From aidslaw at bom5.vsnl.net.in Sat Dec 4 15:27:46 2004 From: aidslaw at bom5.vsnl.net.in (lawyers) Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 15:27:46 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] People's Convention & Protest March Against the Patent Bill, New Delhi Message-ID: <00e401c4d9e7$b4ba5680$0e00a8c0@lawyers> Affordable Medicine and Treatment Campaign Phone: 24321101/2, Email: aidslaw1 at lawyerscollective.org Contact person: Leena Menghaney, 9811365412 National Working Group on Patents Laws Phone: 26813311, Email: wgkeayla at del6.vsnl.net.in Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology Phone: 26968077,26561868 Email: vshiva at vsnl.com People's Convention & Protest March Against the Patent Bill, New Delhi The Government of India has initiated the process to amend the Patents Act. A Third Patent Amendment Bill is expected to be tabled in the Parliament during the forthcoming winter session. The Bill in its present form seriously compromises the accessibility and availability of medicines, two important components of the right to health. As a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the 'Doha Declaration' (November 2001) on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, the Government of India is obliged to implement the TRIPS Agreement in a manner, which is supportive to access to medicines for all. The Patent (Amendment) Bill undermines farmers' rights to affordable seeds and citizens' rights to affordable food and drugs, since plants, genetic material and drugs are now patentable subject matters. Public Interest Groups working on health, food security and farmers' rights are gravely concerned that India through the Patent (Amendment) Bill will trade away its right to safeguard public health and make independent policies and decisions regarding its food security. As the first step to hold the government accountable and to support a transparent process for the consideration of amendments to the Patents Act, public interest groups in Delhi are organising a People's Convention on the Patent (Amendment) Bill, 2004. Date : 7th December 2004 Time : 10.00 a.m. - 12.00 p.m. Venue : Speakers Hall, Constitution Club(followed by protest march to Parliament St) Speakers : 1. B. K. Keayla, National Working Group on Patent Laws 2. Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecolog y 3. Anand Grover, Affordable Medicines & Treatment Campaign 4. K.K Abraham, Indian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS 5. Dr. Amit Sen Gupta, People's Health Movement Partners in the Campaign: All India Drug Action Network, CISRS-JWP-ATN, Delhi Network of Positive People, Indian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit, Sharan, Swaasthya, Voluntary Health Association of India -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041204/82d2ecd0/attachment.html From kalisaroj at rediffmail.com Fri Dec 3 18:12:56 2004 From: kalisaroj at rediffmail.com (avinash jha) Date: 3 Dec 2004 12:42:56 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: Owning 'work or owning 'information' Message-ID: <20041203124256.20988.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com>   Keith, Thanks for your response. More than outright demolition of what I proposed, I feared the silence it might be greeted with. But I disagree with your contention that it is futile to try imagining a different regime of intellectual property, since the problem is with the very notion of ‘intellectual property’, or even with the very notion of private property. It is true that we will never be able to fabricate a perfect legal regime for intellectual property, or property, or for anything at all. We should not even attempt. Just as the attempt to institute a perfect democracy may give birth to a tyranny, so the attempt to create the perfect law will only cause mayhem. But, this is certainly not a reason for abandoning all aspirations for a change of regime. Within any legal framework, there will always be outlaws, gangsters, pirates, and bandits, whose illegality will not prevent our moral economy to include them or embrace them. Different legal regimes, however, will create different kinds of outlaws. We can compare them and find one system of law-outlaw better than another one. Moreover, people want to get on with their ordinary lives. Rather than change their lives by becoming either law-abiding or outlaws in a given regime, they might want to change the regime. Or, prevent a change to a worse regime, as is the case right now in India, where many are working to stop the change from the product patent law to a process patent law. I find it difficult to imagine a society without any notion of ownership. I suspect that the notion of ownership will be smuggled in, in some form or other, in all such attempts at property-less society. And it may be as tyrannical as a perfect legal regime of private property. I think that the question is: what form of ownership or property, with what limits, on what bases? Of course, we cannot answer this in a vacuum. Various debates, battles, cases, arguments, movements are going on in different fields of music, academic publishing, etc. etc. There is enough research and information to show that the piracies, the so-called copy culture, are not only vital to economic survival of large number of people, at least in countries like India, but also a locus of creativity and enjoyment. With the stricter regime of intellectual property now in the process of implementation, they are forever under the threat of police raids and so on. There is nothing wrong with celebrating these piracies, and indulging in them, but we cannot be neutral to the question of intellectual property regime at this point in time. Should we argue for the abolition of all laws of intellectual ownership and banish this notion? This position is precariously balanced on a knife-edge, between the neutral and the most radical. Be that as it may. I will argue that some notion of intellectual ownership or ownership of cultural materials is essential to contemporary life. Illegal industries, piracies, remix industry, all work with some notion of intellectual ownership. If a new technique is developed, measures are taken to see to it that the competitors do not immediately copy it. And this is accepted as the norm. In the different context of academic production, research institutes and university systems will be unable to function without such a notion. Stealing of credits by the supervisors and senior researchers is rampant. A balanced notion of rightful intellectual ownership is needed for the activity of modern research. In yet another context, people working in corporations find their spare time thoughts being claimed by their employers. When you have such large numbers of people living on the basis of their intellectual and technical skills, you cannot just abolish the notion of intellectual property and authorship altogether. If there were no such notion in law, there would have to be such a notion in the common law. I know little about the common law tradition, but I guess that it must be something dynamic, keeping pace with life. And the written law will not be entirely divorced from the common law. In this situation, imagining and working out a coherent perspective on the question of ownership of intellectual creations and a possible legal regime for intellectual property might be of some value. The challenge is that the principle of free sharing of knowledge be not compromised and yet the credit is given where it is due. That vast areas of economic and cultural activities are not deemed illegal and yet a vital ingredient of their normal functioning is not removed. It is here that de-linking the notion of ownership from knowledge and information and linking it to work may help in negotiating the complexities of this issue, while at the same time opening possibilities of a different, more egalitarian future society. You have argued that the extension of the notion of property to intellectual arena and cultural products is unjustified. Yes, if the current notion of private property is just transposed to the intellectual arena. But what if our notion of property or ownership that embraces both areas also challenges the dominant notion of property itself? I think the interplay between work and ownership offers us precisely that. Let us also not forget the other dimension of ownership, the dimension of responsibility associated with ownership. This ‘play’ between work and ownership is not something I or anyone else could have invented. Who knows from what streams of lives, traditions, languages, meanings, ideologies, movements it has been shored up to the present. Of course it remains to be seen whether it indeed offers us the perspective we need. Whether I have been deceptively led to believe that it does so. But if it does, then it is worthwhile exploring. There is little possibility of a new regime to be instituted for intellectual property anytime soon. As you point out, Great Powers and their interests are involved. Even if China-Japan-India emerges as a power bloc, it is not going to change the situation by itself. As we have seen in some cases in the music industry in India, a company that thrived on piracy has become a supporter of stricter implementation of IP laws after it became successful. I believe that our confidence in our own knowledge of future, at a world scale and the like, is often misplaced. Who knew in 1985 that Soviet Union would disappear within the coming decade? No one can tell what the significance of subterranean philosophies, practices, forms developing and disappearing under the shadow of great powers is going to be. Moreover, at least in places like India, the question of intellectual property is still open. We need not assume the eventual capitualation of resistance to stricter forms of intellectual property regime. For now, we can perhaps contribute to the tradition of evolving common law and forms of conduct, and use a coherent perspective to argue against the incoherent ad hoc extensions of present property law to intellectual arena. All this is relevant only if the philosophical move that I suggested is sound, and not utopian. -avinash -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041203/293c70ca/attachment.html From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Sat Dec 4 17:44:35 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 13:14:35 +0100 Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: Owning 'work or owning 'information' In-Reply-To: <20041203124256.20988.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com> References: <20041203124256.20988.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <41B1AA2B.2030400@thememorybank.co.uk> Avinash, Thank you for your reasonable response to my criticism. Of course I have a more complex position on intellectual property, as I am sure you do. Debates of this kind sometimes require us to stick to one point when we are actually capable of holding two different thoughts in our mind at once. I agree with you that some sort of property law is indispensable to society and that intellectuals can usefully dream up better schemes for social infrastructure than those we have. But the politics of legal process should also be invoked, especially when the law is manifestly unjust both in principle and practice. I find the general tone of discussion on this list excessively polite (or fearful which may amount to the same thing) and seized on your quite radical (but polite) intervention to say something unbalanced. You referred to the political context of proposed changes in IP law in India, as well as to the economic situation of many 'pirates'. The Indian government, along with Brazil and perhaps others, stand in the frontline of challenges to the international regime that I and many others find to be unjust. So it matters to us what Indian intellectuals on a list like this think and do. I made the analogy with Indians' fight for freedom from British rule because the present situation is akin to imperialism before the collapse of empire. How else can one understand an IP treaty that secures monopoly rents for western corporations on pain of excluding poorer countries from the US market, while another secures lawless US militarism on a bilateral basis? This system has been called 'information feudalism' for good reason. The rich and powerful barons of the recording industry, for example, threaten the unseen masses by using their bottomless wealth and unequal access to the law to terrorise selected victims, much as their medieval counterparts set wolfhounds on escaping serfs, all within the law of course. Extreme perhaps, but the current system of extraction from the poor to the rich few is the most powerful ansd successful ever devised and it operates on a planetary scale. At least acknowledge this, when you ask how you might benefit from a fairer IP framework. You mention the plight of junior academics in a corrupt university system that sees young scholars being