by the second WSIS which will be held in Tunisia in 2005. They are proposing that the declaration -Shaping information societies for human needs- becomes part of the official outcomes of the Summit, a decision that has to be taken by the governments. Shaping information societies for human needs" will be online shortly in English, Spanish and French. If you want to endorse it, please send your name and organisation to ct-endorse at wsis-cs.org. -- 9. WISIS-Award.Org Heads of State, Executive Heads of United Nations agencies, industry leaders, non-governmental organizations, media and civil society representatives - all will meet at the «World Summit on the Information Society» (WSIS), Geneva, 10-12 December 2003, to debate trends, perspectives and challenges of the emerging Information Society. The WSIS will provide a unique opportunity to develop a better understanding of new Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their impact on the development of the international community. The World Summit Award (WSA) ? a global initiative to demonstrate the benefits of the Information Society in terms of new contents and applications - will be a highlight of the gathering. The World Summit Award is an official side event of the Geneva World Summit on the Information Society. A Showcase Event on best content from around the world will be held on December 10th in the framework of the WSIS in the Palexpo. This page links to the important bits re the Awards -- 10. NTK on WSIS _ _ _____ _ __ <*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the uk> | \ | |_ _| |/ / _ __ __2003-12-12_ o join! sign up at | \| | | | | ' / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ / / o http://lists.ntk.net/ | | |\ | | | | . \ | | | | (_) \ v v / o website (+ archive) lives at: | |_| \_| |_| |_|\_\|_| |_|\___/ \_/\_/ o http://www.ntk.net/ Everyone's got an opinion, haven't they? In a week when even the taciturn Torvalds started opining on how copyright law worked, the president of the notoriously fair and open-minded ICANN had *his* views summarily squelched, after a literal kickban from this week's WORLD SUMMIT ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY. As guards hussled PAUL TWOMEY away from the DNS pre-meeting at the UN summit, he whined his complaints like... like... like an obscure domain registrar bitching on an ignored "public" ICANN mailing list, say. Will ICANN humbly learn its lesson? Hopefully not - given that the WSIS bouncers waved ROBERT MUGABE through to give his views on the Net (summary: Sluggy sucks, Penny Arcade much cooler). Is this some kind of hint that ICANN needs to start cracking down on its opposition? Or should it be more like the President of Iran, who found his WSIS Q&A getting bogged down in questions relayed from his nation of bloggers. "Do you blog?", they demanded, before going on to ask him whether he preferred Moveable Type or Livejournal, and Which Character From "24" Was He, exactly? http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1735 - I Am Not A Linus http://www.itworld.com/Man/2685/031208torvalds/ - ... but I play one when subpoenaed http://www.iht.com/articles/120570.html - squeal little piggie http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3303129.stm - Mr Mugabe has "giant Orwellian viewscreen" in his rider http://www.dailysummit.net/english/archives/2003/12/11/iran_roundup_.asp - I'm sorry, am I hot or what? # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo at bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at bbs.thing.net ------------------------------------------------------- -- Jeebesh Bagchi Sarai/CSDS 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Ph: 91 11 23960040 From nidhi_tandon at hotmail.com Sun Jan 25 11:19:54 2004 From: nidhi_tandon at hotmail.com (Nidhi Tandon) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 11:19:54 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] NYTimes.com Article: The Tyranny of Copyright? Message-ID: >This article from NYTimes.com >has been sent to you by tandonn at email.com. > > >Hello Everyone, > >This is a pretty interesting article about the "Copy Left social movement" >from this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. > >The Tyranny of Copyright? >January 25, 2004 >By ROBERT S. BOYNTON > http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html > > > >The Tyranny of Copyright? > >January 25, 2004 > By ROBERT S. BOYNTON > > > > > >Last fall, a group of civic-minded students at Swarthmore >College received a sobering lesson in the future of >political protest. They had come into possession of some >15,000 e-mail messages and memos -- presumably leaked or >stolen -- from Diebold Election Systems, the largest maker >of electronic voting machines in the country. The memos >featured Diebold employees' candid discussion of flaws in >the company's software and warnings that the computer >network was poorly protected from hackers. In light of the >chaotic 2000 presidential election, the Swarthmore students >decided that this information shouldn't be kept from the >public. Like aspiring Daniel Ellsbergs with their would-be >Pentagon Papers, they posted the files on the Internet, >declaring the act a form of electronic whistle-blowing. > >Unfortunately for the students, their actions ran afoul of >the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.), one >of several recent laws that regulate intellectual property >and are quietly reshaping the culture. Designed to protect >copyrighted material on the Web, the act makes it possible >for an Internet service provider to be liable for the >material posted by its users -- an extraordinary burden >that providers of phone service, by contrast, do not share. >Under the law, if an aggrieved party (Diebold, say) >threatens to sue an Internet service provider over the >content of a subscriber's Web site, the provider can avoid >liability simply by removing the offending material. Since >the mere threat of a lawsuit is usually enough to scare >most providers into submission, the law effectively gives >private parties veto power over much of the information >published online -- as the Swarthmore students would soon >learn. > >Not long after the students posted the memos, Diebold sent >letters to Swarthmore charging the students with copyright >infringement and demanding that the material be removed >from the students' Web page, which was hosted on the >college's server. Swarthmore complied. The question of >whether the students were within their rights to post the >memos was essentially moot: thanks to the Digital >Millennium Copyright Act, their speech could be silenced >without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearings, >judges or other niceties of due process. > >After persistent challenges by the students -- and a >considerable amount of negative publicity for Diebold -- in >November the company agreed not to sue. To the delight of >the students' supporters, the memos are now