From pranesh at cis-india.org Sun Feb 1 12:07:02 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 12:07:02 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Irish ISP agrees to disconnect repeat P2P users Message-ID: <4785f1e20901312237g49529d16w28cbcdef6128a0ce@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, Eircom, an Irish ISP, voluntarily (as part of a settlement) agrees to implement "graduated response" to online copyright infringement. http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/01/irish-isp-agrees-to-disconnect-repeat-p2p-users.ars Other links: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/12181/new-media/big-four-music-labels-and-eircom-in-landmark-piracy-settlement http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0129/1232923373331.html http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/01/irish-isp-agrees-three-strikes-against-its-users Irish ISP agrees to disconnect repeat P2P users By Nate Anderson | Last updated January 29, 2009 1:10 The dispute began some time ago when the Irish branches of EMI, Warner, Universal, and Sony filed suit against Eircom. They charged that the ISP was essentially aiding and abetting piracy by doing things like advertising its services on The Pirate Bay, and the labels believed they could get a judge to force the ISP to install network monitoring equipment. But Eircom has agreed to the plan on a voluntary basis, without any government pressure. The move lead the Electronic Frontier Foundation to blast the ISP over its claim that it will consider the evidence presented by the music industry before shutting anyone off. The agreement sets Ireland alone, so far as we can tell. While the French HADOPI law could bring government backing to the three strikes idea (complete with disconnections), Eircom may be the only ISP in the world voluntarily cutting P2P users off without court orders. It also means that Irish labels are pursuing—and Eircom has agreed to—a plan that was explicitly rejected by the European Parliament last year (though the European Commission watered down this stance when it went over the bill in question). From sunil at mahiti.org Thu Feb 5 17:58:39 2009 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:58:39 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] UK copyright law in verse Message-ID: <1233836919.6817.49.camel@goli.lan.deeproot.in> http://jergames.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-copyright-law-in-verse.html Enjoy ;-) From vivek at sarai.net Thu Feb 5 21:31:17 2009 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:31:17 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] UK copyright law in verse In-Reply-To: <1233836919.6817.49.camel@goli.lan.deeproot.in> References: <1233836919.6817.49.camel@goli.lan.deeproot.in> Message-ID: <498B0D4D.5060500@sarai.net> Thanks for this Sunil, My favourite so far is-- Somehow the singers or actors are never the copyright holders; they must not be clever. V Sunil Abraham wrote: > http://jergames.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-copyright-law-in-verse.html > > Enjoy ;-) > > > > _______________________________________________ > commons-law mailing list > commons-law at sarai.net > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law > From kalakamra at gmail.com Sun Feb 8 13:36:45 2009 From: kalakamra at gmail.com (CAMP on the Roof) Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009 13:36:45 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Announcement - Pad.ma Engagement In-Reply-To: <33eee40c0902071221u67de4bb4q65ddea2b3bc16a7d@mail.gmail.com> References: <33eee40c0902071221u67de4bb4q65ddea2b3bc16a7d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <33eee40c0902080006v24b9280dlc1fa6aded4a4c618@mail.gmail.com> (due apologies for cross-posting) Dear all. We take great pleasure in inviting you to a day-long engagement with Pad.ma. Day: Monday, February, 16, 2009. Time: 11:am to 7pm Location: "Who Are We?" hall - inside the Discovery of India exhibition, First Floor, Nehru Centre, Dr. Annie Besant Road, Worli, Mumbai - 400018. Featuring: Agaaz-Akanksha - Bombay Ayisha Abraham - Bangalore Desire Machine Collective - Guwahati/Shillong GBGB Andolan (NAPM) - Bombay Jan Gerber and Sebastian Lütgert - Berlin Kaushik Bhaumik - Bombay Lawrence Liang -Bangalore Nida Ghouse - Bombay Nilanjan Bhattarcharya - Calcutta Priya Sen - Delhi Ranu Ghosh - Calcutta Sadanand Menon - Chennai Sanjay Kak- Delhi For the past year, we (Oil21 from Berlin, the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore, and three organisations from Bombay: Majlis, Point of View and ChitraKarKhana/CAMP) have been working on various aspects of the online archive, http://pad.ma. At the moment Pad.ma contains some 150 hours of video and over 92,500 annotations (text entries). We see the Pad.ma archive as a way of opening up images, meanings and effects that are present in video footage and its production process: resources that conventions of editing and viewing have tended to suppress. This in a way, is its traditional archiving function. At the same time, Pad.ma responds to the invitation and challenge of a landscape beyond "the film" as the desired end-product of this medium, and beyond youtube as its default online repository. Filmmakers and others are already engaged in many forms of presentation, interpretation, and the combination of images and ideas. Pad.ma suggests some specific new relations between images and text, production and commentary, online and offline, visibility and possibility. It proposes a few new ways to write about and discuss documentary film practice, ways to base academic work on video sources, and more generally, ways to still care for something that has become "democratic". All of these claims, ofcourse, will be tested in Pad.ma's new phase. In March this year, Pad.ma will be opened up to external contributions. As a lead-up to this, we invited a number of "users": independent filmmakers, artists, activists, researchers, students, scholars, and enthusiasts to contribute their own material into pad.ma, or traverse the archive and explore its ways. On the 16th of February, we are having a day-long series of presentations and discussions with this group. We hope you will join us and take part, to understand the activities over the past year, and to help us plan the road ahead. Looking forwards. with love, pad.ma group Who are we: altlawforum.org camputer.org chitrakarkhana.net majlisbombay.org oil21.org pointofview.org -- camputer.org pad.ma chitrakarkhana.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090208/9d0c44d4/attachment.html From daya.shanker at deakin.edu.au Sat Feb 7 15:06:04 2009 From: daya.shanker at deakin.edu.au (Daya Shanker) Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:36:04 +1100 Subject: [Commons-Law] Can India, Brazil take on EU over regulation? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090207203409.047748e0@deakin.edu.au> Dear Sangeeta This note is in reference to the seizure or detention of Losarton by the Dutch Customs at the instance of DuPont and Merck. Article 51 of the TRIPS Agreement dealing with the Suspension of release by customs authorities says Members, shall, in conformity with the provisions set out below, adopt procedures to enable a right holder, who has valid grounds for suspecting that the importation of counterfeit trademark or pirated copyright goods may take place, to lodge an application in writing with competent authorities, administrative or judicial, for the suspension by the customs authorities of the release into free circulation of such goods. Members may enable such an application to be made in respect of goods which involve other infringements of intellectual property rights, provided that the requirements of this Section are met. Member may also provide for corresponding procedures concerning the suspension by the customs authorities of the release of infringing goods destined for exportation from their territories. There is a corresponding note in the TRIPS Agreement which says "It is understood that there shall be no obligation to apply such procedures to imports of goods put on the market in another country by or with the consent of the right holder, or goods in transit.” (note 13). The first part of Article 51 of the TRIPS Agreement deals with issues of restricting import of counterfeit trademark goods and pirated copyright products and the second part apparently gives the members of the WTO the opportunity to restrict import of product covered by other intellectual property rights such as patents leading to free circulation of such goods in their territory. However, note 13 specifically mention that there shall be no obligation to apply such provision to the goods in transit. The use of the term “shall be” does not leave any doubt that the provision of Section 51 is not to be applied to the case of goods in transit. Read with note 13, it is clear that the last sentence of Article 51 of the TRIPS Agreement shall not be applicable in the case of losarton which was in transit in Amsterdam. An examination of the European Council Regulation Number 3295/94 of December 22, 1994, apparently in anticipation of the coming into force of the TRIPS Agreement on 1st January 1995 would help in interpretation of Article 51 of the TRIPS Agreement and the interpretation of Council Regulation (EC) No. 1383/2003 of 22 July 2003 and corresponding rules issued in 2007. The 3295/94 regulation lays down “measures to prohibit the release for free circulation, export, reexport or entry for a suspension procedure of counterfeit and pirated goods” ”taking into account the terms of the GATT agreement on trade related intellectual property issues, including a trade in counterfeiting goods ” It had a specific stipulation that action by customs authorities to re-export was to take place only where the suspected counterfeit or pirated goods are discovered during a check” i.e. not as per the complaint of some agents purportedly affected by such import or production. Article 1(1) of this regulation says This regulation shall lay down: (1) the conditions under which the customs authorities shall take action where goods suspected of being counterfeit or pirated are: - entered for free circulation, export or re-export, -found when checks are made on goods placed under a suspensive procedure within the meaning of Article 84(1)(a) of Council Regulation (EEC) No 2913/92 of 12th October 1992 establishing the Community Customs Code (5), or re-exported subject to notification; and (b) the measures which shall be taken by the competent authorities with regard to those goods where it has been established that they are indeed counterfeit or pirated. The relevant part of Council Regulation (EC) No 1383/2003 of 22 July 2003) which rplaced Council Regulation (EC) No 3295/94 of Dec. 22, 1994 as is the case in other regulations with the European Community, the office and the staff of which are totally controlled by multinational corporations and local industries, was amended to read as (1) to improve the working of the system concerning the entry into the Community and the export and re-export from the Community of goods infringing certain intellectual property rights introduced by Council Regulation (EC) No 3295/94 of 22 December 1994 laying down measures to prohibit the release for free circulation, export, re-export or entry for suspensive procedure of counterfeit and pirated goods. (2) The marketing of counterfeit and pirated goods, and indeed all goods infringing intellectual property rights, does considerable damage to law-abiding manufacturers and traders and or right-holders, as well as deceiving and in some cases endangering the health and safety of consumers. Such goods should, in so far as is possible, be kept off the market and measure adopted to deal effectively with this unlawful activity without impeding the freedom of legitimate trade. This objective is consistent with efforts under way at international level. (3) In cases where counterfeit goods, pirated goods and more generally, goods infringing an intellectual property right originate in or come from third countries, their introduction into the Community customs territory, including their transshipment, release for free circulation in the Community, placing under a suspensive procedure and placing in a free zone or warehouse, should be prohibited and a procedure set up to enable the customs authorities to enforce this prohibition as effectively as possible.” The changes are mischievous and their application was deliberate. A simple reading of the amendment of 3295/94 leading to 1383 of 2003 has been the extension of customs regulation dealing with counterfeit and pirated goods to “indeed all goods infringing intellectual property rights” which can be justified by the later part of Article 51 of the TRIPS Agreement. But the introduction of “including their transshipment” is in direct violation of the TRIPS Agreement. The European Community has tried to justify these modifications in terms of the objective “consistent with efforts under way at international level” mentioned in paragraph 3 of the Council Regulation 1383(2003). The transshipment through Community customs territory also brings in the issue whether ports and ships can be considered customs territory. Normally customs territory is the land mass of a country along with contiguous sea and the