From mukundan at som.iitb.ac.in Wed Dec 9 13:24:36 2009 From: mukundan at som.iitb.ac.in (Mukundan R) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 13:24:36 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] 1st IPR Researchers Confluence - IIT Bombay Message-ID: <8673bed063837ce35a9ec981b96d3387.squirrel@chanakya.som.iitb.ac.in> Dear All, This mail is an invitation to the 1st IPR Researchers Confluence to be held at Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay - dec 21 & 22, 2009. THe link - www.som.iitb.ac.in has the details on the programme. The key highlight of this confluence (not a conference..) is to share the status of IPR Research happening in India and attempt to create a roadmap for IPR Research in India. looking forward to your participation. thanks and regards mukundan From manu_shahalia at hotmail.com Sun Dec 20 11:47:50 2009 From: manu_shahalia at hotmail.com (MANU LUV SHAHALIA) Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:47:50 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Working of the Biodiversity Act In-Reply-To: <00e001ca69a9$ed905890$c8b109b0$@com> References: <00e001ca69a9$ed905890$c8b109b0$@com> Message-ID: it seems I have accidentally got un-subscribed to this mailing list, Kindly resubscribe me please. Thanks -- Manu From: krishnaswamysudhir at gmail.com To: commons-law at sarai.net Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:53:03 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Working of the Biodiversity Act Dear all The Biodiversity Act is the centre piece of the legislative efforts to create a regulatory regime around biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge. Kanchi Kohli takes a critical look at one of the applications granted by the National Biodiversity Authority to collect blood samples and hair of the Indian Wild Ass. Notice the primary role of a state funded lab in making the application. http://www.indiatogether.org/cgi-bin/tools/pfriend.cgi She concludes that granting state regulatory control over biodiversity fails to ensure conservation or prevent the misappropriation of knowledge rights. Best Sudhir _________________________________________________________________ New Windows 7: Find the right PC for you. 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URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20091220/811eed2b/attachment-0001.html From vivek at sarai.net Mon Dec 14 22:39:03 2009 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:39:03 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Philosophy prof wont go to jail for unofficial Derrida translations Message-ID: <4B26712F.6030904@sarai.net> Question: I wonder who gets to authorise the translations? --Vivek http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/14/philosophy-prof-wont.html Philosophy Prof Won't Go to Jail for Making Unofficial Derrida Translations Available to Students Horacio Potel, the Argenine philosophy professor who was facing a possible prison sentence for posting unauthorized translations of unavailable Derrida works for his students to read, has been exonerated by an Argentine court: On 13 November, the Argentinean justice decided that Potel's actions did not justify penal prosecution, and he was declared free of charges, according to the Fundación Vía Libre, an Argentinean nongovernmental organisation focussed on civil rights in the digital area, who posted the court decision [pdf] on their website... "In our legal system," Beatriz Busaniche of Vía Libre told Intellectual Property Watch this week, "this case will not be considered as jurisprudence, but the case as a whole helped us spread the word about copyright issues." "One of the main results is that now social sciences universities here are aware of this conflict and really committed to open the debate around copyright," she said. Restoration Of French Philosopher's Work Online In Argentina Seen As An Opening (Thanks, Carolina!) (Image: File:Derrida-by-Pablo-Secca.jpg, Wikimedia Commons) Previously: * Argentine philosophy prof faces prison time for posting unofficial ... From siddharth.narrain at gmail.com Mon Dec 21 13:44:28 2009 From: siddharth.narrain at gmail.com (siddharth narrain) Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:44:28 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Talk on Ecosytems of Northern India, the Commons and the Law by Prof. Minoti-Chakravarty-Kaul In-Reply-To: <52cddec0912150349s7267e458ldc072511b849cc04@mail.gmail.com> References: <52cddec0912150349s7267e458ldc072511b849cc04@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1773a06d0912210014t38510e69j15f11c81e62e9b5f@mail.gmail.com> The Alternative Law Forum invites you to a talk on *"Ecosytems of Northern India, the Commons and the Law" by Prof. Minoti-Chakravarty-Kaul (*Dr. Chakravarty-Kaul is a founder member of the International Association for the Study of Common Property. She has established a research organization as Foundations for Common Lands in India : RAHAT and RAAH SHAMILAT) *Where*: Alternative Law Forum, 122/4 Infantry Road (opp Infantry Wedding Hall) *When*: Dec 21 (Monday) from 06:00 PM to 08:00 PM *THE CONTEXT* Historical precedent and Institutional Analysis of Eco-systems: Since the last part of the nineteenth century and in the early 1940s in British India it was just dawning among revenue and judicial officers, but not fully comprehended that common property resources and the seemingly ‘wastelands’ or open access common grasslands were central to eco-system services that communities of both agricultural and pastoral production provided for each other. Given a particular level of technology, infra-structure of market and political governance - these eco-systems were recognizeably self-organised and self-governed to *minimize risk and uncertainty* * not *to *maximize production* in situations of both dynamic climate variability and political uncertainty. Thus it is that in northern India, which was the entire land mass of the doabs from the Indus to the Ganga, there were not just delineated by natural resource circumstances but access to them were ‘guided’ by customs-in-common of a tenurial system of ‘joint revenue responsibility’ which then got recorded as ‘rights’ in the village administration paper or *wajib-ul-arz* of forest and village settlements and for the district a *riwaj-i-am*. These eco-systems ranged over long distances being defined not just by bio-physical conditions of precipitation, vegetation, rivers and altitude but were sustained by the social-cultural relationships of communities which inhabited these tracts and adjusted with others who were non-residents. Therefore concerns of livelihood had to include both the sedentary and nomadic or transhumant aspects of natural-resource needs in the residential area of villages and townships like Lahore and Delhi, in open access wastelands of the plains and in the forests of the Siwaliks and streatching out in both directions of the Hindu Kush in the west and the Himalayas in the east. Such systems existed right across Europe too, in early centuries if the first millennia before the fracture of nation states occurred but continued to do so in England and Scotland into the nineteenth century. Legal historians like Erwin Nasse from Bonn outlined the importance of the institutions of village communities in England and Henry Sumner Maine carried this forward to a comparison of institutions of Europe and India. Finally it was Baden Powell who was to examine the whole concept of the wastelands and agrarian systems in south India, north Kanara to be precise. In the twentieth century it was R.P. Whyte and A.M. Stow who were to identify fallows in north India as basic to eco-systems while a the seminal work of Ester Boserup clinched the issue for Africa. However it was already too late and economic-historians do not determine policy. Twentieth century brought changes in tenure mostly determined by political means altering the legal standing of those who had access to the commons. A well-known historical example of course is the enclosure of common lands by means of private legislation in England which presumed that there was no village community and that the commons belonged to feudal manors in the centuries prior to the nineteenth. Such dis-enfranchisement of the rural population from the effective governance of rural resources was recognized by Malthus, (unfortunate though it was that his demographic theory caught more attention) and the consequent danger of under-consumption due to pauperization, a century before the Great Depression! One never knows how neo-classical economics would have developed if Malthus rather than Ricardo were to lead the way. However John Stuart Mill did try to counter the situation by suggesting tenurial reforms to give back the commons to the dispossessed. and accordingly an Association was formed in London in 1871 with no less a person than as its first President. Contemporary changes in eco-systems and ‘eco-refugees’: It was almost it was in keeping with this tradition that after the Second World War various programs of land tenure reform became the economic and social counterpart of political movements for freedom from colonial rule in Asia and Africa. But such historic expectation unfortunately generated a field day for political games; not all indigenous communities, interests groups or political parties were equally schooled in terms of what was involved in tenurial reforms. Agrarian reform has often been a double-edged strike on common property. Collectives organized around territorial commons based on customary rights were often perceived as threats to administrative spatial boundaries within the emerging nations. Thus it was often *ideology* and *politics *that provided the rhetoric for tenurial reforms while it was the *politicking*during institutional design and implementation which prevented the realization of the intended goals of poverty alleviation, equity and social justice. A major question that arises is whether legislative development or court actions can be more appropriate tools for tenurial reforms than institutional design by politics? In most countries in South Asia and Africa, ecological conditions vary so greatly from region to region, that a centralized and uniform statutory land tenure reforms tend to produce unintended consequences right from the outset. Very often the poorest segments of the rural communities are directly hit because those aspects of rights to common property resources which complemented private individual property rights were either ignored or annihilated, even in so-called socialist economies. A ray of hope? The Gitksan and Wet’su’Weten tribes of British Columbia initiated history in Canada in 1998 by what is known as the Delgamukw case when they struggled to get recognition for their perceptions of customary usages even though