back on their >Web site. But to proponents of free speech on the Internet, >the story remains a chilling one. > >Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar at New York University, >calls anecdotes like this ''copyright horror stories,'' and >there have been a growing number of them over the past few >years. Once a dry and seemingly mechanical area of the >American legal system, intellectual property law can now be >found at the center of major disputes in the arts, sciences >and -- as in the Diebold case -- politics. Recent cases >have involved everything from attempts to force the Girl >Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires >to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret >Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's book >''The Wind Done Gone'' (which tells the story of Mitchell's >''Gone With the Wind'' from a slave's perspective) to >corporations like Celera Genomics filing for patents for >human genes. The most publicized development came in >September, when the Recording Industry Association of >America began suing music downloaders for copyright >infringement, reaching out-of-court settlements for >thousands of dollars with defendants as young as 12. And in >November, a group of independent film producers went to >court to fight a ban, imposed this year by the Motion >Picture Association of America, on sending DVD's to those >who vote for annual film awards. > >Not long ago, the Internet's ability to provide instant, >inexpensive and perfect copies of text, sound and images >was heralded with the phrase ''information wants to be >free.'' Yet the implications of this freedom have >frightened some creators -- particularly those in the >recording, publishing and movie industries -- who argue >that the greater ease of copying and distribution increases >the need for more stringent intellectual property laws. The >movie and music industries have succeeded in lobbying >lawmakers to allow them to tighten their grips on their >creations by lengthening copyright terms. The law has also >extended the scope of copyright protection, creating what >critics have called a ''paracopyright,'' which prohibits >not only duplicating protected material but in some cases >even gaining access to it in the first place. In addition >to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the most >significant piece of new legislation is the 1998 Copyright >Term Extension Act, which added 20 years of protection to >past and present copyrighted works and was upheld by the >Supreme Court a year ago. In less than a decade, the >much-ballyhooed liberating potential of the Internet seems >to have given way to something of an intellectual land >grab, presided over by legislators and lawyers for the >media industries. > >In response to these developments, a protest movement is >forming, made up of lawyers, scholars and activists who >fear that bolstering copyright protection in the name of >foiling ''piracy'' will have disastrous consequences for >society -- hindering the ability to experiment and create >and eroding our democratic freedoms. This group of >reformers, which Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford >Law School, calls the ''free culture movement,'' might also >be thought of as the ''Copy Left'' (to borrow a term >originally used by software programmers to signal that >their product bore fewer than the usual amount of copyright >restrictions). Lawyers and professors at the nation's top >universities and law schools, the members of the Copy Left >aren't wild-eyed radicals opposed to the use of copyright, >though they do object fiercely to the way copyright has >been distorted by recent legislation and manipulated by >companies like Diebold. Nor do they share a coherent >political ideology. What they do share is a fear that the >United States is becoming less free and ultimately less >creative. While the American copyright system was designed >to encourage innovation, it is now, they contend, being >used to squelch it. They see themselves as fighting for a >traditional understanding of intellectual property in the >face of a radical effort to turn copyright law into a tool >for hoarding ideas. ''The notion that intellectual property >rights should never expire, and works never enter the >public domain -- this is the truly fanatical and >unconstitutional position,'' says Jonathan Zittrain, a >co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society >at Harvard Law School, the intellectual hub of the Copy >Left. > >Thinkers like Lessig and Zittrain promote a vision of a >world in which copyright law gives individual creators the >exclusive right to profit from their intellectual property >for a brief, limited period -- thus providing an incentive >to create while still allowing successive generations of >creators to draw freely on earlier ideas. They stress that >borrowing and collaboration are essential components of all >creation and caution against being seduced by the romantic >myth of ''the author'': the lone garret-dwelling poet, >creating masterpieces out of thin air. ''No one writes from >nothing,'' says Yochai Benkler, a professor at Yale Law >School. ''We all take the world as it is and use it, remix >it.'' > >Where does the Copy Left believe a creation ought to go >once its copyright has lapsed? Into the public domain, or >the ''cultural commons'' -- a shared stockpile of ideas >where the majority of America's music and literature would >reside, from which anyone could partake without having to >pay or ask permission. James Boyle, a professor at Duke Law >School, notes that the public domain is a necessity for >social and cultural progress, not some sort of socialist >luxury. ''Our art, our culture, our science depend on this >public domain,'' he has written, ''every bit as much as >they depend on intellectual property.'' > >In opposition to the cultural commons stands the >''permission culture,'' an epithet the Copy Left uses to >describe the world it fears our current copyright law is >creating. Whereas you used to own the CD or book you >purchased, in the permission culture it is more likely that >you'll lease (or ''license'') a song, video or e-book, and >even then only under restrictive conditions: read your >e-book, but don't copy and paste any selections; listen to >music on your MP3 player, but don't burn it onto a CD or >transfer it to your stereo. The Copy Left sees innovations >like iTunes, Apple's popular online music store, as the >first step toward a society in which much of the cultural >activity that we currently take for granted -- reading an >encyclopedia in the public library, selling a geometry >textbook to a friend, copying a song for a sibling -- will >be rerouted through a system of micropayments in return for >which the rights to ever smaller pieces of our culture are >doled out. ''Sooner or later,'' predicts Miriam Nisbet, the >legislative counsel for the American Library Association, >''you'll