airspace above with the exception of goods on the ships and in the part area. The patent acts are not applicable to the goods in transit i.e. the goods which have temporarily entered into the customs area. This issue has been discussed in detail in Brown v Duchesne ( 235 US 641 (1913)) by the US Supreme Court and confirmed in a series of later decisions as this judgment raised intellectual property rights to the level of property where a ship had entered into the US port, parts of which had been patented. The US supreme Court observed But these acts of Congress do not, and were not intended to, operate beyond the limits of the United States: and as the patentee’s rights of property and exclusive use are derived from them, they cannot extend beyond the limits to which the law itself is confined. And the use of it outside of the jurisdiction of the United States is not an infringement of his rights and he has no claim to any compensation of the profit or advantage he may derive from it. Basically a product must hurt the commercial interests of the patent holder in the territory of the patent and any goods in transit do not hurt the commercial interest of the patent holder in any way in the territory of the patent. I have discussed these aspects in the case of Paragraph 6 amendment of the TRIPS Agreement in my articles The Paragraph 6 solution of the Doha Public Health Declaration and Export under the TRIPS Agreement (Journal of World Intellectual Property Rights, 2004, 7(3) pp. 365-400) and Access to Medicines, Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on Public Health, and Developing Countries in International Treaty Negotiations (The Indian Journal of Law and Technology, 2006, 2, 8-64). I do not know what international efforts are under consideration as claimed by the European Community unless the secret agreement on counterfeit products is the example of international efforts under way. The seizure of losarton in transit is a case of direct and deliberate mischief by the European Union at the behest of DuPont and Merck and Brazil and India would fail in their duties by not taking the matter to the WTO dispute Settlement Organization. Pending the action at the WTO DSO, to withdraw transshipment facility to all the goods originating the European community and going to European community. The audacious reply of the Ambassador Eckart Guth of the European Community does not leave any choice to countries such as Brazil and India. Such obdurate talk always takes care of the after retirement job. Mr. Eckarat Guth appears to be from the Netherlands itself. Let the European Community approach the WTO for redress of its grievances. Such mischief must be dealt with instantly and thoroughly. Possibly I am expecting too much from these countries which on the sly went and signed the TRIPS Amendment on 30th August 2003 and are even ratifying it knowing fully well that each and every word in that amendment is a fraud. Daya Shanker At 09:29 PM 4/02/2009, Sangeeta wrote: >India, Brazil to take on EU over regulation >The two countries have taken a strong stand against EU act of seizing Dr >Reddy’s in-transit shipment >Radhieka Pandeya >http://www.livemint.com/2009/01/30002200/India-Brazil-to-take-on-EU-ov.html? >d=1 > >New Delhi: A ship loaded with medicine from India drops anchor at a European >port from where it will sail for Brazil. European officials seize the cargo >and later send it back to India. They say the drug is a generic version that >violates a patent protected in Europe. A generic drug is cheaper than the >patented version. > >The seizure has led to a full-blown war of words in three corners of the >world—and put the spotlight back on contentious issues such as intellectual >property (IP) laws, access to affordable medicines and the use of non-tariff >barriers against exports from developing countries. > >Patent tussle: India’s ministry of commerce and industry is working out a >legal strategy to convince the European Union to drop the provision under >which the shipment from Dr Reddy’s Laboratories was seized. Bharath Sai / >Mint > >The governments of India and Brazil have taken a strong stand against the >European Union (EU) for seizing an in-transit shipment of a drug >manufactured by Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd (DRL). Brazil’s ministry of >external affairs has threatened to take the issue up with the World Trade >Organization (WTO) that settles trade disputes between countries. And >Brazil, with strong support from India and Bangladesh, at a recent executive >board session of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, also >succeeded in blocking a controversial resolution backed by the European >Commission (EC) and WHO-funded International Medical Product >Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce, or IMPACT. The resolution had been widely >criticized for mixing up issues of public health and private IP rights in >the context of defining “counterfeit” drugs. > >The Indian ministry of commerce and industry is working out a legal strategy >to convince the EU to drop the provision under which the DRL shipment was >seized. “We plan to approach the WTO if the EU fails to take suitable >action,” said G.K. Pillai, secretary, department of commerce. > >On 15 January, Mint had reported that a DRL shipment of the generic version >of losartan was seized in transit in the Netherlands. This shipment, on its >way to Brazil, was held by the customs authority at Rotterdam, which said it >infringed the patent of the original drug—Cozaar. Losartan is not patented >in India or Brazil. The patent for Cozaar in the Netherlands is held by >DuPont, while US-based pharma multinational Merck and Co. holds the >marketing rights. > >“We have taken up the issue with a national-level industry body. But we hope >the Indian government will take it up at the government-to-government >level...as it is an industry-wide problem,” said DRL chief executive G.V. >Prasad. > >Referring to the EC regulation, a DRL spokesperson told Mint in an email >response, “...These provisions may have a significant impact on Indian >companies, most of which use the EU route to transport pharmaceutical >products to markets where the patent is not recognized or the product is off >patent. By forcing (them) to opt for a different route...the cost of >transport may significantly add to the cost of producing...thus adversely >impacting the India’s ability to remain >competitive.” He added, “This will, >obviously, also impact the availability of much needed medicines in >developing countries, to which India exports...” > >On its part, the Indian government will provide legal support to the >industry. “Indian companies like DRL and IndSwift whose goods were seized in >transit will get legal and financial help from us to file cases in the EU >court of justice. They have shown interest in our offer,” said Pillai. (Mint >first reported about Indswift on 12 December.) > >According to the EC regulation, the EU customs are empowered to detain goods >in transit on suspicion of an infringement of IPR. “Therefore, customs have >a right to stop goods of which they suspect that an intellectual property >right (in this case a patent) is infringed,” Maria Assimakopoulou, >spokesperson, taxation and customs union, EC, told Mint in an earlier email. >The spokesperson has not responded to the newspaper’s email about India and >Brazil’s opposition. > >“The shipment was seized on grounds that it infringed... the patent... >However, it is made in India with full respect to international legislation >concerning (IP) rights. In Brazil and in India, the product is not protected >by a patent and can be imported freely,” said an official of the Brazilian >ministry of external affairs in an email. > >The fear of more such episodes has been expressed earlier. “After the EU >regulation was introduced, MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres, an international >medical and humanitarian aid organization) expressed concern about its >potential to hamper the transit of perfectly legitimate medicines for use in >developing countries. This concern remains,” said Michelle Childs, policy >director of the non-profit, MSF Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. >Patent lawyers suggest a larger battle lies ahead. Rajeshwari Hariharan, >partner, patents division of the law firm K&S Partners, said, “...if it is >in transit...it is deemed to be in storage, and storage is one of the acts >that fall under IPR... I would agree though that it is a non-tariff >barrier... (I)t would still remain (an) infringement but the countries can >take it up with WTO and ask for amendment in the law.” > >“The seizure of in-transit consignments not meant for the EU markets >operates as a non-tariff barrier and is antithetical to the very spirit of >free trade envisaged under the WTO. But the current wording of TRIPS leaves >much to be desired and may provide enough flexibility to the EU to justify >such seizures. It may be far more fruitful for India and Brazil to engage in >a diplomatic dialogue with the EU to resolve this issue and amend the text >of TRIPS to prohibit such seizures in the guise of IP enforcement,” said >Shamnad Basheer, a professor in IP law at the National University of >Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. > >TRIPS, or the agreement on aspects of intellectual property rights related >to trade, provides for basic protection that each government has to give to >the IP of fellow WTO members, while balancing the long-term benefits and >possible short-term costs to society. Governments have certain flexibilities >to be able to tackle, for instance, public health problems. > >This gives an option, argue others. Sangeeta Shashikant, a lawyer with the >Third World Network, an international non-profit, says India and Brazil can >and should explore legal options including approaching the WTO Dispute >Resolution Body. “The TRIPS agreement clearly states that any IP enforcement >measures should be applied in such a manner as to avoid the creation of >barriers to legitimate trade,” she said. > >Asked how Brazil would now deal with issues such as seizure of generic >shipments in transit, the official said in an email, “...(A) motion to >accept recommendations by IMPACT that could lead to confusions (between >counterfeit and generic drugs) was stopped by countries such as Brazil and >India. Other options, including (going) to the WTO, are still being >considered.” > >India, Brazil and other countries from the South-East Asia region, been >campaigning against the IMPACT resolution for its attempt to redefine >counterfeit drugs to include generics. The losartan case led Brazil to take >an aggressive and successful stance this time. > >But the battle between affordable generics and costly patented drugs is far >from over. “There is the Acta (anti counterfeiting trade agreement) being >negotiated between certain countries as well as the SECURE (standards to be >employed by customs for uniform rights enforcement) which promotes strict IP >enforcement being developed by the World Customs Organization,” said Dilip >G. Shah, secretary general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance. >Meanwhile, the EC regulation continues to provide ample scope for abuse, as >customs authorities are unlikely to be able to gauge what constitutes IP >violation. As Hariharan said, “The customs officials aren’t aware of >patents. The patent owner traces the entire shipment and is aware of the >route of the product and knows exactly which port they can seize the >shipment at. Then they notify the customs authority of that port, and the >product is seized.” > >radhieka.p at livemint.com > > >_______________________________________________ >Ip-health mailing list >Ip-health at lists.essential.org >http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/ip-health From lawrence at altlawforum.org Tue Feb 10 17:37:37 2009 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:37:37 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Defend the Right to Love Message-ID: *DEFEND THE RIGHT TO LOVE* Love crosses all barriers! Love knows no caste nor class! Love has no religion nor region! Love sees no gender nor sexuality! The recent incidents of fundamentalist violence in many parts of Karnataka has led to the curbing of freedoms of common people. One of the point of attacks has been to curb the right of people to have friends and lovers across communities. A fixed and divisive idea of Indian culture is being thrust upon us. While we resist this violence, we also need to clearly state that we see love as a basic human right which must be defended from attack by fundamentalists of all hues. The idea of love which cuts across all boundaries, is part of every culture around the globe. The stories of Heer - Ranjha, Nala - Damayanti, Dushyanta - Shakuntale, Krishna, Rukmini, Romeo-Juliet and even John and Abhishek in Dostana are some among the many! It is time for us to send a strong message to those who say that the 'right to love' is not part of our culture. They speak from a position of ignorance of a rich history of Love which is an integral part of our culture. Please Join us to celebrate this precious right. Lets stand in solidarity and strengthen the choices and lives of those who love.... unabashedly. Lets come together to celebrate love and send a message to those who propagate