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Impressum: Institut für Neue Kulturtechnologien/t0, Neustiftgasse 17, 1070 Wien, Verlagspostamt 1070 Wien, Sponsoring Post GZ02Z033689 S. t0 World Summit on the Information Society World-Information City TUNIS 16-18 November 2005
BANGALORE 14-20 November 2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS P 02 The Black and White (and Grey) of By Lawrence Liang Options to traditional patents - The west, too, is seriously experimenting with alternatives P 03 TRIPS into the Uncertain By Corinna Heineke P 04 Intellectual Property Rights and Wrongs By Joseph Stiglitz 'Don't Copy That Floppy!': The Propaganda of Digital Protectionism P 05 Open Access to Science in the By Peter Suber and Subbiah Arunachalam P 06 Schools and the ‘African Digital Information Commons’ By Chris Armstrong Brazil's Canto Livre Project: The Emergence of Society’s Creativity P 07 Fragmented Urban Topographies and Their Underlying Interconnections P 08 Analogue to Digital: Valorising Peripheries to Fear New Hydras By Solomon Benjamin P 10 Cities of Planning and Cities of Non- Planning: A Geography of Intellectual P 11 Disembedding from Psycho-Urban By Ewen Chardronnet P 12 Haussmann in the Tropics P 13 The Camera is there, but where ist the IP AND THE CITY - RESTRICTED LIFESCAPES AND THE WEALTH OF THE COMMONS By Frederic Noronha The booms, bubbles and busts of the digital networking revolution of ideas, thoughts, and experiences - as songs, as computer programs, as P 14 Autolabs, Cybermoholla the 90s have ebbed into normality. The new logic of information economies stories, as new processes how to make things better - is being prohibited By Ricardo Rosas, Tatiana Wells and is interacting with the full range of social and political contexts, producing by proprietary claims of "data lords" who enforce dominion over their new systems of domination but also new domains of freedom. It is now own zones of the cultural landscape. This is accompanied by intense By Richard Stallman that from deep societal transformations the new informational lifescapes propaganda efforts extolling the "evils" of sharing culture. There is no start to emerge.
trespassing, and while their culture is ubiquitous around the globe, we P 15 The Open Networks Declaration · The Delhi Declaration of A New Context are more and more restricted from making our own.
It has become necessary to highlight the strong normalizing forces that · The Vienna Document shape this process. This is not just a question of abstract information Counter-movements that talk about the commons instead of proprietary policy. The building of immaterial landscapes has very material conse­ zones have been gathering strength around the globe. The goal is to quences for social, cultural and economic realities. With digital restriction devise new ways in which information can flow freely from one place to technologies and expanded intellectual property regimes on the rise, it another, from people to people. Instead of deepening fragmentation, is an urgent task to develop new ways to protect and extend the wealth information and cultures are held to be a resource produced and used The glossary covers some terms often used in the current of our intellectual and cultural commons.
collaboratively, rather than being controlled by particular owners. People intellectual property debates. The terms and their definition reflect an Anglo-American bias and need to be challenged should be free to appropriate information as they see fit, based on their by introducing other cultural experiences into the debates.
Human life is physical and informational at the same time, our physical own historical and personal needs and desire, rather than having to and cultural dimensions are mutually constitutive. Their interrelations consume the standardized products of McWorld. More than ever emerging from historical and local context are now more than ever informational commons, accessible to everyone under conditions of their influenced by global transformations in the info sphere. The term "glo­ own choosing, are needed to help reconnect people bypassed by the balization" describes a deep change in how physical and informational standard flows of information and capital.
spaces are organized and how they intersect with one another to formlandscapes, both physical and informational. "Zoning", the establishment In this paper, we bring together theoreticians and practitioners, artists of domains governed by special rules, is a key concept to understand and lawyers, programmers and musicians who offer a diverse critique these new landscapes.
of the new regime of physical and informational zoning. This collectionof cultural intelligence looks into alternative models of how to reinvent Physical space is increasingly fragmented into "export zones", special cultural practices based on a collaborative plurality of commons and, "safety zones", VIP lounges at transportation hubs, gated communities, perhaps, imbue fragmentation of space with a new positive sense of "no-go areas" and so forth. Just when for the first time in history a majority shared differences. As each and every one of us produces culture in the of humanity lives in cities, their form starts dissolving and is replaced by course of our daily lifes, we are forced to choose sides: do we, in the a patchwork of distinct sectors. Every city has places that are fully global myriad of small acts that constitute life in the information society, enforce alongside others which are intensely local, "first world" and "third world" restrictions or enable access? are no longer regional identifiers, but signify various patches within asingle geographic domain.
Vienna, October 2005 Informational landscapes are fragmented by similar processes. What Director of Netbase/t0, Institute of New Culture Technologies.
used to be relatively open and accessible cultural spaces are increasingly caved up in special administrative zones, privatized claims of intellectual Lecturer in media economics at the Academy of Art and Design, Zurich, and co-founder of openflows.org.
property, and policed through the ever increasing scope of patents and Ulrike Brückner : www.musterfirma.org World-Information City Campaign, Bangalore copyrights. What comes natural to people, to create, transform and share THE BLACK AND WHITE (AND GREY) OF COPYRIGHT By Lawrence Liang In a broad historical and cultural view, copyright is a recent and • Alice Randall, a black American author, wrote a parody of "Gone International, a group of left-wing artists, cultural theorists and by no means universal concept. Copyright laws originated in With the Wind" from the perspective of Scarlett O’Hara’s Mullato political activists that existed from 1958 to 1970, put all its Western society in the Eighteenth century. During the Renaissance, half sister. The estate of "Gone With the Wind" author Margaret publications under anti-copyright terms that permitted anyone to printers throughout Europe would reprint popular books without Mitchell claimed that this was an infringement of copyright and copy, translate and rewrite them even without authorization.
obtaining permissions or paying roy­ obtained an injunction against the publication of alties and copyright was created as a the book. Fortunately in this case the court of way to regulate the printing industry.
Copyright laws over time have been appeal then overturned the injunction.
The Walt Disney Corporation founded much of its wealth With the emergence of the concept transformed from their original on folk tales, such as "Snow White" and "Sinbad", by of artistic genius, copyright became purpose of regulating the publishing • In December 2003, a young artist DJ Danger taking them out of the public domain and turning them enmeshed with the general cultural industry to instead regulating its Mouse remixed an album called the "Grey Album" into proprietary, copyrighted films and merchandise understanding of authorship. Later, with customers, artists and audiences.
from the "White Album" of the Beatles and hip hop globalized capitalism, control over artist Jay Z's "Black Album". Only 3000 copies copyrighted works became centered of the "Grey Album" were released and would in the hands of media corporations instead of authors and artists.
probably have disappeared into obscurity, were it not for the fact Even as the internet and digital media rendered distinctions that two months later DJ Danger Mouse received a cease and • In the late 1980s and early 1990s, musicians and groups like between original and copies largely obsolete, changes in the law desist letter ordering him to stop any further distribution of the Jon Oswald, Negativeland and the Tape-beatles advocated tried to artificially maintain them. As a result, copyright laws over album since it violated the copyright of the Beatles White Album, "Plunderphonics", non-copyrighted music that mainly consisted time have been transformed from their original purpose of owned by EMI.
of experimental audio collages of pop music and broadcast sound regulating the publishing industry to instead regulating its cus­ tomers, artists and audiences.
This unofficial ban on the album was seen as an unfair violation of creative expression by a number Traditionally, copyright was of little relevance to cultural and artistic of people, and a campaign called Sebastian Lütgert : www.textz.com World-Information City Campaign, Bangalore practice except in the realm of commercial print publishing.
Grey Tuesday, sponsored by launched to ensure that the album would still be available for people to • Authorship, originality and copyright are of no or little relevance download via P2P networks. Over in virtually all traditional forms of popular culture all over the world.
170 web sites offered to host the Most folk songs and folktales, for example, are collective anonymous "Grey Album", many of which later creations in the public domain. Variations, modifications and received cease and desist letters translations are traditionally encouraged as part of their tradition.
from EMI. To date, the "Grey Album" has been downloaded by over 1.25 • The Walt Disney Corporation founded much of its wealth on million users and continues in making folk tales, such as "Snow White" and "Sinbad", by taking them DJ Danger Mouse the top "selling" out of the public domain and turning them into proprietary, artists of the past year beating other copyrighted films and merchandise products. Today, the company contenders such as Norah Jones.
is one of the strongest backers and political lobby sponsors for drastic copyright restrictions on digital media.
What then are our options in the face of this onslaught of copyright law? We could of course reject the • In 1999, the novel "Q" appeared under the name of Luther • The same is true for many works considered part of the high- legitimacy of these laws which impinge on freedom of speech Blissett, known previously as the collective moniker of an Italian cultural canon, crafted by unidentified, often collective authors: and expression, but there is the danger of having to defend yourself media prankster project. This allegorical account of Italian subculture Homer's epics for example, or the "Tales of 1001 Nights" which in a highly expensive law suit.
in the form of a historical thriller set in 16th century Italy, "Q" were spread by storytellers and of which no authoritative, "original" became a national no.1 best-seller and subsequently appeared written version ever existed. Modern philology believes them to This would still be a defensive move that relies on existing provision in French, German and English translations. Obviously, the sales be derived from Persian sources which in return were translated of copyright law, which makes our choices rather restricted. There didn't suffer at all from the fact that the imprint of the book from Indian works.
is, however, another movement which is growing in popularity permitted anyone to freely copy it for non-commercial purposes.
which recognizes the • In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, original authorship was need for a pro-active Renaissance and baroque paintings were to a large degree collective workshop book was not re­ even rather more disregarded than encouraged. In the foreword leased by an under­ productions, and recycled conventionalized, emblematic pictorial motifs.
to "Don Quixote", Cervantes falsely claims that his novel was building a public domain ground publisher, Rubens and Rembrandt were the most prominent practitioners of the workshop based on an Arabic source. Literary works typically render them­ of materials which can be method, with author attributions of their work remaining unclear until today.
selves canonical by not inventing new stories, but rewriting existing used in the future without established pub­ ones, such as the many adaptions of "Faustus" from Christopher necessarily having to Marlowe to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fernando Pessoa, obtain prior permission from the copyright owner or having to pay Einaudi in Italy, Editions du Seuil in France and Piper in Germany, Alfred Jarry, Thomas Mann and Michel Butor.
hefty royalties. It seeks to counteract the unrestricted growth of amongst others who apparently didn't mind giving up traditional copyright. This movement is sometimes popularly called the copyright-granted distribution models for a promising publication.
• Until the 20th century and the rise of the recording industry, copyleft movement. Its historical roots lie in free software (such copyright played no major role for music and musical composition.
as Linux and GNU), but more recently, it attempts to broaden its This introductory guide is meant for media designers, artists, Musical themes were freely adapted and copied from one composer scope and apply the principles of free distribution, usage and musicians, producers of content, academics, researchers, etc.
to another. Bach's "Concerto in D Major BWV 972" for example collaborative development, to all kinds of media. In addition, there who are likewise interested in having their works widely circulated is simply a re-orchestration of the ninth is also an artistic tradition of non- and anti- without too many restrictions. The model that it seeks to look at movement of Vivaldi's "L'Estro Armonica".
With globalized capitalism, control over is the idea of the "Open Content License". However, making your Even as late as in the 19th century, work available without placing restrictions does not mean that copyrighted works became centered in Beethoven didn't have to buy a license • The French late romantic poet Lautréamont you abandon your copyright to the work. This guide will provide the hands of media corporations instead for writing the "Diabelli Variations", 83 wrote in a famous passage of his 1870 book a set of options to assert some rights to your work. It will also of authors and artists.
variations on a waltz written by the "Poésies": Plagiarism is necessary, progress introduce the new positive rights to share, distribute and change Austrian Anton Diabelli. And finally the implies it. It closely grasps an author's sen­ being developing under copyleft.
entire genre of Blues music is, as a matter of fact, a variation of tence, uses his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with only one song, the twelve bar harmonic scheme.
a right one.
Lawrence Liang is a researcher with the Alternative Law Forum, • Copyright was a non-issue in the visual arts, too, until recently.
Today, this reads like a precise description of how, for example, Bangalore. His key areas of interest are law, technology and culture, Renaissance and baroque paintings were to a large degree free software development works.
the politics of copyright and he has been working closely with Sarai, collective workshop productions, and recycled conventionalized, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the emblematic pictorial motifs. Rubens and Rembrandt were the • Inspired by Lautréamont and a study about gift economies by most prominent practitioners of the workshop method, with author the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss, the Situationist attributions of their work remaining unclear until today. In 1921, Kurt Schwitters called his own brand of Dada "Merz", derived from the logo of the German bank "Commerzbank" which he had OPTIONS TO TRADITIONAL PATENTS used in a collage painting. Today's artists who do the equivalent in the Internet risk being sued for copyright and trademark THE WEST, TOO, IS SERIOUSLY EXPERIMENTING WITH ALTERNATIVES • Ever since personal computers and the Internet closed most of the technical gaps that prevented media consumers from becoming The recent changes in Indian patent law are a cause to reflect.
market of 50 million persons. In other words, if it has a monopoly, media producers and receiver technology from functioning as Will India embrace the most closed and proprietary models for Novartis plans to price its new medicines so that they are too sender technology (to cite the media critiques of Bertolt Brecht controlling access to knowledge, or will it find a way to reconcile expensive for more than 95% of the population. Giant corporations and Hans Magnus Enzensberger from 1930's and 1970's), its obligations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with and governments in North America and Europe have lobbied India copyright has emerged as a deterrent against creativity rather the need to protect human rights? Will India have the vision to to adopt high levels of patented protection for medicines, seeds, than an incentive for it.
explore the promise of new models for supporting creativity and software and other technologies. The basic argument they advance innovation? Or will it follow the worst impulses of increasingly is that India will remain poor, unless it can provide the legal • The case of the graphic artist Kieron Dwyer shows what might discredited systems for restricting access to knowledge? protection that will support lucrative knowledge-based industries.
have happened to Kurt Schwitters if he had appropriated the It is a seductive message, that has clearly resonated with some bank logo nowadays. A year after Dwyer made comic books, The Patent Act, as amended by Parliament in March, presents of the elite policymakers. It has flaws, however.
t-shirts, and stickers with his version of the Starbucks logo, the opportunities to move in very different directions. The amendments company sued him. When the case was finally settled, Dwyer to the Ordinance obtained by the left were substantive, and when First, the United States and Europe are now engaged in a growing was allowed to continue displaying his logo, but only in extremely combined with other provisions of the Act, give the government debate over the best ways to promote innovation. The idea that limited circumstances. No more comic books, t-shirts or stickers: considerable flexibility to protect consumers. The legal mechanisms high levels of intellectual property protection are best is now he may post the image on the web, but not on his own website, under attack. Regardless of what is said in Delhi, back home nor may he link from his website to any other site that shows the wealthy countries are backing open standards for the Internet, parody. (Sources: http://www.illegal-art.org) In 2004, Novartis told the World Bank it considers India to be a open-source software, open-access archives for publicly-funded continued on next page

Sebastian Lütgert : www.textz.com World-Information City Campaign, Bangalore scientific research, public domain databases like the Human innovation from that for products providing hefty financial incentives Genome Project or the HapMap Project and similar open initiatives.
for companies investing in R&D, without harming consumers.
Big successful companies like Cisco are alarmed at patent thickets on software and computing technologies and IBM is undergoing India now has many options. It can protect its own consumers a profound shift in the way it thinks about intellectual property through liberal compulsory licensing, but still allow Indian inventors resources, which it now seeks to share.
to seek the higher levels of intellectual property protection in the North American or European markets. It can even experiment with The US Congress is debating whether or not to weaken patent new ideas for collective management of patent rights, such as protections on medicines. In key areas, such as parallel trade, the the Medical Innovation Prize Fund, or the proposals for an essential French government recently amended its patent law to extend medicines patent pool. Fortunately for India, it has the legal tools compulsory licensing to certain medical diagnostic technologies.
it needs. Soon a large number of compulsory licenses will be The UK government recently implemented the European Union’s issued for products now manufactured in India, which are subject directive to create mandatory compulsory licensing of genetically to the mailbox patents. This will increase the familiarity with modified corps. And the European Union is debating whether or compulsory licensing and provide needed expertise in setting reasonable remuneration to patent owners.