get to the point where you say, 'Well, I guess >that 25 cents isn't too much to pay for this sentence,' and >then there's no hope and no going back.'' > >There is a growing sense of urgency among the members of >the Copy Left. They worry that if they do not raise >awareness of what is happening to copyright law, Americans >will be stuck forever with the consequences of decisions >now being made -- and laws being passed -- in the name of >preventing piracy. ''We are at a moment in our history at >which the terms of freedom and justice are up for grabs,'' >Benkler says. He notes that each major innovation in the >history of communications -- the printing press, radio, >telephone -- was followed by a brief period of openness >before the rules of its usage were determined and >alternatives eliminated. ''The Internet,'' he says, ''is in >that space right now.'' > > >America has always had an ambivalent attitude toward the >notion of intellectual property. Thomas Jefferson, for one, >considered copyright a necessary evil: he favored providing >just enough incentive to create, nothing more, and >thereafter allowing ideas to flow freely as nature >intended. ''If nature has made any one thing less >susceptible than all others of exclusive property,'' he >wrote, ''it is the action of the thinking power called an >idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long >as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, >it forces itself into the possession of everyone.'' His >conception of copyright was enshrined in Article 1, Section >8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority >to ''promote the progress of science and useful arts, by >securing for limited times to authors and inventors the >exclusive right to their respective writings and >discoveries.'' > >But Jefferson's vision has not fared well. As the country's >economy developed from agrarian to industrial to >''information,'' ideas took on greater importance, and the >demand increased for stronger copyright laws. In 1790, >copyright protection lasted for 14 years and could be >renewed just once before the work entered the public >domain. Between 1831 and 1909, the maximum term was >increased from 28 to 56 years. Today, copyright protection >for individuals lasts for 70 years after the death of the >author; for corporations, it's 95 years after publication. >Over the past three decades, the flow of material entering >the public domain has slowed to a trickle: in 1973, >according to Lessig, more than 85 percent of copyright >owners chose not to renew their copyrights, allowing their >ideas to become common coin; since the 1998 Copyright Term >Extension Act lengthened present and past copyrights for an >additional 20 years, little material will enter the public >domain any time soon. > >Some of the changes that expanded copyright protection were >made with an understanding of their effects; what also >troubles the Copy Left, however, are the unintended >consequences of seemingly innocuous tweaks in copyright >legislation. In particular, two laws that were passed years >before the creation of the Internet helped set the stage >for today's copyright bonanza. Before the 1909 Copyright >Act, copyright was construed as the exclusive right to >''publish'' a creation; but the 1909 law changed the >wording to prohibit others from ''copying'' one's creation >-- a seemingly minor change that thereafter linked >copyright protection to the copying technology of the day, >whether that was the pen, the photocopy machine, the VCR or >the Internet. In 1976, a revision to the law dispensed with >the requirement of formally registering or renewing a >copyright in order to comply with international copyright >standards. Henceforth, everything -- from e-mail messages >to doodles on a napkin -- was automatically copyrighted the >moment it was ''fixed in a tangible medium.'' > >The true significance of these two laws didn't become >apparent until the arrival of the Internet, when every work >became automatically protected by copyright and every use >of a work via the Internet constituted a new copy. ''Nobody >realized that eliminating those requirements would create a >nightmare of uncertainty and confusion about what content >is available to use,'' Lessig explains, ''which is a >crucial question now that the Internet is the way we gain >access to so much content. It was a kind of oil spill in >the free culture.'' > >Lessig is one of the most prominent and eloquent defenders >of the Copy Left's belief that copyright law should return >to its Jeffersonian roots. ''We are invoking ideas that >should be central to the American tradition, such as that a >free society is richer than a control society,'' he says. >''But in the cultural sphere, big media wants to build a >new Soviet empire where you need permission from the >central party to do anything.'' He complains that Americans >have been reduced to ''an Oliver Twist-like position,'' in >which they have to ask, ''Please, sir, may I?'' every time >we want to use something under copyright -- and then only >if we are fortunate enough to have the assistance of a >high-priced lawyer. > >In October 2002, Lessig argued before the Supreme Court in >Eldred v. Ashcroft, which concerned a challenge to the >Copyright Term Extension Act. On behalf of the plaintiffs, >Lessig argued that perpetually extending the term of >copyright was a violation of the Constitution's requirement >that copyright exist for ''a limited time.'' The court >responded that although perhaps unwise on policy grounds, >granting such extensions was within Congress's power. It >was a major setback for the Copy Left. Given the Eldred >decision, there is nothing to stop a future Congress from >extending copyright's term again and again. > >Lessig's efforts haven't been limited to the courtroom. In >2001, he was part of a group that founded an organization >called Creative Commons, which offers individual creators >the ability to carefully calibrate the level of control >they wish to maintain over their works. The organization >services the needs of, say, musicians who want rappers and >D.J.'s to be able to download and remix their music without >legal trouble or of writers who want their works >republished without charge, but only by nonprofit >publications. The Commons has developed a software >application for the Web that allows copyright holders who >do not want to exercise all of the restrictions of >copyright law to dedicate their work to the public domain >or license it on terms that allow copying and creative >reuses. The aim of Creative Commons is not only to increase >the sum of raw source material online but also to make it >cheaper and easier for other creators to locate and access >that material. This will enable people to use the Internet >to find, for example, photographs that are free to be >altered or reused or texts that may be copied, distributed >or sampled -- all by their authors' permission. The >Creative