hate. All you need to do is wear something RED OR PINK and meet us at Mahatma Gandhi Statue on MG Road at 12 o'clock. We will walk through MG road and Brigade road. If you don't catch us at the Gandhi Statue look for us, we'll be painting the town red... and pink. Join us with friends, family and lovers! Time: 12:00 am to 2:00 PM Date: Valentine's Day, 14th February, 2009. For further details contact: 9448043941 Jagadeesh 9886182458 Ponni 9980010933 Arvind Please send across to people Jagadeesh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090210/4e011a27/attachment.html From A.Khanna at sms.ed.ac.uk Tue Feb 10 18:39:53 2009 From: A.Khanna at sms.ed.ac.uk (A Khanna) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:09:53 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] [Reader-list] Defend the Right to Love In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090210130953.30ytusau8ks8owoc@www.sms.ed.ac.uk> what fun! just one thought, should it not be John and Abhishek and Priyanka in Dostana? polyamourously pink, akshay Quoting Lawrence Liang : > *DEFEND THE RIGHT TO LOVE* > > Love crosses all barriers! > > Love knows no caste nor class! > > Love has no religion nor region! > > Love sees no gender nor sexuality! > > > The recent incidents of fundamentalist violence in many parts of Karnataka > has led to the curbing of freedoms of common people. One of the point of > attacks has been to curb the right of people to have friends and lovers > across communities. A fixed and divisive idea of Indian culture is being > thrust upon us. While we resist this violence, we also need to clearly state > that we see love as a basic human right which must be defended from attack > by fundamentalists of all hues. > > The idea of love which cuts across all boundaries, is part of every culture > around the globe. The stories of Heer - Ranjha, Nala - Damayanti, Dushyanta > - Shakuntale, Krishna, Rukmini, Romeo-Juliet and even John and Abhishek in > Dostana are some among the many! > > > It is time for us to send a strong message to those who say that the 'right > to love' is not part of our culture. They speak from a position of ignorance > of a rich history of Love which is an integral part of our culture. > > Please Join us to celebrate this precious right. Lets stand in solidarity > and strengthen the choices and lives of those who love.... unabashedly. > > > Lets come together to celebrate love and send a message to those who > propagate hate. > > > All you need to do is wear something RED OR PINK and meet us at Mahatma > Gandhi Statue on MG Road at 12 o'clock. We will walk through MG road and > Brigade road. If you don't catch us at the Gandhi Statue look for us, we'll > be painting the town red... and pink. Join us with friends, family and > lovers! > > > Time: 12:00 am to 2:00 PM > > Date: Valentine's Day, 14th February, 2009. > > > For further details contact: > > 9448043941 Jagadeesh > > 9886182458 Ponni > > 9980010933 Arvind > > Please send across to people > Jagadeesh > _________________________________________ > 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. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. From ssangeeta at myjaring.net Wed Feb 11 04:41:16 2009 From: ssangeeta at myjaring.net (Sangeeta) Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:11:16 +0800 Subject: [Commons-Law] Can India, Brazil take on EU over regulation? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20090207203409.047748e0@deakin.edu.au> Message-ID: Dear Daya Shanker & Michelle, Thanks for your observations. My quick reading of TRIPS is as follows: Footnote 13 states "It is understood that there shall be no obligation to apply such procedures to imports of goods put on the market in another country by or with the consent of the right holder, or goods in transit.” It seems to suggest that while there is no obligation on member states to apply procedures in Article 51 to transit in goods, members may do so. Having said that I think it is important to read Article 51 and footnote 13 in light of the preamble, principles, objectives, Article 1 (1) and Article 41 of TRIPS. It is also important to interpret Article 51 in light of the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health as well as the 30th August Decision. Article 51 (first line) applies to importation of counterfeit trademark or pirated goods. The second line extends it to other infringements of IP rights. The third line states that corresponding measures may also apply to exportation. Noting what is in Art. 51, there is a deliberate attempt to leave out goods in transit, I imagine, the reason would be that applying similar provisions to goods in transit would create trade barriers, which is definitely not the intention of WTO. Any member that would like to incorporate goods in transit, can do so but this would be subject to Art. 1(1) and Art 41 of TRIPs. Article 1 (1) very clearly states that "Members may, but shall not be obliged to, implement in their law more extensive protection than is required by this Agreement, provided that such protection does not contravene the provisions of this Agreement". I would argue that the EU actions could be seen as violating Article 41 as any enforcement measures should be applied in a manner as to avoid the creation of barriers to legitimate trade and should be fair and equitable. "1. Members shall ensure that enforcement procedures as specified in this Part are available under their law so as to permit effective action against any act of infringement of intellectual property rights covered by this Agreement, including expeditious remedies to prevent infringements and remedies which constitute a deterrent to further infringements. These procedures shall be applied in such a manner as to avoid the creation of barriers to legitimate trade and to provide for safeguards against their abuse. 2. Procedures concerning the enforcement of intellectual property rights shall be fair and equitable. They shall not be unnecessarily complicated or costly, or entail unreasonable time-limits or unwarranted delays. Brazil and India have also relied on the Doha Declaration and the 30th August Decision to support their case. I hope some of this helps. I do agree that in light of the numerous anti-counterfeiting initiatives and provisions in FTAs and EPA that attack goods in transit, it would be very useful for India and Brazil to take this matter to WTO. Regards Sangeeta [1] <#_ftnref1> It is understood that there shall be no obligation to apply such procedures to imports of goods put on the market in another country by or with the consent of the right holder, or to goods in transit. [2] <#_ftnref2> For the purposes of this Agreement: (a) "counterfeit trademark goods" shall mean any goods, including packaging, bearing without authorization a trademark which is identical to the trademark validly registered in respect of such goods, or which cannot be distinguished in its essential aspects from such a trademark, and which thereby infringes the rights of the owner of the trademark in question under the law of the country of importation; (b) "pirated copyright goods" shall mean any goods which are copies made without the consent of the right holder or person duly authorized by the right holder in the country of production and which are made directly or indirectly from an article where the making of that copy would have constituted an infringement of a copyright or a related right under the law of the country of importation. On 2/7/09 5:36 PM, "Daya Shanker" wrote: > Dear Sangeeta This note is in reference to the seizure or detention of > Losarton by the Dutch Customs at the instance of DuPont and Merck. Article 51 > of the TRIPS Agreement dealing with the Suspension of release by customs > authorities says Members, shall, in conformity with the provisions set out > below, adopt procedures to enable a right holder, who has valid grounds for > suspecting that the importation of counterfeit trademark or pirated > copyright goods may take place, to lodge an application in writing with > competent authorities, administrative or judicial, for the suspension by the > customs authorities of the release into free circulation of such goods. > Members may enable such an application to be made in respect of goods which > involve other infringements of intellectual property rights, provided that > the requirements of this Section are met. Member may also provide for > corresponding procedures concerning the suspension by the customs > authorities of the release of infringing goods destined for exportation from > their territories. There is a corresponding note in the TRIPS Agreement which > says "It is understood that there shall be no obligation to apply such > procedures to imports of goods put on the market in another country by or > with the consent of the right holder, or goods in transit.” (note 13). The > first part of Article 51 of the TRIPS Agreement deals with issues of > restricting import of counterfeit trademark goods and pirated copyright > products and the second part apparently gives the members of the WTO the > opportunity to restrict import of product covered by other intellectual > property rights such as patents leading to free circulation of such goods in > their territory. However, note 13 specifically mention that there shall be > no obligation to apply such provision to the goods in transit. The use of > the term “shall be” does not leave any doubt that the provision of Section 51 > is not to be applied to the case of goods in transit. Read with note 13, it > is clear that the last sentence of Article 51 of the TRIPS Agreement shall > not be applicable in the case of losarton which was in transit in > Amsterdam. An examination of the European Council Regulation Number 3295/94 > of December 22, 1994, apparently in anticipation of the coming into force of > the TRIPS Agreement on 1st January 1995 would help in interpretation of > Article 51 of the TRIPS Agreement and the interpretation of Council > Regulation (EC) No. 1383/2003 of 22 July 2003 and corresponding rules issued > in 2007. The 3295/94 regulation lays down “measures to prohibit the release > for free circulation, export, reexport or entry for a suspension procedure > of counterfeit and pirated goods” ”taking into account the terms of the GATT > agreement on trade related intellectual property issues, including a trade > in counterfeiting goods…” It had a specific stipulation that action by > customs authorities to re-export was to take place only where the suspected > counterfeit or pirated goods are discovered during a check” i.e. not as per > the complaint of some agents purportedly affected by such import or > production. Article 1(1) of this regulation says This regulation shall lay > down: (1) the conditions under which the customs authorities shall take > action where goods suspected of being counterfeit or pirated are: - entered > for free circulation, export or re-export, -found when checks are made on > goods placed under a suspensive procedure within the meaning of Article > 84(1)(a) of Council Regulation (EEC) No 2913/92 of 12th October 1992 > establishing the Community Customs Code (5), or re-exported subject to > notification; and (b) the measures which shall be taken by the competent > authorities with regard to those goods where it has been established that > they are indeed counterfeit or pirated. The relevant part of Council > Regulation (EC) No 1383/2003 of 22 July 2003) which rplaced Council > Regulation (EC) No 3295/94 of Dec. 22, 1994 as is the case in other > regulations with the European Community, the office and the staff of which > are totally controlled by multinational corporations and local industries, > was amended to read as (1) to improve the working of the system concerning > the entry into the Community and the export and re-export from the Community > of goods infringing certain intellectual property rights introduced by > Council Regulation (EC) No 3295/94 of 22 December 1994 laying down measures > to prohibit the release for free circulation, export, re-export or entry for > suspensive procedure of counterfeit and pirated goods. … (2) The marketing of > counterfeit and pirated goods, and indeed all goods infringing intellectual > property rights, does considerable damage to law-abiding manufacturers and > traders and or right-holders, as well as deceiving and in some cases > endangering the health and safety of consumers. Such goods should, in so far > as is possible, be kept off the market and measure adopted to deal > effectively with this unlawful activity without impeding the freedom of > legitimate trade. This objective is consistent with efforts under way at > international level. (3) In cases where counterfeit goods, pirated goods and > more generally, goods infringing an intellectual property right originate in > or come from third countries, their introduction into the Community customs > territory, including their transshipment, release for free circulation in > the Community, placing under a suspensive procedure and placing in a free > zone or warehouse, should be prohibited and a procedure set up to enable the > customs authorities to enforce this prohibition as effectively as > possible.” The changes are mischievous and their application was deliberate. > A simple reading of the amendment of 3295/94 leading to 1383 of 2003 has > been the extension of