Straight from the Copy South Research Group at University of Kent Law School. Also check out their poster corner.

THE COPY/SOUTH DOSSIER

Issues in the economics, politics, and ideology of copyright in the global South
Researched and published by the Copy/South Research Group May 2006
ISBN: 978-0-9553140-1-8 (printed edition) Not restricted by copyright

We are told that we live in the ‘digital revolution’ era and that we can communicate across the globe as we never could before. In fact, restrictive copyright laws still act as a serious barrier to sharing and learning from each other. This is particularly true in countries of the South where three quarters of the population live. To read more, get a copy of the 208-page Copy/South Dossier produced in May 2006 by the Copy South Research Group after more than 18 months of research. Available at no charge, this unique dossier contains more than 50 articles examining many dimensions of the issue across the global South, such as access, culture, economics, libraries, education, software, the Internet, the public domain, and resistance. It is available at no charge.

You can get the dossier in two ways: either download it <www.copysouth.org> or send us an e-mail <contact@copysouth.org> and we will send you a copy in the post, either as a printed booklet or as a CD.

Copy South gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Open Society Institute, the Research Fund of the University of Kent Law School, UK and HIVOS, NL.

Technorati Tags: access2knowledge, developingcountries, IPR

Great to see that the in-house research and workshops (Policy Brief on Open Source and Open Standards, UNU-MERIT Symposium, UNU-IIST Symposium) go hand-in-hand with implementation. It is especially noteworthy that the decision seems to be based on “access” considerations; by endorsing open standards the FAO aims to lower barriers to adoption of technology.

“One of the key requirements for our technical information systems is that they must be very easily available and accessible by the member countries as well as easy to set-up and maintain,” said Kurt Vertucci, Senior Officer, IT Governance for FAO. “We cannot dictate to countries what their infrastructure should be. Therefore, in addition to requiring very flexible licensing, these systems need to be portable and based on open standards.”

More below, and the full article is here (http://linuxpr.com/releases/8687.html)

United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization Selects MySQL as its Open Source Database Standard

One of the Largest Specialized UN Agencies Plans to Migrate up to 80% of its Technical Information Systems to MySQL

ROME, Italy – May 2nd, 2006 – MySQL AB, the developer of the world’s most popular open source database, today announced that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has selected MySQL as its open source server-side database standard.

Founded in 1945 and with more than 3,700 staff members, FAO’s mandate is to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy. Achieving food security for all is at the heart of FAO’s efforts. With headquarters in Rome and 74 country offices around the world, FAO provides the kind of behind-the-scenes assistance and sustainable solutions that help people and nations help themselves.

Technorati Tags: access2knowledge, developingcountries, foss

Yale’s Access 2 Knowledge Conference brought together an A-list of international academics working on new approaches to intellectual property, the implications of further “protecting” access to knowledge, and various examples how this plays out in education, software, entertainment.

UNU-MERIT’s Rishab Gosh moderated the Economics of Access to Knowledge panel, and spoke on the Licensing Frameworks for Access to Knowledge panel.

You can find a wealth of information about the conference online, both in the comprehensive conference wiki, and on the lawmeme blog (look for entries titled A2K: <name of the session>) The blog is created by Yale Law students who took notes during the panels.

Technorati Tags: access2knowledge, developingcountries, education, IPR, oer

Another excellent article by Jamie Love (CPTECH) on the implications of intellectual property rights. This time he talks about the proposed WIPO Broadcasting Treaty that is being discussed right now. Find some snippets below, and please read the full text at huffingtonpost.com. This is important!

“What does this mean? WIPO is debating whether or not to create a new intellectual property right in information that is distributed over television, radio, cable television, or through any wired or wireless computer network, including the Internet. This is something different from copyright. Indeed, it is designed to benefit people who cannot get a copyright, because a work belongs to someone else (the person or group that created it), or because the information is in the public domain. The new right is not a “copyright,” but a “broadcaster” or “webcaster” right. It is a bad idea when applied to television or radio, but a disaster if applied to the Internet.”

“No one who is pushing these treaties can explain why anyone who would get the right actually needs it in the first place, and there is no assessment of how this will impact copyright owners, consumers or creative communities and innovative businesses.”

“If you don’t know about the Treaty, it is because there has not been a single story about it in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, and I think only two stories in the Washington Post, the most recent of which ran last year, and one in the New York Herald Tribune, which few people in the United States read. The computer trade journals have written very little about it either.

“In the developing countries, there is strong opposition to the expansion of the Rome broadcaster right to the Internet. They correctly see this as something that will increase transaction costs and prices, harm access to knowledge, and undermine the rights of their own copyright owners in the works distributed over the Internet.”

Technorati Tags: access2knowledge, developingcountries, IPR