If it has a monopoly, Novartis plans to price its new medicines so There is also Article 92 of the new Act, which gives the that they are too expensive for more than 95% of the population.
government the right to issue compulsory licenses to address public health emergencies. This covers all INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY not its directive on database protection was a mistake and if it medicines, without any prior negotiation with patent owners. In should be scaled back or repealed.
a country with such serious medical needs, it promises to be a Through copyright, patent and trademark living provision.
law, it is possible to claim exclusive Recently, a bill (HR 417) was introduced in the US Congress.
ownership of ideas and expressions.
The proposal would radically change the way medical R&D is Traditionally, from this ownership, in analogy financed in the US. It would eliminate all market exclusivity on James Love is director, Consumer Project on to physical property, the right to exclude others has been derived. Over the last two prescription medicines, in return for remuneration from a $60 Technology, an NGO focusing on IP policy, especially decades an alternative practice of IP has billion per year Medical Innovation Prize Fund that would be related to healthcare.
been developed, which is not based on distributed to companies that develop new medicines on the basis the right to exclude, but on the right to of the incremental healthcare benefits the medicines deliver. The access. Many view this as a socially more new US proposal shows one can separate the markets for beneficial way to organizing scientific innovation and cultural production in the information age.
TRIPS INTO THE UNCERTAIN - INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATE By Corinna Heineke The call for a Development Agenda within the stances as branded drugs, can legally produce wish to purchase. The medicines shall, for exam­ access for agricultural products and textiles and World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) cheaper versions of the same drug. Equally, ple, be specifically labelled as having been were faced with threats of trade sanctions, it is is one of the latest efforts of countries of the under the TRIPS-Agreement, governments are produced under the compulsory licensing only fair that they fight for the maintenance of global South to curb the sweeping advance of permitted to issue compulsory licenses to local scheme. The decision implementing the flexibilities both in TRIPS and recently the intellectual property rights into all fields of knowl­ generics’ producers for the production of generic Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health also Substantive Patent Law Treaty in WIPO. The edge production. Brazil and Argentina filed a versions of patented drugs “in the case of a requires an amendment of the TRIPS-Agreement case of South Africa shows that to a degree proposal for integrating the development dimen­ national emergency or other circumstances of itself so that the exportation of generic drugs governments can protect basic rights to health sion more fully into WIPO’s mandate at the extreme urgency or in cases of public non- becomes legally possible. However, the deadline care and food security if they use the flexibilities organisation’s 31st General Assembly in commercial use” (Art. 31 (b)). Thus the Medicines of 31 March 2005 once again passed due to of TRIPS. However, it has to be cautioned that September 2004. In this document these coun­ Act in no way violates the TRIPS-Agreement resistance from OECD-countries.
developing countries in the end agreed to the tries demand more flexibility for developing coun­ since the AIDS-pandemic constitutes a circum­ TRIPS-Agreement because another discourse tries to address public interest, for example in stance of extreme urgency. However, the PMA It is precisely these kinds of flexibilities that has - under the structural adjustment programmes public health issues, and to allow for policy space claimed that the Medicines Act violated their developing countries have had to fight for, even of the IMF and World Bank - become hegemonic: in regulating intellectual property. Particularly constitutional rights to property. Interestingly, though the TRIPS-Agreement allows for com­ The idea that free trade generates welfare is the Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) cur­ the Treatment Action Campaign, which is fighting pulsory licensing. Another flexibility provided in inextricably interlinked with a discourse of mod­ rently under negotiation in WIPO - and possibly for affordable medicines for people with HIV and the agreement is the non-patentability of plants ernisation and economic development. It is this taking intellectual property which members can inscribe development along an allegedly predetermined rights beyond anything in their national laws.
route that echoes in the demands of developing Patented seeds will stop farmers from pursuing their century long practice of sharing, existing today - is of con­ However, Art. 27.3(b) states countries when technology transfer and recog­ developing and saving seeds from their own harvest.
cern to the two countries that “Members shall provide nition of their rights over natural resources are and the coalition of twelve for the protection of plant stipulated. While the countries’ right to determine so-called Friends of Development that endorsed joined the litigation as amicus curiae of the varieties either by patents or by an effective sui their own economic strategies cannot be denied the original proposal.
Government of South Africa, could appropriate generis system or by any combination thereof”.
there has however been a process of commer­ the constitution for its own case against the The patenting of life forms such as micro- cialisation in the name of development. Beside It was the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects pharmaceutical giants. It argued that proprietary organisms dates back to 1980 when the US the TRIPS-Agreement allowing the patenting of of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the rights in medicines question the constitutional Supreme Court decided that the patenting of life, the Convention on Biological Diversity, signed World Trade Organisation (WTO), however, that right to access to health care services (Section life forms is legal if they have been modified from in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, codified this process complicated the global scenery of innovation, their natural state, can be technically mass- of enclosure in that it transferred the sovereignty creativity and access to knowledge ten years produced and if they are used in technical appli­ over genetic resources to the states. Previously, earlier. Entering into force on 1 January 1995, The case received enormous international rec­ cations. In 1985 followed a patent on a geneti­ seeds and other natural resources had been it considerably shaped the conditions under ognition, and public pressure from activists all cally modified plant and in 1988 one on the so- considered the heritage of humankind. With the which policy debates regarding genetic resourc­ over the world led the pharmaceutical complain­ called cancer mouse. Patented seeds will in time majority of genetic resources existent in countries es, the protection of traditional knowledge as ants to withdraw their court application against effectively stop farmers from pursuing their cen­ of the South, however, developing states came well as access to medicines are taking place the South African Government in April 2001.
tury long practice of sharing, developing and to perceive their genetic resources as tradable today. The TRIPS-Agreement obliges all member But the case also revealed some loopholes in saving seeds from their own harvest. This is goods. The result of the state controlling access states of the WTO to provide in their national the TRIPS-Agreement itself. For the production because the privatisation of the basic ingredient to these resources is that the peoples that over legislation for the patentability of products and of generic drugs under a compulsory license of agriculture ties in with an enormous advance centuries developed seeds and discovered me­ processes in all fields of technology (Art. 27.1).
“shall be authorized predominantly for the supply of monocultural, commercial seeds through the dicinal remedies in the natural world are often That is to say that the 148 WTO-members must of the domestic market of the Member authorizing so-called Green Revolution. With the spread of deprived of their right to say no to the privatisation grant patents on inventions in biotechnology, such use” (Art. 31(f)). That poses a difficult these seeds, more and more farmers worldwide of biological resources that they have used for including patents on life forms such as micro- problem for many, predominantly small developing have become dependent on seeds sold by global up to centuries.
organisms, as well as on pharmaceutical inven­ countries that do not have their own production agro-chemical giants such as Monsanto.
tions. Both kinds of patents have had serious capacities for medicines because the possibility While calls for recognising the health and food effects, particularly in or for developing countries.
of granting compulsory licenses evades their If developing countries wish to exclude plants needs of the South in the IP-system are absolutely policy scope. At the Fourth Ministerial Meeting from patentability in order to prevent their farmers justified in the face of poverty and appropriate Take the case of South Africa for example. In of the WTO in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, from facing such lawsuits they are required to from a perspective of sovereignty over livelihoods, 1998 the South African Pharmaceutical developing countries and NGOs therefore implement an “effective sui generis system” for caution needs to be exercised regarding the role Manufacturers Association (PMA) and 41 phar­ pushed for recognition of the problem and an the protection of new plant varieties. But once of the state in the enclosure of the commons maceutical companies, launched a lawsuit against amendment of the TRIPS-Agreement in order again developed states push them to implement and with respect to the kinds of technology the South African Government over its Medicines to allow generics’ producers to export their the International Convention for the Protection transferred. The advance of intellectual property and Related Substance Control Amendment products to poor developing countries. The of new Plant Varieties (UPOV); an agreement into all spheres of human subsistence will most Act of 1997. The Act was aimed at making subsequent Declaration on the TRIPS- developed in the North that in its latest version likely continue but the resistance of local peoples medicines more affordable through the generic Agreement and Public and farmers can make the substitution of off-patent medicines and medi­ Health and its paragraph TRIP towards an all-enclosing The resistance of local peoples and farmers can make the TRIP towards an all- cines produced under compulsory licenses as 6 instructed the TRIPS- intellectual property regime enclosing intellectual property regime one with an uncertain end.
well as through the parallel importation of pat­ Council to find an “ex­ one with an uncertain end.
ented drugs from countries where these are sold peditious solution” for at a lower price. In a country where in 2003 5.3 countries without manufacturing capacities in from 1991 hinders plant breeding on the basis million people or almost a quarter of the popula­ the pharmaceutical sector. A 2002 deadline of protected varieties and saving seed. The Corinna Heineke is currently tion were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS passed and blatant power-plays occurred until implementation of UPOV is often pushed through working on her PhD on traditional and 40% of the population are considered poor, an agreement was struck in August 2003. While bilateral trade agreements between the US or knowledge and intellectual lowering prices for anti-retroviral and other med­ developing countries managed to keep a limita­ European Union and developing countries. Only property rights. In the past she icines is essential. The amended Medicines Act tion of applicable diseases out of the agreement, few countries have attempted to draft a legislation worked on IPRs in Central foresees, for example, that pharmacies would international health advocates have criticised of its own kind (sui generis) for the protection America where she edited the be obliged to sell a generic version instead of the Public Health deal as too bureaucratic be­ of plant varieties.
book 'La Vida en Venta: the branded drug if available. When patents cause countries wanting to make use of it have Transgénicos, Patentes y have expired producers of generic medicines, to file very detailed applications with the WTO Because developing countries were lured into Biodiversidad' (Ediciones Heinrich i.e. medicines that are made of the same sub­ for each and every drug and the quantities they the TRIPS-Agreement by promises of market Böll, San Salvador, 2002).

INTELLECTUAL-PROPERTY RIGHTS AND WRONGS By Joseph Stiglitz Last October, the General Assembly of the World and used less than they would be otherwise.
the American firm that isolates the active ingre­ death because they might no longer be able to Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) de­ dient? Pharmaceutical companies argue that get affordable generic drugs? Had the question cided to consider what a development-oriented The economic rationale for intellectual property been posed in this way to par­ intellectual property regime might look like. The is that faster innovation offsets the enormous liaments around the world, I move was little noticed, but, in some ways, it costs of such inefficiencies. But it has become The growth of the "open source" movement shows believe that TRIP’s would have was as important as the World Trade Organiza­ increasingly clear that excessively strong or badly that products of enormous value can be produced been soundly rejected.
tion’s decision that the current round of trade formulated intellectual property rights may actually without intellectual property protection.
negotiations be devoted to development. Both impede innovation - and not just by increasing Intellectual property is important, decisions acknowledge that the current rules of the price of research.
they should be entitled to a full patent, paying but the appropriate intellectual-property regime the international economic game reflect the nothing to the developing country from which for a developing country is different from that interests of the advanced industrial countries - Monopolists may have much less incentive to the traditional knowledge was taken, even though for an advanced industrial country. The TRIP’s especially of their big corporations - more than innovate than they would if they had to compete.
the country preserves the biodiversity without scheme failed to recognize this. In fact, intellectual the interests of the developing world.
Modern research has shown that the great econ­ which the drug would never have come to market.
property should never have been included in a omist Joseph Schumpeter was wrong in thinking Not surprisingly, developing countries see things trade agreement in the first place, at least partly Without intellectual property protection, incen­ that competition in innovation leads to a succes­ because its regulation is demonstrably beyond tives to engage in certain types of creative sion of firms. In fact, a monopolist, once estab­ the competency of trade negotiators.
endeavors would be weakened. But there are lished, may be hard to dislodge, as Microsoft Society has always recognized that other values high costs associated with intellectual property.
has so amply demonstrated.
Besides, an international organization al­ Ideas are the most important input into research, ready exists to protect intellectual property.
Most of those who signed the TRIPS agreement and if intellectual property slows down the ability Indeed, once established, a monopoly can use Hopefully, in WIPO’s reconsideration of to use others’ ideas, then scientific and techno­ its market power to squelch competitors, as did not fully understand what they were doing.
intellectual property regimes, the voices logical progress will suffer.
Microsoft has demonstrated in the case of the of the developing world will be heard more Netscape Web browser. Such abuses of market may trump intellectual property. The need to clearly than it was in the WTO negotiations; In fact, many of the most important ideas - for power discourage innovation.
prevent excessive monopoly power has led anti- hopefully, WIPO will succeed in outlining what example, the mathematics that underlies the trust authorities to require compulsory licensing a pro-developing intellectual property regime modern computer or the theories behind atomic Moreover, so-called “patent thickets” - the fear (as the US government did with the telephone implies; and hopefully, WTO will listen: the aim energy or lasers - are not protected by intellectual that some advance will tread on pre-existing company AT&T). When America faced an anthrax of trade liberalization is to boost development, property. Academics spend considerable energy patents, of which the innovator may not even be threat in the wake of the September 11, 2001, not hinder it.
freely disseminating their research findings. I am aware - may also discourage innovation. After terrorist attacks, officials issued a compulsory pleased when someone uses my ideas on asym­ the pioneering work of the Wright brothers and license for Cipro, the best-known antidote.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2005.
metric information - though I do appreciate them the Curtis brothers, overlapping patent claims giving me some credit. The growth of the “open thwarted the development of the airplane, until Unfortunately, the trade negotiators who framed source” movement on the Internet shows that the United States government finally forced a the intellectual-property agreement of the Uru­ not just the most basic ideas, but even products patent pool as World War I loomed. Today, many guay trade round of the early 1990’s (TRIP’s) Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel lau­ were either unaware of all of this, or more likely, reate in economics, is Professor industry worry that uninterested. I served on the Clinton administra­ of Economics at Columbia Uni­ Overlapping patent claims thwarted the development of the airplane.
tion’s Council of Economic Advisors at the time, versity and was Chairman of thicket may impede and it was clear that there was more interest in the Council of Economic Advis­ ers to President Clinton and of enormous immediate commercial value can pleasing the pharmaceutical and entertainment Chief Economist and Senior be produced without intellectual property pro­ The creation of any product requires many ideas, industries than in ensuring an intellectual-property Vice President at the World and sorting out their relative contribution to the regime that was good for science, let alone for Bank. His most recent book is outcome - let alone which ones are really new The Roaring Nineties: A New By contrast, an intellectual property regime - can be nearly impossible.
History of the World’s Most rewards innovators by creating a temporary I suspect that most of those who signed the Prosperous Decade.
monopoly power, allowing them to charge far Consider a drug based on traditional knowledge, agreement did not fully understand what they higher prices than they could if there were com­ say, of an herb well known for its medicinal were doing. If they had, would they have willingly petition. In the process, ideas are disseminated properties. How important is the contribution of condemned thousands of AIDS sufferers to 'DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY!': THE PROPAGANDA OF DIGITAL PROTECTIONISM Intellectual Property (IP) has gone from being a 'dry' topic to a 'hot' one (or should that be 'wet'?) stolen it,' students were told - eliding fair use, public domain works, Free Software, and alternative these last few years. One reason for this is the unholy conjunction of the network form and the digital licensing in one sweep of the revisionist hand. Teachers worked from a 25-page classroom guide, file format: taken together, these give all sorts of media - including explaining that the use of a computer to download files was those that copyright owners would rather keep under their control 'If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it', students were told. 'morally and ethically wrong.' Students played roles such as 'The - the capacity to propagate and self-distribute rapidly and endlessly.
Film Producer' and 'The Starving Artist'; at the end of one session, according to an article in the Boston Globe, a teacher asked a boy: ''Will you stop copying music This creates problems for the entire category of IP: a legal system that holds 'Thou Shalt Not Copy' online and download the right way?' 'Yes,' he answered. 'I'll go to the music store and buy more at its very juridical heart now faces the social-technological fact that copying is as easy and natural CDs.' Alongside the propaganda comes bribery: for writing essays about why file sharing is bad, - for those with a computer at their disposal - as breathing, eating or walking.
students are offered incentives such as free DVD players and DVDs (first one's free, but they'rehooked forever), movie tickets and trips to Hollywood.