ripped off by their powerful patrons. Again, the question is whether their interests would be better served by measures shoring up individual ownership of ideas or by reform of the institutions organizing the production of ideas. It is ironic that complaints about larceny of this kind should be commonplace at a time when individual and corporate ownership of ideas is both more pronounced and more coercively policed. The previous sytem was, as you know, based on voluntary acknowledgment and it worked for the most part. But this was at a time when the universities housed only a few people who mostly knew each other and regulated their own activities informally. I have written elsewhere about the coming demise of the university. Sorry to be such a spoilsport, but universities as we know them were an invention of national capitalism in the twentieth century and they are going down with the political system that made them. The curent panic there about plagiarism in an age of digital reproduction reflects the contradictions of commercial copying without the same unequal power of money at work. Notions of individual ownership, I agree, should be reformulated to meet the needs of a world society that will be hopefully more democratic as well as being driven by money and machines. This is not a counsel of perfection, but a critique of what passes for democracy these days. So we are not so far apart. We agree that new approaches to IP would be an improvement on what we have already. I was touched by your desire to publ aish a personal collection of writings dear to you and I would like society to make that possible. Failing the approval of society, however, I was suggesting that you can go ahead without much risk, since your project would be unlikely to disturb the rentseekers who control commercial publishing. All our actions are relative to our historical moment and mine may be less exposed than yours. Recall the situation around 1960 when the Korean government tacitly sanctioned the illegal reproduction of expensive American proprietary textbooks in its national drive towards better educational standards. This was contrary to the Berne Convention, which was made by and for the western powers at a time when the world's territory was 80% owned by Europeans. Of course, they were threatened with exclusion from the American market and they eventually came into the fold, but not before millions of Korean students had access to knowledge that would have otherwise been denied them. The point is that Asians do stand on the brink of making an effective challenge to the West. They do so on solid economic grounds. The emperor really does have no clothes. I fully understand the tactical priority of making a reasoned case on IP law to the Indian government at this time. I just hope that a list like this would occasionally be less reasonable. It is sad, but true that one can usually only occupy one position, for or against the status quo. Our world has about one billion white people protected by the current system of world society and one billion non-white people who think they have a stake in the same system; the other four billion know they don't. IP law has moved to the forefront of the debate about the character of world society because it is central to exploitation of the world by western corporations who wish to run the economy through a system of command and control. This illiberal regime is normally called, by Orwellian doublethink, neo-liberal and it is doomed to failure because it depends on unleashing social and technological forces that cannot be controlled by such means. Please don't imagine that such a failure will be calm and unresisting. Iraq is one of its manifestations. By all means the world's people deserve decent laws to live by, but we should first reciognize that we are in a war and we have to choose sides. Keith From iram at sarai.net Sun Dec 5 11:02:54 2004 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 06:32:54 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Commons-Law] the Act of leisure In-Reply-To: <41B1AA2B.2030400@thememorybank.co.uk> References: <20041203124256.20988.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com> <41B1AA2B.2030400@thememorybank.co.uk> Message-ID: <1059.210.7.77.145.1102224774.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Dear all, this is my first posting on the commons law list. Taha and I initiated a discussion on the sarai reader list on issues involving the performance of law in our everyday lived experience through the institutionalisation of the leisure act and the intertwining of leisure space and surveillance. We would like to engage in similar debates but with possibly a different group of people on this list, people who would bring in other perspectives and directionality to the discussion possibly legal viewpoints around the control of space through the nuisance and vagabond laws etc. Some of the issues that we would like to probe/ excavate/ explore/ understand, also include an experiential study of the New Friends Colony Community Centre and: - The nuances that govern the State and non state players in their behaviour in non formal spaces which do not seem to fall under the purview of either public or private space. - The control/ censorship of thought and action as a direct fallout of the use of quasi legal language by the State and its implications in codes of deemed public behaviour. - The ambivalent dictates in the name of public security and legality that form the basic subtext of restraining ordinary forms of leisure. - Does the State want the public to stay within the `private’ space of the home- safe and secure and to come out only to engage in some form of economic activity or other? And is leisure activity in public space possible without spending money? AN INCIDENT: On a cold, foggy evening, last winter, Taha and a couple of other friends, Bikas and Gaurav, all students from Mass communication Research Centre, Jamia were sitting at the fountain opposite Bon Bon pastry shop in New Friends Colony Community Centre. CC, as it is popularly called by Jamia students, lies in the shadow of Softel Surya hotel. It is surrounded by a number of posh south Delhi gated colonies, the Jamia University and its hostels, and a few other middle class colonies. The last bus stop for #400, is Okhla Village barely 2 kilometres from CC. So far, CC has been able to cater to all its distinctly diverse communities of patrons. So, if there is the stylish Ego Thai on one hand, there is also a more middle class New Delhi Food Corner, serving the best butter chicken in all of Delhi. The khaki uniform is not an unfamiliar sight in CC because of the presence of New Friends Colony thana within the complex of shops and restaurants. The people seemed to be used to a certain amount of police presence and control, especially around diwali, dusshehera, eid, new years eve, 26th January, and the 15th August. Despite illegal encroachments by shop owners, and a mushrooming community of street kids from the Okhla railway station flyover complex, the relationship between the police and public is what can be termed as normal- normal to our times. The wine and beer shops close at 10 pm but CC would remain open till 1 am on normal days. That evening, as these friends were sitting at the fountain and talking about what young people would normally talk about studies, career, politics, films,colleagues, etc that Taha noticed a man in khaki with what suspiciously looked like a 3 CCD camera, video recording what looked like themselves! On questioning, the man proudly identified himself as Pandu[name changed], a constable with the NFC thana. They told him that they were media students in MCRC, Jamia and were working with Zee news, star news and CNBC! On hearing this, Pandu revealed that he was friends with an ex- student who worked as a reporter with Aaj Tak news channel. He pointedly asked them to sit in either Barista or Mc Donalds, if they wanted to be out that late and instead of loitring around. According to Pandu a training in digital camera and basic non linear editing software had been given to at least one constable in all police stations of Delhi. Instructions had been given to record the janta from 7.30 pm till 9:00 pm everyday. Pandu proudly showed these guys the footage shot so far. A couple of men having beer in a car, zoom in to the number plate of the car, some close up shots of women and mid shots of themselves. In fact, because Taha’s face was covered by a shawl, he had changed the camera angles to get a better shot. It was amply clear was that Pandu was a not a very good camera person! Pandu disclosed, with an air of self importance, that because an alleged terrorist arrested from some part of Delhi, had apparently had dinner at Ego Thai, orders were issued to video graph the area, map people, and generate profiles of regulars and new comers. In retrospect, the enormity of the situation did strike these people but final projects were on and you don’t take pangas with the police if you are a law abiding student from jamia Millia Islamia. Hence, though the matter was much discussed/ debated, but just that. This summer Taha ran into Pandu again. At CC. He promptly shot Taha for a a few minutes, smiled, waved a hi and went on his way like a friendly neighbourhood constable. Possibly his camera work had improved but one can only guess, for this time he did not show the footage to Taha. College was finally over. Taha and his friends have left the hostel. Bikas wrote a short story about the incident but I guess lost it in shifting accomodation. He works with CNBC. Gaurav is a free lance photographer and Taha is a researcher on information society. Community Centre is as welcoming as before. They are now building a mall cum multiplex cinema hall on top of Mc Donalds. CC just might change. We invite readers and writers on the list to share personal experiences/ discuss opinions/ raise questions on the institutionlistion of leisure and the surveillance/ control of leisure/public space in Delhi and elsewhere. How law determines the way we behave and how does one perform in the face of this bareness of act? looking forwards to responses, cheers, iram and taha From lawrence at altlawforum.org Mon Dec 6 18:12:52 2004 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 18:12:52 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] EU strategy to enforce Intellectual Property Rights in third countries In-Reply-To: <41B44F44.5080001@cptech.org> Message-ID: Very interesting read..... Lawrence -------- Original Message -------- Subject: EU strategy to enforce Intellectual Property Rights in third countries Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:21:35 -0500 From: James Love To: Random-bits This is the EU enforcement strategy for IP in "third countries." The Basics....... 1. Identifying the priority countries: EU action will focus on the most problematic countries in terms of IPR violations. These countries will be identified according to a regular survey to be conducted by the Commission among all stakeholders and should be the basis for renewing the list of priority countries for the subsequent period. 2. IPR mechanisms in multilateral (incl. TRIPs), bi-regional and bilateral agreements: This would include: raising enforcement concerns in the framework of these agreements more systematically; consulting trading partners with the aim of launching an initiative in the WTO TRIPs Council, sounding the alarm on the growing dimension of the problem, identifying the causes and proposing solutions; strengthening IPR enforcement clauses in bilateral agreements.. 3. Political dialogue: Making clear to trading partners that an effective protection of IP, at least at the level set in TRIPs, is essential; launching joint initiatives focusing on IPR enforcement with countries sharing or affected by similar concerns; providing training and implementing networking mechanisms for officials in EU Delegations in third countries facing enforcement problems. 4. Incentives-Technical Co-operation: Ensuring that technical assistance provided to third countries focuses on IPR enforcement, especially in priority countries; exchanging ideas and information with other key providers of technical co-operation, like the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the US or Japan , with the aim of avoiding duplication of efforts and sharing of best-practices. 5. Dispute settlement / Sanctions: Recalling the possibility that right-holders have to make use of the Trade Barriers Regulation in cases of evidence of violations of TRIPs or of bilateral agreements; making ex officio use of the dispute settlement mechanisms included in multilateral and/or bilateral agreements in case of non-compliance with the required standards of IP protection. 6. Creation of public-private partnerships: Supporting-participating in local IP networks established in relevant third countries; using mechanisms already put in place by Commission services (IPR Help Desk and Innovation Relay Centres) to exchange information with right-holders and associations; building on the co-operation with companies and associations that are very active in the fight against piracy/counterfeiting. 