Commons now has a presence in 10 countries, >including Brazil, whose minister of culture, the musician >Gilberto Gil, plans to release some of his songs under the >Creative Commons license so that others may freely borrow >from them. Creative Commons is currently talking to Amazon >and others about a plan to release out-of-print books under >Creative Commons licenses. > > >One of the central ideas of the Copy Left is that the >Internet has been a catalyst for re-engaging with the >culture -- for interacting with the things we read and >watch and listen to, as opposed to just sitting back and >absorbing them. This vision of how culture works stands in >contrast to what the Copy Left calls the ''broadcast >model'' -- the arrangement in which a small group of >content producers disseminate their creations (television, >movies, music) through controlled routes (cable, theaters, >radio-TV stations) to passive consumers. Yochai Benkler, >the law professor at Yale, argues that people want to be >more engaged in their culture, despite the broadcast >technology, like television, that he says has narcotized >us. ''People are users,'' he says. ''They are producers, >storytellers, consumers, interactors -- complex, varied >beings, not just people who go to the store, buy a packaged >good off the shelf and consume.'' > >A few weeks ago, I met Benkler in his loft in downtown New >York. He stroked his beard while explicating his ideas with >the care of a man parsing a particularly knotty question of >Scripture. Benkler was born in Tel Aviv in 1964, and while >in his 20's, he helped found a remote desert kibbutz in an >attempt to recapture the Zionist movement's original >socialist spirit. The challenges of creating a community in >isolation from the rest of society ultimately proved >overwhelming. ''After a few years,'' he said, ''we realized >that at the rate we were going we wouldn't attend college >until we were in our 50's.'' It was a hard lesson in the >difficulty of producing anything -- a community, a work of >art -- in isolation. > >But Benkler's belief in the importance of creating things >in common rests on more than anecdotal evidence. What makes >his argument more than wishful thinking, he said, is that >he has some economic evidence for his view. ''Let's compare >a few numbers,'' he said. ''How much do people pay the >recording industry to listen to music versus how much >people pay the telephone industry to talk to their friends >and family? The recording industry is a $12 billion a year >business, compared with the telephone business, which is a >more than $250 billion a year business. That is what >economists call a 'revealed willingness to pay,' a clear >preference for a technology that allows you to participate >in work, socializing and interaction in general, over a >technology that allows you to be a passive consumer of a >packaged good. Is that a study of human nature? No. Is it >an economic measure that would suggest there is a lot of >demand out there for speaking and listening to others? >Yes.'' > >According to Benkler, the cultural commons not only offers >a better model for creativity; it makes good economic >sense. Like Lessig and other members of the Copy Left, he >takes his bearings from the free software movement and >views the success of products like Linux and services like >Google as evidence of a viable collaborative (or ''peer to >peer'') model for producing and sharing ideas -- a model >that will augment and, in some cases, replace the current >model. (He concedes that some products, like novels and >blockbuster movies, will never be produced peer to peer, >though they will draw on the work of artists before them.) > >Benkler predicts that the recording industry will be one >of the first businesses to go. ''All it does is package and >sell goods,'' he said, ''which is technically an unfeasible >way of continuing. They are trying their best to legislate >the environment to change, but that doesn't mean we have to >let them.'' > > >The battle between the Copy Left and its opponents is as >much a clash of worldviews as of legal doctrine. Aligned >against the Copy Left are those who sympathize with the >romantic notion of authorship and view the culture as a >market in which everything of value should be owned by >someone or other. Jane Ginsburg, a professor at Columbia >Law School who specializes in copyright law, fears that in >the Copy Left's rush to secure the public domain, it gives >short shrift to the author. A self-described ''copyright >enthusiast,'' Ginsburg considers the author the moral >center of copyright law and questions equating copyright >control with corporate greed. ''Copyright cannot be >understood merely as a grudgingly tolerated way station on >the road to the public domain,'' she writes in a recent >article titled ''The Concept of Authorship in Comparative >Copyright Law.'' ''Because copyright arises out of the act >of creating a work, authors have moral claims that neither >corporate intermediaries nor consumer end-users can >(straightfacedly) assert.'' > >Ginsburg and others embrace many elements of the >''permission society'' demonized by the Copy Left and cite >developments like the iTunes store as a sign of greater >consumer choice and freedom. In his book ''Copyright's >Highway,'' Paul Goldstein, a professor at Stanford Law >School, writes that ''the logic of property rights dictates >their extension into every corner in which people derive >enjoyment and value from literary and artistic works.'' He >characterizes the permission society as a ''celestial >jukebox'' in which access to every creation -- music, >literature, movies, art -- is available to anyone for a >price. > >An entire ''digital rights management'' industry has arisen >to bring this vision to fruition, each company calibrating >a particular license through a system of micropayments -- >play a song on your computer for one price; transfer it to >your MP3 player for a slightly higher fee. Goldstein argues >that the scheme of a business like iTunes is actually more >efficient and democratic than the commons model championed >by the Copy Left. ''The problem with the commons is that it >doesn't take into consideration the direction of the >payment; it doesn't reveal what kind of culture gets used >and what kind doesn't,'' he says. ''I think it is good to >have a price tag attached to each use because it tells >producers what consumers want; it lets them vote with their >purchase for the kinds of culture they want.'' > >But the Copy Left is convinced that there is a better way >for the entertainment industry to adapt to the Internet age >while still paying its artists their due. William Fisher, >director of the Berkman Center, has spent the last three >years devising an alternative compensation system that >would enable the entertainment industry to restructure its >business model without resorting to cumbersome >micropayments. He has worked out a modified version of the >system that