Three options offer themselves to copyright holders looking to lock things down. One: More Law.
There have been unprecedented extensions to copyright terms in many western countries recently The States isn't the only place to attempt brainwashing children on the merits of strong IP. The Hong - extensions that mean both that owners' copyright persists for longer, and that it is more illegal to Kong chapter of the Scouting Association started offering an MPA (its own local Motion Picture copy and share media. Two: Technological Protection-schemes like Trusted Computing provide an group) intellectual property merit badge earlier this year. The 'badge of honour' is conditional on infrastructure that can be used to limit the inherent capacity of your computer to copy files although successfully completing a series of seminars and workshops on the importance of protecting and it is far from clear that such schemes can work reliably.
respecting intellectual property rights. Badge wearers also have to join the 'I Pledge' Scheme andwork to promoting the good message. Baden Powell's legacy was never a particularly clean one.
The third option is propaganda - make people believe that copying is a sin by insisting on the pointat every available opportunity. This article briefly reviews some of the more egregious examples of Teachers worked from a 25-page classroom guide, explaining that the use of a pro-copyright propaganda that have been circulating recently.
computer to download files was 'morally and ethically wrong'.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation Microsoft entered the fracas this year with a contest in which malleable teens are supposed to (WIPO), a UN cathedral whose priests create a video about the adverse effects of IP theft on society. (The finished work can't use any third worship at the feet of the mightiest copyright party intellectual property, and if you win, Microsoft claims complete ownership over your work.) This gods, produces some astonishing propa­ is particularly ironic given that Bill Gates' first operating system, Altair Basic, was itself a proprietary ganda in its own right, reminiscent of the incorporation of community developed software. Microsoft's behaviour specifies very well the worst propaganda excesses of Stalinist tendency of the victors to cast others as pirates once they have looted enough resources to have Russia or Nazi Germany. In the asinine form obtained a solid commercial advantage. Not only are Robber-Barons not gracious to those they of a series of pedagogic comics, WIPO have looted; often as not, they pursue them with the full force of their newly-purchased law.
promulgates the 'self-evident truths' of IP: There is no shame for hyperbole amongst the IP Barons, the most obvious example of which being A few people at Bangalore's own Alternative the utterly unsubstantiated 'piracy funds terror' tale. Even amongst the main promulgators of the Law Forum have worked up an amusing story there is little consistency here: Jack Valenti, head of MPAA, has publicly linked piracy and response to these comics (see http://www.altlawforum.org/lawmedia/CC.pdf), terrorism, claiming that funds generated from pirated films support terrorist activity. But at a 2003 a socially necessary undertaking given the comics' mind bending mendacity (any lawyer knows the hearing of the U.S. House Judiciary Committees on the links between terrorism and the illegal trading representation of the 'facts' of IP presented here, to children, is flagrantly insufficient) and cultural of copyrighted material, at which Valenti was present, neither he nor any other of the industry insensitivity (the 'pirates' of the piece are, inevitably, non-white.) witnesses felt moved to make any such bold claim. Instead, there were the usual complaints aboutcollege students using peer-to-peer networks and other governments sanctioning copyright violations.
In 2003/04 the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) spent more than $200,000 on an Of course, the small matter of fact doesn't prevent the industry propaganda machine from associating 'educational' course for schoolchildren, bizarrely entitled 'What's the Diff? A Guide to Digital itself with good fight of the War on Terror. A 2004 Federation Against Copyright Theft advert seen Citizenship'. This was nothing more than a lesson in IP dogma. 'If you haven't paid for it, you've in cinemas in the UK shoved a hot branding iron in viewers' faces while brazenly declaring that continued on next page 'piracy funds terrorism' and that 'piracy will destroy our society.' Many viewers complained to theAdvertising Standards Agency (ASA), who upheld the statements. Next up: Guantanamo Bay forpirates.
IP Barons have publicly linked piracy and terrorism, claiming that funds generated from pirated films support terrorist activity.
You don't have to search hard to find stories and materials like these: IP propaganda is rife. An onlinearchive at www.shiversofsharing.org/propaganda/ is currently being created for people to uploadany examples they find. The undisputed classic of the genre is 'Don't Copy That Floppy' (1992) bythe Software Publishers Association, which is archived at the Internet Archive, in which MC DP(that's Disk Protector) declares the 'End of the Computer Age' if kids don't stop sharing piratedsoftware. Almost fifteen years after the film predicted digital Armageddon, the computer industryis still going strong. What might not please the Disk Protector (where is he now?) is that it's goingstrongest precisely in the areas in which traditional property rights don't pertain: Free/ Libre andOpen Source Software. How do you like them apples, DP? Jamie King ([email protected]) is a Contributing Editor at Mute Magazine (www.metamute.com) and the founder of Pretext (www.pretext.org), the first free/libre literary publisher. Jamie lives in Hackney, London, in what could fairly be described as the last bastion of disorganised resistance.
Alternative Law Forum : www.altlawforum.org A pool for information that is managed by a community of users. Acceptable use policies are set by the community. Usually, access to the resource is granted on a non-discriminatory basis and at no or low costs.
OPEN ACCESS TO SCIENCE IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD Examples: scientific information, open source software.
By Peter Suber and Subbiah Arunachalam Since the birth of the scientific programs mitigate the opportunities for funding and international collaboration.
journal in 1665 scientists have The rise of the internet meant that the tradition of free offering by access crisis but do not been publishing journal articles authors could finally be matched with free distribution.
solve it. India is surpris­ Although developed countries were the first to encourage OA to without payment. They may ingly excluded even publicly-funded research, the model is very appealing in developing expect royalties for their textbooks and monographs, but they give though its per capita GDP is less than $500! Moreover, insofar countries and likely to spread. One direct way is simply to put an away their journal articles in exchange for a host of intangible as they satisfy demand, they reduce the urgency of deep reforms OA condition on publicly-funded research grants. Another is to benefits, such as a time-stamp that gives them priority over other that will bring about a superior, OA system of scientific communi­ have universities and research laboratories set up institutional scientists working on the same problem, and the prestige, citations, archives and adopt policies encouraging or requiring researchers and impact that advance their careers.
to deposit their research output even if they also publish it in About half the world's OA journals pay their bills by charging For more than 300 years, these author-donated works were upfront fees for accepted papers. The fees are usually paid by distributed in print editions, whose costs were covered by sub­ the author's research grant or employer, not out of the author's Providing OA to publicly-funded research accelerates research, scription fees. The rise of the internet, however, meant that the pocket. The Public Library of Science and BioMed Central, the gives taxpayers (both lay readers and professional researchers) tradition of free offering by authors could finally be matched with two best-known OA publishers, waive these fees in cases of access to the research they funded, and increases the return on free distribution - or open access - to readers.
economic hardship, no questions asked. There are many successful their investment in research. As this argument gets traction in OA initiatives in the developing world. These include Bioline developing countries, the transformation should be dramatic.
At about the same time that the internet was born, the price of International, which hosts electronic OA versions of 40 journals began to grow sharply. The average price of a science developing country journals; SciELO, which hosts more Because Open Access enhances research productivity and accelerates journal has risen four times faster than inflation for the past three than 80 journals published in Latin American countries the pace of discovery, it helps everyone who benefits from research decades. The result is an access crisis in which no institutions and Spain; and African Journals advances. It's a beautiful solution to a serious problem.
can afford access to the full range of journals. Librarians have Online (AJOL), which provides free online access to titles responded by cancelling subscriptions and cutting into their book and abstracts of more than 60 African journals and full text on budgets. Scientists have responded by working out alternative request. The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT), Doesn't the digital divide interfere with these plans? Yes and no.
ways of sharing their research.
established in 1996, promotes open access to the world's scholarly First, internet access is improving rapidly in many developing literature and the electronic publication of bioscience journals countries and equipment costs and connectivity charges are Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and from countries experiencing difficulties with traditional publication.
coming down. Second, we should work now on the content side free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. It can be delivered of the divide in order to take full advantage of every increment of through OA journals, which perform peer review, or through OA India is home to many OA journals that charge no author-side progress on the hardware side. Primarily, this means educating archives or repositories, which do not. One of the achievements fees. All 10 journals of the Indian Academy of Sciences and all scientists about the benefits of OA and persuading universities, of the worldwide OA movement is to persuade 80% of non-OA four journals of the Indian National Science academy are OA libraries, funding agencies, and governments to adopt journals to let their authors journals. INSA has al­ deposit the peer-reviewed Open Access can raise the profile of an entire nation's research output. ready produced free- versions of their work in OA access electronic ver­ OA helps researchers directly, both as authors and readers. It sions of back volumes for all its journals, and the Indian Academy helps the institutions that fund and supervise research, from of Sciences has launched a similar digitization project for its back universities and laboratories to foundations and governments. It OA is gathering momentum around the world. Today there are run. The Journal of the Indian Institute of Science is also available widens the distribution of research literature and lowers costs at over 1,650 peer-reviewed OA journals and over 500 interoperable in this form back to its very first issue, published in 1914. The the same time, and does so without compromising peer review, OA repositories. In the US, the National Institutes of Health asks Indian Medlars Centre of the National Informatics Centre is bringing preservation, indexing, or the other virtues of conventional pub­ all its grantees to provide OA to the results of NIH-funded research out OA versions of 33 biomedical journals and has an OA biblio­ lishing. Above all, because OA enhances research productivity within 12 months of publication. The Wellcome Trust requires OA graphic database, providing titles and abstracts of articles from and accelerates the pace of discovery, it helps everyone who to Wellcome-funded research within six months of publication, 50 Indian biomedical journals. Medknow Publications, a company benefits from research advances. It's a beautiful solution to a and the Research Councils UK are considering a similar policy based in Mumbai, has helped 30 medical journals make the serious problem.
with an even shorter delay. Major research institutions in Australia, transition from print to electronic open access and most of them China, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, are doing much better now than before.
Subbiah Arunachalam is an information scientist based in Chennai in Switzerland, the UK, and the US have committed themselves South India. His research interests include science on the periphery, to provide OA to their research output.
OA archiving is even more promising than OA journals. It is less scientometrics, information access, and the application of information and expensive, allows faster turnaround, and is compatible with communication technologies in development and poverty reduction OA is a matter of special concern in developing countries, which publishing in conventional journals.
have less money to fund or publish research and less to buy theresearch published elsewhere. Most libraries in sub-Saharan For researchers in developing countries, OA solves two problems Peter Suber is the Open Access Project Director at Africa have not subscribed to any journal for years. The Indian at once: making their own research more visible to researchers Public Knowledge, a public-interest advocacy group in Washington D.C. focusing on information policy.
Institute of Science, Bangalore, has the best-funded research elsewhere, and making research elsewhere more accessible to He's also a Research Professor of Philosophy at library in India, but its annual library budget is just Rs 100 million them. OA, if adopted widely, can raise the profile of an entire Earlham College and Senior Researcher at the (about € 1,9 million).
nation's research output. When Indian research, for example, is Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources published in expensive journals, then all too often it goes unnoticed Coalition (SPARC). He has a Ph.D. in philosophy and a J.D. For more details, see his home page: There are several programs, like HINARI and AGORA, in which by other researchers in India. OA journals and archives help to journal publishers donate electronic subscriptions to developing integrate the work of scientists everywhere into the global knowl­ countries whose per capita GDP is less than $1,000. These edge base, reduce the isolation of researchers, and improve SCHOOLS & THE 'AFRICAN DIGITAL INFORMATION COMMONS' By Chris Armstrong The prospects for a meaningful African participation in the “digital based Access to Learning Materials (A2LM) in Southern Africa play in getting their schools into the digital information commons.
information commons” are decidedly mixed.
project has pointed out, even a comparatively well-off country Trade ministries need to work towards more enabling copyright such as South Africa finds its Department of Education budget dispensations for educational settings, and education departments On the one hand, there are clear shortfalls to contend with in stretched out of control by the costs of hard-copy, copyrighted need to seek out publishers and firms willing to develop open internet connectivity, in exportable informational and cultural output, textbooks produced by educational publishers locally and overseas.
access and open content resources (i.e., publishers and firms and in exportable academic and research output. On the other It seems clear that “digital commons” techniques (digital, online willing to sign away certain of the usual default copyright rules hand, digitisation and international electronic networks possess distribution and access), when coupled with broader national for materials they are paid to develop).
much potential for assisting African knowledge workers and copyright exceptions for “fair dealing” educational uses, have the creators in sharing knowledge within the continent, in tapping potential to significantly enhance the affordability of school-level South Africa’s Department of Education started moving in this into the knowledge and creative resources of other continents, education delivery.
direction in 2005, providing open content, curriculum-aligned and in improving awareness of materials for teachers and learners via a portal called Thutong – – and even economic oppor­ How can the internet become a place where African school teachers One current schools the Setswana word for “place of learning.” tunities for – African creators.
and learners find content of relevance? And it can never hurt to have a bit of fun! – as SchoolNet Namibia A recent effort to build an online “wiki” called the African Commons Learning (CoL)’s Learning Objects Repository (LOR), which is amply illustrating with its online open content comic called Hai Encyclopedia[1], linked to the May 2005 Commons-sense provides open content course materials (free to use, copy, distribute, tai!, which means “listen up” in the local Oshiwambo dialects.
Conference in Johannesburg, has found that African schools can adapt) for teachers in all Commonwealth countries, using a free Teachers and learners are free to use and adapt the comic, which and must be in the vanguard of the digital commons movement and open source software platform developed in Canada. The has a Creative Commons licence and extols the virtues of open on the continent.[2] African Virtual University (AVU), based in Nairobi, is working with source software and the use of the online environment for formal CoL to get learning objects relevant to African teachers into the or informal learning (e.g., getting sports scores).
At continental level, the NEPAD e-Schools project aims to support repository. Meanwhile, SchoolNet Africa is providing shared The focus on schools highlights both the difficulties faced in internet connectivity for all of the continent’s high schools within continental online networking spaces for teachers and learners creating a digital commons in Africa, as well as its potential. While 5 years, and primary schools in 10 years, via wired and wireless through their African Education Knowledge Warehouse (AEKW) much needs to be built up from the ground, hence the central systems. The first official e-School was launched in Uganda in and African Teachers Network (ATN).
importance of schools, there is the potential that the better part of the continent will encounter the internet through free software Meanwhile, the Catalising Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA) project In Senegal, the Examen project, started in 2001, is a free web and teaching materials provided as open content, thus forming is working hard to free up national regulatory rules for use of VSAT resource that helps high school students prepare for examinations attitudes towards digital information that favour access and satellite, which will need to become a key wireless connectivity and make career choices, with a focus on mathematics and solution for schools. SchoolNet Africa, with a presence in 30 science. The web interface is well-used, as evidenced by the African countries, is trying to build the necessary technical following statistics from a recent one-week period in 2005: [1] The Commons-sense Project at the Wits University LINK Centre in management and troubleshooting skills at school level, partly • 8850 page visits (between 750 and 1539 page visits per day) Johannesburg is tracking projects on the continent that are, inbuilding through its online course for Technical Service Centre Managers.
• 963 site visits African participation in the commons. It produces the African Commons • 822 distinct visitors Encyclopedia. All projects mentioned in this article are listed there.
These programmes have the potential to gradually answer the “digital” part South Africa is also home to of the digital information commons There is the potential that the better part of Africa some interesting online work in [2] Many of the issues raised in this article are further explored in presen­ challenge. But what of the “information” will encounter the internet through free software and support of math and science tations made to the May 2005 Commons-sense Conference.
dimension? How can the internet be­ teaching materials provided as open content.
teachers and learners. The Free come a place where African school High School Science Texts teachers and learners find content of relevance, and content that (FHSST) project, initiated by graduates of the University of Cape that they are free to use and adapt in whatever manner they see Town, is an online collaboration among materials developers around the world to build free science textbooks for Grades 10- Chris Armstrong is an Associate at the LINK 12. Also in Cape Town, the Shuttleworth Foundation’s “Online Centre’s Commons-sense Project at Wits University, Johannesburg. His research includes This is where the open access and open content movements Text Book” project aims to deliver free open content science, digital TV, community TV and video, radio and have a role to play – in encouraging the development of online technology and entrepreneurship teaching materials.
new ICTs in Africa, and SADC civil society repositories of curriculum materials that can be freely used and participation in the World Summit on the adapted/translated for local appropriateness. As the Johannesburg- African government departments also have an important role to Information Society (WSIS).