7. Awareness raising / Drawing on our own experience: Promote the inclusion in technical co-operation programmes and in public-private partnership initiatives of information destined to raise public awareness about the impact of counterfeiting (loss of foreign investment and technology transfer, risks to health, link with organised crime, etc.) and raise the awareness of Community right-holders doing business in problematic countries about the risks incurred; make available to the public and to the authorities of concerned third countries a “Guidebook on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights”. 8. Institutional co-operation: Improving the exchange of information and the co-ordination between the services in charge of the different aspects of IPR enforcement; simplifying the identification and the access of external entities (right-holders, third country authorities, etc.) to the service responsible for the specific issue concerning them. ..... The complete document MEMO/04/255 Brussels, 10 November 2004 EU strategy to enforce Intellectual Property Rights in third countries - facts and figures What is the dimension of the problem? Between 1998 and 2002 the number of counterfeit or pirated articles intercepted at the EU's external frontiers increased by more than 800%. Figures published by the European Commission in November 2003 show that customs seized almost 85 million counterfeit or pirated articles at the EU's external border in 2002 and 50 million in the first half of 2003. This illicit trade is worth the equivalent of more than 2 billion euro on the legal Community market. These figures only tell us what is being caught at the Community borders. As is the case with other types of illegal traffic, seizures by the authorities represent only the tip of the iceberg and show us little about the dimension and value of the illicit goods that end up being sold in markets and streets worldwide. This is why it is extremely difficult to quantify the exact values involved in the global trade of fake goods. Some estimations point to figures representing between 3% and 9% of the total world trade, i.e., 120 to 370 billion euro a year. Studies carried out by the OECD in 1998 and by the International Chamber of Commerce in 1997, estimated then that counterfeits accounted for 5 to 7% of world trade and were responsible for the loss of 200,000 jobs in Europe. Which IP rights are violated and which sectors are most affected? One frequent misconception is that piracy and counterfeiting mainly affect some luxury, sports and clothing brands, music and software CDs/DVDs, and little else. The reality is that virtually every IP is being violated on a considerable scale and that the variety of fake products ranges from cereal boxes to plants and seeds, from aeroplane spare parts to sunglasses, from cigarettes to medications, from AA batteries to entire petrol stations. Big software producers are as likely to be harmed as small makers of a certain type of tea. The annual statistics published by the Commission’s customs services regarding the number and the nature of seized pirated and counterfeit goods originating from third countries provide detailed and reliable information about the dimension and the growth of the problem . Why focusing now on third countries? The WTO Agreement of intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) establishes for the first time a single, comprehensive, multilateral set of rules covering all kinds of IPR. It contains also a detailed chapter setting minimum standards of IPR enforcement to be adopted by all members of the WTO. However, despite the fact that, by now, most of the WTO members have adopted legislation implementing such minimum standards , the levels of piracy and counterfeiting continue to increase every year. These activities have, in recent years, assumed industrial proportions, because they offer considerable profit prospects with often a limited risk for the perpetrators. Within the Community and at its external borders there have been a number of important initiatives in the last 10 years. In 1994 the EU adopted the Customs Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 3295/94), allowing border control of imports of fake goods. Later, in 1998, the Commission issued its Green Paper on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy in the Single Market. As a result of responses to the Green Paper, the Commission presented an Action Plan, on 30 November 2000. This Action Plan has been translated into a Directive published last April, harmonising the enforcement of intellectual property rights within the Community, a Regulation improving the mechanisms for customs action against counterfeit or pirated goods set by the previous Customs Regulation, the extension of Europol’s powers to cover piracy and counterfeiting, etc. The situation is, however, different outside the borders of the Community. The internal instruments available to Community right-holders in the case of violations of their rights within the Community or in the case of imports of fake goods into the EU are not usable when these violations occur in third countries and the resulting goods are either consumed domestically or exported to other third countries. Although such violations occur outside, they directly affect Community right-holders. Hence the need for an Enforcement Strategy focussing on third countries. Why should developing countries concentrate their limited resources in areas like justice, police or customs on the fight against the sale of copies of goods and brands belonging to right-holders from rich and developed countries? The trade of fake goods is no longer limited to cheap copies of luxury brands and recordings of music and films consumed mostly by tourists looking for a bargain souvenir. Nowadays, almost every conceivable product is being illegally copied: from food to pharmaceuticals, from toys to car and plane parts, from toasters to mineral water. The risks to public health and consumer safety incurred by frequently unaware purchasers are obvious. Consumers in the poorest countries are particularly exposed to sales of these dangerous products. Another reason why every country, rich or poor, should be concerned has to do with the undeniable role played by organised crime networks in the spread of piracy and counterfeiting. Until this activity is no longer seen as a low risk / high profit type of crime, it will continue to spread and to put in the hands of criminal organisations entire sectors of the economy. It is therefore also a question of public order, security and good governance. Effective enforcement of IP rights is also essential to attract foreign investment, transfer of technology and know-how, as well as to protect the local right-holders in developing countries. It is also an indicator of international credibility and respect of the rule of law. Finally, in the mid-to-long term, it will encourage more domestic authors, inventors and investors and contribute to the development of these countries. Why does the Commission target the problem in third countries when pirated and counterfeited goods are so easily available within the EU? Generally speaking, the Community and its Member States are acknowledged for protecting and enforcing IPR according to very high standards. In practical terms, reports like the one published annually by the European Commission give a clear idea of the results achieved by each Member State in terms of seizures of fake goods at the borders. This has already led to an increase of more than 800% in the volume of such confiscations between 1998 and 2002 (from 10 million to more than 85 million articles). The recently approved Directive harmonising the enforcement of intellectual property rights within the Community will not only help to improve the situation, but it also constitutes an example to third countries of measures that proved effective in some Member States and that are now being extended to the entire Community. The challenge is now to ensure that enforcement takes place beyond the EU borders, in third countries. What is in the Enforcement Strategy? The Enforcement Strategy is a Communication of the Commission determining the priorities and optimising the use of resources in order to obtain the most effective results in terms of IPR enforcement in third countries. The actions in detail: 1. Identifying the priority countries: EU action will focus on the most problematic countries in terms of IPR violations. These countries will be identified according to a regular survey to be conducted by the Commission among all stakeholders and should be the basis for renewing the list of priority countries for the subsequent period. 2. IPR mechanisms in multilateral (incl. TRIPs), bi-regional and bilateral agreements: This would include: raising enforcement concerns in the framework of these agreements more systematically; consulting trading partners with the aim of launching an initiative in the WTO TRIPs Council, sounding the alarm on the growing dimension of the problem, identifying the causes and proposing solutions; strengthening IPR enforcement clauses in bilateral agreements.. 3. Political dialogue: Making clear to trading partners that an effective protection of IP, at least at the level set in TRIPs, is essential; launching joint initiatives focusing on IPR enforcement with countries sharing or affected by similar concerns; providing training and implementing networking mechanisms for officials in EU Delegations in third countries facing enforcement problems. 4. Incentives-Technical Co-operation: Ensuring that technical assistance provided to third countries focuses on IPR enforcement, especially in priority countries; exchanging ideas and information with other key providers of technical co-operation, like the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the US or Japan , with the aim of avoiding duplication of efforts and sharing of best-practices. 5. Dispute settlement / Sanctions: Recalling the possibility that right-holders have to make use of the Trade Barriers Regulation in cases of evidence of violations of TRIPs or of bilateral agreements; making ex officio use of the dispute settlement mechanisms included in multilateral and/or bilateral agreements in case of non-compliance with the required standards of IP protection. 6. Creation of public-private partnerships: Supporting-participating in local IP networks established in relevant third countries; using mechanisms already put in place by Commission services (IPR Help Desk and Innovation Relay Centres) to exchange information with right-holders and associations; building on the co-operation with companies and associations that are very active in the fight against piracy/counterfeiting. 7. Awareness raising / Drawing on our own experience: Promote the inclusion in technical co-operation programmes and in public-private partnership initiatives of information destined to raise public awareness about the impact of counterfeiting (loss of foreign investment and technology transfer, risks to health, link with organised crime, etc.) and raise the awareness of Community right-holders doing business in problematic countries about the risks incurred; make available to the public and to the authorities of concerned third countries a “Guidebook on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights”. 