customs regulation dealing with counterfeit and > pirated goods to “indeed all goods infringing intellectual property rights” > which can be justified by the later part of Article 51 of the TRIPS > Agreement. But the introduction of “including their transshipment” is in > direct violation of the TRIPS Agreement. The European Community has tried to > justify these modifications in terms of the objective “consistent with > efforts under way at international level” mentioned in paragraph 3 of the > Council Regulation 1383(2003). The transshipment through Community customs > territory also brings in the issue whether ports and ships can be considered > customs territory. Normally customs territory is the land mass of a country > along with contiguous sea and the airspace above with the exception of goods > on the ships and in the part area. The patent acts are not applicable to the > goods in transit i.e. the goods which have temporarily entered into the > customs area. This issue has been discussed in detail in Brown v Duchesne ( > 235 US 641 (1913)) by the US Supreme Court and confirmed in a series of later > decisions as this judgment raised intellectual property rights to the level > of property where a ship had entered into the US port, parts of which had > been patented. The US supreme Court observed But these acts of Congress do > not, and were not intended to, operate beyond the limits of the United > States: and as the patentee’s rights of property and exclusive use are > derived from them, they cannot extend beyond the limits to which the law > itself is confined. And the use of it outside of the jurisdiction of the > United States is not an infringement of his rights and he has no claim to > any compensation of the profit or advantage he may derive from it. Basically a > product must hurt the commercial interests of the patent holder in the > territory of the patent and any goods in transit do not hurt the commercial > interest of the patent holder in any way in the territory of the patent. I > have discussed these aspects in the case of Paragraph 6 amendment of the > TRIPS Agreement in my articles The Paragraph 6 solution of the Doha Public > Health Declaration and Export under the TRIPS Agreement (Journal of World > Intellectual Property Rights, 2004, 7(3) pp. 365-400) and Access to > Medicines, Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on Public Health, and > Developing Countries in International Treaty Negotiations (The Indian > Journal of Law and Technology, 2006, 2, 8-64). I do not know what > international efforts are under consideration as claimed by the European > Community unless the secret agreement on counterfeit products is the example > of international efforts under way. The seizure of losarton in transit is a > case of direct and deliberate mischief by the European Union at the behest > of DuPont and Merck and Brazil and India would fail in their duties by not > taking the matter to the WTO dispute Settlement Organization. Pending the > action at the WTO DSO, to withdraw transshipment facility to all the goods > originating the European community and going to European community. The > audacious reply of the Ambassador Eckart Guth of the European Community does > not leave any choice to countries such as Brazil and India. Such obdurate > talk always takes care of the after retirement job. Mr. Eckarat Guth appears > to be from the Netherlands itself. Let the European Community approach the > WTO for redress of its grievances. Such mischief must be dealt with > instantly and thoroughly. Possibly I am expecting too much from these > countries which on the sly went and signed the TRIPS Amendment on 30th > August 2003 and are even ratifying it knowing fully well that each and every > word in that amendment is a fraud. Daya Shanker At 09:29 PM 4/02/2009, > Sangeeta wrote: >India, Brazil to take on EU over regulation >The two > countries have taken a strong stand against EU act of seizing Dr >Reddy’s > in-transit shipment >Radhieka > Pandeya >http://www.livemint.com/2009/01/30002200/India-Brazil-to-take-on-EU-o > v.html? >d=1 > >New Delhi: A ship loaded with medicine from India drops anchor > at a European >port from where it will sail for Brazil. European officials > seize the cargo >and later send it back to India. They say the drug is a > generic version that >violates a patent protected in Europe. A generic drug is > cheaper than the >patented version. > >The seizure has led to a full-blown war > of words in three corners of the >world—and put the spotlight back on > contentious issues such as intellectual >property (IP) laws, access to > affordable medicines and the use of non-tariff >barriers against exports from > developing countries. > >Patent tussle: India’s ministry of commerce and > industry is working out a >legal strategy to convince the European Union to > drop the provision under >which the shipment from Dr Reddy’s Laboratories > was seized. Bharath Sai / >Mint > >The governments of India and Brazil have > taken a strong stand against the >European Union (EU) for seizing an > in-transit shipment of a drug >manufactured by Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd > (DRL). Brazil’s ministry of >external affairs has threatened to take the > issue up with the World Trade >Organization (WTO) that settles trade disputes > between countries. And >Brazil, with strong support from India and Bangladesh, > at a recent executive >board session of the World Health Organization (WHO) in > Geneva, also >succeeded in blocking a controversial resolution backed by the > European >Commission (EC) and WHO-funded International Medical > Product >Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce, or IMPACT. The resolution had been > widely >criticized for mixing up issues of public health and private IP rights > in >the context of defining “counterfeit” drugs. > >The Indian ministry of > commerce and industry is working out a legal strategy >to convince the EU to > drop the provision under which the DRL shipment was >seized. “We plan to > approach the WTO if the EU fails to take suitable >action,” said G.K. > Pillai, secretary, department of commerce. > >On 15 January, Mint had reported > that a DRL shipment of the generic version >of losartan was seized in transit > in the Netherlands. This shipment, on its >way to Brazil, was held by the > customs authority at Rotterdam, which said it >infringed the patent of the > original drug—Cozaar. Losartan is not patented >in India or Brazil. The patent > for Cozaar in the Netherlands is held by >DuPont, while US-based pharma > multinational Merck and Co. holds the >marketing rights. > >“We have taken > up the issue with a national-level industry body. But we hope >the Indian > government will take it up at the government-to-government >level...as it is > an industry-wide problem,” said DRL chief executive > G.V. >Prasad. > >Referring to the EC regulation, a DRL spokesperson told Mint > in an email >response, “...These provisions may have a significant impact on > Indian >companies, most of which use the EU route to transport > pharmaceutical >products to markets where the patent is not recognized or the > product is off >patent. By forcing (them) to opt for a different route...the > cost of >transport may significantly add to the cost of producing...thus > adversely >impacting the India’s ability to remain >competitive.” He > added, “This will, >obviously, also impact the availability of much needed > medicines in >developing countries, to which India exports...” > >On its > part, the Indian government will provide legal support to the >industry. > “Indian companies like DRL and IndSwift whose goods were seized in >transit > will get legal and financial help from us to file cases in the EU >court of > justice. They have shown interest in our offer,” said Pillai. (Mint >first > reported about Indswift on 12 December.) > >According to the EC regulation, > the EU customs are empowered to detain goods >in transit on suspicion of an > infringement of IPR. “Therefore, customs have >a right to stop goods of > which they suspect that an intellectual property >right (in this case a > patent) is infringed,” Maria Assimakopoulou, >spokesperson, taxation and > customs union, EC, told Mint in an earlier email. >The spokesperson has not > responded to the newspaper’s email about India and >Brazil’s > opposition. > >“The shipment was seized on grounds that it infringed... the > patent... >However, it is made in India with full respect to international > legislation >concerning (IP) rights. In Brazil and in India, the product is > not protected >by a patent and can be imported freely,” said an official of > the Brazilian >ministry of external affairs in an email. > >The fear of more > such episodes has been expressed earlier. “After the EU >regulation was > introduced, MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres, an international >medical and > humanitarian aid organization) expressed concern about its >potential to > hamper the transit of perfectly legitimate medicines for use in >developing > countries. This concern remains,” said Michelle Childs, policy >director of > the non-profit, MSF Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. >Patent > lawyers suggest a larger battle lies ahead. Rajeshwari Hariharan, >partner, > patents division of the law firm K&S Partners, said, “...if it is >in > transit...it is deemed to be in storage, and storage is one of the acts >that > fall under IPR... I would agree though that it is a non-tariff >barrier... > (I)t would still remain (an) infringement but the countries can >take it up > with WTO and ask for amendment in the law.” > >“The seizure of > in-transit consignments not meant for the EU markets >operates as a non-tariff > barrier and is antithetical to the very spirit of >free trade envisaged under > the WTO. But the current wording of TRIPS leaves >much to be desired and may > provide enough flexibility to the EU to justify >such seizures. It may be far > more fruitful for India and Brazil to engage in >a diplomatic dialogue with > the EU to resolve this issue and amend the text >of TRIPS to prohibit such > seizures in the guise of IP enforcement,” said >Shamnad Basheer, a professor > in IP law at the National University of >Juridical Sciences, > Kolkata. > >TRIPS, or the agreement on aspects of intellectual property rights > related >to trade, provides for basic protection that each government has to > give to >the IP of fellow WTO members, while balancing the long-term benefits > and >possible short-term costs to society. Governments have certain > flexibilities >to be able to tackle, for instance, public health > problems. > >This gives an option, argue others. Sangeeta Shashikant, a lawyer > with the >Third World Network, an international non-profit, says India and > Brazil can >and should explore legal options including approaching the WTO > Dispute >Resolution Body. “The TRIPS agreement clearly states that any IP > enforcement >measures should be applied in such a manner as to avoid the > creation of >barriers to legitimate trade,” she said. > >Asked how Brazil > would now deal with issues such as seizure of generic >shipments in transit, > the official said in an email, “...(A) motion to >accept recommendations by > IMPACT that could lead to confusions (between >counterfeit and generic drugs) > was stopped by countries such as Brazil and >India. Other options, including > (going) to the WTO, are still being >considered.” > >India, Brazil and other > countries from the South-East Asia region, been >campaigning against the > IMPACT resolution for its attempt to redefine >counterfeit drugs to include > generics. The losartan case led Brazil to take >an aggressive and successful > stance this time. > >But the battle between affordable generics and costly > patented drugs is far >from over. “There is the Acta (anti counterfeiting > trade agreement) being >negotiated between certain countries as well as the > SECURE (standards to be >employed by customs for uniform rights enforcement) > which promotes strict IP >enforcement being developed by the World Customs > Organization,” said Dilip >G. Shah, secretary general of the Indian > Pharmaceutical Alliance. >Meanwhile, the EC regulation continues to provide > ample scope for abuse, as >customs authorities are unlikely to be able to > gauge what constitutes IP >violation. As Hariharan said, “The customs > officials aren’t aware of >patents. The patent owner traces the entire > shipment and is aware of the >route of the product and knows exactly which > port they can seize the >shipment at. Then they notify the customs authority > of that port, and the >product is > seized.” > >radhieka.p at livemint.com > > >___________________________________ > ____________ >Ip-health mailing > list >Ip-health at lists.essential.org >http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listin > fo/ip-health _______________________________________________ commons-law > mailing > list commons-law at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law> From artresourcesteaching at gmail.com Wed Feb 11 12:20:20 2009 From: artresourcesteaching at gmail.com (Art, Resources & Teaching Bangalore) Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:20:20 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Lecture "Whose Taste? Indian Silver for the Raj" by Prof. Vidya Deheja In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: -- Art, Resources & Teaching 79 Hutchins Road IInd Cross St Thomas Town, Bangalore 560 084 +91.80.2580.0733 info at artscapeindia.org www.artscapeindia.