BRAZIL'S CANTO LIVRE PROJECT: THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIETY'S CREATIVITY Brazil has been playing a very important role in becomes increasingly alienated from the real this acknowledgement is of great value to the goal is to make available three types of content: the international sphere regarding the discussion musical production in the country. A very signif­ audience, leading thousands to buy copies of a) public domain works; b) public and private of alternative uses for the Intellectual Property icant portion of Brazilian music today is produced the recorded live presentation.
archives, made available by their owners; c) all system. By way of example, Brazil and Argentina on the fringes of the market and on the fringes sorts of musical works, which can be uploaded proposed to the World Intellectual Property of Intellectual Property. Examples include the This practice to record “live” presentations for by any musician. Whole scenes like the tecno- Organization in 2004 the so-called “Development musical scene known as “tecno-brega”, taking immediate selling obtained worldwide attention brega, the funk carioca, the forró from the Amazon, Agenda”, seeking to strike a proper balance place in the city of Belém, state of Pará. In that when the North-American rock band, "The Pixies" and several others, will benefit from a global between the rights of intellectual property owners city, a parallel music industry has been active started doing the same thing during their 2004 distribution tool, allowing the scenes to expand and the interests of society as whole.
for years. The "tecno-brega" parties attract every world reunion tour. The press praised such in an unprecedented fashion.
weekend thousands of people in the outskirts practice as an innovative business model for Besides such Brazilian initiatives in the interna­ of Belém for "sound system parties". A couple musicians in the digital era. Little did they know In short, what the “Canto Livre” project does is tional sphere, several other projects are being hundred new records are produced and released that the same practice had been in place for at to recognize that, especially in the developing put in practice to demonstrate the possibilities every year by local artists, but both the production least 3 years in the tecno-brega scene in the world, musical creativity is much larger in society and distribution of city of Belém.
than in the market. In Brazil, cultural production these records take taking place in a decentralized fashion has be­ A very significant portion of Brazilian music is place outside the Such “under the radar” institutional arrangements come much more important than the culture produced on the fringes of Intellectual Property.
traditional music in­ can play an important role in reshaping the being produced within the “cultural industry”.
ment and cultural interplay between media, culture and the role of Providing a place for all this creativity to emerge production. An important example is “Canto IP rights in the developing world. That is espe­ is the mission of Canto Livre. That will help to Livre”, a project aimed at building an open creative This music is born “free”, in the sense that cop­ cially true when one considers the fact that in disseminate the Brazilian culture globally, and environment for Brazilian music, relying on the yright protection is not part of the business examples such as the above, copyright is simply to promote economic and cultural inclusion for idea of sharing and remixing, on the possibilities model developed by the tecno-brega scene.
not a factor. In this sort of business model, several creative communities within the country of collective creation, and on intellectual gener­ The CD is considered as a mere advertising “piracy” is either irrelevant or economically im­ which are today estranged by the existing tradi­ piece, in the sense that it works as vehicle for tional market alternatives.
advertising the different sound system parties “Canto Livre” is Portuguese for free singing - taking place every week. Artists make money The “Canto Livre” is building an online platform For more information on the Canto Livre project, “free” as in “free jazz”, not as in “free lunch”. It through innovative business models. By way of for all Brazilian music in the fringes to emerge.
also stands for free corner, a place where eve­ example, they record www.direitorio.fgv.br/cts (Portuguese only) ryone is welcome to participate and to engage their live presenta­ Copyright protection is not part of the business in activities related to music. The project was tions in the parties model developed by the tecno-brega scene.
relying on a cer­ created after the idea of Gilberto Gil, Brazil´s in “real-time", and tified P2P infra­ Ronaldo Lemos is the director of the Center for Law & Technology at the Fundação Getulio Vargas Minister of Culture, and one of its most important sell them immediately after the concerts.
structure, where you have to identify yourself in Law School in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is also the musicians.) Music is the soul of Brazilian society.
Accordingly, the audience is able to go back order to upload music, but not to download it.
director of the Creative Commons project in the Rhythms like samba and maracatu help to define home with a CD containing the concert that they Additionally, Canto Livre offers a Creative the very essence of what being a Brazilian means.
have just attended. The tecno-brega DJ´s usually Commons interface. All the music being made acknowledge in their live presentations the pres­ available under the project can be licensed In spite of that, the Brazilian musical market ence of people from various neighborhoods, and according to the Creative Commons model. The

FRAGMENTED URBAN TOPOGRAPHIES AND THEIR UNDERLYING INTERCONNECTIONS Topographic representations of the built environment of cities Cities as production sites for global control capacities.
city of work and housing and daily services, can then be seen as tend to emphasize the distinctiveness of the various socio-economic a strategic component of advanced urban economies.
sectors: the differences between poor and rich neighborhoods, Complex cities, especially if global cities, are production sites for between commercial and manufacturing districts, and so on. While a large array of inputs and "organizational commodities" necessary New Frontier Zones: The formation of new political actors valid, this type of representation of a city is partial because there for global control and coordination. The key point from the are a variety of underlying connections. Further, it may even be perspective of the interdependencies underlying what appear as The other side of the large complex city, especially if global, is more problematic than in the past, given some of the socio- fragmented topographies is that these inputs need to be produced.
that it is a new “frontier zone” where an enormous mix of people economic, technical, and cultural dynamics of the current era.
The producer services sector is a sort of new basic industry - it converge. Those who lack power, those who are disadvantaged, One step towards understanding what constitutes the complexity ranges form advanced corporate services such as finance and outsiders, discriminated minorities, can gain presence in such of large cities is the analysis of interconnections among urban accounting to industrial services like trucking and warehousing.
cities, presence vis a vis power and presence vis a vis each other.
forms and fragments that present themselves as unconnected.
Major cities are preferred sites of production for the specialized This signals the possibility of a new type of politics centered in services that firms need. But firms in the advanced sector also new types of political actors. It is not simply a matter of having or The Informal City in "Advanced" Urban Economies.
create a demand for industrial services - the software used by the not having power. There are new hybrid bases from which to act.
financiers and accountants needs to be trucked. Further, the The corporate complex and the immigrant community today are lifestyles of the new professional classes create a large demand Here the interaction between fragmented topographies and the probably two extreme modes in the formation and appropriation for goods and services, often made and delivered through low existence of underlying interconnections assume a very different of urban space in wage workers. These form: what presents itself as segregated or excluded from the global cities of the do not seem to be part mainstream core of a city is actually an increasingly complex The urban form represented by the immigrant community, or the informal city, of the advanced econ­ political presence. The space of the city is a far more concrete complex cities of the is habitually seen as not belonging to an advanced economy.
omy, but they are.
space for politics than that of the nation. Here, non-formal political actors who are rendered invisible in national politics, have better global cities, we see the informal city rather than the “immigrant Focusing on the production of these various services helps us access to the political scene. And, perhaps more importantly, they community”. Globalization has brought about an often massive see the many different types of firms, workers and neighborhoods can constitute themselves as political actors. The fact itself that development of the corporate economic built environment in these that are actually part of the advanced urban economy. Furthermore, the new advanced urban economy generates a vastly expanded cities of the South, as is evident in Mumbai, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, it helps us focus on the organization of globalized economic luxury zone that displaces other firms and homes becomes a fact Mexico City, Bangalore, and so on.
sectors: outsourcing, subcontracting, supply chains, networks, feeding politics. Urban space is no longer civic, as old local ruling or input and output markets. All of this allows us to see that much elites aspired to: today it is political. Much of urban politics is of this work happens partly in the informal economy of these cities.
concrete, enacted by people rather than dependent on massive Thus the existence of a dynamic growth sector feeds the expansion media technologies. Street level politics makes possible the of what appear to be declining or backward economic sectors, formation of new types of political subjectivity, which are not such as the downgraded manufacturing sector and the informal dependent on the formal political system, as is the case with electoral systems.
Even the most sophisticated Further, the Internet can professional sectors need access strengthen a new type to a broad range of industrial The space of the city is a far more concrete space for politics than of cross-border political services located in easy access that of the nation. Here, non-formal political actors who are rendered activism, one centred in in central areas. When these invisible in national politics, have better access to the political scene. multiple localities, re­ lower profit firms lack the bidding flecting local struggles power to locate in central areas they often operate partly or fully and initiatives, yet intensely connected digitally with other such in the informal economy. Further, the growing inequality in the localities around the city, the country, the world. This is a politics distribution of household income and firms’ profits reorganizes of the local but with a big difference. Digital networks are consumption and life-styles. High income households and newly contributing to the production of new kinds of interconnections gentrified residential areas require more services, often through underlying what appear as fragmented topographies, whether at Dominik Hruza World-Information City Campaign, Bangalore informal workers. But also the growing numbers of low-income the global or at the local level. A poor neighborhood may look households – or firms - are likely to meet more and more of their isolated and out of the loop, but may in fact be deeply connected The urban form represented by the global city function – the needs through the informal economy, albeit through a different to other such neighborhoods and larger institutions. Political internationalized corporate services complex and the highly paid component of it.
activists can use digital networks for global or non-local transactions professional workforce with its high-priced lifestyle spaces – is and they can use them for strengthening local communications the one habitually thought to constitute the essence of an advanced Finally, a question bringing these different strands together is that and transactions inside a city or rural community.
post-industrial economy. The urban form represented by the of the effect of economic restructuring (in its many guises) on the immigrant community, or the informal city, is habitually seen as organization of the capital-labor relation. Informalization of economic The large city of today, especially the global city, emerges as a not belonging to an advanced economy, one to be found in the activities and downgrading of manufacturing in particular (e.g.
strategic site for these new types of operations. It is a strategic global cities of the North only because it is imported via immigration, going from unionized factories to semi-informal operations) are, site for global corporate capital: the urban moment turns that and in the cities of the South as a sign of underdevelopment.
in the end, modes of reorganizing the relationship between capital elusive category that is global corporate capital into actual men and labor in an advanced urban economy with enormous differ­ and women who wanted it all and grab it all. In so doing they These two forms reveal how power and the lack of power inscribe entials in the profit-making capacities of different types of firms become visible as a social force with a distinct project, a project themselves in the urban landscape and which narratives are and sectors. Through this reorganization these low-profit sectors that also has an urban shape. But it is also one of the sites where attached to each. One is seen as representing technological are actually incorporated into the advanced economy. But it just the formation of new claims by informal political actors is given advance and cosmopolitan culture, the other, economic and does not look like it. The changes in the sphere of social repro­ shape, and materializes in concrete forms. Under these conditions, duction described above also add the enormous mixity of the disadvantaged also takes the shape One presents itself as The informal city of work and housing and daily services can be to this reorganization insofar as of a social force. These are two new actors on the scene of history: part of the global seen as a strategic component of advanced urban economies.
consumption and life-style have and it is in the city that they encounter each other and become economy, suffused in contributed to a proliferation of internationalism; the other, while international in its origin, is small, labor intensive firms. Some of these cater to high-income promptly reconstituted as a local, vernacular form. One is read to households and others cater to very low-income households. Both be dis-embedded, transterritorial to the point of being thought of Saskia Sassen is Professor at the University however share the fact that they have a distinct form of organizing as a-spatial, captured by concepts such as the information economy of Chicago, and Centennial Visiting Professor work, quite different from the large-scale, standardized firm where and telematics. The other is read as deeply embedded in an at the London School of Economics. Her unionization and adherence to various regulations are more typical.
economic, social and cultural territory of neighborhoods and new book is Territory, Authority and Right: particularistic traditions that have little if any conncetion with the From Medieval to Global Assemblages One effect of all of this is the proliferation of small firms, including (Princeton University Press, 2006). She has advanced corporate sector.
interestingly an expansion in labor-intensive and informal types just completed for UNESCO a five-year of manufacturing in the city, even as large standardized factories project on sustainable human settlement for However, the informal economy and, more generally, certain leave the city. I like to think of this as “urban manufacturing” – a which she set up a network of researchers "working class" uses of space are actually also forms through kind of networked manufacturing, dependent on contractors and and activists in over 30 countries.
which advanced economies function and materialize in urban subcontractors, and mostly servicing service firms and housheolds.
This inverts the historic relationship whereby services servicedmanufacturing. These small firms become more typical at the Many of the highly differentiated components of the economy – same time that global market firms dominate the city's economy.
whether firms, sectors, or workers – are actually interconnected,but with often extreme social, economic, racial and organizational One fundamental form of the interaction of space, production, segmentation. The result is fragmented topographies that obscure and social reproduction in our “advanced” cities is the growing the underlying connections. This segmentation is regularly strength­ demand for both luxury housing and low-price housing. Displace­ ened, and even enabled, through racism and discrimination. Ethnic/ ment of more modest households, including the lower ends of racial segmentation not only produces economic outcomes that the middle class, is common in all global cities around the world.
devalue some firms and workers and over-value others, but also So are conflicts over access to city land. But pushing out the low- Information owned by a private legal entity (a corporation produces a narrative about the nature of our large cities which wage workers does not make sense: if their trip to work becomes or an individual person). the owner has exclusive rights marginalizes the economics and the culture of non-dominant unacceptably long or costly, those highly dynamic sectors with to the property as defined by the IP law and can do as a critical mass of both high- and low-income jobs will suffer – and s/he pleases with it. Most importantly, the owner can they are likely to bring income to city government. The informal freely set the conditions under which it can be accessed and used by third parties.
ANALOGUE TO DIGITAL: RE-LIVING BIG BUSINESS’S NIGHTMARE IN NEW HYDRAS By Solomon Benjamin Either poverty must lose the fear of property, or The new Hydras encroach on ‘property’ and the Such de-facto landscapes, highly agile and the stage to introduce the concept of ‘civil property in fear of poverty will destroy democ­ economy: Perhaps on the most structural level, transformative of local society in economy and society’. Perhaps this is posed to strengthen the the Hydra transforms notions of property. While politics, come into being where information binary with a replacement of a trilogy of the located in seemingly mainstream notions of shaping the market of land is driven by the ‘nation state-market - civil society’. Closer inspec­ If the ‘south’ and particularly their cities property, these are encroached upon in the forms potential of change: of inter-connected home tions of ‘civil society’ turn out to be little other experience much higher growth rates than of multiple tenures and claims that make central­ based manufacturing and of municipal upgrading than elite congregations.
those in the ‘north’, has Int. capital recon­ ized control and surplus extraction increasingly of basic infrastructure, both actions which in­ stituted itself to invest and gain from these impossible (see figure 1-A: Street side Hydras).
crease efficiency and by way of settlement, new New institutional and legal framework for mega locations? Since real estate in cities of the What emerges instead is a complex of networked social connections.
land acquisition makes available huge tracts of South and retail provides one of the highest bazaar like small firm clusters. Thus emerging land in Bangalore’s periphery to construct IT returns, how is land and its connected diversity of tenure underpins and is at the campuses. In central city areas, urban renewal institutions sought to be framed to facilitate same time shaped by an increasingly so­ Seemingly ‘messy, under-developed third world’ focused SPVs and TDRs open up space for phisticated economy. This comes at a time environments are assuming a life force of their own Malls and Multiplexes designed over huge when globally connected big business (with and subverting a global ideal.
urban territory. Little wonder that the CEOs the highest levels of government policy of India’s largest real estate firms and globally making and legislative apparatus at their side) The new Hydras encroach on democracy: connected Financial Institutions press the central promote digital forms of land title recording and Linebaugh re-enters our world when we see the government to implement such frameworks in a range of financial and institutional architecture location of fluid de-facto property being located the more globally connected cities, posing these to reinforce exclusive property regimes (see in a building block of mainstream ‘democracy’: as a pre-requisite for ‘global competitiveness’.