8. Institutional co-operation: Improving the exchange of information and the co-ordination between the services in charge of the different aspects of IPR enforcement; simplifying the identification and the access of external entities (right-holders, third country authorities, etc.) to the service responsible for the specific issue concerning them. Is this an attempt to impose on poor countries additional TRIPs plus, one-size-fits-all mechanisms of IP enforcement? Is this an attempt by developed countries to gang up against developing countries? No and no. The strategy paper does not impose any additional, TRIPs plus obligations on any developing country. It is just focused on enforcement of existing rules. We are not trying to gang up with or to copy other countries that may share our concerns. We believe however that we can create synergies and rationalise our efforts in areas like technical assistance with partners that also believe in the use of such mechanisms to improve the situation. On the other hand, we don’t believe in pre-formatted solutions. It will be necessary to have a flexible approach that takes into account the different needs, the level of development, the membership or not of World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the main problems in terms of IPR (country of production, transit or consumption of fake goods) of the country with whom we are talking. We believe that any proposed solutions will only be effective if they are prioritised and indeed felt as important in the recipient country. Which are the most problematic countries? In July 2003, the European Commission issued the results of a survey on enforcement issues in the area of intellectual property rights , aimed at assessing in a detailed manner the situation in third countries. The countries considered then as most problematic according to the results of the survey were China, Thailand, Ukraine, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and South Korea. Respondents considered these as the main countries where production of pirated and counterfeit goods, both for domestic consumption and for export, reached worrying dimensions. Results of the survey in detail: - China: In the area of copyright, there is widespread piracy in all formats (CDs, VCDs, cassettes, DVDs). There are also extensive illegal digital downloads and distribution of films, music and software. Regarding trademarks, estimates that around 15 20% of all brand products sold in China are fakes, and that the portion has risen significantly in recent years. Information was received regarding fake clothes, footwear, leather goods, watches, toys, cigarettes, pharmaceutical products, car parts and entire cars, electronic devices, lighting products, small electrical appliances (hairdryers, irons, kettles), semiconductors, large industrial machines, lubricants and even entire petrol stations. In the area of patents, there are reports of infringements on pharmaceutical products, electrical domestic appliances, industrial machinery, etc. - Thailand: Copyright - generalised piracy of music, movie, business and game software in CD, DVD and VCD format. Trademarks - There is an important counterfeiting problem in this country, regarding well know brands of cloths manufacturers. - Ukraine: Copyright - Production and dissemination of audio-visual products, in particular CD’s and copying and dissemination of unlicensed software are most acute. About 95% of software in Ukrainian computers are estimated to be illegally installed. Trademarks - Clothes, alcohol, cigarettes, fertilizers, agrochemicals and increasingly foodstuffs. The violations in this area ranged from the illegal use of trademark or mixing it in a misleading way with a proper trademark, to the illegal use of a company name, to the divulging of commercial secrets. Patents - Pharmaceuticals. - Russia: There is a high level of music piracy (more than 60% of the market in 2002). The same situation is witnessed by other copyright related industries (e.g. video and film, software industries). Internet based piracy is also extensive. There is also a significant level of counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals, (accounting for around 12% of the Russian pharmaceutical market), counterfeits of drinks, food, and other fast moving consumer goods products etc. - Brasil: Copyright piracy: during 2001, the legitimate industry reported losses of over 300 million €, caused mainly by the growth of piracy. This figure represents 55% of the recorded music in Brazil. During the same period, the software industry lost around € 300 million which represents 58% of the computer software programs sold. Trademark counterfeiting, notably clothing, sport items, toys, perfumes, tobacco, etc. (€ 150 million in 2001). The legitimate clothing industry loses 1.5 million € per year due to counterfeiting. - Turkey: Copyright - Piracy (cassettes and CDs) is the main area of violation in the music industry. Piracy in Turkey is estimated between 50 and 75% of the market, with the higher figure reflecting piracy of international repertoire. Trademarks - Extensive and systematic counterfeiting of trademarks on clothes, footwear, leather goods, apparel, car parts and others.. - South Korea: Trademarks and designs - counterfeiting of high value luxury consumer goods, estimations that Korea was in 2002 the third producer of counterfeit goods in the world. Copyrights - Music piracy in all format, CDs, VCDs, cassettes and illegal digital downloads and distribution. Industrial design -There are also reports of counterfeiting of designs in sports equipment (mainly footwear) - Indonesia: Trade marks and industrial design: Extensive counterfeiting of apparel and of automotive products. But also copyright violations of music, films and software. -- James Love, Director, CPTech, http://www.cptech.org Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA Tel.: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176 Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva 1 Route des Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 791 6727 Mobile +1.202.361.3040 james.love at cptech.org -- James Love, Director, CPTech, http://www.cptech.org Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA Tel.: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176 Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva 1 Route des Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 791 6727 Mobile +1.202.361.3040 james.love at cptech.org _______________________________________________ Ip-health mailing list Ip-health at lists.essential.org http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/ip-health ------ End of Forwarded Message From lawrence at altlawforum.org Tue Dec 7 18:29:20 2004 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:29:20 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Bangalore AMTC Rally on Thursday! In-Reply-To: <41B5A45D.5070801@sangama.org> Message-ID: MEDICINES TO COST MORE FROM JANUARY 1st 2005!!! 3rd PATENT AMENDMENT BILL due to be passed in December 2004 OPPOSE THE PATENT BILL OR PAY MORE FOR MEDICINE What YOU can do- STEP 1: Sign the Letter to the Prime Minister and Other Ministers to stop the Bill being passed in its current form. STEP 2: Join the People¹s Protest Rally against the Patent Bill On: 9-12-2004 (4: 00 pm) Starting point: Banappa Park (Near St. Martha¹s Hospital) Ending Point: Town Hall (via Corporation) Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign Call: 25461920 (Deepak) Fax : 51239289, Email: amtc_india at yahoo.co.in, C/o AMTC Secretariat, Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit, First Floor, 4 A MAH Road, Off. Park Road, Tasker Town, Shivajinagar, Bangalore ­ 51 ------ End of Forwarded Message -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041207/dee903f4/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 322 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041207/dee903f4/attachment.gif From lawrence at altlawforum.org Tue Dec 7 18:36:10 2004 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:36:10 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Cultural production and Open Content licenses Message-ID: Hi all I was in a residency at the Piet Zwart Institute earlier this year, and have written two pieces, one is a longish article on Open Content Licenses and Cultural production, and the other is a small book / guide on open content licenses. (If any one wants a gratis copy of the booklet, do write to Piet Zwart). Both are now available online, and on a Creative Commmons non commercial sharealike license (for more on the license have a look at the guide :) so do feel free to use, create version, rescensions, and any feedback / criticism would be appreciated Lawrence https://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/pubsfolder/liangessay https://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/pubsfolder/opencontent/view From alforum at vsnl.net Tue Dec 7 18:28:06 2004 From: alforum at vsnl.net (Lawrence) Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:28:06 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Bangalore AMTC Rally on Thursday! In-Reply-To: <41B5A45D.5070801@sangama.org> Message-ID: MEDICINES TO COST MORE FROM JANUARY 1st 2005!!! 3rd PATENT AMENDMENT BILL due to be passed in December 2004 OPPOSE THE PATENT BILL OR PAY MORE FOR MEDICINE What YOU can do- STEP 1: Sign the Letter to the Prime Minister and Other Ministers to stop the Bill being passed in its current form. STEP 2: Join the People¹s Protest Rally against the Patent Bill On: 9-12-2004 (4: 00 pm) Starting point: Banappa Park (Near St. Martha¹s Hospital) Ending Point: Town Hall (via Corporation) Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign Call: 25461920 (Deepak) Fax : 51239289, Email: amtc_india at yahoo.co.in, C/o AMTC Secretariat, Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit, First Floor, 4 A MAH Road, Off. Park Road, Tasker Town, Shivajinagar, Bangalore ­ 51 ------ End of Forwarded Message -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041207/be97bb61/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.gif Type: image/gif Size: 322 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041207/be97bb61/attachment.gif From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Tue Dec 7 21:35:50 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 17:05:50 +0100 Subject: [Commons-Law] Cultural production and Open Content licenses In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <41B5D4DE.5070101@thememorybank.co.uk> Lawrence, Congratulations on having produced this article which is certainly the most comprehensive and challenging contibution to this topic that I have encountered. I also find it easier to respond to your concluding sections in the context of the whole argument than when you circulated them separately on this list. I was particularly impressed with your use of th eexample of dance to deconstruct the limitations not only of copyright, but of open licences that are too closely tied to software practices. i was reminded of Marx's argument in the introduction to Grundrisse that distribution is secondary to the forms of production and use: you can't steal from a nation of bankers in th eway you can from a nation of shepherds. I will indicate briefly here some of the many ways I was stimulated by this piece, touching on reciprocity, authorship, community or 'public' and the American empire, ideas that your analysis links up both explicitly an dimplicitly. Mauss presents the gift and the contract as two instances of a human universal, 'reciprocity'. He asks how we make society where it did not exist before and concludes that we do so by giving in expectation of a return. Contract divests itself of much of the spiritual and social baggage of the gift by making the return instantaneous. Delay in returning the gift likewise generates the potential for domination and inequality. Modern market institutions combine element of this contrast. He wanted to show that we all know the 'grammar' (in your terms) of reciprocity in that paying for ourselves makes us more independent than if we accept a gift. But he also presented the gift as an earlier form from which contracts evolved. You link Locke's state of nature to the 'gift economies' of North America and the Pacific that provided him and Mauss with ethnographic examples. But the latter are all societies based on property, often in a highly individualised and competitive form. A case can be made for suggesting that reciprocity was an invention of agricultural societies and that hunter-gatherers were and are indifferent to the sort of exchange relations they imply. Domestication entailed carving out a sphere of protected animals and plants that marked out human settlements from the wild surrounding them. This gave rise to the division between culture and nature and to religious practices aimed at bridging the gap between them. Mauss cites the Roman term, do ut des, I give so that you will give, as the logic of sacrifice under these circumstances. But it may be that this unnecessarily restricts the models of society open to us. Instead of reciprocity, hunter-gatherers usually operate with the idea of sharing, a porcess that involves individuals, communities and their environments. The latter are often seen as banks making their resources available to human inhabitants in a collaborative way. This model would serve you quite well, I think. Although it would take too long to establish here, I fear that you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater when you persist if referring to the 'romantic genius of the author' as an invented figure of capitalist aggression. I have long contemplated a riposte to Barthes death of the author called 'Death of the audience'. what is strilking about the publics invoked by early modern modern authorship is their singularity. If Scottish publishers threatened a few London monopolists 200 years ago, there is very little left in Britain today to disturb the introverted clique of press, TV, publishers and politicians that dominates the dissemination of information there. Yet you and I also experience writing for a public that is unknowable. How often have I tried to envisage the audience for what I write and failed? Not only that. When reading is unpredictably free, I have no way of anticiopating what sort of response, if any, I will get for what I write. So I have to look for the public, for society , in myself and write to reconcile the many fragments