artists' advocacy groups currently use to make >sure that composers are paid when their music is performed >or recorded. According to Fisher's plan, all works capable >of being transmitted online would be registered with a >central office (whether government or independent is >unclear). The central office would then monitor how >frequently a work is used and compensate the creators on >that basis. The money would come from a tax on various >content-related devices, like DVD burners, blank CD's or >digital recorders. It is a brave proposal in a political >culture that is allergic to taxes and uncomfortable with >complex solutions. Still, if his numbers do indeed add up, >Fisher's proposal might be the best thing that ever >happened to the cultural commons: the creators would be >paid, while every individual would have unlimited access to >every cultural creation. > >Fisher and Charles Nesson, his colleague at Harvard Law >School, have showed this proposal to movie executives and >lawyers for several media conglomerates. Fisher says that >his ideas have been received with great interest by the >very industries -- music, home video -- that see their >business models disintegrating before their eyes. > >When asked whether he thinks his ambitious scheme has a >chance, Fisher says that the likeliest possibility would be >for it to be adopted in countries that are neither so >developed that they have signed on to international >copyright protocols nor so undeveloped that they are >desperate to do so. Only second-world countries, like >Croatia or Brazil, he speculates, are unfettered enough to >try something new. ''The hope is in the rain forest,'' he >says, in countries that ''are more like the United States >was before 1890, when we were a 'pirate' nation.'' > >And in the United States, is there any future for this sort >of payment system? Perhaps when the various current schemes >fail, Fisher's plan will seem more attractive, he says. >''What is involved here is nothing less than the shape of >our culture and the way we think of ourselves as >citizens,'' he adds. He describes a recent letter he >received from a supporter of his work. ''When they come for >my guns and my music, they'd better bring an army,'' it >read. ''People are used to being creatively engaged with >the culture,'' Fisher explains. ''They won't let someone >legislate that away.'' > >The future of the Copy Left's efforts is still an open >question. James Boyle has likened the movement's efforts to >establish a cultural commons to those of the environmental >movement in its infancy. Like Rachel Carson in the years >before Earth Day, the Copy Left today is trying to raise >awareness of the intellectual ''land'' to which they >believe we ought to feel entitled and to propose policies >and laws that will preserve it. Just as the idea of >environmentalism became viable in the wake of the last >century's advances in industrial production, the growth of >this century's information technologies, Boyle argues, will >force the country to address the erosion of the cultural >commons. ''The environmentalists helped us to see the world >differently,'' he writes, ''to see that there was such a >thing as 'the environment' rather than just my pond, your >forest, his canal. We need to do the same thing in the >information environment. We have to 'invent' the public >domain before we can save it.'' > > > > >Robert S. Boynton, director of the graduate magazine >journalism program at New York University, is writing a >book about American literary journalism. > >http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magazine/25COPYRIGHT.html?ex=1076009128&ei=1&en=e0ba1b262ddcba4a > > >--------------------------------- _________________________________________________________________ Contact brides & grooms FREE! http://www.shaadi.com/ptnr.php?ptnr=hmltag Only on www.shaadi.com. Register now! From karim at sarai.net Mon Jan 26 20:11:15 2004 From: karim at sarai.net (Aniruddha Shankar) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 20:11:15 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] SCO v. Linux : The story so far Message-ID: <4015270B.5020507@sarai.net> This is a historical delineation and a summary of the SCO v. Linux story which explains in clear language what the issues of contention are and interviews to SCO's McBride & to khadi's Torvalds and Perens. Two quotes are excerpted: “If Darl McBride had his way, he would have banned marriage too, because it obviously is against the remunerative interests of prostitutes,” [Perens] said. “Listen real clearly to what’s happening here,” McBride said in early January. “The situation is that we used to be the leader … we were where Red Hat [the No. 1 Linux distributor] is now. Linux then comes in, with Red Hat being the ringleader, and really attacks our [UNIX] market share and our marketplace. And they do it by simply taking our value and doing it for free. So, it’s really hard to compete with free. And so, then we come back in, and we start looking at this Linux beast, and we looked inside of it, and we realized, ‘Hey, wait a minute, this is actually us—this is a substantial amount of our intellectual property showing up inside of Linux itself.’ And that’s when we got our war paint on and said, ‘We gotta go back and take this thing head-on.’” Article at http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2004/feat_2004-01-22.cfm Discussion of article at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/25/1511238 K From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat Jan 31 03:29:08 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:29:08 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Documentray filmmakers against censorship Message-ID: <200401310329.08261.jeebesh@sarai.net> Documentary filmmakers from all over the country have been fighting for the last 6 months on Censorship. The campaign has been run through emails compilations, distributed meetings and pro-active actions of withdrawals. Remarkably it has able to provide a new way of working that combines discussion, debate, opening of new creative posssibilities and yet focused actions. They will bring out a comiplation of all the emails and it will be a great asset for any movement. For more information write to MIFF CAMPAIGN Enclosed is an article on the latest in this campaign..... ------------------------------------------ Not Merely 'Miff'ed Scharada Bail's article One could hardly be an independent documentary filmmaker in our country if one was even remotely faint-hearted. These men and women, who make films about marginalized people, neglected issues, and matters so disturbing that they can only be spoken of in whispers, if at all, battle odds that would daunt the most courageous amongst us. Funds for making films through official patronage or private sponsorship are hard to come by, and institutions that support the documentary can still be listed in a slim volume. Completed films can rarely hope