Figure 2: global-local networks in IT Campus municipal politics. Not only are political party Many of the changes came about under the new structures increasingly authoritarian but they are governance model of the Bangalore Agenda today susceptible to ‘capture’ by globally em­ Task Force (BATF) - headed by the city’s IT Globally connected Financial Institutions, in powered and invested big business. Not surpris­ honchos supported by the then Chief Minister.
partnership with a range of other players, invest ingly, this also makes space for those city builders Seen as a ‘supply side’ reform, they also framed in urban designed IT campus developments in enamoured with the mega and the large - seem­ the ‘citizen-centric’ Jannagraha and PROOF (a Fig. 1: Sundamma's house cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Bombay and ing ways to make cities globally competitive! For citizens campaign to promote transparency and Hyderabad with excellent profits. A particular this range of actors - the business, bureaucratic accountability in local government)as the ‘de­ This essay suggests that corporate led globali­ financial architecture around ‘Special Project and political elite - what is deeply threatening is mand side’. The head of Bangalore’s and now sation in rooting itself in cities of the south, faces Vehicles’ (SPVs), and mechanisms such as the opaqueness of municipal politics and its India’s famous ‘civil society movement’ makes un-expected confrontation in what they see as Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) facilitates driving political economy of small business.
an ardent plea for framing of digital rather than a new ‘Hydra’. What seemed like ‘messy, under- urban renewal of central city areas and also Hardly conducive to centralized control, it is little analogue land titles. Contest comes from the developed third world’ environments (Figure 1: makes high returns to International capital pos­ wonder that national headquarters of political Hydra of municipal councils across party lines, Sundramma’s house) turned out to be increas­ sible. Real estate profits accrue from a play of parties and their appointed provincial chiefs, the lower bureaucracy, and poorer residents ingly beyond planning, assuming a life force of ‘digital titles’ intended for online trading. The backed by elite ‘civil society’ and the World resisting attempts to impose fines and increased its own and subverting a global ideal.
World Bank in partnership with India’s largest Bank, press for ‘transparency and accountability’ user charges. The Hydra’s support in municipal Fig. 1-A: Street sidy Hydras private banks invest $ 1000 m in e-governance, reforms aimed at local government. Little on democracy is critical. Local councils encourage I borrow the term Hydra from two kinds of sourc­ and in particular, computerized land titles. The corporate accountability though! The response occupation and extension of village and town es. The first use can be found in ‘English media digitisation of 20 million land records by the of the Hydra here is municipal democracy.
areas. In central city areas, older forms of munic­ press’ among the elite to describe three situa­ Goverment of Karnataka designated as a World However, in a situation of polarized power struc­ ipal licensing and tenancy payments help estab­ tions: an extensive and un-controllable under­ Bank ‘Best practice’, reducing 1500 forms of tures, such a democracy relies on stealth, on lish claims. The Hydra’s support: Municipal ground economy; a messy, chaotic and corrupt land tenure to 256! This has allowed very large internal bureaucratic conventions, and interven­ councils’ ‘messy’ and opaque politics and ad­ city hall centred politics and bureaucracy; an all- real estate companies catering to the IT industry tions accentuating multiple forms of tenure to pervasive un-authorized, non-conforming, un- to access land Bangalore, resulting in dramatic reinforce political and economic constituency.
planned, cancer like slumming process which changes in land markets. An extension of the These, not surprisingly, take on the responsibility rapidly edges out ordered city growth and sub­ concept is a GIS based digitising of titles in 57 The new Hydra encroaches on city building: to address what has been discussed before: A verts Master Planning. My second source is the towns and secondary cities financed by the the Hydra, located in municipal government and de-generative cancer-like politics afflicting cities use of the term by Linebaugh and Rediker to Asian Development Bank with back office support rooted in the materiality of land, lo­ continued on next page describe the quest for alternatives in 16-18th by the personal funds of the CEO of India’s cation and economy, anchors the day- Century Europe and the Americas.[2] They show largest IT company.
to-day process of city building. This how a ‘motley’ bunch of sea farers, slaves, con­ process contrasts conceptions of city victs in being banished seek out alternatives to Contest comes from a Hydra secured by diverse building located in the conceptual define conceptions of property, and a way of tenure regimes inherent within the ‘occupation framework of the ‘nation state’ or then life, and in doing so, termed a ‘hydra’ to threaten and settlement’ process built around de-facto the ‘market’. In these latter concep­ titles. In some parts, customary tenure forms a tions, the driving force is of the grand further block against this modernization ideal.
plan: one posed for equity and the Today I see at least three aspects of the Hydra These underpin incrementally developing small- other posed for efficiency. Either ex­ transforming what we know of ‘property’, ‘de­ scale land developments that house mixed land treme poses centralized controls mocracy’, and the conceptually flawed trilogy use as well as manufacturing and bazaar areas.
bound to break down when we con­ ‘the Nation State-Market-civil society’. The New The Hydra’s support comes from ‘regularization’ sider local narratives of how areas Hydras are severely threatening in being shadows of occupied land and improvement of basic come into being and those of wider and stealth-like structures, capable of eroding infrastructure by municipal councils. The latter’s city transformation. As urban terrain the ‘self’. In breaking down binaries, they encroach gains are revenue and political clout, actions turns increasingly contested and on other binary/dualistic based conceptions.
which strengthen and spur diverse tenure re­ conflict ridden, the distinction between normative planning and politics sets like a Hydra. The imaginary of the global city is Hydra, they combine newer legal and regulatory [1] Peter Linebaugh, Public Lecture at “Contested Solly Benjamin is an independent powerfully seductive to a variety of groups driven structures that not just provide access to cheap Commons/Trespassing Publics: A Conference on researcher operating out of by various interests. For many within ‘civil society’, institutional finance, but dissolve claims over Inequalities, Conflicts and Intellectual Property” 6th - Bangalore and also part of a the way forward is for land management to be location to emphasize corporate control. The 8th January 2005 in New Delhi, India. Sarai/CSDS recently group called CASUMm.
He has been looking at issues of framed in digital records, GIS based online bustling bazaars selling look-a-likes and also /Alternative Law Forum urbanism, its politics, economy, monitoring ‘un-authorized hawkers’ and non- other daily consumption goods helps a counter and issues of land.
conforming land use, and reigning in the politics encroachment to root. In doing so, reinforcing Linebaugh P., Rediker M., The Many-Headed Hydra within Municipal Government via the agenda of the Hydra to carve out autonomous political and Verso New York 2000 ‘transparency and accountability’. Central also economic space.
are attempts to increase high-level bureaucraticcontrol over elected municipal government via Cities as locations of the Hydra pose the question city commissioners and ‘citizen charters’. City of hybridity of property central to its politics and building becomes strangely conflictual over economy. Hybridity also seems central to help control of territory, amalgamation into super large understand contemporary forms of globalisation, The global city is not a place, but a series of functions, complexes of Malls and Multiplexes.
and move away from conceptually defunct bina­ distributed over a network of large cities, such as London, New York and Tokyo. However, even these major cities These mega complexes are partnerships of ries. Such hybridity of property gives globalising are comprised of areas that function according to a administrator led Municipal Government and big cities like Bangalore particular distinctions.
primarily local logic, and many smaller cities contain business. Most important in ways to contain the elements of the global city.
CITIES OF PLANNING AND CITIES OF NON-PLANNING: A GEOGRAPHY OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Where is intellectual property policy made? liberal fundamentalism, which they did, telling generous campaign contributions have bought patent systems have never serviced their needs Governments make intellectual property law, but themselves that it didn’t taste so bad after all.
the lobbyists and company men meeting time.
and never will. For all the prattle that comes out where does the policy thinking that lies behind Gandhi may have kicked out the British Raj, but Congressmen want to be responsive in those of the West about patent reform, the truth is the law come from? More than a decade ago the politicians of the 1990s led India back into meetings to inventing new intellectual property simple. Knowledge capitalism cares more about I, along with my colleague John Braithwaite, set the role of the servant who fades into an unno­ laws for the US and rest of the world. After all, its mode of production and monopoly profits out to answer this question. At that time we ticed background. Today there are thousands there will be new elections to contest. Congress than it does about producing low cost medicines were struck by the fact that during the late 1980s of call centres in India politely attending to the passes more and more intellectual property law.
for the poor in developing countries. Their informal and into the 1990s governments all over the faults and troubles to be found in the rich con­ An American public that is perpetually distracted economies are swept away as their cities rezone world were busily introducing or reforming their sumer markets of the West. The intellectual by a media that sates it with images but no news and rebuild to become protected sites of pro­ national systems of intellectual property protec­ property rights that introduce what the economist hardly notices. Copying is crimi­ tion. Countries such as Singapore and South calls “demand inelasticities” into markets, thereby nalized, copyright terms extended Intellectual property exists to protect what rich imitators Korea were passing laws on copyright and pat­ helping to generate supra normal profits, remain to make the rich even richer and have stolen from those innovators that work on the ents. This was even more puzzling because in the firm grip of US and European companies.
patent laws strengthened. When periphery of survival and creativity.
imitative production was important to these American citizens ask questions economies just as it had been a century earlier There are some obvious reasons why Washing­ about patents and the price of medicines they duction for investors rich in intellectual property.
to European states and the US.
ton, New York, Geneva and Brussels are the get told that soon the rest of the world will also City planners pave the way with factories and dreamtime places for new ideas about intellectual be paying these high prices so the system will malls that will deliver the brands for which con­ We approached our study using the methods property. Washington is the seat of US political once again be equitable.
sumers with bulging wallets and bulging waist­ of historians and anthropologists, reading docu­ power, Brussels is the home of Europe’s super lines will pay a premium.
ments and laws and Intellectual property laws with their epicenter in interviewing and ob­ The private hands of command turn the wheels European Com­ Washington, New York, Brussels and Geneva The poor end up being pushed closer to another serving individuals of executive power to their purpose.
travel like invisible tsunamis to developing coun­ edge. But then they do what they have always who were key players has organizational tries. There they turn the national innovation done. They innovate. Whether it is in the form in the domains we were trying to understand.
behemoths like the World Intellectual Property systems of those countries into so much debris.
of music that has emerged from the ghettos and In the case of intellectual property our fieldwork Organization and the WTO and New York has New laws to serve old masters have to be slavery of the centuries or in the diverse seeds kept taking us back to the same four cities: business organizations, company headquarters quickly enacted. There is also loss of life. The of life that indigenous farmers have bequeathed Washington, New York, Brussels and Geneva.
and Wall Street where a rock star like David patent provisions of free trade agreements com­ us from living in the harshest climates, they There were other places we went to, such as Bowie can turn the intellectual property in his plicate access to life-saving medicines. The innovate. They do so without intellectual property Munich to speak to people in the European music into a tradeable security. More important pharmaceutical company men on the ground in protection, for intellectual property exists to Patent Office, Seattle to see Microsoft, London though are the networks that are thick with these countries hiss about what will happen to protect what rich imitators have stolen from to see the International Federation of the Pho­ lobbyists, the company men and the expert foreign investment if developing countries do those innovators that work on the periphery of nographic Industry and so on. But over time we consultants that snake their way through the not follow the new order of intellectual property.
survival and creativity.
realized that it was mainly in four cities that the corridors of power. These networks hum with Threats are not always needed. Rewards, includ­ tribe of intellectual property met and planned.
ideas about the future of intellectual property ing travel to the cities of the epicenter are offered protection for multi­ Other cities turned out to be places of non- nationals. Big ideas, Intellectual property laws with their epicenter in country officials if Peter Drahos is a Professor in planning. So in an interview in Seoul in 1994 like linking intellectual Washington, New York, Brussels and Geneva travel they toe the line Law and the Head of Program I asked a senior official why Korea had agreed property protection like invisible tsunamis to developing countries.
on US intellectual of the Regulatory Institutions to TRIPS being part of the WTO. “Because we to the trade regime, property ideology.
Network at the Australian Na­ tional University. His publications were ignorant” came back the reply. Two years get put down on paper by technical experts and Minor acts of betrayal by locals iterated many include A Philosophy of Intel­ later I visited New Delhi where I saw the same sent to committees on which big business sits.
times over produce in developing countries a lectual Property (1996), Global non-planning. There was a lot of fine speech- Those committees send out recommendations, culture of compliance with the new order. Some Business Regulation (2000) and making from Indian parliamentarians about the which are more like marching orders, to govern­ officials even deceive themselves into believing Information Feudalism: Who Controls the Knowledge Economy? (2002; both with John Braithwaite) and inequity of TRIPS, the new imperialism of knowl­ ments. The private hands of command turn the that this new enslavement serves the national Global Intellectual Property Rights: Knowledge, edge as well as complaints by the generic phar­ wheels of executive power to their purpose.
Access and Development (2002, with Ruth Mayne).
maceutical industry about the impact of TRIPS Trade laws get amended to make them a weapon on prices of medicines. But there were no real of economic war in the fight to control a resource Life for poor people in the plans or strategies of resistance. In any case even more important than oil - knowledge.
cities of non-planning re­ Indian political elites had quietly decided to hitch mains the same. They con­ Information that has no legal protection, either because their cart to the glowing star of US hegemony.
Teams of lobbyists go to work on Congressional tinue to suffer ill health and copyrights/patents have expired, or because it has been As part of the price they had to swallow its neo- representatives. Getting access is easy because lack of treatment. Western released into the public domain by the owner. Example: the works of William Shakespeare.
Paula Roush : www.msdm.org.uk World-Information City Campaign, Bangalore Alternative Law Forum : www.altlawforum.org DISEMBEDDING FROM PSYCHO-URBAN CONTAINMENT By Ewen Chardronnet To create a common element above the three dimensions of urban malls, cul-de-sacs, segregated functions (industry over here, confrontation with the police when they pass by the Latin Quarter, life (work, housing, public and gathering spaces), the terms "traffic" offices there, housing at a safe distance) - is dictated by rules Bastille and Charonne, as opposed to Invalides or Montparnasse.
and "communication" imposed themselves in the urbanistic and regulations. The sprawling suburb is an expression of the free Past events psychologically influence a crowd, which can become generalities about movement. With the explosion of electronics, market combined with the consequences of arrangements arrived uncontrollable. This is integrated in the tactics of unions when realising the science-fiction of yesterday, we are now in scenarios at by local politicians and real-estate agents scheming together.
they organise demonstrations. Go here when you want to heat of the virtual city, the online city, the city of bits, the cybertown Zoning laws and regulations are often deeply flawed, having been up the conflict, or there when you want to cool down and negotiate.
and other metaphors of disembodiment. But the real function of created haphazardly, largely to suit developers and politicians, cities is still to organise the proper cohabitation of centres, non- and they too often lead to dull, dead living conditions. A set of Another strong and long familiar model for bringing people together centres and outlying areas, like an accumulation of topographic laws and regulations for the commons would surely result in is the re-appropriation of architecture; not developing utopian powers (factories and offices, flats and houses, stadiums, theatres, neighbourhoods that suit people better.
models, but reclaiming old buildings or constructions, because squares, streets and public buildings).
of democratic necessity. This has been well known since the Governments and local administrations have always been among improvised gathering of the republicans in the royal building of the major "consumers" of architectural commissions. In this area the "Jeu de Paume" handball court, just a few days before the the modern state, either as charitable patron or direct overseer French Revolution. In our times, squats and temporary occupations In the second half of the 20th century, a significant number of of the job, does no more than continue a centuries-old tradition are still an effective tactic for people to gather when they have utopian architects[1] wanted to find fundamentally new models for of public works. Since the 60s and 70s, organisations operating no other possibilities: airports runways for teknivals, medieval the organisation of urban space. Many of them experimented in under public law have become avid clients of intellectual services fortresses in strategic areas[10], occupation of universities or train search of an alternative to the failures of centralised rationalism commissioned from outside suppliers, whether these services stations during social movements[11], obsolete spying stations or in old Europe, and to the disgusting fascist holism of control. This involve studies, contractualised research or computer program military infrastructures of former empires[12], etc. Anything that broad movement was partly a reaction to post-World War recon­ development. Thus we have seen a growing complexity in the permits a group to gather and talk.
struction models that appeared unsatisfactory[2]. The Situationist production-lines of authoring and service provision, with a gener­ International avant-garde movement, created in 1957 by artists alisation of outsourcing, But somehow, this was much including Guy Debord, Asger Jorn, Constant and others, proposed an increasingly large In modern cities, increasingly fragmented into "export zones", special stronger in the mid-90’s. Before to study cities with new techniques: Psychogeography and Unitary percentage of "imported" "safety zones", "no-go areas", it becomes almost impossible to the rise of the world wide web Urbanism. Psychogeography is the "the study of the precise elements in every given structure an oppositional assault.
and mobile phones. In ten years, effects of geographical setting, consciously managed or not, product (most commonly the entire city has been invaded acting directly on the mood and behaviour of the individual”.
through the "cut-and-paste" function of computer software tools), by information technologies: surveillance cameras, biometrics, Unitary Urbanism is "the theory of the combined use of arts and and the spread of multiauthor and multiprofessional production wireless networks, mobile phones, automatic doors, identification techniques as means contributing to the construction of a unified modes which formerly were limited to the audiovisual field [8]. The cards or numbers for transports and buildings, etc. If it was still milieu in dynamic relation with question of software patents thus be­ possible for social movements to occupy train stations ten years experiments in behaviour"[3]. "The comes equally crucial in the realm of ago, it would be difficult now, because of mass terrorism. It was sudden change of ambiance in a public construction. While in certain also the period of the illegal raves, sound systems were invading street within the space of a few Information owned by the state. Within the bounds of the countries computer programs are treated buildings all over European cities, it is now forbidden or controlled.
meters; the evident division of a law and what is politically acceptable, the state can do with as "art works" under the definition of The paradox is that people have more tools to communicate but city into zones of distinct psychic the information is it sees fit. Example: census data.