of social experience that bear on my topic in the hope that this will somehow act as a bridge to unknown readers. You rinvocation of Kaviraj and the narrative contract of early nationalism bears directly on this reflection, as does your notion of 'fuzzy communities'. I think all of us expereince community in this fuzzy way nowadays. I have found a small measure of comfort in the etymology of 'society'. When the Romans were still an undisciplined rabble known as Latins, they invented the word societas to describe an emergent form of association between them. It comes from the o-grade form of the root sekw- (sokw-yo) which means to follow, as in second, sequel and, more obscurely, sign. For them society was an agreement for a network to help each other out if any of them was attacked, in which event they would follow whoever was the initial target. leadership was seen as being inevitable, but also contingent. This contrasts starkly with the medieval French, societe, in which society is conceived of as fixed and bounded with a central point, the prototype of the modern nation-state. I agree completely with your critique of the US-centrism of Stallman, Lessig etc, but I would be less inclined to link this to 18th century liberalism (depite the manifest destiny, genocide etc of the era) than to the idea of the USA as a world entire unto itself. This is the very stuff of imperialism of course, the drive to impose American property laws on the rest of the world. But, just as the empire cannot contemplate what it is not, so too both copyright protagonists and FLOSS opponents are drawn together into a self-contained universe whose shared assumtions are greater than any differences. To my mind, it is obvious, as I have indicated elsewhere, that Asia poses an economic threat to US` dominance that must expose th ecultural fragility of this blinkered outlook. But I wonder, from your expereince, whether you think that Asian intellectuals are any less capitve to the cultural model of the nation-state. from my scattered observations it would seem that could be even more so restricted in their horizons. I would like to be proven wrong on this point. Keith From sunil at mahiti.org Wed Dec 8 06:09:45 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 00:39:45 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Who Owns the Knowledge Economy? Political Organising Behind TRIPS Message-ID: <1102466385.674.95.camel@box> Who Owns the Knowledge Economy? Political Organising Behind TRIPS by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite first published September 2004 http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/item.shtml?x=85821#index-01-00-00-00 http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/briefing/32trips.pdf Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mob: (60) 1-2205-3895 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP Manager - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net "A world opened up by communications cannot remain closed up in a feudal vision of property" - Gilberto Gil, Minister of Culture, Brazil From vishwas123 at gmail.com Tue Dec 7 17:49:23 2004 From: vishwas123 at gmail.com (vishwas devaiah) Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:49:23 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: STOP MEDICINE PRICES FROM RISING!!!!! In-Reply-To: <20041207111108.2263.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> References: <20041207111108.2263.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <1a2579a20412070419457580fa@mail.gmail.com> STOP MEDICINE PRICES FROM RISING!!!!!! Join the People's Rally against the 3rd PATENT AMENDMENT BILL in Bangalore Date: 9/12/04 Time: 4.00 p.m. – 6.00 p.m. Starting point: Banappa Park (Near St. Martha's Hospital) Ending Point: Town Hall (via Corporation) PROTECT YOUR RIGHT TO HEALTH!!!!! ( See details below) Dear Friend, Warm greetings from the members of the AMTC- Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign!! We invite you to attend the rally being organized by AMTC on 9-12-04 to protest against the 3RD PATENT AMENDMENT BILL due to be passed by the Lok Sabha in December '04. The bill is likely to increase the prices of medicines in India, thereby affecting citizens' access to health, a fundamental component of the Right to Health. The worst to be affected will include patients suffering from life-threatening diseases like H.I.V/A.I.D.S and Cancer. The chief demand of the AMTC and hundreds of partners including health professionals, health organizations and other NGOs is that government must hold a public debate on the issues raised by the bill before it is passed. Please forward this email and the attachments given below to as many organizations and individuals as possible. Attachments include: 1.PATENT BILL ISSUES: A presentation to raise awareness and clarify issues raised by the Patent Bill 2.Letter to PM: Standard format of the letter being sent to the PM ( Join the Signature Campaign) stating the demands of the Affordable Medicines & Treatment Campaign 3.Letter to Partner Organizations: Gives details of how to participate in the campaign 4.AMTC Leaflet: Discusses the issues raised by the bill in greater depth Hoping for your full-fledged support, With warm regards, Members of AMTC -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: patent_bill_issues.ppt Type: application/x-mspowerpoint Size: 38400 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041207/2b382fbe/attachment.bin -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: letter_to_pm.doc Type: application/msword Size: 28672 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041207/2b382fbe/attachment.doc -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: lr_to_partners_invitation.doc Type: application/msword Size: 38400 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041207/2b382fbe/attachment-0001.doc -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: amtc_leaflet.doc Type: application/msword Size: 44032 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041207/2b382fbe/attachment-0002.doc From anasuya_s at yahoo.com Wed Dec 8 11:07:31 2004 From: anasuya_s at yahoo.com (Anasuya Sengupta) Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 11:07:31 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Support the Right to Information Message-ID: <41B6931B.1020204@yahoo.com> Dear friends, Please do try and support the National Campaign for People's Right to Information in any way you can. It impacts on all our future work on social justice issues, especially civil society campaigns for good governance. The call for contributions has gone out on behalf of the NCPRI from MKSS, Rajasthan, headed by Magsaysay award winner, Aruna Roy. apologies for any cross-posting. in solidarity, anasuya Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 04:03:19 -0000 From: "mazdoor kisan shakti sangathan" Subject: Appeal to support the Right to Information Movement in India Dear Friend, The National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) organized the Second National Convention on the People's Right to Information, in Delhi, from October 8-10, 2004. We had nearly a thousand people from all parts of the country to participate in this convention. Apart from three plenary sessions, involving eminent personalities from people's movements, politics, academics, the judiciary, the press, and the arts, there were also over forty workshops on various aspects of the right to information. The purpose of the convention was to raise awareness about the right to information and its role in strengthening and deepening democracy, and in making the government and other public institutions more answerable to the people. It was also used to create an All-India network of activists, with the objective of strengthening the movement in India and for taking on specific responsibilities to that end. I cannot over-stress the importance of the Right To Information movement in really bringing transparency and accountability in governance. Presently the Right To Information Act has been in force in only nine States and a very weak Central Act has been passed some years back, but not implemented. We are trying to get the Act amended at the Centre. Presently the National Advisory Council- NAC- has recommended a very powerful set of amendments, which the Prime Minister has in principle accepted. However, there are powerful forces seeking to stop these. The NCPRI is making an effort to build support and ensure that an effective Act is passed. Apart from this a sustained movement will be required to sustain and spread this movement. I am making a plea to a few friends to support this movement. The support needed would be terms of advocacy and some money. We are hoping some friends would give money to defray the costs. It has been decided not take more than Rs. 20000 from anyone. If you are convinced about this cause, do send your cheque (for Indian Rupees) in favour of 'National Campaign for People's Right to Information.' No income-tax exemptions would be available. Receipts would certainly be sent. The cheques could be mailed to: NCPRI C 17A DDA Flats Munirka New Delhi 110 067 Thanking you and in solidarity, Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey From paul at waag.org Tue Dec 7 17:35:10 2004 From: paul at waag.org (paul keller) Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:35:10 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] EU strategy to enforce Intellectual Property Rights in third countries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3E64C1B2-4848-11D9-B343-000D93C0E134@waag.org> dear all, very interesting indeed. i find it quite interesting that in each and all the 'ranging from ... to ... ' lists in articles, memos and studies of IPR issues one always finds 'aeroplane spare parts'. to me this looks like a blunt attempt to appeal to some deep rooted human fear invoking the idea of a plane crash due to the malfunction of an inferior pirated spare part. does anybody here on this list know of an actual case (or plane crash for that matter) involving pirated aeroplane spare parts. or is this just fear mongering pretty much in line with the frequently invoked connection between piracy and terrorism? best, paul On 6 Dec, 2004, at 18:12, Lawrence Liang wrote: > > Very interesting read..... > > Lawrence > > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: EU strategy to enforce Intellectual Property Rights in third > countries > Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:21:35 -0500 > From: James Love > To: Random-bits > > This is the EU enforcement strategy for IP in "third countries." > > The Basics....... > > 1. Identifying the priority countries: EU action will focus on the most > problematic countries in terms of IPR violations. These countries will > be identified according to a regular survey to be conducted by the > Commission among all stakeholders and should be the basis for renewing > the list of priority countries for the subsequent period. > > 2. IPR mechanisms in multilateral (incl. TRIPs), bi-regional and > bilateral agreements: This would include: raising enforcement concerns > in the framework of these agreements more systematically; consulting > trading partners with the aim of launching an initiative in the WTO > TRIPs Council, sounding the alarm on the growing dimension of the > problem, identifying the causes and proposing solutions; strengthening > IPR enforcement clauses in bilateral agreements.. > > 3. Political dialogue: Making clear to trading partners that an > effective protection of IP, at least at the level set in TRIPs, is > essential; launching joint initiatives focusing on IPR enforcement with > countries sharing or affected by similar concerns; providing training > and implementing networking mechanisms for officials in EU Delegations > in third countries facing enforcement problems. > > 4. Incentives-Technical Co-operation: Ensuring that technical > assistance > provided to third countries focuses on IPR enforcement, especially in > priority countries; exchanging ideas and information with other key > providers of technical co-operation, like the World Intellectual > Property Organisation (WIPO), the US or Japan , with the aim of > avoiding > duplication of efforts and sharing of best-practices. > > 5. Dispute settlement / Sanctions: Recalling the possibility that > right-holders have to make use of the Trade Barriers Regulation in > cases > of evidence of violations of TRIPs or of bilateral agreements; making > ex > officio use of the dispute settlement mechanisms included in > multilateral and/or bilateral agreements in case of non-compliance with > the required standards of IP protection. > > 6. Creation of public-private partnerships: Supporting-participating in > local IP networks established in relevant third countries; using > mechanisms already put in place by Commission services (IPR Help Desk > and Innovation Relay Centres) to exchange information with > right-holders > and associations; building on the co-operation