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090211/004c2a41/attachment.html From lawrence at altlawforum.org Fri Feb 13 00:44:46 2009 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:44:46 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Interview with Jacques Ranciere Message-ID: Hi All I recently conducted an interview with Prof. Jacques Ranciere when he was visiting Sarai, and I am posting the interview with an introduction to him. The full interview can also be accessed at Kafila at the following address http://kafila.org/2009/02/12/interview-with-jacques-ranciere/ *Interview with Jacques Rancière *Conducted by Lawrence Liang Lodi Gardens, Delhi, 5th February 2009 Jacques Rancière (born Algiers, 1940) is Emeritus Professor, Philosophy, at the University of Paris (St. Denis). He came to prominence when he co-authored Reading Capital (1968), with Louis Althusser, the Marxist philosopher. He subsequently broke away from Althusser and wrote The Nights of Labour, a work that examined the philosophical and poetical writings of workers in 19th century France. Through an examination of the lives of these worker autodidacts, Rancière introduced a new way of thinking about the idea of the worker, and of the injunction that divides between those entitled to a life in thought and those born to do manual labour. He went on to write The Philosopher and His Poor which looks at the figure of the poor artisan from classical philosophy down to Marx and Sartre. In The Ignorant Schoolmaster, inspired by the experiences of a radical early 19th century teacher, Joseph Jacotot, Rancière sought to rethink the idea of pedagogy away from the idea of moving form the unknown to the known and from those who possess knowledge to those who don't, to look at how all forms of ignorance are also conditions of knowledge. He was in Delhi recently, on the occasion of the release of the Hindi language edition of The Nights of Labour. *Le us begin with a quote, which will help us draw people unfamiliar with your work, into the heart of The Nights of Labour. Why is a worker who composes verses more dangerous than the one who performs revolutionary songs?* I did not exactly say that the one is more dangerous than the other. You have to see it historically. The fact is that in France in the 1830s there were a lot of workers doing verse, doing literature, and I think the bourgeoisie felt that there was a danger when the worker entered the world of thought and of culture. When workers are only struggling, then they are supposed to be in their world and in their place. Workers were supposed to work and be dissatisfied with their wages, their working conditions and possibly still work again, struggle again and again. But when workers attempt to write verses and try to become writers, philosophers, it means a displacement from their identity as workers. The important thing is this dis-placement or dis-identification. What I was trying to show was that there was no real opposition. I don't mean that all workers who are attempting to write verses had entered the revolution or anything, but it was a kind of a general movement of people getting out of their condition. *A common sentiment shared amongst those involved in emancipatory politics suggest that "Another world is possible". And yet this suggestion is often premised on the idea of the material improvement of existing worlds. I read in Nights of Labour another suggestion, which is not as interested in the improvement of the material conditions of existing worlds, as much as in fleeing it. You suggest that these worker-writers were already participating in the impossible by redrawing the lines. How do you conceptualize the relationship between emancipation and the politics of impossibility? * It all depends on what you understand by the word impossibility. It was only not about looking for something which was absolutely impossible, I was looking at situations as the distribution of positions. It means what can be seen, what can be said and what can be thought of as being possible. A situation determines a set of possibilities, and the impossible is the limit. I was looking at the idea of the emancipated worker, where the question is always of crossing the borders of the impossible. Because what was ironically possible was the improvement of the conditions of work and wages, but it was not enough. What they wanted was to become entirely human, with all the possibilities of a human being and not only having what is possible to do for workers. So that there is not necessarily an opposition between material improvement, and this attempt. I hope I did not give the impression that on the one hand there is concern with these material improvements and on the other hand the greatest impossible. The question of what is possible and impossible is really at stake in every situation, and I think the intellectual impossible and the material impossible are connected with one another. What was impossible was really changing a form of existence, and that is why the book was called The Nights of the Proletariat, because what was most materially and intellectually impossible for a worker is precisely not to sleep at night. This was entirely material and entirely intellectual at the same time. That was what made it important for me *Your imagination of equality is radically different from liberal ideas of equality. Equality in your work is not an ends to arrive at, but the point of departure. Your work assumes that everyone leads an intellectual life, but recognizes that material and economic differences determine our ability to perform this intellectual life. How does this idea of equality differ from the general struggles for equality? And I think this is quite relevant in a context like India where we are on the one hand marked by very sharp social and economic inequality, but the only way in which one finally finds forms of addressing that is from a very unequal place. That's why the pedantic and the pedagogic comes in – the struggle for finding terms of addressing what may be material inequality, but which actually take the quality of thought as a starting point. * We can locate this in the debate about education because in our countries, education is supposed to be the way to make people equal, starting from inequality. It is at the same time the logic of pedagogy and also the logic of progress, and a progressive thinking that of course people are not equal, and lower class people are not equal, and that precisely this derogation regenerates equality and we can get out of that condition etc etc. This is the normal pedagogic and progress of your thinking. When I encountered the works of Joseph Jacotot, I was very challenged. It is very difficult to categorise him. Was he a philosopher, a professor? His work led me to rethink the very idea of pedagogy, and what it means to teach. Similarly in the 1820s there was a lot of concern about how we can educate the people, slowly, progressively: but that was not the point, the idea of starting from inequality to reach quality; it's impossible because in the very process, you ceaselessly recycle practices of inequality. You must not go towards equality, but must start from equality. Starting from equality does not presuppose that everyone in the world has equal opportunities to learn, to express their capacities. That's not the point. The point is that you have to start from the minimum equality that is given. The normal pedagogic logic says that people are ignorant, they don't know how to get out of ignorance to learn, so we have to make some kind of an itinerary to move from ignorance to knowledge, starting from the difference between the one who knows and the one who does not know. The idea of Jacotot and the idea of intellectual emancipation was that there is always some point of equality. There is always something that is shared, for instance when the teacher is explaining something to the student, on the one hand it supposes that he has something to explain, that the student is unable to understand by himself or herself etc, so this is a relationship of inequality, but it can work only if the master supposes that that the students can simply understand the explanation, understand what the master is telling him. So there is a kind of equality in the fact that they atleast share the same language. So the idea is not that we consider everybody as equal etc etc, rather it is about thinking about the process of learning, not as a process from ignorance to knowledge but as a process of going from what is already known or what is already possessed, to further knowledge or new possessions. I think it is a very important point so the idea is that the ignorant always knows something, always asks something and always has the capacity, and the problem is how to make the best of this capacity and start from equality. When I wrote The Ignorant Schoolmaster there was a big debate in France because there sociologists were saying that education is a lie, that education supposes that all the kids are equal and can understand the same thing, and that's not true, so you have to adapt education to the background of the students, especially of the lower classes. At the same time there were the Republicans saying equality means that we have to consider everyone at the same level, which means that they are all ignorant but had to become learned. So that was the debate and I tried to subvert the debate, to state precisely that all those people are looking for the best path – from inequality to equality, but the only good part is to move from equality to equality. *How would you distinguish between the ignorant schoolmaster and something like the pedagogy of the oppressed? * When I wrote The Ignorant Schoolmaster, I was not very concerned with a pedagogy of the oppressed, mainly because it was not a part of the French debate. The pedagogy of the oppressed is also about linking general education with political education, so I think that if there is something common between intellectual emancipation and pedagogy of the oppressed, it is the idea that education first means enablement, that you first deal with the capacity possessed even by the oppressed, or by the lower class people. But at the same time, it is true that intellectual emancipation means that there is no specific pedagogy of the oppressed, that there is no specific education for poor people or oppressed people etc. If there is a specific pedagogy of the oppressed, then it must be thought of as a specific case in the general idea of intellectual emancipation, because basically the idea of emancipation is the same for rich people and for poor people. * Nights of Labour recasts the relationship between aesthetics and politics: At the heart of the book is an 'aesthetic revolution' which is fundamentally about the reordering of time (workers wresting away the 'intellectual nights of the writer' challenge the assumption that labour exhausts the labourer and hence is not able to participate in intellectual life). How would you revisit this thesis in the contemporary era of global capital? It is said that the contemporary reordering of time destroys 'forms of life' and subjects it to the tyranny of time.