Artistic and Literary Intellectual Property live in a more controlled physical space. Is it possible that the atmospheres; the path of least (ALIP), there is a strong pressure to Information decade simultaneously generated a Mass Terrorism resistance which is automatically simply consider them as Industrial decade? 9/11's unprecedented scale gives size to the enemy, followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation to the physical Property. That would entail demonstrating a possible industrial but United Nations statistics show - although there is no valid contour of the ground); the appealing or repelling character of application or an actual use. Thus a de facto relation emerges definition of terror - that terrorist acts worldwide have been on certain places - these phenomena all seem to be neglected.
between utopian artist-architects (whose creations can remain the decline and not on the rise for a decade, despite all the media People are quite aware that some neighbourhoods are gloomy under ALIP, whereas constructed architecture often falls under and political shuffling (the Irish Republican Army launched rockets and others pleasant. But they generally simply assume that elegant Industrial Property) and utopian artist-programmers - and if the at number 10 Downing Street in the 80's). The point is probably streets cause a feeling of satisfaction and that poor streets are latter lose the artistic and literary possibility, they will also lose the that the economy of fear is on the rise: mediated angst, media depressing, and let it go at that.”[4] chance to develop open systems[9].
In the decade of the 60s that followed, the utopian and political dimensions of urbanism were also extensively analysed, not only With creators like Buckminster Fuller, Archigram, Yona Friedman, Paolo Soleri or Constant.
by the Situationists, but also by Marxist researchers such as Henri Electronics wields increasing influence over today’s urbanism.
Lefebvre or later by Manuel Castells [5]. As the development of Everything is liable to create more profit in the cities of world [2] To learn more about this, read "Sphären III” by Peter Sloterdijk.
the "new towns" continued commerce, as soon as the [3] "Définitions", Internationale Situationniste 1, 1958.
in America and Europe, with Zoning laws and regulations are often deeply flawed, having been exchange speed has been [4] Guy Debord, "Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography", "Les historical events such as created haphazardly, largely to suit developers and politicians, and increased. What is called Lèvres Nues", 1956.
the Watts riots in the USA, they too often lead to dull, dead living conditions.
Electronic Urbanism is only [5] From Henri Lefebvre in that period, read for instance "The Production urbanism was interpreted the surge of acceleration, the of Space" and from Manuel Castells, "The Urban Question." by them as an ideology that "organises silence" in the emerging spreading foam of nodes and pipes in the telematic networks [6] "The Society of Spectacle", Guy-Ernest Debord, 1967 Information City. This analysis drove the Situationist International between connected people. But for State planners, the most [7] "The Flexible Personality", Brian Holmes, in "Hieroglyphs of the Future", to abandon utopian architecture in order to concentrate on important thing remains the ability to monitor circulation and stop semiotics and the distribution of information in what they called it in the physical space. Zoning the physical landscape has become [8] "Marchés Publics et droits de la Propriété Intellectuelle", Groupement the Society of the Spectacle[6].
a tool for governance to keep control of counter-powers and their Français de l’Industrie de l’Information, 2003.
potential disobedience. In modern cities, increasingly fragmented [9] On today’s convergence between utopian architects and utopian pro­ Nevertheless, psychogeography has been co-opted along with into "export zones", special "safety zones", "no-go areas", it grammers, see the Makrolab project : http://makrolab.ljudmila.org[10] advocacy planning and participation by think-tanks on space becomes almost impossible to structure an oppositional assault.
A good example is Fadaiat event in the Castle of Guzman El Bueno in Tarifa, the southern town of Spain, with an affirmed objective to develop management. Today’s companies can easily quote Guy Debord Zoning can be contested but is usually approved by the citizens, a counter-surveillance observatory of the Gibraltar Straits between Africa if it justifies their business orientations. Spatial management is in the name of their sovereign individual security.
and Fortress Europa (http://www.fadaiat.net).
inserted in temporality and in a permanent process of semantisation.
[11] As in Paris in December 1995.
What was described as "intense life" by the leftist romanticism Control over the physical landscape strives to be very strong, but [12] Good examples are in Latvia with the ex-tsarist and ex-Soviet facilities of the 50s and 60s is now integrated in lifestyle management.
can still be quite weak in its effects on the circulation patterns of of Karosta, or the former Cold War spy dish "Little Star".
The dream for the cyber-citizens is to escape their physical location everyday life. Only a totalitarian governance could imagine full and its embedded situations. Mobile phone companies already control over the movements of individuals. On the global level, finance "locative" artists to develop prototypes that will invade weakness also appears at the tensegrity nodes, under the strain Ewen Chardronnet is a French media artist and the Flexible Personality market very soon [7]. "Disembedding", of geo-economic conflicts. To illustrate this, we just need to think writer, organiser and researcher in information decentralising, are the romantic escapology dreams of today’s of today’s drama of global terrorism.
systems. He published in 2001 an anthology individualist urban life. An illusion of freedom that goes hand in "Quitter la Gravité" (Editions de l'Eclat) about the Association of Autonomous Astronauts.
hand with social containment in the physical city.
Zoning, Software, Utopia, And Industrial Property If the Situationist utopia somehow failed, the psycho-history oflocations is still a toolkit for social movements. Some places have The way towns and cities are set up now - wide streets, strip a strong history. In Paris, demonstrations can easily shift to HAUSSMANN IN THE TROPICS The root cause of urban slumming seems to lie not in urban of metropolitan space, poverty but in urban wealth.
involving a drastic dimu­ In contrast to Second Empire Paris, contemporary nition of the intersections Haussmannization often reclaims the center for Goods whose use is non-rivalrous, i.e. using the good between the lives of the Polarized patterns of landuse and population density recapitulate ungrateful upper classes whose bags are already does not deplete it, and non-excludable, i.e. once it is rich and the poor, that produced people cannot be excluded from using it. The older logics of imperial control and racial dominance. Throughout packed for the suburbs. If the poor bitterly resist transcends traditional light house at the coast, alerting ships to potential peril, the Third World, post-colonial elites have inherited and greedily eviction from the urban core, the well-heeled are is an example of a public good. Without intellectual social segregation and reproduced the physical footprints of segregated colonial cities.
voluntarily trading their old neighborhoods for property law, particularly copyrights and patents, all Despite rhetorics of national liberation and social justice, they fantasy-themed walled subdivisions on the pe­ digital information would be a public good.
Some Brazilian writers have aggressively adapted the racial zoning of the colonial period riphery. Certainly, the old gold coasts remain - have recently talked about to defend their own class privileges and spatial exclusivity.
like Zamalek in Cairo, Riviera in Abidjan, Victoria a "the return to the medi­ Island in Lagos, and so on - but the novel global trend since the eval city," but the implications of middle-class secession from In India also, independence did little to alter the exclusionary early 1990s has been the explosive growth of exclusive, closed public space are more radical[16] Rodgers, following Giddens, geography of the Raj. Kalpana Sharma, in her book about "Asia's suburbs on the peripheries of Third World cities. Even (or especially) conceptualizes the core process as a "disembedding" of elite largest slum," Rediscovering Dharavi, emphasizes that "the in China, the gated community has been called the "most significant activities from local territorial contexts, a quasi-utopian attempt inequalities that defined Bombay as a colonial port town have development in recent urban planning and design."[8] to disengage from a suffocating matrix of poverty and social continued . Investment is always available to beautify the already well-endowed parts of the city. But there is no money to provide These "off worlds" - to use the terminology of Bladerunner - are even basic services to the poorer are­ often imagineered as replica Southern Fortified, fantasy-themed enclaves and edge cities, disembedded as."[2] For urban India as a whole, Nandini Urban redevelopment still strives to maximize Californias. Thus "Beverly Hills" is not from their own social landscapes but integrated into globalization's Gooptu has shown how the "socialist" both private profit and social control.
only the 92102 zip code; it is also, like cyber-California floating in the digital ether - this brings us full Congress Party middle classes, who Utopia and Dreamland, a suburb of Cairo circle to Philip K. Dick. In this "gilded captivity," Jeremy Seabrook during the 1930s and 1940s extolled the garib janata (the poor - an affluent private city "whose inhabitants can keep their distance adds, the third-world urban bourgeoisie "cease to be citizens of common people) in the abstract, ended up after Independence from the sight and severity of poverty and the violence and political their own country and become nomads belonging to, and owing as enthusiastic custodians of the colonial design of urban exclusion Islam which is seemingly permeating the localities."[9] Likewise, allegiance to, a superterrestrial topography of money; they become and social separation. "Implicitly or explicitly, the poor were denied 'Orange County' is a gated estate of sprawling million-dollar patriots of wealth, nationalists of an elusive and golden nowhere."[18] a place in civic life and urban culture, and were seen as an California-style homes, designed by a Newport Beach architect impediment to progress and betterment of society.”[3] with Martha Stewart décor, on the northern outskirts of Beijing.
Gita Verma, Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours, London 2003, p. xix.
Laura Ruggeri contrasts the expansive "imported" California Removing "Human Encumberments" lifestyles of residents in their large semi-detached homes with the Kalpana Sharma, Rediscovering Dharavi, Delhi 2000, p. 8 living conditions of their Filipino maids who sleep in chicken-coop- [3] Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India, Urban segregation is not a frozen status quo, but a ceaseless like sheds on the rooftops. [10] Cambridge 2001, p. 421 social warfare in which the state intervenes regularly in the name [4] Tunde Agbola, Architecture of Fear, IFRA, Ibadan 1997, p. 51.
of "progress," "beautification," and even "social justice for the Bangalore, of course, is famous for recreating Palo Alto and [5] Solomon Benjamin, "Globalization's Impact on Local Government," UN Habitat poor" to redraw spatial boundaries to the advantage of landowners, Sunnyvale lifestyles, complete with Starbucks and multiplexes, in Debate 7:4 (December 2001), p. 25.
foreign investors, elite homeowners, and middle-class commuters.
its southern suburbs. The wealthy expats (officially "non-resident [6] Banashree Chatterjimitra, "Land supply for low-income housing in Delhi, in Baken As in 1860s Paris, under the fanatical reign of Baron von Haus­ Indians") live as they might in California in "exclusive 'farmhouse' and van der Linden, pp. 218-29; and Neelima Risbud, "Policies for Tenure Security mann, urban redevelopment still strives to maximize both private clusters and apartment blocks with their own swimming pools in Delhi," in Durand-Lasserve and Royston (eds.), Holding Their Ground: Secure Land Tenure for the Urban Poor in Developing Countries, London 2002, p. 61.
profit and social control. The scale of population removal is and health clubs, walled-in private security, 24-hour electrical immense: every year hundreds of thousands of poor people - legal power backup and exclusive club facilities."[11] Lippo Karawaci Jeremy Seabrock, In the Cities of the South: Scenes from a Developing World, Londeon 1996, p. 267 tenants as well as squatters - are forcibly evicted from Third World in Tangerang district, west of Jakarta doesn't have an American neighborhoods. The urban poor, as a result, are nomads, "transients name but is otherwise a "virtual imitation" of a West Coast suburb, Pu Miao, "Deserted Streets in a Jammed Town: The Gated Community in Chinese Cities and Its Solution," Journal of Urban Design 8:1 (2003), p. 45.
in a perpetual state of relocation."[4] boasting a more or less self-sufficient infrastructure "with hospital, shopping mall, cinemas, sport and golf club, restaurants and a Asef Bayat and Eric Denis, "Who is afraid of ashiwaiyat?", Environment and Urbanization 17:2 (October 2000), p. 199.
In big Third World cities, the coercive, panoptican role of "Hauss­ university." It also contains internally gated areas known locally mann" is typically played by special-purpose development agencies.
as "totally protected zones."[12] Laura Ruggeri, "Palm Springs. Imagineering California in Hong Kong," 1991/94, author website (www.spacing.org). Another "Palm Springs" is a elegant condominium Financed by offshore lenders like the World Bank and immune to complex in Beijing.
local vetoes, their mandate is to clear, build and defend islands The quests for security and social insulation are obsessive and [11] Solomon Benjamin, "Governance, economic settings and poverty in Bangalore," of cyber-modernity amidst unmet urban needs and general under­ universal. In both central and suburban districts of Manila, wealthy Environment and Urbanization 12:1 (April 2000), p. 39.
homeowners' associations barricade public streets and crusade [12] Harald Leisch, "Gated Communities in Indonesia," Cities 19:5 (2002), pp. 341 for slum demolition. Berner describes the exclusive Loyola Heights Solomon Benjamin has studied the example of Bangalore where district near the university: [13] Berner, Defending a Place, p. 163.
the Agenda Task Force, which directs overall strategic decision- making, is firmly in the hands of the chief minister and major An elaborate system of iron gates, roadblocks and check­ For a description of Lagos' fortress homes, see Agbola, pp. 68-69.
corporate interests, with negligible accountability to local elected points demarcates the boundaries of the area and cuts it [15] Guy Thuillier, "Gated Communities in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires," representatives. "The zeal of the political elite to turn Bangalore off from the rest of the city, at least at nighttime. The threats Housing Studies 20:2 (March 2005), pp. 258-59.
into a Singapore has resulted in ex­ to life, limb, and property are the [16] Amalia Geraiges De Lemos, Francisco Scarlato and Reinaldo Machado, "O tensive evictions and demolitions of Every year hundreds of thousands of poor people are overwhelming common concern retorno a cidade medieval: os condominios fechados da metropole paulistana," in Luis Cabrales (ed.), Latinoamerica: paises abiertos, ciudades cerradas, Guadalajara settlements, especially small business forcibly evicted from Third World neighborhoods.
of the wealthy residents. Houses 2000, pp. 217-36.
clusters in productive urban locations.
are turned into virtual fortresses [17] Dennis Rodgers, “’Disembedding’ the city: crime, insecurity and spatial The demolished land is reallocated by master planning to higher by surrounding them with high walls topped by glass shards, organization in Managua,” Environment and Urbanization 16:2 (October 2004), p.
income interest groups, including corporations. "[5] barbed wire, and heavy iron bars on all windows.[13] 123[18] Seabrock, p. 211 Similarly in Delhi, - where Banashree Chatterjimitra finds that the This "architecture of fear," as Tunde Agbola describes fortified government has utterly "subverted the objectives of supplying lifestyles in Lagos, is commonplace in the Third World and some Mike Davis is an urban sociologist based in San Diego. He land for low income housing" by allowing it to be poached by the parts of the First, but reaches a global extreme in large urban is the author influential books such as "City of Quartz" (1992) middle classes - the development authority has targeted nearly societies with the greatest socio-economic inequalities: South and "Ecology of Fear" (1999). His latest book, "Planet of half million squatters for eviction or "voluntary relocation."[6] The Africa, Brazil, Venezuela and the Untied States.[14] Slums", will appear in 2006.