NOT recorded, by the judiciary in federal Canada. This could well re-instate first principles of historical jurisprudence so eminently established by Sir Henry Sumner Maine in the nineteenth century, and in the process revive faith in *local self-governance*. The Delgamukw case sets a path-breaking precedent, opening the window to the possibility of centralised governments avoiding solutions based on the market. Over the last two centuries, “enclosing the commons” in both renewable and non-renewable resources and creating private property have not necessarily been efficient in scale economy. Rather, such privatisation through the market or bureaucratic execution of natural resource policy is an expensive substitute as against self-governance by pastoral people the world over. It has been the means of creating environmental refugees who are constantly under threat of being marginalised through erosion of customary rights in the commons, which in turn endanger the political stability of countries like oil-rich Africa and the middle-east. *Biographical Sketch* *Dr. Minoti Chakravarty-Kaul* was born in Nagpur, India. She has a PhD in Economics (Delhi School of Economics, 1991), an MA in Economics (Delhi School of Economics, 1961), and a BA Honours in Economics (Miranda House, Delhi University, 1959). She worked for 40 years 1961-2002 as a lecturer first and then a Senior Reader in Economics in Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi. She has held a number of fellowships, including: Visiting Fellowships at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University (1999-2000) and Chair for International Economic Development (2002-2003); Shastri Indo-Canadian Senior Fellowship at the University of British Columbia (1993 and 1998); the S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Post-doctoral Fellowship (1993-1995); and Ford Foundation Fellowship at Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis (1990-1992). She is the author of * Common Lands and Customary Law, Institutional Change in Northern India in the past two centuries* (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996) and a variety of conference and journal articles, including: "Dam a river, why Damn a People?", *Alp Jan*, Vol.II, No.2, pp.28-37, Jan-March, 2002; and "Market Success or Community Failure? Common Property Resources in Colonial North India and a Case Illustration from a Cluster", *Indian Economic and Social History Review*, Vol. XXXVI, No.3, pp.355-87, August, 1999. Her current research interests include the historical development of the commons in Delhi and Eco-systems of the Himalayas, the northern plains and the Hindu Kush and how this history feeds into contemporary events for the peoples of those areas. Dr. Chakravarty-Kaul is a founder member of the International Association for the Study of Common Property. She has established a research organization as Foundations for Common Lands in India : RAHAT and RAAH SHAMILAT. -- Alternative Law Forum 122/4 Infantry Road Opposite Infantry Wedding House Bangalore 560001 Phone 22868757/22865757 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20091221/2822b5ee/attachment.html From artscapeindia at gmail.com Thu Dec 24 17:51:23 2009 From: artscapeindia at gmail.com (Art, Resources & Teaching) Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:51:23 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Streets: Workshop, Exhibition and Film Screenings (2-9 Jan, 2010) In-Reply-To: <7397dac50912240404l6b3623dav8517051badd3cdd5@mail.gmail.com> References: <7397dac50912240404l6b3623dav8517051badd3cdd5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7397dac50912240421x375748f5y77a81ca14be1d793@mail.gmail.com> Dear friends, A one-day workshop on *Streets *is being organized by the Urban Research and Policy Programme of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), in collaboration with Art, Resources and Teaching Trust (A.R.T), Bangalore. The workshop will be held on *Saturday, January 2nd*, 2010, from 9.00 a.m.to 5.30 p.m., at the NIAS Auditorium, Indian Institute of Science campus. The workshop will examine the past, the present and look towards the future to understand how a street shapes and produces the social, economic, physical, and political environment of the city. It will provide a platform to move beyond thinking of the street as a stage set or benign backdrop to urban life, to suggest instead that the street plays a more important and active role in shaping how people move, interact, do business, comprise or negotiate with authority and make claims to urban space. There will be four thematic sessions: 'Imagining the Street', 'Boundaries and Grids', 'Producing the Street', and 'Politics beyond Marginality', as well as a concluding open session on 'Thinking the City through the Street'. Speakers include Ravi Sundaram (SARAI, Delhi), Nikhil Rao (Wellesley College, USA), Prasad Shetty (CRIT, Mumbai), Shveta Sarda (Cybermohalla Lab, LNJP - SARAI), Curt Gambetta (Rice University), Annapurna Garimella and Fiza Ishaq (A.R.T., Bangalore), Lalitha Kamath (TISS, Mumbai), Jonathan Anjaria (Bard College, USA), Zainab Bawa (CSCS, Bangalore), and Solomon Benjamin (NIAS). We invite you to participate in the workshop. For registration, please contact: Mariyammal: nias_mmu at yahoo.co.in, 22185078 or Sanam: sanam.roohi at gmail.com, 9243092970 The workshop is part of a larger event on 'Streets' that includes