to reach even an audience of the size of a flop Hindi film that is withdrawn in its first week. Screenings of documentaries remain confined to select venues and audiences, with television also becoming a virtually closed medium after the rise of commercial satellite channels, and Doordarshan's reduced interest in documentaries. In the circumstances, it is extremely heartening that documentaries are still being made with passion and determination, and gaining international recognition. If there is one forum that brought cheer to documentary filmmakers since 1990, it was the Mumbai International Film Festival, or MIFF, (formerly BIFF) that is held every two years in Mumbai, and organized by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Films Division. A festival for documentary, short and animation films, with a national and international selection of films, a competition and an information section, and tributes to legendary documentary makers, this was the place where the non-fiction filmmaking fraternity converged every couple of years, a place to meet, screen your films, and see some of the best work among your peers. Not any more, it appears. In a series of developments chillingly similar to changes sweeping many of our institutions and public domains in the past few years, MIFF 2004 is mired in a controversy relating to censorship, and silencing dissent through discriminative processes. The deadline for submitting entries for MIFF 2004 was September, and by August, more than 200 independent filmmakers across the country were already up in arms at the demand for clearance from the Censor Board for their festival entries. The filmmakers' concern and anger was understandable in view of the fact that foreign entries were exempted from the Censor Board clearance. Moreover, censorship does not play a role in any international festival of note, nor had a Censor Board clearance been necessary for MIFF since its inception in 1990, and this had become established as the convention. It appeared as if the authorities were in a hurry to invoke the Censor's clout against the dreaded G word that they feared would come up again and again at the festival, and in fact, quite a few films deal with the blow that the events in Gujarat have dealt to our nation. When independent filmmakers banded together under the banner of CAC or the Campaign Against Censorship, and succeeded in receiving support from their friends in other countries, the organizers withdrew the Censorship clause for MIFF 2004 entries, and the process of submitting films concluded in September.The experience made filmmakers feel it was important to discuss issues of political censorship, hate speech and censorship related laws. They decided to hold a seminar on these issues alongside MIFF 2004. However, the entire filmmaking community was again thrown into agitation by the selection of films for the festival. In January 2004, just weeks before the festival is held from February 3 to 9 in Mumbai, there has been a series of letters written by filmmakers protesting at the manner of selection, and raising questions about the composition of the selection committee, and the procedure followed, which appears to be a clear departure from the past. The atmosphere has been so vitiated by what one filmmaker has described as the "pattern of backdoor censoring of films with political text or a pattern to censor films that put 'shining India' in a bad light" that many filmmakers whose films have been selected for the festival have withdrawn their entries. (See box for list of films) Many excellent films, already recognized, or decorated by awards at other festivals, have been rejected, and filmmakers from across the country have decided to organize a parallel film festival to MIFF 2004 called Vikalp - Films for Freedom where these and other films will be screened. In what appears to be the final straw around the MIFF controversy, Girish Karnad has resigned from the MIFF jury, and Chennai based filmmaker R.V.Ramani has resigned from the organizing committee of MIFF. The last decade has seen India break with many traditions of cultural freedom and honesty. While icons like Mahatma Gandhi have been consigned to as much obscurity as the present political leadership can cover them with, a new breed of aggressive leaders and their agents have risen to prominence at every available public forum, loudly proclaiming their allegiance to 'nation' and defining daily the genetic, religious, and political qualities that citizens of such a nation should aspire to. In fact, such a 'nation' appeared many years earlier in the speeches of Adolf Hitler, when he seduced Germany to vote him into power. What is most revealing in the current MIFF controversy is the organisers' choice of personality for special tribute - Leni Reifenstahl. This was 'Hitler's favourite filmmaker' an actress and director whose propaganda film 'Triumph of the Will' and 'Olympia', a film about the 1936 Berlin Olympics contain many of the ideas of ethnic purity and superiority and 'cultural nationalism' that we in India in 2004 can ill afford. With their spirited resistance to the discrimination and censorship of MIFF 2004, Indian documentary filmmakers have lived up to their courageous vocation. Scharada Bail ---------------------------------- Films that have been withdrawn by their makers in protest at the MIFF 2004 selection and exclusion. Ajay Raina -- I am Human Gautam Sonti -- Anjavva is Me, I am Anjavva' Gopal Menon -- Naga Story:The Other Side of Silence Kabir Khan -- The Taliban Years and Beyond Meghnath & Biju Toppo -- Development Flows From The Barrel Of A Gun P Baburaj and C Saratchandran - The Bitter Drink Pankaj Butalia -- Tracing The Arc Reena Mohan -- On An Express Highway Surabhi Sharma -- Aamakaar (The Turtle People) Films that have received recognition elsewhere and been rejected by MIFF Naata (The Bond) (45 min) Bombay/India, 2003, dir - K P Jayasankar and A Monteiro Naata is about Bhau Korde and Waqar Khan, two friends who work on conflict resolution and communal amity initiatives between the different communities in Dharavi, reputedly, the largest "slum" in Asia. Naata is the second in a series of films on the people and city of Mumbai, and is a sequel to Saacha (The Loom), 2001. A Night of Prophecy (77 min) India, 2002, dir-Amar Kanwar The film travels in the states of Maharashta, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, and Kashmir. Through poetry you see where all the territories are heading towards, where you belong, and where to intervene, if you want to. The narratives merge, allowing us to see a more universal language of symbols and meanings. This moment of merger is the simple moment of prophecy. Resilient Rhythms (64 min) India, 2002, dir - Gopal Menon India's caste system places nearly 160 million people, the dalits, at the outskirts of society. It exploits their services but at the same time denies them acceptance as human beings. Resilient Rhythms