Indian capital offers brutal confirmation of Jeremy Seabrook'scontention that "the word 'infrastruction' is the new code word Brazil's most famous walled and Americanized edge-city is Al­ for the unceremonious clearance of the fragile shelters of the phaville, in the northwest quadrant of greater Sao Paulo. Named (perversely) after the dark new world in Godard's distopian film,Alphaville is a complete private city with a large office complex,an up-scale mall, and walled residential areas - all defended bymore than 800 private guards.
The Johannesburg and Sao Paul edge cities (as well as those inBangalore and Jakarta) are self-sufficient 'off worlds' becausethey incorporate large employment bases as well as most of theretail and cultural apparatus of traditional urban cores. In the casesof more purely residential enclaves, the construction of highspeedhighways - as in North America - has been the sine qua non forthe suburbanization of affluence.
Privately-build motorways in Buenos Aires now allow the rich tolive fulltime in their countries (country club homes) in distant Pilarand commute to their offices in the core. (Gran Buenos Aires alsohas an ambitious edge city or megaempredimiento called Nordeltawhose financial viability is uncertain.)[15] In Lagos, likewise, a vastcorridor was cleared through densely populated slums to createan expressway for the managers and state officials who live in thewealthy suburb of Ajah.
It is important to grasp that we are dealing here with a reorganization Ulrike Brückner : www.musterfirma.org World-Information City Campaign, Bangalore WORLD-INFORMATION CITY Global Information Landscapes and Urban Transformations WORLD-INFORMATION CITY IS A ONE-WEEK PROGRAMME OF EVENTS ADDRESSING GLOBAL ISSUES OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND TECHNOLOGY IN CONJUNCTION WITH CHANGING URBAN HELD AT INDIA'S IT METROPOLIS BANGALORE, WORLD-INFORMATION CITY IS A COOPERATIVE PROJECT OF THE INSTITUTE OF NEW CULTURE TECHNOLOGIES/t0 (VIENNA), SARAI CSDS (DELHI), WAAG SOCIETY (AMSTERDAM), ALF (BANGALORE) AND LOCAL PARTNERS.
THE PROGRAMME BRINGS TOGETHER RESEARCHERS, ARTISTS AND ACTIVISTS FROM EUROPEE AND SOUTH ASIA. IT CONSISTS OF A CONFERENCE, WORKSHOPS, AN EXHIBITION, A PUBLIC OUTREACH CAMPAIGN, AND A SERIES OF MUSICAL AND ART EVENTS BASED ON ELECTRONIC MEDIA, AND HAS BEEN PRODUCED WITH THE FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE OF THE EU'S EU-INDIA CROSS CULTURAL PROGRAMME.
LIFE STREAMS OF THE CONFERENCE WILL BE MADE ACCESSIBLE THROUGH NETBASE, VIENNA (www.netbase.org) AND THE STUDIO RIX SPECTROGRAPHY EVENT, POINT EPHÉMÈRE, PARIS (http://e-ngo.org) FOR MORE DETAILED INFORMATION, PLEASE REFER TO: THE CAMERA IS THERE, BUT WHERE IS THE SCREEN? - OR, WHY INDIAN ALTERNATIVE FILM NEEDS ALTERNATIVE MODELS TO 'MARKET' By Frederick Noronha Control of information has many faces, not just A lucky few are able to win prizes at international younger film-makers, says: "Audiences in India But, more importantly, they hope to create a IP. While digital technology has made it easier competitions, or make a name for themselves are ripe for good documentary films. I've had full space where students, activists, academics, to create new content, closed cultural industries there. But they're really not being noticed where control ever more tightly distribution channels it matters. So what's going wrong? Copyright-based models aren't earning alternative film media, and friends can come in real space. They make it harder, if not impos­ makers the millions, nor taking them to the audiences together and interact through sible, for independent producers to reach tradi­ Alternative film-makers have, without even real­ which they so badly need.
meaningful cinema. By keeping tional audiences. To break this deadlock, new izing it, adopted a model of distributing their these films on sale, they hope to models of distribution are necessary.
work which is more suited to large players of houses just with word-of-mouth publicity at encourage the otherwise neglected film-makers' the corporate world. Copyright-based models almost every screening done." Patwardhan Take this dilemma: something big is happening aren't earning them the millions nor taking them has been working to sell his film at reasonable on the small screen across India. Alternative to the audiences which they so badly need.
prices, and as one of the big names in the field Most of these young and highly talented people Indian documentary is booming. There's a whole Unlike their counterparts in the Free Software of documentary film has managed to get some are doing a great job too. They're telling the story lot of creative output coming out of a wide range world, alternative film-makers in India haven't of his excellent work shown in a few mainstream in a way which simply doesn't surface in the of film-makers, who have the skills and courage quite accepted that they could gain both the cine theatres and multiplexes.
mainstream media otherwise. They're speaking to tell the truth bluntly, just as it is.
audiences and popularity (and, indirectly, incomes out in favour of the weak and powerless, who too) by making a decided shift away from the In Orissa, eastern coastal India, the Bring Your are left without a voice. Of course, there are still But, the reality is: virtually nobody is watching copyrighted model. Take some of the work being Own Film Festival at Puri offers five days of films thousands of stories waiting to be told, in a all these interesting alternative films. In spite of put out by film-makers here, for instance.
at a fee of as little as Rs 50 for students (four country the mind-boggling diversity of India. In the fact that they bring in fascinating stories from times that amount for non-students). The idea more ways than one, it's as if the genie has got across a subcontinent-sized is simply: you bring your own film and screen it.
out of the bottle. There is no putting it back country. Stories which would Digital technology has made it easier to create new content, This is no coincidence. Technology has become either. Films are becoming easier to shoot, the otherwise never get told, not in but cultural industries control ever more tightly distribution more affordable. Today, you don't need costly technology is reaching the hands of those who such graphic details and with channels in real space.
and bulky equipment to create a film - and digital can use it, and suddenly you no more need costly fairly decent film-making skills technology is really driving down the price.
hard-to-access equipment to make or view a film that give you the impression of being there.
Dhananjoy Mondal (37) of West Bengal has Computers allow you to edit your movie on your or even to easily share one.
Today most film-makers spend months or a few made a film on an unusual tribe of crow-eaters.
years making a film which then languishes un­ He says: "The urge to know and explore the But there's one crucial part of this jigsaw that's seen, un-written about, and largely unnoticed.
'other' world of the marginal men (and women) That's not all. Today, an alternate film can be missing. There's simply no distribution channel shared via a CD. You can make the copies at for alternate film in India. And alternate film- home, and circulate it to your audience at a few makers are, till now, reluctant to look at alternate Rupees per CD. At last year's International Film approaches, such as non-copyrighted models.
Festival of India held in Goa, the wealth of alter­ Lawyer Lawrence Liang of Bangalore's Alternative native cinema made its presence felt. Among Law Forum has argued that Indian documentary the 20 'non-feature films' in Indian Panorama and alternative film makers would do well to think section, themes ranged from the nuclearisation of starting to license their works under an 'open of South Asia to the human price of war, films content' license. Liang argues: "Most documen­ on artists and folk musicians, about ethnic tribal tary film makers do not live off royalty in any clashes in the North East, and even a film about case. Their films are either commissioned or they a film. Films screened included 'The Green earn some money from various prizes, invitations Warriors - Apatanis' (on the unusual tribal sus­ and the like. So the fear of the loss of revenue tainable agricultural practices in Arunachal), 'I cannot be a very serious one." Couldn't Be Your Son, Mom' (about a gendercrisis), 'Invisible Parsis: The Poor of a Prosperous Film-maker Anjali Monteiro, who's based in Mum­ Community' by Kaevan Umrigar, and Sanjivan bai, sees things differently: "The possibilities for Lal's 'Is God Deaf?' (on religion-linked noise public broadcast are very limited, given the censorship (of alt films ) by the state and of themarket. While there are attempts to reach out But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Out there, through local, travelling festivals and screenings there are literally hundreds, if not thousands - by activist groups and educational networks, in this country of one billion - of enthusiastic these are sporadic and pitifully few for a country people behind the camera making their own the size of India." Indian alternative film simply Elffriede : www.elffriede.net World-Information City Campaign, Bangalore films. For a nation which has had little of an deserves a wider impact. But can it think of has led to the formulation of this film." Vinayan alternative film-making tradition, caught in be­ innovative ways of reaching out to a greater OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE Kodoth directed a "nearly non-verbal" film that tween the mammoth Bollywood world of com­ Open Source, or Free, Software are collaboratively "builds up a surreal picture of Bombay". It mercial films and the government-dominated developed programs - operating systems, web describes, for instance, what it feels like to be field of documentary film for long, this is quite servers, word processing packages - that can be part of a desperate crowd of seven million com­ a positive development.
Frederick Noronha is a Goa, India based indepen­ used and distributed freely. Furthermore, the programs can be modified by anyone. Combining muters who use the sub-urban trains to travel to dent journalist, co-founder of BytesForAll, and active the talents of many developers, some of the most work each day. This film won awards at Madrid, Take the case of the Kriti Film Club of Alaknanda in both cyberspace and channels for alernative communications. He runs the Docuwallahs2 mailing- advanced programs are free and open source Chicao, Uruguay, Ann Arbor, and Seoul.
in New Delhi. They've been running their club to list on Indian documentary film at and used by many individuals, corporations, and, take "thought-provoking cinema" and use it to increasingly, governments. The Internet as we As Anand Patwardhan, noted documentary- "deepen understanding of social and develop­ know it would not exist without it.
maker and old enough to be the father of many ment issues amongst film makers and viewers".
Alternative media practices are being developed from the bottom up. Around the world, new AUTOLABS, SAO PAULO (2004) experiments are conducted to combine new media technology and a 'copyleft attitude' with struggles for local self-determination. The Autolabs in Sao Paulo, and the Cybermohalla Project By Ricardo Rosas and Tatiana Wells in New Delhi are presented here as two examples of the wide range the approaches take.
Sao Paulo is a place where social inequalities Technical Nucleus: Recycled Computers Main­ are extreme. It is a global city full of abundance tenance. Technical learning of computer mainte­ CYBERMOHOLLA, NEW DELHI (ONGOING) and hunger, of advanced universities and prob­ nance and assembly of recycled hardware.
lems with access to basic education, with sprawl­ ing villas and lots of homeless and landless Support Nucleus: IT for Independent Media.
people. From this background social movements Computer literacy for independent media, mobi­ arise and spread in different intensities, trying lization and online collaboration through dynamic Cybermohalla (CM, or Cyber Neighbourhood) and evenings on the other days are devoted to to answer and confront a situation which the content websites and mailing lists as well as the is a network of five labs across the city of Delhi creating projects from these texts, their narrations ruling powers tends to render as insoluble.
knowledge of the principles of free software and - locality labs in LNJP (an informal settlement in and the discussions that follow every narration.
Besides, the mediascape is dominated by great Central Delhi, lab set up in 2001), Dakshinpuri These projects could be animations, HTML, monopolies that obviously defend the very inter­ (a Resettlement Colony in South Delhi, 2002) typed and formatted texts, soundscape, photo ests of these elites to maintain the apparent Digital Media Nucleus: Graphic Produc­ and Nangla Maachhi (2004, an informal settle­ stories, written word, audio and visual juxtaposi­ order and a complacent consensus towards a tion/Publication and Digital Stories. Digital media ment in which surveys have begun which mark tions o rnarratives, storyboards, etc. That is, every social situation which sometimes dares to show production through design experimentation and the beginning of the State's process to displace day is a day for practice and creation from its angry face and explode in riots.
graphic publishing as well as production of it to the outskirts of the city); a CM Research associational thinking with each others' experi­ content through digital storytelling.
and Development Lab in the Ankur office (started ences, thoughts and energies.
2003) and the Sarai Media Lab. The languages Sound Nucleus: Free/Web Ra­ Despite the dominance of media monopolies, independent spoken in these labs are diverse - Hindustani, Repetition and duration are central to building dio, DJ-ing and Music Produc­ Khari Boli, Hindi; and the audio-visual-realm, too, the density of each node, and therefore, of the media projects have a long history in Brazil.
tion. Sound production, free is unique and specific to each location. The network; and every practitioner coming to the radio/web radio programming locality lab practitioners meet each other at each lab knows there will be new encounters and Despite the dominance of media monopolies, and edition/finalization of CDs.
others' labs, do joint projects at the RnD Lab, engagements every day.
independent media projects have a long history keep connected with each others' labs through in Brazil. During the last dictatorship in the 70s Local people from peripheral communities cre­ keeping materials in circulation on Mailing Lists For a practitioner who is new to the lab, the lots of alternative magazines, the "imprensa ated their own Autolabs since its very beginning, and Blogs. Does this 'diversity' constitute a threshold of entry is this challenge - not only to nanica" (small press), produced uncountable that is, recycling discarded computers and learn­ share, but to listen. Perhaps one of the questions zines, samizdats and culture magazines against ing how to keep them, setting a laboratory in a asked to a new entrant by his older peers is, the established government. This created a sort local decided by a leadership from their own A network can be defined through the terms that “Aap ka sunne ka samay kitna hai? (What is your of a counterculture. From the 80s onwards this community, learning how to actively use the are set up in it, so that nodes can keep reworking listening time?)” movement was gradually reduced to a pop market machines to produce their own media and show­ the accretion of densities within them, by keeping of fandom publishing. Could that situation be ing the results with a website and planned events them in circulation. What are these 'terms' for What are the protocols of interaction of this changed or, at least, challenged? Such a gigantic to happen along the course that will integrate Cybermohalla? Each locality lab is a room with network? As in any network, practitioners come task would demand great efforts, for which media all the results - movies, music, radio programs, three computers, portable audio recorders (dicta­ to a locality lab with different priorities and tacticians could only do a small, if significant zines and an storytelling archive. Those events phones) and cameras (digital and bromide print); desires, seeking pleasures differently, and with part, in order to minimize the devastating aspects happened both during and at the end of the and fifteen to twenty practitioners from the locality, their own unique imaginations. A context of of this almost entirely monopolized mediascape.
course and comprise a week of lectures, debates between 15 and 24 years of age. The labs are listening is therefore crucial to the practices at This dilemma was the main reason for one of - with national and foreign theoreticians and self-regulated spaces, that is the daily routine the labs. As one practitioner puts it, “Fearless the Brazilian TML organizers to take a very clear media activists - and a festive weekend held in of the lab is decided upon by them, they are in speech requires that there be fearless listening”.
position. Believing in media autonomy for the one of the targeted peripheral districts.
charge of the maintenance of the lab and the Many people have joined this network, but many masses, media activists conceived the Autolabs, responsibility to imagine and realise the future have left as well, because of marriage, when a project for labs of tactical media to be taught The Autolabs experience provided important of the lab is theirs.
they find a job, or to pursue other searches in to young people on the periphery, in poor districts input for a much larger government initiative, the and slums in São Paulo.
pontos de cultura, to create a network of inter­ Each practitioner spends five days a week at the linked community media centers, based entirely lab, and many are at the lab for close to eight For more information, see Autonomously created with the help of local on free software. Currently, about 200 such hours every day. The day begins with listening communities, the Autolabs are thought to be centers are being created country-wide. The to what their peers have written the day before, laboratorial prototypes of media literacy and plans is to create as many as 1000 such centers and brought to the lab to share. The challenge technical formation in new technologies and here is not only to be able to write a text, but to Shveta Sarda works with the Cybermohalla Labs media. All based on tactical concepts, Autolabs be able to read it out in front of fifteen people, use cheap DIY media, allowed by the digital The address for the collective weblog is and to be able to listen with them, and among as a process chronicler and interlocutor, and keeps revolution accessibility, promoting the develop­ the diverse CM content in circulation among English ment and improvement of independent individual speaking publics through blogs, essays and post­ and/or collective media production in a creative While Mondays are reserved exclusively for ings on discussion lists. She seeks to critically way and using free software/open source oper­ Ricardo Rosas is a writer, translator and experi­ listening to each others' texts (reflections, de­ engage with the debates on pedagogy, translation, ational systems. Autolabs are centers of orien­ mental musician. He was one of the organizers of scriptions, conversations, logs of a street, anec­ technology and inequality. She is a member of the editorial collective of the Sarai-txt, a bimonthly tation, documentation and self-education with the Brazilian Tactical Media Lab in Sao Paulo. He dotes from daily encounters, etc), afternoons publication (broadsheet) from Sarai.
free and open access, where human mediation has studied Social Communication and German prevails in the process of accessing knowledge Studies at Universidade de Sao Paulo and is cur­ rently senior editor of Rizoma (www.rizoma.net), a as a generalized exchange of wisdoms stimulating Alternative Law Forum : www.altlawforum.org web site devoted to activism, tactical media under­ participation and collective work.
ground culture in general, net critic, conspiracy stuff and occulture. He writes about media activism The Autolabs workshops were run from January and (anti) pop culture.
to July 2004, involving 300 youngsters between 17 and 21 from three poor districts of Sao Paulo's periphery: Sao Miguel Paulista, Ermelino Tatiana Wells is one of the organisers of the Sao Paolo Tactical Media Lab and also worked some Matarazzo and Itaquera. They were divided in time for a computer clubhouse at an NGO in Sao four different unities teaching: Paulo, Brazil.