an exhibition and film screenings. The exhibition ‘Streets’ will be a rare opportunity for audiences to see work by several photographers and artists from Bangalore and other Indian cities, each looking at the street through his or her work with a unique perspective. The aim of the show is to create a visual dialogue on the historical, cultural, social and economic layers of the street and its role in shaping how people move, interact, do business, comprise or negotiate with authority and make claims to urban space. *The exhibition opening is on* *Sunday, January 3rd at **6.00 pm* *at the ** Venkatappa** **Art** **Gallery*. The exhibition will continue till* **Saturday, January 9th, 2010** *from 10.00 am to 5.30 pm. The film screenings will be held on *Tuesday, January 5th, Thursday, January 7th and **Friday, January 8 th 2010* from 3.00 pm to 6.45 pm at the Venkatappa auditorium (programme given below). [image: http://artscapeindia.org/E-mailer-for-street-workshop-new.png] Please feel free to invite your friends, Art, Resources & Teaching Casa Andree II, First Floor, No.8 B 1 Andree Road, Shanti Nagar Bangalore 560 027 +91.80.4112.4556 info at artscapeindia.org www.artscapeindia.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20091224/1a7f22c8/attachment-0001.html From manu_shahalia at hotmail.com Tue Dec 29 09:35:02 2009 From: manu_shahalia at hotmail.com (MANU LUV SHAHALIA) Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:35:02 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] BusyBox Complain Message-ID: Please find attached the BusyBox Complaint for reference. Regards -- Manu Luv Shahalia Advocate _________________________________________________________________ New Windows 7: Find the right PC for you. Learn more. http://windows.microsoft.com/shop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20091229/cf7a49b6/attachment.html From pranesh at cis-india.org Wed Dec 30 15:46:02 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:46:02 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] No partying without music licences Message-ID: <4B3B2862.80503@cis-india.org> Dear all, It's that time of the year again: time for newspaper coverage of music licences from PPL. (IPRS, it seems, gets sidelined.) Two reports, from Bangalore and New Delhi. (Bangalore) Not music to their ears: hotels get notice to pay licence fee http://www.thehindu.com/2009/12/30/stories/2009123060150300.htm (New Delhi) Court orders restaurants, malls to pay licence fee for music http://www.thehindu.com/2009/12/30/stories/2009123056940400.htm ## For previous years' coverage from the Hindu alone, see: Party capital in no mood for revelry http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/29/stories/2008122954650500.htm New Year bash sans music? http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/25/stories/2007122551680200.htm It may not rock on New Year's Eve http://www.thehindu.com/2005/12/23/stories/2005122322750300.htm /----------------/ Date:30/12/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/12/30/stories/2009123060150300.htm Karnataka - Bangalore Not music to their ears: hotels get notice to pay licence fee Sharath S. Srivatsa Music industry guns for establishments which evade copyright laws BANGALORE: Cracking down on establishments that play music during the New Year’s Eve bash without licence, the Phonographic Performance Ltd. (PPL) has issued legal notice to 700 hotels here to prevent them from infringing on the copyrights of the music industry. Around 1,500 establishments have been identified in the city alone which could host New Year parties and the PPL has sent a legal notice to those which have not paid the licence fee to play music at their year-end events. It has also secured injunction order against two leading hotels. The PPL is the apex licensing arm of the Indian Music Industry (IMI) that has 140 music companies as members. Established in 1941, it was earlier known as Indian Phonographic Industry and was formed to administer the broadcast, telecast and public performance rights of its member companies. “A number of places that have decided not to host parties have responded informing us about their decision but quite a few are yet to get back to us, and we have issued notice warning them against playing music without our consent,” Sowmya Chowdhury, Country Head (Events) of PPL, told The Hindu. “We expect about 500 premises in Bangalore to take licence from us to play music. A vigilance squad comprising 50 members will be on the move on New Year’s Eve to check violations,” he said. The licence fee for a small to medium-sized parties could range between Rs. 45,000 and Rs. 60,000, and it could exceed Rs. 1 lakh for large parties. The fee is calculated based on the number of people and the duration of the event. Under Section 35 of the Indian Copyright Act, playing commercial music in public without paying the licence fee is an offence liable to contempt of court. Section 35 also grants exclusivity to PPL to issue licence to hotels/ pubs for playing music during the events on their respective premises. Mr. Chowdhury said: “Musical nights and customised New Year’s events rake in huge revenues. A year-ending event cannot be imagined without music. Yet when it comes to paying for the commercial use of music, the event organisers chose to evade the licence fee.” © Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20091230/47763482/attachment.bin