with companies and > associations that are very active in the fight against > piracy/counterfeiting. > > 7. Awareness raising / Drawing on our own experience: Promote the > inclusion in technical co-operation programmes and in public-private > partnership initiatives of information destined to raise public > awareness about the impact of counterfeiting (loss of foreign > investment > and technology transfer, risks to health, link with organised crime, > etc.) and raise the awareness of Community right-holders doing business > in problematic countries about the risks incurred; make available to > the > public and to the authorities of concerned third countries a “Guidebook > on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights”. > > 8. Institutional co-operation: Improving the exchange of information > and > the co-ordination between the services in charge of the different > aspects of IPR enforcement; simplifying the identification and the > access of external entities (right-holders, third country authorities, > etc.) to the service responsible for the specific issue concerning > them. > > > ..... The complete document > > > MEMO/04/255 > Brussels, 10 November 2004 > EU strategy to enforce Intellectual Property Rights in third countries > - > facts and figures > > What is the dimension of the problem? > > Between 1998 and 2002 the number of counterfeit or pirated articles > intercepted at the EU's external frontiers increased by more than 800%. > Figures published by the European Commission in November 2003 show > that > customs seized almost 85 million counterfeit or pirated articles at the > EU's external border in 2002 and 50 million in the first half of 2003. > This illicit trade is worth the equivalent of more than 2 billion euro > on the legal Community market. > > These figures only tell us what is being caught at the Community > borders. As is the case with other types of illegal traffic, seizures > by > the authorities represent only the tip of the iceberg and show us > little > about the dimension and value of the illicit goods that end up being > sold in markets and streets worldwide. > > This is why it is extremely difficult to quantify the exact values > involved in the global trade of fake goods. Some estimations point to > figures representing between 3% and 9% of the total world trade, i.e., > 120 to 370 billion euro a year. Studies carried out by the OECD in 1998 > and by the International Chamber of Commerce in 1997, estimated then > that counterfeits accounted for 5 to 7% of world trade and were > responsible for the loss of 200,000 jobs in Europe. > > Which IP rights are violated and which sectors are most affected? > One frequent misconception is that piracy and counterfeiting mainly > affect some luxury, sports and clothing brands, music and software > CDs/DVDs, and little else. The reality is that virtually every IP is > being violated on a considerable scale and that the variety of fake > products ranges from cereal boxes to plants and seeds, from aeroplane > spare parts to sunglasses, from cigarettes to medications, from AA > batteries to entire petrol stations. Big software producers are as > likely to be harmed as small makers of a certain type of tea. The > annual > statistics published by the Commission’s customs services regarding the > number and the nature of seized pirated and counterfeit goods > originating from third countries provide detailed and reliable > information about the dimension and the growth of the problem . > > Why focusing now on third countries? > The WTO Agreement of intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) establishes > for the first time a single, comprehensive, multilateral set of rules > covering all kinds of IPR. It contains also a detailed chapter setting > minimum standards of IPR enforcement to be adopted by all members of > the > WTO. > > However, despite the fact that, by now, most of the WTO members have > adopted legislation implementing such minimum standards , the levels of > piracy and counterfeiting continue to increase every year. These > activities have, in recent years, assumed industrial proportions, > because they offer considerable profit prospects with often a limited > risk for the perpetrators. > > Within the Community and at its external borders there have been a > number of important initiatives in the last 10 years. In 1994 the EU > adopted the Customs Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 3295/94), allowing > border control of imports of fake goods. Later, in 1998, the Commission > issued its Green Paper on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy in the > Single Market. As a result of responses to the Green Paper, the > Commission presented an Action Plan, on 30 November 2000. This Action > Plan has been translated into a Directive published last April, > harmonising the enforcement of intellectual property rights within the > Community, a Regulation improving the mechanisms for customs action > against counterfeit or pirated goods set by the previous Customs > Regulation, the extension of Europol’s powers to cover piracy and > counterfeiting, etc. > > The situation is, however, different outside the borders of the > Community. The internal instruments available to Community > right-holders > in the case of violations of their rights within the Community or in > the > case of imports of fake goods into the EU are not usable when these > violations occur in third countries and the resulting goods are either > consumed domestically or exported to other third countries. Although > such violations occur outside, they directly affect Community > right-holders. Hence the need for an Enforcement Strategy focussing on > third countries. > > Why should developing countries concentrate their limited resources in > areas like justice, police or customs on the fight against the sale of > copies of goods and brands belonging to right-holders from rich and > developed countries? > > The trade of fake goods is no longer limited to cheap copies of luxury > brands and recordings of music and films consumed mostly by tourists > looking for a bargain souvenir. Nowadays, almost every conceivable > product is being illegally copied: from food to pharmaceuticals, from > toys to car and plane parts, from toasters to mineral water. The risks > to public health and consumer safety incurred by frequently unaware > purchasers are obvious. Consumers in the poorest countries are > particularly exposed to sales of these dangerous products. > > Another reason why every country, rich or poor, should be concerned has > to do with the undeniable role played by organised crime networks in > the > spread of piracy and counterfeiting. Until this activity is no longer > seen as a low risk / high profit type of crime, it will continue to > spread and to put in the hands of criminal organisations entire sectors > of the economy. It is therefore also a question of public order, > security and good governance. > > Effective enforcement of IP rights is also essential to attract foreign > investment, transfer of technology and know-how, as well as to protect > the local right-holders in developing countries. > > It is also an indicator of international credibility and respect of the > rule of law. Finally, in the mid-to-long term, it will encourage more > domestic authors, inventors and investors and contribute to the > development of these countries. > > Why does the Commission target the problem in third countries when > pirated and counterfeited goods are so easily available within the EU? > Generally speaking, the Community and its Member States are > acknowledged > for protecting and enforcing IPR according to very high standards. In > practical terms, reports like the one published annually by the > European > Commission give a clear idea of the results achieved by each Member > State in terms of seizures of fake goods at the borders. This has > already led to an increase of more than 800% in the volume of such > confiscations between 1998 and 2002 (from 10 million to more than 85 > million articles). > > The recently approved Directive harmonising the enforcement of > intellectual property rights within the Community will not only help to > improve the situation, but it also constitutes an example to third > countries of measures that proved effective in some Member States and > that are now being extended to the entire Community. > The challenge is now to ensure that enforcement takes place beyond the > EU borders, in third countries. > > What is in the Enforcement Strategy? > > The Enforcement Strategy is a Communication of the Commission > determining the priorities and optimising the use of resources in order > to obtain the most effective results in terms of IPR enforcement in > third countries. > > The actions in detail: > > 1. Identifying the priority countries: EU action will focus on the most > problematic countries in terms of IPR violations. These countries will > be identified according to a regular survey to be conducted by the > Commission among all stakeholders and should be the basis for renewing > the list of priority countries for the subsequent period. > > 2. IPR mechanisms in multilateral (incl. TRIPs), bi-regional and > bilateral agreements: This would include: raising enforcement concerns > in the framework of these agreements more systematically; consulting > trading partners with the aim of launching an initiative in the WTO > TRIPs Council, sounding the alarm on the growing dimension of the > problem, identifying the causes and proposing solutions; strengthening > IPR enforcement clauses in bilateral agreements.. > > 3. Political dialogue: Making clear to trading partners that an > effective protection of IP, at least at the level set in TRIPs, is > essential; launching joint initiatives focusing on IPR enforcement with > countries sharing or affected by similar concerns; providing training > and implementing networking mechanisms for officials in EU Delegations > in third countries facing enforcement problems. > > 4. Incentives-Technical Co-operation: Ensuring that technical > assistance > provided to third countries focuses on IPR enforcement, especially in > priority countries; exchanging ideas and information with other key > providers of technical co-operation, like the World Intellectual > Property Organisation (WIPO), the US or Japan , with the aim of > avoiding > duplication of efforts and sharing of best-practices. > > 5. Dispute settlement / Sanctions: Recalling the possibility that > right-holders have to make use of the Trade Barriers Regulation in > cases > of evidence of violations of TRIPs or of bilateral agreements; making > ex > officio use of the dispute settlement mechanisms included in > multilateral and/or bilateral agreements in case of non-compliance with > the required standards of IP protection. > > 6. Creation of public-private partnerships: Supporting-participating in > local IP networks established in relevant third countries; using > mechanisms already put in place by Commission services (IPR Help Desk > and Innovation Relay Centres) to exchange information with > right-holders > and associations; building on the co-operation with companies and > associations that are very active in the fight against > piracy/counterfeiting. > > 7. Awareness raising / Drawing on our own experience: Promote the > inclusion in technical co-operation programmes and in public-private > partnership initiatives of information destined to raise public > awareness about the impact of counterfeiting (loss of foreign > investment > and technology transfer, risks to health, link with organised crime, > etc.) and raise the awareness of Community right-holders doing business > in problematic countries about the risks incurred; make available to > the > public and to the authorities of concerned third countries a “Guidebook > on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights”. > > 8. Institutional co-operation: Improving the exchange of information > and > the co-ordination between the services in charge of the different > aspects of IPR enforcement; simplifying the identification and the > access of external entities (right-holders, third country authorities, > etc.) to the service responsible for the specific issue concerning > them. > > Is this an attempt to impose on poor countries additional TRIPs plus, > one-size-fits-all mechanisms of IP enforcement? Is this an attempt by > developed countries to gang up against developing countries? > No and no. The strategy paper does not impose any additional, TRIPs > plus > obligations on any developing country. It is just focused on > enforcement > of existing rules. > > We are not trying to gang up with or to copy other countries that may > share our concerns. We believe however that we can create synergies and > rationalise our efforts in areas like technical assistance with > partners > that also believe in the use of such mechanisms to improve the > situation. > > On the other hand, we don’t believe in