* Of course it is not the same situation and the Nights of Labour dealt with a period of history when there was no legislation about labour hours and things like that. But it was also a period when practices of auto-didactism were very important amongst the working-class. So both the questions of the partition of time and access to education and culture were quite different and certainly the power of intellectual emancipation was linked to a specific time. But at the same time, I would really question the idea that in contemporary capitalism all life is really framed within the capitalist organization of time and of life. In a way it is always the same. Of course, the possibilities of life are different and the organization of private and public life is quite different, as is the relationship between what is work and what is outside work. Everything has changed. What I think remains the same is that in each situation you have the choice between two positions. You could say that life is entirely subjected to the empire of domination, which means at that time during the whole day all the people were subjected to the law of the workshops, and they just had time for work and rest, and they had no time to waste, and they had to go to work the following day. But the workers said no, it is not true, it is possible to break the circle. Now of course the circle is constructed differently. People say that people work less and that there are some forms of protection etc. But now their life is entirely dominated by the rhythms of labour on the one hand and on the other hand by all the apparatuses of consumption, or with the power of the media etc. So in a way it is always the same discourse that says that life is entirely subjugated with the idea that every change is a new form of subjugation. For instance many people, when they read Foucault, they got from Foucault the idea that all forms – of welfare state, social security etc – were forms of administration of government and of the life of people. I do not think this is true because you have the same debate on the same choice, but you can use it differently. And you can think of it quite differently. Now people say for instance that with television and the internet life is entirely subjugated. But we all know of examples with the internet, that it can be subjugated with the dominant ideology or you can create new forms of discussion and discourse etc. So my point is that there is this kind of lingering discourse that life is entirely subjugated or exhausted, and I think the idea of bio politics has something very harmful about it. Because there's this idea that in bio-politics, life is entirely governed, and even inside us, even our blood and flesh is governed by power. But I don't think so and I remember in the 70s and 80s, we tried precisely to take a distance from this view that was also becoming dominant in left wing thinking. *While reading Nights of Labour the one thing that had struck me, was the fact that what Gauny and his friends were fighting this idea that your life has been exhausted, your life has already been decided and that there is no other possibility. This is something that as intellectual labourer or cultural labourers in the late 20th and early 21st century, we recognize, we seem to be continuously fighting social theory and forms of discourse that keep reminding us that our selves are already exhausted, the possibilities of creative expression are exhausted through commodification etc, the possibility of forms of visioning life are exhausted because of bio politics which has taken over. So it seems like we are somehow actively possessed by Gauny, to keep ourselves alive. So in a sense, Nights of Labour is not about the past, but is written for the future, and for thinking about intellectual and cultural labour in the contemporary. * Yes, certainly what is interesting in the case of Gauny is the construction of a counter economy, which sounds rather paradoxical because he tries to reduce his consumption precisely to get free from the empire of necessity and in a certain way you could even say that he is a forerunner of the ecological movement and things like that. But the point is not whether he is a forerunner of ecology, rather he is the forerunner of the idea of emancipation, which means that you can always turn the conditions around. Following from that, one could say that the common account of the revolution is an account where the revolution comes after time. But in the Nights of Labour, by breaking the distinction between the aesthetic and the political revolution, the revolution is one which is in time, and is happening – along with us. Could you elaborate on this distinction. When I tried to think of the idea of intellectual emancipation, there is no distinction between the idea that – now we are struggling, now we are constructing and now we are preparing the future and the future will be wonderful. The art of emancipation is precisely to get out of this relationship between means and ends, which in the leftist tradition is based on the idea that now we create the conditions for a better future, we are preparing the weapons for the future, which means a certain phase in historical necessity. But what I think is at the heart of emancipation is precisely the idea that time is everyday. This does not mean that you have to be entirely swallowed in the everyday, but that the question of time is not to be thought of in terms of present and future, it has to be related to the partition between here and now, between time as a form of constraint and time as a possibility of freedom; and what is important in Nights of Labour was this idea of the subversion of time, and what happens in the here and now. My point is that this idea of the future, and the use of time as a form of prohibition, that you can have it in the future but you cannot have it in the present, an idea of deferred time, so the idea of historical necessity and historical process, is part of this repressive idea of time. Because the main point is whether you can or cannot and whether you use time to say yes we can, or no we can't. *In many ways the Nights of Labour can be read as a poetics of curiosity (the figure of the auto didact), and yet curiosity itself seems to be under theorized in your own work. * I didn't elaborate on the idea of curiosity and perhaps somebody can elaborate on this now, but at that time what was important for me in the idea of curiosity can be seen through the prism of looking: You look on the side, you look at places or questions that are not supposed to be your place or your questions. For instance in Gauny's book there is this relationship of the day to work, but there is also a disjuncture at a particular moment – between the eye and the look – to go aside. To look through the window, to take an imaginary possession of the neighbourhood which is at the same time not a real possession but is something real, because it means that you are not only working or only a worker working with his hands, but also his eyes are looking at what his hands are doing. So curiosity for me is in this mode, I was interested in the idea of transgression. So you're putting your feet or you're looking in other places apart from the one that you are supposed to be in. *An underlying assumption of a number of movements is the idea of representation, and utility: But your own interest has been in the idea of the non-representative individual and in his relationship to non-utility and things which are useless. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Nights of Labour was not accepted in its time, because both these categories are crucial for the labour historian and the philosopher. But given the changes that have taken place in the last 30 years, are we now in a position to relook or think about how the figure of the non-representative individual and the idea of non-utility are now opening up possibilities today? * This is very difficult to answer, because what made it possible for me to write this book was the context of 1968 and the things that happened around '68. It was precisely because a lot of the things that were thought impossible had become possible, and one of the impulses when I began my research was the fact that in '68 there were meetings in factories between students and workers. I was surprised by the kind of questions that were put forward by the workers. They were not unionists, and in that sense they were not representative individuals. But it did show that they had a number of strange preoccupations and strange interests and concerns which were not the normal concerns of workers, or least their leaders. So on the one hand there was an actuality of what I was dealing with in the book, but when the book came out 13 years later, the Socialist Party had already taken over power and the context had entirely changed. It was no more intelligible, and old categories were coming back. There was a certain kind of social science that had become dominant. There was very little concern with philosophy and everything had taken an empirical turn. There were two ways of thinking about the worker at that time: you were either a part of the indistinguishable mass of workers or you were the representative of workers, and you either represented this faction or the other. It was therefore impossible for them to grapple with this kind of material and with the range of non-representative individual that I was talking about in my book. What was impossible for them to think about was what symbolic rupture means. In '68 it was easier to think of what symbolic rupture meant – when people start talking about things that were not supposed to be their business – but it was no more intelligible in '81. And now I think it is possible to understand it because in '81, when the book came out, the Socialist Party was taking more or less a straightforward Marxism. There was this idea of the class as the totality and a movement. And we know intellectually what came after that. It was the era of postmodernism and skepticism where there was a sentiment that the entire world was now headed towards a global petit bourgeoisie of mean people, and the idea was that there was no possibility of any subversion. So over a period of time people have begun to appreciate what I was saying. And our conditions changed with the so-called crisis. People are now again beginning to feel that perhaps the capitalist machine is not eternal. So what seems to have changed now is the possibility of understanding the idea of time in an anti-evolutionist manner, and the destiny of historical necessity. And at the same time, it is possible to understand that those individual destinies mean some form of strong symbolic break. *What would constitute the archives of new labour, where days and nights are exchanged, through labour. Nights are precisely when one engages in labour, and the day is when one sleeps? * What is different now of course is that the internet exists, so a lot of thoughts and writings that would have entirely disappeared in other contexts can now remain, be written, be exchanged. The archive that I worked with is of course a very little part of what the workers were writing. Now there are many more channels that people can write in and go through. So the question might be not about whether people can express themselves, but how the self-expression is related to the idea of dissent and subversion, and how is this related to official dissent or official subversion because the problem now is not self-expression any longer. All of this itself is now categorized, and it is now more difficult to think of this kind of an archive of dissent. So I'm not sure if I can answer, but probably for people who work through the night and sleep during the day, there is the same problem. Being able to spare a part of the day and to escape this kind of cycle and to find forms of practices and expression. *One of the lines that touched me the most form the book was "What if the truest sorrow lay not in being able to enjoy the false ones". This line speaks to me about ways in which we can move from the pedantic and pedagogic impulses of many movements of solidarity which relates to marginalized subjects, not through subjectivity but through piety. * Finding pleasure in sorrow, finding pleasure in pain is indeed the very definition of a certain form of aesthetic pleasure. For instance, the very definition of classical tragedy is precisely a certain form of performance which deals with painful events, but which at the same time is destined to bring about pleasure for people. But it also means that in the classical order only people of privilege, or people of leisure and culture are able to enjoy such sorrows and to take pleasure in pain. What was important in the 1830s in the experience of the workers was the fact that they were living at a time of the great romantic poets and writers. These poets were for example writing about sorrow, the sorrow of being born, the sorrow of having nothing – no place in society, no place in the world. At the same time it was pleasure, the pleasure to write those lines or those verses about the sorrow of being born, the sorrow of having no place in society etc, and what was interesting for me was the way in which those workers could take up this paradoxical pleasure. Because, of course, they had a place in society, and what was difficult for them was to be in the other place, so it was important in a way for them to escape their place, and to play precisely the part of those who had no place, and to share the sorrow of those who had no place and nothing to do in society. What I also tried to say was, the very definition of proletarian – it is an old Latin word – which at the beginning had nothing to do with factory and work, and it only referred to people who had children, or people who are only able to reproduce life, or people who were really attached to what Agamben would call bare life. So it was quite important for them, I think, to rephrase the condition of people who were doomed to the mere production of life, and to rephrase each life as a kind romanticist sorrow – what a pity I was born in the world that had no place for me. The important thing is the possibility to exchange one sorrow for another, and in a sense the pleasure in literature and culture is the ability to exchange one sorrow for another sorrow. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090213/0e3f10a0/attachment-0001.html From kalakamra at gmail.com Sun Feb 15 15:33:25 2009 From: kalakamra at gmail.com (Pad.ma) Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:33:25 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Tomorrow, An Engagement with Pad.ma Message-ID: <33eee40c0902150203q69e9962j5005a1cdee1e291d@mail.gmail.com> Dear all, We cordially invite you to join us on Monday, February 16 for a day-long engagement with Pad.ma, its members and invited guests. For the past year, we (Oil21 from Berlin, the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore, and three organisations from Bombay: Majlis, Point of View and ChitraKarKhana/CAMP) have been working on various aspects of the online archive, http://pad.ma. At the moment Pad.ma contains 150+ hours of video and over 100,000 annotations (text entries). This coming week, Pad.ma will be opened up to external contributions. As a lead-up to this significant new phase, we invited a number of "users": independent filmmakers, artists, activists, researchers, students, film scholars, and enthusiasts to contribute their own material into pad.ma, or traverse the archive and explore its many ways. They will present their work. As an archive, we see Pad.ma as a way of opening up images and meanings that are present in video footage and its production process: resources that conventions of editing viewing and have tended to suppress. At the same time, Pad.ma responds to the invitation and challenge of a landscape beyond "the film" as the desired end-product of this medium, and beyond youtube as its default online repository. Pad.ma suggests new relations between images and text, production and commentary, online and offline, visibility and possibility. It proposes specific ways to discuss documentary film practice, ways to base academic work on video sources, and more generally, ways to still care for something that has become "democratic". All of these claims, ofcourse, will be tested in Pad.ma's new phase. We hope you will join us and take part, to plan the future. Day: Tomorrow, Monday, February, 16, 2009. Time: 11:am to 7pm Location: "Who Are We?" hall - inside the Discovery of India exhibition, First Floor, Nehru Centre, Dr. Annie Besant Road, Worli, Mumbai - 400018. _________________ 11:15 Shaina Anand *Where We Are. * 11: 30 Aagaaz *The Depth of Jogeshwari's Waters. * 12:00 Sanjay Kak. Flight over the CFL. 12: 30 Priya Sen *The Knower of Secrets, a film revisited. * 1:00 Nida Ghouse *Reading Pad.ma: a few observations on images and text. * Discussion. 1:30 Lunch break 2: 30 Sebastian Lütgert and Jan Gerber *10 things about video and the internet. * 3:00 GBGB Andolan. *In the Interests of The Public * 3:30 Desire Machine Collective *Name, Place: North East. * 4:00 Kaushik Bhaumik *Narratives in Trouble: Public impulses and Private desires in the 21st Century Indic* 4: 30 Lawrence Liang *On the distribution of Images and Politics* Discussion. 5: 00 Tea Break 5: 30 Ayisha Abraham *Ram Gopal * 5: 50 Ranu Ghosh 6:10 Nilanjan Bhatacharya 6:30 Sadanand Menon. *From Chandralekha's archive. * 7:pm. Closing discussion *Aagaaz *is a voluntary youth group whose members come from PremNagar, Meghwadi and SanjayNagar bastis of Jogeshwari, Mumbai from diverse religious and caste backgrounds. They function as a youth development center and and organise camps on education, health, employment, personal development and projects around local infrastructures such as water and rationing(PDS). They are supported entirely by local contributions. The pad.ma presentation is by Shaali Shaikh, Durga Gudillu and Ismail Sharif, Hakin Lillyawala and Ajeet Mahale. * Ayisha Abraham *is an artist who has been increasingly researching and working with 8 mm found footage, including the film series: "Straight 8". She is a member of the Bangalore artists collective, BAR1 and works as a visual arts consultant at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. * Desire Machine Collective. *Mriganka Madhukailya and Sonal Jain are co-founders of Desire Machine collective, an ensemble of practitioners working predominantly with new media, video and photography. They have recently initiated the artists-space Periferry, on a boat on the Brahmaputra. * Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan*: A social movement of slum dwellers and unorganised sector workers-hawkers. The Andolan was initiated to challenge the inhuman and unconstitutional demolitions of more than 75,000 houses by the Government of Maharashtra in 2004. The movement, under the leadership of women believes in the dual approach of Sangharsh aur Navnirman and adopts non-violence as a value framework.The Andolan is affliated with NAPM (National Alliance of People's Movements). The pad.ma presentation is by *Simpreet Singh*, a Production Engineer and TISS post-graduate who has been working full-time with the GBGB Andolan since 2005 and *Ruchi* *Kumar,* a second-year student of Tata Institute of Social Sciences who is doing her field work with the Andolan. * Kaushik Bhaumik* programs films at Osian's-Connoisseurs of Art. He is co-editor of the recently published Visual Sense: a Cultural Reader published by Berg, Oxford. His monograph on early Indian cinema is forthcoming this year from Clarendon Press, Oxford. * Lawrence Liang* is a researcher and writer. He is one of the founders of the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, and has been writing extensively on issues of law and culture, intellectual property and censorship. He is the author of A Guide to Open Content Licenses (Piet Zwart, 2005), and Sex, Laws and Videotape: The Public is Watching (PSBT, 2007). He is on the Board of the iCommons, and the Center for Internet and Society, and is currently working on a book on law and justice in indian cinema. * Nida Ghouse* born in 1982, works in Cairo and Bombay. * Nilanjan Bhattacharya* is a Calcutta based filmmaker who has been making documentaries for the last 14 years. In 2005 he received the National Film Award for his documentary, Under This Sun. He is now working on the indigenous food culture in India. Nilanjan is the initiator and project director of the "Interpretative Interactive Archive on Calcutta". *Priya Sen* mainly works with non-fictional and experimental genres of video, photo, sound and writing. She is currently with Sarai-CSDS, New Delhi where she works as a researcher-practitioner of experimental media with the Cybermohalla project - a network of media practitioners and writers in working class localities in Delhi- as well as with the Sarai Media Lab. *Ranu Ghosh *is a film director-cInematographer based at Calcutta working in video and celluloid for the last ten years. She has done a number of national and international projects as a producer, cinematographer and researcher. *Sadanand Menon *is a reputed arts editor, teacher of 'cultural journalism', a widely published photographer, curator, writer and speaker on politics, ecology and the arts, and is Adjunct Faculty at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. A long-time collaborator of the dancer Chandralekha, he is currently in the process of setting up a publicly accessible archive of her work. *Sanjay Kak* is an award winning documentary film-maker based in New Delhi. His recent film the feature length Jashn-e-Azadi (How we celebrate freedom, 2007) made extensive use of anonymous archival material from Kashmir. *Sebastian Lütgert *and *Jan Gerber *are the software developers of pad.ma. They are initiators of a number of projects on intellectual property, cinema and the internet, including the cinema archive 0xdb.org, the Oil21 project, and Pirate Cinema. * Shaina Anand* is a filmmaker, artist founding member of CAMP ( http://camputer.org) and co-initiator of the pad.ma project. pad.ma ~lotuses are pink~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090215/468628b7/attachment-0001.html From lawrence at altlawforum.org Sat Feb 21 10:43:55 2009 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 10:43:55 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Screening and Discussion with Pirate Cinema Message-ID: Pirate Cinema Bangalore Presentation, Discussion, Screening Saturday Jan Gerber and Sebastian Luetgert from Pirate Cinema Berlin (www.piratecinema.org) and 0xdb (www.0xdb.org), most recently operating as Pirate Cinema Bombay (www.camputer.org), will introduce the idea of "cinema beyond copyright" -- not only as a set of practices in film-making, or as the inevitable result of peer-to-peer distribution, but also with regards to the creation of new, informal screening spaces, and the emergence of distributed online film archives. Date: 21st Feb 2009 Venue: 1 Shanthi Road, Bangalore Time: 8pm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090221/078e41e8/attachment.html From lawrence at altlawforum.org Wed Feb 25 10:18:26 2009 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:18:26 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Report on the launch of pad.ma (Public Access Digital media Archive) Message-ID: *Report of Pad.ma Launch * On the 16th of February 2009, we officially opened out Pad.ma to the general public, and as a part of the launch we had a stimulating day-long event with various people who have been engaging with pad.ma. This report attempts to capture a sense of the day, as well as the various questions and concerns that were raised. We were very excited by the range of responses, and ways in which people had used pad.ma in interpreting their own footage, revisiting their earlier work or annotating archived material, and we wanted to share our sense of excitement, as well as the newer ways in which the possibilities of pad.ma was revealed for us through its use by all the participants. Shaina Anand began the day by providing the background to pad.ma, and how the various organizations involved (Oil21 from Berlin, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, and three organizations from Bombay: Majlis, Point of View and ChitraKarKhana/CAMP) came together to conceptualize pad.ma. In its one year of making, pad.ma had already inculded over 150 events from Majlis's Godaam, Chitrakarkhana's collection of micro media and other contributions including that of Point of View, Alternative Law Forum and footage by filmmakers such at T. Jayashree and Saeed Mirza. Shaina said that the main reason for the day was to get a sense of how people from different disciplinary backgrounds from film makers to artists, and scholars to activists could use pad.ma to explore the relationship between text and image, to examine the possibilities that it opens up, and also to look at the blurring lines between those who produce images, those who interpret it, and those who are supposed to consume it. The first presentation of the day was made by Aagaz, a voluntary youth group from PremNagar, Meghwadi and SanjayNagar bastis of Jogeshwari. Members of Aagaz including Shaali Shaikh, Durga Gudillu and Ismail Sharif spoke about their contribution to pad.ma. About 15 hours of footage from their video project Ek Dozen Pani was collaboratively annotated to describe some relationships between infrastructure, water and the city. While infrastructure is hyper visible in most cities in their diverse forms, from high rise shining malls and multiplexes to decaying pipes from which water and electricity leaks to poorer neighborhoods, the members of Aagaz used the layers of annotation in pad.ma to go deep into their own histories of how infrastructure gets to be made and unmade in urban experience. ( http://pad.ma/find?l=Lj) Sanjay Kak spoke about his own relationship to found footage after the experience of making Jashn-e-azadi, and he was invited to write over a two-hour long tape of found footage, "Flight Over the CFL". In what can only be described as an ethnography of a media event, Sanjay Kak's reading of this film opens out for us the historical and analytical possibilities that lies in material which may seem completely ordinary and uneventful. Combining the skills of a film maker with that of the historian, Sanjay's contemporatry reading of the material opened out ways in which we can think the relationship between events, fragmentary material and contested political histories (http://pad.ma/Vg92c17o/info) Priya Sen, a film maker from Delhi revisited a film that she had made six years ago "The Knower of Secrets" about Qawwali singers in Hazrat Nizamuddin. In her annotations, Priya looked at what it would mean to capture the experience of the film maker in the making of the film, an experience which is never exhausted by the end product that emerges in the form of the finished film. Her annotation moves between the personal, the affective, the theoretical and the analytical. On Pad.ma, the knower of secrets emerges as a text which opens out to different registers of experience and reflection which were not immediately available at the time of the making of the film. (http://pad.ma/Vu5mgs8w/info) Nida Ghouse's presentation raised the critical question of the difference between seeing an image, reading and image and understanding the experience of pad.ma which attempts to bring text and image together. Nida located the development of the various versions of pad.ma andf its implications for newer forms of reading that are made available. Finally, Nida looked at the idea of the electronic archive not just as an archeological site for data mining, but also as a construction site of ideas and possibilities. Sebastian Lütgert and Jan Gerber looked at 10 remarks about video and the internet, which balances between the exhilaration about video on the net and the material realities of low bandwidth etc. They distinguished between open source as a 'cool attitude' and openness as a form of practice that constantly requires interventions that reframes the ways we think of our own practices. They also argued that licenses are 'real', in that issues of format of videos, inter-operability etc are all affected by proprietary licenses and the future of video on the net is also an issue about closed or open systems. Kaushik Bhowmick was invited by pad.ma to be a guest annotator, and Kaushik took up the challenge by trawling through all the events and settling on ten of them. But rather than choosing to annotate them through information or analysis of the events (which ranged from bar dancers to the item song