SPEECH AT THE WORLD SUMMIT OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY, GENEVA, 16 JULY 2003 By Richard Stallman The benefit of computers is that it's easier to copy and manipulate Then there's the economic effect. When companies have power Software owners deliberately make programs incompatible. With information. Corporations are using two kinds of imposed monop­ over you, they bleed you dry. Copyrights and software patents free software, users can make it follow standards.
olies to deny you this benefit.
increase the digital divide and concentrate wealth. We have toomuch scarcity in the world; let's not create You need free software to train Software patents restrict how you use your computer. They restrict more. TRIPS is bad enough, but software Copyrights and software patents increase the master programmers. Non-free developing software. A big program combines dozens or hundreds patents and the WIPO copyright treaty go digital divide and concentrate wealth.
software is a secret, so nobody of ideas. When each idea can be patented, only IBMs and beyond TRIPS, and WSIS should reject them.
can learn from it. Free software Microsofts can safely write software. Bye bye to any independent Computer users need software that respects their freedom. We gives talented young people in Africa the chance to learn how to local software industry. Software patents must be rejected.
call it "free (libre) software", meaning freedom, not gratis. You work on real software. School should also teach students the have the freedom to run it, study it, change it, and redistribute it.
spirit of cooperation. All schools should use free software.
Copyrights restrict using and sharing information - exactly whatyour computer is for. It was fine to trade away the freedom to Free software means you control your computing. With non-free Free software is necessary for sustainable development. If everyone copy when only publishers could copy; the public lost nothing.
software, the software owners control it. They put in spy features, in your country uses a program that's secret and controlled by a Today peer-to-peer sharing back doors, restrictions.
single company, that's not development, that's electronic coloni­ must be legal. WSIS should If everyone in your country uses a program that's secret not teach people that sharing With free software, you can make and controlled by a single company, that's not development, the program do what you want.
that's electronic colonization.
Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU "You" could mean an individual Project, launched in 1984 to develop the free Copyrights block access to scientific publications. Every university programmer, a company, or a group of users with similar needs.
software operating system GNU, and President of the Free Software Foundation.
should be free to make an open-access mirror for any journal, so Non-programmers can convince or pay programmers to make no one is excluded from access.
changes for you. With free software, you're free to make it handleyour language. Free to adapt it for your disability.
THE OPEN NETWORKS DECLARATION INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION CULTURES (EXCERPTS) THE DELHI DECLARATION OF A NEW CONTEXT FOR NEW MEDIA World Information Cities section of creative, intellectual and discursive energies themarkers and histories of different cultural-historical-spatial The streets of our cities are crowded with signals. Cinemas, specificities and the received as well as emerging traditions desk top publishing, satellite television and fm radio, increasingly of different practices. Through processes of sustained inter­ pervasive and ubiquitous computing, mobile telephony, tele­ actions practitioners are able to evolve a neighbourhood of communications and the internet surround us in a matrix. The affinities in practice, a commons of expression. However, it new landscape continues to feature analog and offline com­ needs to be clearly understood that this coming together is munication practices as diverse as theater, live performance, not contingent on an easy translatability, or the evolution of print culture and books and the production of visual and tactile some kind of 'Esperanto' form of cultural practice. Rather, we objects. Old and new forms of communication create a new need to work with the understanding that there are and will context for culture by their continuous interaction with each be necessary difficulties of translation, that invite us to be at other. We live and work within this context. We also realize least legible to each other, before we make the claim to that this context extends deep into the substructure of local comprehensively understand each other. We need to share histories and situations, just as much as it extends far into a with each other what we do not know about each other before global space of communications that spans the entire planet.
we can make the claim to mutual understanding.
Our neighbourhoods and streets contain the world, and theworld is a patchwork made up of all our local histories.
Designs for a Plurality of Commons Communicative Practices These encounters when allowed to play out to their fullestextent, can give rise to various designs for commoning, different We, a diverse group of artists, activists, researchers and protocols of working together, of sharing materials of having theoreticians from Europe and South Asia, celebrate that the access to each other's work and materials, some of which may culture of communicative practices is characterized by a rich be expressed in quasi legal languages - as licenses and heterogeneity of forms and protocols and expresses a healthy charters, while some others may be expressed simply as diversity in the face of the tendency of the formal operations invitations and invocations.
of intellectual property to flatten the protocols of culturalproduction on to a single plane. Rather than have every cultural We emphatically endorse a plurality of ways in which the good available as a commodity designed for one time sale, commons of cultural and social media use can be and are the prevalence of a vigorous cluster of practices of ongoing being constituted through different modes of practice. Some cultural transaction within and outside formal commodity of these may be more discursive than others, some may be relations guarantees the diversities of contemporary cultural more invested with aesthetic pursuits, while others may find expression. This does not imply an antagonism or indifference themselves more committed to social and political questions, to market imperatives, rather, it places such imperatives within and still others may be recursive in the sense that they may a larger matrix of practices which also include sharing, gift involve practices of consistent but critical self reflexivity. The giving and formal as well as informal protocols of reciprocity.
one thing that we do insist on is that the commons constitutedby such collaborations grow immanently (admitting that there The Collaborative Nature of Cultural Practice is no master plan or overall design) and that they make room for an ethic of collegial criticism across the boundaries of We recognize that all cultural work is necessarily collaborative, cultures, histories, tastes, forms and disciplines. In other words and that collaborators may either be part of generations either we want to insist that there are and will be many kinds of THE VIENNA DOCUMENT contemporaneous or previous to our own. Taking this further, commons, and that we all must retain the right to be critical everything that we produce today is also potential material for of different modes of commoning as they emerge, evolve and collaboration with partners in all our tomorrows. We also dissolve, even as we agree on the value of the commons itself. • We applaud all initiatives that reclaim the benefits of new recognize that the collaborative nature of cultural work requires communication technologies for the common public.
not only freedom of speech, but also increased mobility of our Clearly, what this entails is a refined practice of trust. Where words, images and ideas. A key challenge is to develop people allow for the fact that they need to nurture practices • We recognize that street level open intelligence is of high methodologies that enable open sharing while developing a that foreground trust and respect precisely because they may public value and a cultural process that is highly dependent plurality of models and approaches towards sustainable, mixed not be transparent to each other. We recognize that the on information climate and environment conditions.
and re-mixed modes of usage of intellectual and cultural groundwork needed for such trust and for the conditions of resources, some of which may be expressed as different kinds collaboration to grow are directly proportional to cultural • We do not accept a world where popular culture and of intellectual property (in some instances) and others as a distance. And here by cultural distance we mean both the human heritage is fenced in and IP restriction management varied cultural commons (in other instances).
distance between practitioners based in different parts of the separates us from our own thoughts.
world, as well as the distances between different kinds of The Question of 'Translatability' practitioners, regardless of the co ordinates of their physical • We appreciate the fact that boundaries between users location or historical inheritances. We need to take these and producers become permeable in new communication The climate of mutuality that characterizes this landscape is distances seriously, and still establish open exchange.
environments and new practices dissolve traditional notions founded on the many acts of making, of authorship.
sharing, viewing, listening, reading, re­ For the full version of the declaration, searching, curation and criticism that • We are committed to critically observing the mindsets of draw their strengths from existing net­ possession and the creation of scarcity as processes works of everyday collaborations be­ implementing control in the information economy.
tween different nodes spanning theuniverse of practice in new contextmedia. Practitioners bring to this inter­ • We refuse to live in an information society where nothing belongs to all of us, but everything is owned by cartels, Oliver Ressler : www.ressler.at World-Information City Campaign, Bangalore locking human knowledge into the vaults of private interests.
• We acknowledge that knowledge is for those who do, not for those who don't, because cultural progress implies that ideas emerge from exchanges, from communication, from • We do not want a world where you need a license to whistle a song or access your own memories.
• We anticipate a silent spring in Information Society's landscapes when even a bird's song becomes subject of copyright control.
• We realize that intangible information resources raise the issue of a digital ecology, the need to understand ecosys­ tems constituted by information flows through various The full version of the Vienna document can be downloaded from http://world-information.org or TOWARDS A CULTURE OF OPEN NETWORKS PARTNER ORGANISATIONS ‘World-Information City’ will be realized as part of the EU-India Economic Cross Cultural Programme (ECCP) Project ‘Towards a Culture of Open Networks - a collaborative initiative on bridging information society in Europe and India through culture and communication’ jointly carried out by the Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0 (Vienna), Sarai CSDS (Delhi) and Waag Society (Amsterdam).
Institute for New Culture Technogies/t0 In 1994 the Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0 established Public Netbase, a net culture institution that offers the arts and culture scene a platform for the self-determined use of new media. Public Netbase organizes exhibits, events, symposiums, and workshops that provide a broad public with an understanding of the new communication media and their various possibilities, and cast a critical light on a society shaped by technology. It constitutes a junction for art, culture, science and media networks in Europe and internationally. Public Netbase, re- launched in 2005 as Netbase, supports know-how transfer and the exchange of media abilities, and project support for artists and initiatives.
The Institute is embedded into an international network of art, culture, media and science, it promotes the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, experiences, and innovations and has been involved in various European and international collaboration projects and repeatedly funded through European Union Culture Programs, as in the case of its international partner program, World-Information.Org World-Information.Org is an trans-national cultural intelligence provider, a collaborative effort of artists, scientists and technicians. It is a practical example for a technical and contextual environment for cultural production and an independent platform of critical media intelligence.
World-Information.Org constantly monitors and maps the infosphere, the world's invisible nerve Sarai CSDS, Delhi system of information networks, as well as the global information economy. Through artistic and scientific exploration of information and communication technologies World-Information.Org Sarai, the New Media Initiative, a programme of the Centre for the Study of disseminates an understanding of their cultural, societal and political implications, and fosters Developing Societies is an alternative, non-profit space for an imaginative future cultural practice.
reconstitution of urban public culture, new/old media practice and research and critical cultural intervention. The framework of Sarai includes scholarly reflection and creative work on film & video, computers, telephony, print culture, radio, World-Information.Org is an agent of digital democratisation and the pursuit of digital human rights.
multimedia and the Internet.
Enlightening the opportunities, challenges and risks of information and communication technology, World-Information.Org provides information necessary for a democratic development of society, Sarai aims are to become an engaged and integral part of contemporary urban culture and politics.
culture within the city of Delhi, to foster interdisciplinary research on urban culture & politics and media history & practice, to create contexts for collaboration between practitioners & scholars, to collaborate with non-elite and neighbourhood media practitioners with new skills through workshops and outreach programmes. Sarai seeks to demonstrate the validity of low-cost & low-tech methods and strategies in media and communication practices, with a commitment to public participation and access and to promote non-proprietary (copyleft) and collaborative models of cultural practice/knowledge.
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE FIRST PUBLICATIONS All texts are published under a Creative Commons license The following texts first appeared in the publications indicated Waag Society was founded in 1995 as a medialab. Situated in the heart of the unless otherwise indicated.
city of Amsterdam Waag Society hosts R & D projects in the areas of culture, education and healthcare, it stimulates network art and initiates debates. With The Black and White (and Grey) of Copyright the international campaigns like 'We Want Bandwidth' (1997), “Public Domain by Lawrence Liang · to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work 2.0” (1998), 'Follow the Free' (1999) and 'I'm Not a Standard User' (2002) · to make derivative works Waag Society raised attention for new political and economical inequalities within · to make commercial use of the work Options to traditional patents electronic networks. In 2004 Waag Society co-founded the Dutch branch of Under the following conditions: by James Love: Financial Express, April 6, 2005 Creative Commons, an initiative that provides standardised open content licenses for artists to promote the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works.
You must give the original author credit.
Intellectual-property rights and wrongs Waag Society is an active member of international networks in the field of social by Joseph E. Stiglitz: Daily Times (Pakistan) August 17, 2005 software and tactical media and supports initiatives with technical infrastructure If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you and knowledge on social software and the tactical use of media. Waag Society may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
and its partners share a mutual interest in the social and cultural impact of new media and its ability to empower people. Since 2001 Waag Society is collaborating · For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
with Sarai/CSDS in Delhi. The two organisations form the nucleus of the Waag · Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission Sarai Exchange Platform that also includes the ALF.
from the author.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by This is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code (the full Concept: Konrad Becker, Felix Stalder Wolfgang Sützl, Christine Mayer Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0 Production: Andrea Ressi Ralf Traunsteiner Mahiti is a Bangalore based organisation that aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information Technology for the voluntary sector through the strategic use of Free/Open Source Software. Over the last 6 years, Mahiti has served over fon: ++43-1-522 18 34 100 voluntary organisations directly by building multi-platform and multi-lingual fax: ++43-1-522 50 58 web / intranet / kiosk / multimedia applications. Mahiti conducts trainings and workshops in partnership with donor agencies and multi-laterals. Mahiti also designs and executes projects in the areas of resource mobilisation, collaboration, documentation, advocacy, e-governance and rural ICT. Mahiti specialises in the use of Python.org, Zope.org and Plone.org.
Information Office : [email protected] Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore This info-paper has been produced with thefinancial assistance of the European Union as The Alternative Law Forum is a group that works on various aspects of law, legality part of the project 'Towards a Culture of Open and power. ALF was started in March, 2000, with a commitment to a practice of Networks' (www.opencultures.net) under the law which would respond to issues of social and economic justice. Over the past aegis of the EU-India Economic Cross Cultural few years ALF has grown from being a legal service provider to becoming a space that integrates alternative lawyering with critical research, alternative dispute EU-India Economic Cross The contents of this document are the sole resolution, and pedagogic interventions. We are also committed to an Cultural Programme UNESCO and WSIS: The Priorities responsibility of World-Information.Org interdisciplinary interrogation of the law using creative forms and new media. ALF (t0/Institute for New Culture Technologies) and · Freedom of Expression through the promotion of media governed has been interested in questions of information politics for a while, particularly its partners and can under no circumstances by public law incl. development of national legislation on the expansion of Intellectual Property into the domain of everyday life.
be regarded as reflecting the position of the · Information for All through genderequitable access to information European Union.
and knowledge; development of guidelines for information in the public domain; establishing multipurpose community access points; promotion and development of digital services in libraries This project is co-funded by the European Union · Capacity-Building through development of programmes for illiterates via ICT´s; promotion of e-literacy skills Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology · Towards Knowledge Societies through the promotion of open access and electronic publishing; promotion of ICT´s in the exchange of knowledge

Source: http://www.t0.or.at/wio/infopaper/wi_ipcityedition.pdf