deals with a range of dalit responses to their marginalisation, from armed struggle to electoral politics. The Unconscious (19 min) Maharastra/India 2003, dir - Manisha Dwivedi This film is a journey with men who call themselves kothi. They are men for their families and society, but for themselves they are women, and wives of other "macho" men. They walk two tightropes, both of fear and disgrace of and for their families and 'husbands'.And yet, they celebrate womanhood in their world of disguises. Vikas Bandook Ki Naal Se (Development Flows from the Barrel of the Gun) (54 min) India, 2003, dir-Biju Toppo and Meghnath The film gives voice to people affected by development projects-and repressed by the state for speaking out. The film asks why most of these incidents have taken place in areas where indigenous Adivasi people are majorities, and leaves us to ask why, in the age of globalisation, the state has turned from protector to predator. (on behalf of CAC we would like to point out that the following films have not been rejected by MIFF as reported in the above article : Resilient Rhythmns, The Unconscious, Vikas Bandook ki Naal Se) ------------------------------------------------------- -- Jeebesh Bagchi Sarai/CSDS 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Ph: 91 11 23960040 From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat Jan 31 04:03:03 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 04:03:03 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Re: [Reader-list] Understanding the Patenting of Traditional Knowledge-In response Message-ID: <200401310403.03629.jeebesh@sarai.net> Apologies for cross-posting. This is a posting on the reader-list on traditional knowledge, open source ideas of freedom and a certain impossibility of translation. I am sure will be of great interest to list member here......The refrence to other postings have been posted in this list earlier..... ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Understanding the Patenting of Traditional Knowledge-In response Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 00:22:43 +1300 From: Danny Butt To: Kia ora all Thanks Aarathi for the post and Jeebesh for the excellent response, which I think is a very important field of research. An area I'm very interested in at the moment is the relationship between Western discourses of 'freedom', particularly among white settler cultures in relationship to indigenous knowledge-management. A few quick points I think are worth exploring: 1) Open Source emphasises freedom of a particular kind: the absolute freedom of use and circulation. This particular conception of freedom as absolute mobility emerges from the particular social arrangements and spatial imaginary of the US nation state [1]. While considering that, it's worth holding in mind the very different conceptions of mobility and freedom held by the people of that land before European colonisation. As Amartya Sen puts it, "There is a deep complementarity between individual agency and social arrangements."[2] For these reasons, while there are many aspects of Open Source I support, I question its ability (and its *desire*) to provide a framework for quite different struggles for informational control (which have little to do with computer programming :7) in different locations. 2) My discussions in First Nations/Indigenous contexts in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia suggest to me that Indigenous Peoples do have a desire for *control* over their knowledge, information and culture, which is more than just about freedom to use it. Jeebesh's notes state that: > Critical to recognise here is that the IP protected materials and processes > cannot by REPRODUCED by other producers and neither can they be MODIFIED. > This basic value of IP protection goes against the foundation of the > protocols in which these earlier forms of knowledges evolved and survived. I don't think this can be argued for all forms of traditional knowledge. In an excellent essay on Indigenous Sovereignty, Ned Rossiter notes that indigenous cultural policy researchers in Australia have argued that 'the concept of intellectual property has been a defining characteristic of Indigenous culture from the beginning. It determines intellectual property rights and responsibilities, identity, and each person's place in society in relation to the [customary] law' [3]. Eric Michaels' work succinctly outlines a similar argument[4]. While in Aotearoa the cultural history is different, the theme remains similar. The link of Indigenous "Intellectual Property Regimes" or Traditional Resource Rights to customary control [Kaitiakitanga - more like guardianship] of land is particularly important in Australia and NZ.[5] 3) If I can freelance out of my philosophical depth a little :7, I think there is an error in trying to disembed knowledge from its practices of circulation. If knowledge is a relation - a signifying practice that is situated in a particular context - the method of circulation is constitutive of what that knowledge "is", and is part of what gives it its use-value. We're used to seeing restraint on information circulation in the West as a way of making an artificial scarcity for commercial gain (the IP model). I would argue that in the Australasian context indigenous desires to restrict knowledge circulation are not necessarily about commercial gain, but are essential for maintaining that knowledge. That is to say, while many forms of Western knowledge gain value through circulation, indigenous knowledge may in some instances be devalued by unrestricted circulation and modification. That is not to say the cultures maintaining this knowledge are "fixed" or "frozen end users" in the way Jeebesh suggests. They have their own logic of maintenance and development which is continually evolving. But that evolution may require the exclusion of users who do not have culturally determined responsibilities to maintain that knowledge. 4) At an empirical level, multinationals seem to desire the knowledge of indigenous people more than those people desire the intellectual property of multinationals :). So far. 4) The interesting issue is that open source cannot always be seen in this context as politically progressive. Given that so many of it's supporters are obssessive gun-toting gringo libertarians, not to mention overwhelmingly male, that should not be surprising :). Which is not to say the OS movement doesn't have an important role in disrupting the inequities of transnational capitalism increasingly articulated through IPRs, particularly in Western markets. But there are cultural limits to its applicability. To suggest otherwise is, from my perspective, to put Open Source's *idea* of freedom in conflict with this area's very immediate struggles to indigenous self-determination (another freedom). I think similar questions arise between European activist philosophy's critiques of "sovereignty" and the very real appeal the term holds among indigenous cultural activists. I'm looking forward to the discussions along those lines. Best, Danny [1] See http://www.opensource.org/docs/history.html [2] Amartya Sen (1999) Development as Freedom, Anchor: New York [3] Morris and Meadows, quoted in Rossiter, Ned (2002) "Modalities of Indigenous Sovereignty, Transformations of the Nation-State, and Intellectual Property Regimes" Borderlands ejournal 1(2) http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no2_2002/rossiter_modalit ies.html [4] Eric Michaels, Bad Aboriginal Art. Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons. Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. [5] See information from the Waitangi Tribunal on the Wai 262 legal claim for Maori control of customary knowledge and resources (Matuaranga Maori and Taonga): http://www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz/research/wai262/wai262xxxx.asp -- http://www.dannybutt.net _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: ------------------------------------------------------- -- Jeebesh Bagchi Sarai/CSDS 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Ph: 91 11 23960040 From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat Jan 31 05:21:31 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 05:21:31 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: Understanding the Patenting of Traditional Knowledge-In response In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200401310521.31800.jeebesh@sarai.net> Thanks Danny for opening up the question of `freedom` in open source. I would agree with you that the open source idea of `freedom` would be difficult to apply in areas of `embodied knowledge practices`. (1) My response was not so much about how traditional knowledge will be or can be or is `protected` by it's practitioners but how IP regimes intervenes within these knowledge practices and the story then on. After IP intervention, a new `disembodied-mobile` knowledge form would emerge and would be protected through `no end user rights to reproduce or modify`. It is within this context that user/producer models can help challenge this dominant form. I would never propogate (would shudder) the translation of `open source` ideas as an intervention into `traditional` forms of knowledge production, circulation or sustanance. Similarly it is IP regime i refer to when i talk about end user being an frozen concept within it. On the other hand I am not so sure whether we can extrapolate the conceptual and legal framework of `property` into earlier practices. There is a danger there. It makes `property` a cultural-legal universal outside the social arrangement within which it emerged. This is one area i am at present very cautious and unsure about. Though i agree that there are various complicated arrangements and protocols within which knowledge is sustained, practiced and transmitted. And these protocols are also about `custodianship` and `withholding`. And these can be harsh in its `exclusionary` frameworks. But to call these arrangements property would be difficult. If we take the example of `classical music` in South Asia, we do see complex social arrangements, codes and protocols that helped it survive, elaborate and grow. You have to learn through practice under guidance and then only you will be able to belong to it. But i would not think it ever articulated a conceptual framework called `property`. But, Danny let me add a caveat to your arguments. I think that the problem with IP regimes along with one of artificial construction of scarcity is one of what Shuddha calls the `unauthorised interlocutors`. This `unauthorised interlocutors` could be a problem in other forms of knowledge practices. In Mahabharata a brilliant archer called Ekalavya had to give us his thumb for the story to continue. He could not prove his authentication in front of the `authenticators`. (more of that Sarai reader 04 ....to be out next month...(..).... best and thanks for your lovely response...looking forward to carrying forward our collective thinking... Salaam Jeebesh 1) We would also have to think harder on the american constitutionalism basis of lot of the arguments to ground open source ideas of freedom. Martin Hardie has written about this in the forthcoming Sarai Reader 04. (forthcoming) From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Sat Jan 31 11:18:58 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 21:48:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] documentary film makers against censorship Message-ID: <20040131054858.16808.qmail@web13606.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all I think what has been taking place in the MIFF/ VIkalp film festivals is a very important phase in our experiuence of freedom of speech and expression ( I term that I am not very found of, as it reduces an entire set of politcal practises into a legal right). And something that we should all contribute to, the present action of the film makers needs to be supported and consolidated in whatever form that we can. There are a few pof us currently wqorking on a compiliation of cases, legislations, tules etc on fearless speech. Our idea is however not to limit this to merely cases and decisions but also include in this compilitation interesting poems, pictures, banned stories, research resources, cartoons etc etc which we would like to release as a first version on 14th of Febuary ( I cannot think of a more meaningful reworking of silly Valentines day than having a celebration against censorship)in Delhi. Again as with our general practise this database/ compiliation will be created on an open collaborative manner and can form the basis of future collaborations and contributions etc. So any leads, any contributions from any sources would be of a great help lawrence __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From RobinManuel at aol.com Fri Jan 30 04:02:06 2004 From: RobinManuel at aol.com (RobinManuel at aol.com) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 17:32:06 EST Subject: [Commons-Law] version recordings, tune-borrowings Message-ID: <42.457114fc.2d4ae3e6@aol.com> A few months ago there was discussion here of the anticipated Indian Parliament decision to delete S.52(1)(j) of the Copyright Act, which would greatly limit the vogue of version recordings by requiring producers to obtain the permission of original copyright holders. Does anyone know if (1) this law was passed, and (2) if it was passed, what sorts of effects it has had on the music industry and the abundance of version recordings? I am also curious about the legal aspects of the hoary tradition of Indian film music composers borrowing tunes from foreign (mostly Western) popular songs. Are permissions ever secured and royalties paid for such borrowings, or do the producers (many on EMI and other large international labels) simply assume that there is no danger of litigation or conflict? Peter Manuel (musicologist)