in hindi films to the lumpen audience), Kaushik chose to read and write across them. Drawing from mythology and film theory, Kaushik chose to make poetic connections across images. Arguing that film eventually relies on the production of sensibilities, Kaushik' sannotations sought to capture the evocative feel of the videos and the ways they spoke to each other. ( http://pad.ma/Vejbx6uz/00:02:54.000) Desire Machine Collective from Guwahati chose to focus on the idea of the North East as it emerges in popular discourse and in the news. They curated a set of items which provided a name and place to the idea of the north east. In their curation they sought to raise the question of how an idea like the Northeast comes into being, where it finds form in media discourse, and also ways in which a counter archive that displaces one central idea of the north east could emerge. They chose to read one segment of a film Tango Charlie and its hugely stereotypical image of the north east and contrasted this with videos that looked at the Bnei Menashe, the lost tribes of Israel from Mizoram. ( http://pad.ma/find?l=Ll) Lawrence Liang made a presentation on the relationship between the image, politics and the distribution of the sensible. Drawing form Jacques Ranciere, Lawrence argued that politics was already aesthetics, in that ideas of the political often draw from sensorial metaphors such as visibility and invisibility, and politics may consist of interruptions/interventions in the distribution of the sensible, which modify the Aesthetic-political field. He tried to link this to an understanding of the political which is not dependent on a pre determined political field, but which is open to redefinition through a reversal of assumptions of social roles. In the case of pad.ma, the blurring of the lines between image makers and image readers would constitute such an aesthetic-political interruption. Ayisha Abraham who has made a film Straight 8 using found footage chose to look at rare films made on Ram Gopal, a dancer who became famous in the mid-twentieth century. Using the footage of Ram Gopal that had been shot by an amateur film maker Tom D'Aguiar, perhaps the only existing fragment of moving image of Ram, Ayesha posed questions about the relationship between the materiality of film, the role of archives and the reconstruction of histories. (http://pad.ma/Vsnjewdj/info) Ranu Ghosh has been working on the changing urban landscape of Kolkatta, looking at the emergence of new high rise apartments against the decaying landscape of factories that have shut down. In her presentation she spoke about the south city project which has emerged on the lands of the Usha sewing machine factory. She has used Pad.ma to annotate the history of the struggle of an individual against the acquisition of his housing quarters, and he was given a camera to document what was happening, since there are no visitors allowed inside the premises. The annotations become another layer through which the relationship between the film maker, footage shot by the subject of the film, and the audience interact. (http://pad.ma/Vfsgvjes/info ) Nilanjan Bhattacharya has been working on questions of traditional knowledge, and biodiversity. He presented an interview with Madhav Gadgil and related Prof. Gadgils view points on rituals and superstitions and myths as essential to the maintaining of sacred forests and knowledge systems through footage from his older films that included exampled of buddhist, hindu and animist rituals. http://pad.ma/Vs6e8x5j/00:13:51.000 Sadanand Menon showcased two films on Chandralekha. The first was part of a program made for a cultural show on Doordarshan, and the only footage available of it is the versions recorded from television. In an example of how text/image and histories (personal and public) interact, Sadanand's annotations on the Tanabana program takes us through an intimate journey with Chandralekha. Moments that would otherwise be missed (a dog passing by, Chandra making Rangoli), if we were just watching the film, are re-read by Sadanand to create a shared space where we begin to understand Chandra's philosophy of creativity and the body. Ghar Bachao, Ghar Banao Andolan is an organization that has been working on housing rights, particularly against corporate privatization. They took an existing footage in pad.ma "One Day in the Life of Niranjan Hiranandani" and re' read it against information that they have been collection for a few years (through the use of RTI as well as investigative journalism). The grandiose vision of Hiranandani is read against the material conditions of housing for the poor, while his statements of corporate responsibility are read against the corrupt practices prevalent in the real estate industry. In a playful manner, GBGB completes the incomplete narrative of images through sharp political satire. (http://pad.ma/Vtowua9j/L2kv9) Once you enter a pad.ma event, you can use the 9 and 0 keys ( and ) keys to advance to next clip. You can register to ad your own annotations. Pad.ma is now open to external contribuitons and also invites in annotators. write to pad.ma at pad.ma For more details feel free to contact kalakamra at gmail.com -- camputer.org pad.ma chitrakarkhana.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090225/43b25661/attachment.html From pranesh at cis-india.org Wed Feb 25 11:20:29 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:20:29 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] New Zealand's new Copyright Act put off for a month Message-ID: <4785f1e20902242150x25193cf4tf79421f8db57689f@mail.gmail.com> From: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10169519-93.html "In the wake of online and in-person protests over impending copyright legislation, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has announced a month's delay in the rules to give the industry time to come up with a workable alternative." Media commentator David Farrar of Kiwiblog said the legislation was wrong because it had been rejected by a parliamentary select committee and was reinserted at the last minute when people thought the matter had been resolved. -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society T: +91 80 40926283 W: http://cis-india.org From pranesh at cis-india.org Fri Feb 27 14:50:26 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:50:26 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Software patents: Microsoft goes after TomTom (and it's implementation of Linux). Message-ID: <4785f1e20902270120k732f1d61k7cc2dfe70128617@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, The full article from Techflash: http://bit.ly/tomtom-ms ----- Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims By Todd Bishop on February 25, 2009 at 1:32 PST Microsoft filed suit against TomTom today, alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents -- including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel. It's believed to be the first time Microsoft has filed a patent suit over Linux, after claiming for years that elements of the open-source operating system violate its patents. However, Microsoft says open-source software is not the intended focal point of the action. Five of the alleged patent violations relate to proprietary software. The complaints filed in the federal court: http://media.techflash.com/documents/tomtomComplaint.pdf [PDF, 10 pages] http://media.techflash.com/documents/tomtomitc.pdf [PDF, 25 pages] Q&A: Microsoft's IP chief on TomTom, Linux and patents: http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/QA_Microsofts_chief_patent_lawyer_on_TomTom_and_Linux_40354407.html Microsoft's most recent patent suit was against Primax Technologies, over computer mice. That case settled in December, when the companies [reached a licensing agreement][86]. [86]: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/dec08/12-17MSIP.mspx -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society T: +91 80 40926283 W: http://cis-india.org From prabhur at sathguru.com Fri Feb 27 17:35:41 2009 From: prabhur at sathguru.com (Prabhu) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:35:41 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] STEM Newsletter: Special Issue on Asian Tech Transfer Case Studies: Call for Contributions Message-ID: <20090227120548.E6F4F2C49122@mail.sarai.net> The Society for Technology Management (STEM) is Asia's premier technology transfer forum that provides a platform to facilitate successful intellectual property creation; licensing and technology transfer processes and promote best practices in technology management in Asia. The STEM Newsletter is published biannually by the STEM, and features relevant, original articles by technology transfer leaders from across the globe. These articles are of interest to beginners and senior professionals engaged in technology management, and technology transfer. The July 2009 issue of the STEM Newsletter will be a special issue dedicated to successful case studies and best practices in technology transfer from Asia. We invite articles from Asian technology transfer professionals on unique technology transfer models, specific case studies in technology commercialization, and identified best practices. Submissions should be made in Microsoft Word format. The article should be of 1200 words. In addition, the submission must have a short bio, alongwith author photograph, author contact info, including e-mail address, phone number, and fax number. If you are a technology transfer professional or entrepreneur with an exciting story to share, please do email the STEM Newsletter at prabhur at sathguru.com . We look forward to hearing from you, Warm regards Prabhu -- Prabhu Ram Program Manager Society for Technology Management (STEM) Plot No. 15, Hindi Nagar, Punjagutta, Hyderabad, A.P- 500 034 Ph: (040) 23356975, 23356507, 23350586, 66612352, 66786148, 66662190 Ext: 240 Mobile: (0) 9966253908 Fax: (040) 23354042 Web: www.stemglobal.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 4774 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090227/90d18dbd/attachment.bin From nagarjun at gnowledge.org Fri Feb 27 19:00:06 2009 From: nagarjun at gnowledge.org (Nagarjuna G.) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:00:06 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Software patents: Microsoft goes after TomTom (and it's implementation of Linux). In-Reply-To: <4785f1e20902270120k732f1d61k7cc2dfe70128617@mail.gmail.com> References: <4785f1e20902270120k732f1d61k7cc2dfe70128617@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200902271900.07958.nagarjun@gnowledge.org> On Friday 27 February 2009 14:50:26 Pranesh Prakash wrote: > Dear All, > The full article from Techflash: http://bit.ly/tomtom-ms > > ----- > Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims > Please see FSF's response. [FSF] ESP: Looking at Microsoft's FAT patents through Bilski glasses From: "Ciaran O'Riordan" To: info-fsf at gnu.org Looking at Microsoft's FAT patents through Bilski glasses http://endsoftpatents.org/looking-at-microsoft-s-fat-patents-through- bilski-glasses/ Yesterday, Microsoft attacked free software and GNU/Linux users with software patent claims against the TomTom Navigator and its implementation of the FAT file system. But do they have a sword or a wet rag? With widespread support for GNU/Linux becoming a reality, are these patent claims an attempt to chill adoption? If so, then we need to make sure everyone knows about Bilski. Please read this story and use digg to help raise awareness: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Looking_at_Microsoft_s_FAT_patents_through_Bilski_glasses_2 Sign-up or ask friends to join our End Software Patents mailing list to get these alerts: http://campaigns.fsf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/esp-action-alert Thanks Ciaran O'Riordan Director End Software Patents Tel: +32 487 64 17 54 email: ciaran [at] fsf.org _______________________________________________ info-fsf mailing list info-fsf at gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-fsf -- Nagarjuna G. gnowledge lab, HBCSE, TIFR. India. From venkyh at gmail.com Sat Feb 28 12:59:48 2009 From: venkyh at gmail.com (Venkatesh Hariharan) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:59:48 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Software patents: Microsoft goes after TomTom (and it's implementation of Linux). In-Reply-To: <4785f1e20902270120k732f1d61k7cc2dfe70128617@mail.gmail.com> References: <4785f1e20902270120k732f1d61k7cc2dfe70128617@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3f400ec0902272329p30f509f1ja9c6982579314ee8@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Pranesh Prakash wrote: > > Dear All, > The full article from Techflash: http://bit.ly/tomtom-ms > > ----- > Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims > > By Todd Bishop on February 25, 2009 at 1:32 PST > > Microsoft filed suit against TomTom today, alleging that the > in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents -- > including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux > kernel. While Microsoft says they are not targeting Linux/FOSS, their statements should not be believed. This case is the proverbial "canary in the coalmine." We will need to keep a close watch on how the case goes and strengthen our legal defenses at the same time. Venky