pre-formatted solutions. It will > be necessary to have a flexible approach that takes into account the > different needs, the level of development, the membership or not of > World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the main problems in terms of IPR > (country of production, transit or consumption of fake goods) of the > country with whom we are talking. We believe that any proposed > solutions > will only be effective if they are prioritised and indeed felt as > important in the recipient country. > > Which are the most problematic countries? > In July 2003, the European Commission issued the results of a survey on > enforcement issues in the area of intellectual property rights , aimed > at assessing in a detailed manner the situation in third countries. > The countries considered then as most problematic according to the > results of the survey were China, Thailand, Ukraine, Russia, Indonesia, > Brazil, Turkey and South Korea. Respondents considered these as the > main > countries where production of pirated and counterfeit goods, both for > domestic consumption and for export, reached worrying dimensions. > Results of the survey in detail: > > - China: In the area of copyright, there is widespread piracy in all > formats (CDs, VCDs, cassettes, DVDs). There are also extensive illegal > digital downloads and distribution of films, music and software. > Regarding trademarks, estimates that around 15 20% of all brand > products > sold in China are fakes, and that the portion has risen significantly > in > recent years. Information was received regarding fake clothes, > footwear, > leather goods, watches, toys, cigarettes, pharmaceutical products, car > parts and entire cars, electronic devices, lighting products, small > electrical appliances (hairdryers, irons, kettles), semiconductors, > large industrial machines, lubricants and even entire petrol stations. > In the area of patents, there are reports of infringements on > pharmaceutical products, electrical domestic appliances, industrial > machinery, etc. > > - Thailand: Copyright - generalised piracy of music, movie, business > and > game software in CD, DVD and VCD format. Trademarks - There is an > important counterfeiting problem in this country, regarding well know > brands of cloths manufacturers. > > - Ukraine: Copyright - Production and dissemination of audio-visual > products, in particular CD’s and copying and dissemination of > unlicensed > software are most acute. About 95% of software in Ukrainian computers > are estimated to be illegally installed. Trademarks - Clothes, alcohol, > cigarettes, fertilizers, agrochemicals and increasingly foodstuffs. The > violations in this area ranged from the illegal use of trademark or > mixing it in a misleading way with a proper trademark, to the illegal > use of a company name, to the divulging of commercial secrets. Patents > - > Pharmaceuticals. > > - Russia: There is a high level of music piracy (more than 60% of the > market in 2002). The same situation is witnessed by other copyright > related industries (e.g. video and film, software industries). Internet > based piracy is also extensive. There is also a significant level of > counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals, (accounting for around 12% of the > Russian pharmaceutical market), counterfeits of drinks, food, and other > fast moving consumer goods products etc. > > - Brasil: Copyright piracy: during 2001, the legitimate industry > reported losses of over 300 million €, caused mainly by the growth of > piracy. This figure represents 55% of the recorded music in Brazil. > During the same period, the software industry lost around € 300 million > which represents 58% of the computer software programs sold. Trademark > counterfeiting, notably clothing, sport items, toys, perfumes, tobacco, > etc. (€ 150 million in 2001). The legitimate clothing industry loses > 1.5 million € per year due to counterfeiting. > > - Turkey: Copyright - Piracy (cassettes and CDs) is the main area of > violation in the music industry. Piracy in Turkey is estimated between > 50 and 75% of the market, with the higher figure reflecting piracy of > international repertoire. Trademarks - Extensive and systematic > counterfeiting of trademarks on clothes, footwear, leather goods, > apparel, car parts and others.. > > - South Korea: Trademarks and designs - counterfeiting of high value > luxury consumer goods, estimations that Korea was in 2002 the third > producer of counterfeit goods in the world. Copyrights - Music piracy > in > all format, CDs, VCDs, cassettes and illegal digital downloads and > distribution. Industrial design -There are also reports of > counterfeiting of designs in sports equipment (mainly footwear) > > - Indonesia: Trade marks and industrial design: Extensive > counterfeiting > of apparel and of automotive products. But also copyright violations of > music, films and software. > > -- > James Love, Director, CPTech, http://www.cptech.org > > Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC > PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA > Tel.: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176 > > Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva > 1 Route des Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland > Tel: +41 22 791 6727 > > Mobile +1.202.361.3040 > james.love at cptech.org > > > > > -- > James Love, Director, CPTech, http://www.cptech.org > > Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC > PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA > Tel.: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176 > > Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva > 1 Route des Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland > Tel: +41 22 791 6727 > > Mobile +1.202.361.3040 > james.love at cptech.org > _______________________________________________ > Ip-health mailing list > Ip-health at lists.essential.org > http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/ip-health > > ------ End of Forwarded Message > > > _______________________________________________ > commons-law mailing list > commons-law at sarai.net > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law From aidslaw at bom5.vsnl.net.in Wed Dec 8 14:25:41 2004 From: aidslaw at bom5.vsnl.net.in (lawyers) Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 14:25:41 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Act Up-Paris Protest on Patent Bill 2004 Message-ID: <023601c4dd03$b24f5340$0e00a8c0@lawyers> Act Up-Paris Press release - Monday December 6 Global access to medicines is threatened The Indian government must postpone amending its patent law Today December 6 2004, French aids activist group Act Up-Paris demonstrated in front of the Indian consulate in Paris to protest against Indian Industry Minister Mr Kamal Nath, whose recent policies are threatening global access to generic medicines. Photographs are available on www.actupparis.org Minister Nath has announced a revision of the Indian Patents Act aiming at putting India in compliance with its WTO obligations. But Mr Nath, giving in to pressure from Washington and Western pharmaceutical companies, is proposing amendments which, if enacted, will block the manufacture and export of cheap generic drugs to AIDS-ridden countries in Africa and Asia . Starting January 1st, the WTO expects India to grant patent monopolies on medicines to international drug companies. But India plays a unique role in global access to medicines. According to WHO, India is the world's chief exporter of cheap generic drugs - primarily to poor nations in Africa and Asia that have no pharmaceutical capability of their own. Due to the WTO patent process, several generics have already had to be withdrawn from Indian pharmacies, such as the generic version of anti-cancer blockbuster Gleevec, which the patent owner is selling at 57 000 dollars. Early next year, the top-selling HIV drug Combivir is expected to undergo patent protection too, even though UN agencies estimates that up to 30% of African AIDS patients receiving treatment now are using one of the Indian generics of Combivir, such as Cipla's Duovir or Ranbaxy's Avocom. In this context, the survival of millions of indigent people with HIV rests on India's continued ability to make and export cheap generic versions of new, effective HIV treatments. In 2001, the WTO recognized developing countries's right to circumvent drug patents through a mechanism known as « compulsory licensing ». Yet Minister Nath intends to rig India's compulsory licensing system with unlimited injunctive relief appeals that the WTO doesn't mandate, and that the drug companies have used to stifle the issuance of any license. The activists from Affordable Medicines Treatment Campaign in India, as well as Health GAP in the US and Act Up in France, demand that Mr Nath implement a strictly enforceable deadline of one to three months for the review of a compulsory license request, as well as the withdrawal of injunctive relief in drug company's rights of appeal. Activists also stress that nothing is forcing India to amend its patent law in haste : most other developing countries have managed to exceed the deadlines set by WTO for complying with its patent norms. Tomorrow Tuesday December 7, Affordable Medicines Treatment Campaign organizes a march on Parliament in Delhi to request its amendments be passed. Pictures are on the web site http://www.actupparis.org/portfolio2.php?id_document=1510 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041208/cfdd4b8b/attachment.html From aidslaw at bom5.vsnl.net.in Wed Dec 8 15:49:28 2004 From: aidslaw at bom5.vsnl.net.in (lawyers) Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 15:49:28 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Protest against new Patents Bill in new Delhi Message-ID: <02a801c4dd0f$66b36fa0$0e00a8c0@lawyers> Protest against new Patents Bill The Hindu , By Our Staff Reporter NEW DELHI, DEC. 7. A people's meeting and protest march were held here today against the Patent Amendment Bill, expected to be tabled in Parliament by the Government during the ongoing winter session. The meeting was organised jointly by the Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign, the National Working Group on Patent Laws and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. According to experts, the Patents Bill in its present form seriously compromises on the "accessibility and availability of medicines,'' the two important components of the right to health. Public interest groups working on health issues claimed that they were concerned that India, through the Third Patent Amendment Bill, would trade away its rights to protect the public health of people who need access to low-cost and quality-generic medicines. They added that the introduction of a product patent regime would reduce accessibility to new drugs. Till now India provided for only process patents in the case of medicines. In the case of a process patent, protection is only for the process and method of manufacture and not for the product. Therefore a process patent does not prevent third parties from manufacturing the product through another process. But in the case of product patents, only the patent owner or the agent authorised by him through a licence can produce the patented medicine. Extended scope "The Bill proposes to extend the scope of patentability to new use of known medicines and to do away with pre-grant opposition procedure. What we are demanding is that the product patent should be given only to new chemical entities and not to new use and dosage forms. This will limit the number of patent-protected drugs. Also, pre-grant opposition is absolutely essential for blocking trivial patents as it gives an opportunity to interested parties, including civil society, to be heard before granting a monopoly,'' claimed Anand Grover of the Affordable Medicine and Treatment Campaign. Protesters also state that the Bill has not properly incorporated the August 30 decision of the TRIPS General Council which permits the grant of compulsory licences for export purpose to countries with no or insufficient manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical sector. More importantly, protesters claim, the people at large, as an affected party, have a right to be consulted and heard. Unfortunately, the Government views patents as a trade issue between Indian and foreign drug companies and not as a health issue concerning the public."Since the product patent regime will have serious and adverse ramifications for the public interest and security of the country, the Government should consult public interest groups and individuals on the ways and means to ensure accessibility and availability of medicines,'' claimed a protester. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20041208/ac5a1218/attachment.html From prashant at nalsartech.org Fri Dec 10 10:31:51 2004 From: prashant at nalsartech.org (prashant at nalsartech.org) Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 10:31:51 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Guatemalan Congress Repeals Law That Restricted Access to Medicines Message-ID: <1102654911.41b92dbf29856@www.nalsartech.org> Hi, I know this is far from home, but I still think it's important to keep a track of these trends. Regards, Prashant http://www.accessmed-msf.org/prod/publications.asp?scntid=261120041559437&contenttype=PARA& Guatemalan Congress Repeals Law That Restricted Access to Medicines 26 November, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSF warns that this step forward could be reversed by similar provisions in the recently signed United States-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) Geneva/Guatemala City, November 26, 2004: The Guatemalan Congress’s repeal of a law that severely restricts people’s access to affordable essential medicines is a positive step forward. The international humanitarian medical aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today that the government of Guatemala should now take advantage of this decision to ensure treatment for greater numbers of Guatemalans living with HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases. But MSF also warned that this step forward could be undermined and reversed by similar provisions included in the recently signed United States-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). In 2003, the Guatemalan government modified its national intellectual property law with Decree 9-2003, which provided five years of “data exclusivity” on drugs registered for use in the country. This provision created an automatic five-year delay in the availability of generic medicines regardless of their patent status in a country. For the nearly 70,000 Guatemalans currently living with HIV/AIDS – 7000 of whom are in urgent clinical need of such treatment – five years without affordable generic medicines could be a death sentence. Presently, only 2700 Guatemalans with HIV receive antiretroviral treatment. “A lot of people throughout Guatemalan society succeeded in pressuring their government to overturn a law that undermined public health,” said Pere-Joan Pons, spokesperson for MSF’s mission in Guatemala. “Now, the Ministry of Health will need to act to urgently expand access for all the Guatemalans who would otherwise die without treatment.” However, MSF warned that CAFTA includes “data exclusivity” and other restrictive intellectual property measures and extends them throughout the entire Central American region. This will further prevent Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua from taking advantage of flexibilities found in the existing World Trade Organization agreement and block generic competition – the only proven mechanism for achieving sustained and systematic price reductions. “We can’t stop at the repeal of the Guatemalan law which blocked patients from receiving life-saving medicines. Repealing Decree 9-2003 will have little meaning if this and other intellectual property restrictions are implemented through CAFTA,” said Ellen ‘t Hoen, the director of policy advocacy for MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. From monica at sarai.net Fri Dec 10 11:14:11 2004 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 11:14:11 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] X Notes on Practice Message-ID: Dear all Here is an essay we wrote a few months ago, meant to be published in: Immaterial Labour: Work, Research & Art, ed. Marina Vishmidt, Melanie Gilligan, Black Dog Publishing, London/New York, 2004. This is our day for sending in our essays, so there is another one next which extends some of the ideas raised in this . best Monica/Shuddha/Jeebesh ---------------------- X notes on Practice Stubborn Structures and Insistent Seepage in a Networked World Raqs Media Collective I The Figure of the Artisan The artisan stands at the outer threshold of early modernity, fashioning a new age, ushering in a new spirit with movable type, plumb line, chisel, paper, new inks, dyes and lenses, and a sensibility that has room for curiosity, exploration, co-operation, elegance, economy, utility and a respect for the labour of the hand, the eye and the mind. The artisan is the typesetter, seamstress, block-maker, carpenter, weaver, computer, oculist, scribe, baker, dyer, pharmacist, mason, midwife, mechanic and cook - the ancestor of every modern trade. The artisan gestures towards a new age but is not quite sure of a place in it. The figure of the artisan anticipates both the worker and the artist, in that it lays the foundations of the transformation of occupations (things that occupy us) into professions (institutionalized, structural locations within an economy). It mediates the transfiguration of people into skills, of lives into working lives, into variable capital. The artisan is the vehicle that carried us all into the contemporary world. She is the patient midwife of our notion of an autonomous creative and reflective self, waiting out the still births, nursing the prematurely born, weighing the infant and cutting the cords that tie it to an older patrimony. The artisan makes us who we are. Yet, the artisan has neither the anonymity of the worker drone, not the hyper-individuated solipsism of the artist genius. The artisan is neither faceless, nor a celebrity; she belongs neither in the factory, nor in the salon, but functions best in the atelier, the workshop and the street, with apprentices and other artisans, making and trading things and knowledge. The artisan fashions neither the mass produced inventories of warehouses, nor the precious, unique objects that must only be seen in galleries, museums and auction houses. The objects and services that pass through her hands into the world are neither ubiquitous nor rare, nor do they seek value in ubiquity or rarity. They trade on the basis of their usage, within densely networked communities that the artisan is party to, not on the impetus of rival global speculations based on the volumes and volatility of stocks, or the price of a signature. As warehouses and auction houses proliferate, squeezing out the atelier and the workshop, the artisan loses her way. At the margins of an early industrial capitalism, the artisan seemingly transacts herself out of history, making way for the drone and the genius, for the polarities of drudgery and creativity, work and art. II. Immaterial Labour Due to the emergence of a new economy of intellectual property based on the fruits of immaterial labour, the distinction between the roles of the worker and the artist in strictly functional terms is once again becoming difficult to sustain. To understand why this is so we need to take a cursory look at the new ways in which value is increasingly being produced in the world today. The combination of widespread cybernetic processes, increased economies of scale, agile management practices that adjust production to demand, and inventory status reports in a dispersed global assembly line, has made the mere manufacture of things a truly global fact. Cars, shoes, clothes, and medicines, or any commodity for that matter, are produced by more or less the same processes, anywhere. The manufacture of components, the research and design process, the final assembly and the marketing infrastructure no longer need to be circumscribed within one factory, or even one nation state or regional economic entity. The networked nature of contemporary industrial production frees the finished good from a fidelity to any one location. This also results in a corollary condition - a multiplication of renditions, or editions, (both authorized as well as counterfeit) of any product line at a global scale. Often, originals and their imitations are made in the same out-sourced sweatshop. The more things multiply, the more they tend towards similarity, in form and appearance, if not in function. Thus, when capital becomes more successful than ever before at fashioning the material surface of the world after its own image, it also has more need than ever before for a sense of variety, a classificatory engine that could help order the mass that it generates, so that things do not cancel each other out by their generative equivalence. Hence the more things become the same the more need there is for distinguishing signs, to enable their purchase. The importance given to the notions of 'brand equity' from which we get derivatives from which we get derivatives like 'brand velocity', 'brand loyalty' and a host of other usages are prefixed by the term 'brand' indicative of this reality. Today, the value of a good lies not only in what makes it a thing desirable enough to consume as a perishable capsule of (deferred) satisfaction. The value of a good lies especially in that aspect of it which makes it imperishable, eternally reproducible, and ubiquitously available. Information, which distils the imperishable, the reproducible, the ubiquitous in a condensed set of signs, is the true capital of this age. A commodity is no longer only an object that can be bought and sold; it is also that thing in it which can be read, interpreted and deciphered in such a way that every instance of decryption or encryption can also be bought and sold. Money lies in the meaning that lies hidden in a good. A good to eat must also be a good to think with, or to experiment with in a laboratory. This encryption of value, the codification and concentration of capital to its densest and most agile form is what we understand to be intellectual property. How valuable is intellectual property? How valuable is intellectual property? In attempting to find an answer to a question such as this, it is always instructive to look at the knowledge base that capitalism produces to assess and understand itself. In a recent paper titled "Evaluating IP Rights: In Search of Brand Value in the New Economy" a brand management consultant, Tony Samuel of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Intellectual Asset Management Group says: "This change in the nature of competition and the dynamics of the new world economy have resulted in a change in the key value drivers for a company from tangible assets (such as plant and machinery) to intangible assets (such as brands, patents, copyright and know how). In particular, companies have taken advantage of more open trade opportunities by using the competitive advantage provided by brands and technology to access distant markets. This is reflected in the growth in the ratio of market-capitalised value to book value of listed companies. In the US, this ratio has increased from 1:1 to 5:1 over the last twenty years. In the UK, the ratio is similar, with less than 30% of the capitalised value of FTSE 350 companies appearing on the balance sheet. We would argue that the remaining 70% of unallocated value resides largely in intellectual property and certainly in intellectual assets. Noticeably, the sectors with the highest ratio of market capitalisation to book value are heavily reliant on copyright (such as the media sector), patents (such as technology and pharmaceutical) and brands (such as pharmaceutical, food and drink, media and financial services)."1 The paper goes on to quote Alan Shepard, sometime chairman of Grand Metropolitan plc, an international group specializing in branded food, drinks and retailing which merged with Guinness in 1997 to form Diageo, a corporation which today controls brands as diverse as Smirnoff and Burger King. "Brands are the core of our business. We could, if we so wished, subcontract all of the production, distribution, sales and service functions and, provided that we retained ownership of our brands, we would continue to be successful and profitable. It is our brands that provide the profits of today and guarantee the profits of the future." We have considered brands here at some length, because of the way in which brands populate our visual landscape. Were a born again landscape painter to try and represent a stretch of urban landscape, it would be advisable for him or her to have privileged access to a smart intellectual property lawyer. But what is true of brands is equally true of other forms of intangible assets, or intellectual property, ranging from music, to images to software. The legal regime of intellectual property is in the process of encompassing as much as possible of all cultural transactions and production processes. All efforts to create or even understand art will have to come to terms, sooner or later, with the implications of this pervasive control, and intellectual property attorneys will no doubt exert considerable 'curatorial' influence as art events, museums and galleries clear artists projects, proposals and acquisitions as a matter of routine. These 'attorney-curators' will no doubt ensure that art institutions and events do not become liable for possible and potential 'intellectual property violations' that the artist, curator, theorist, writer or practitioner may or may not be aware of as being inscribed into their work. III The Worker as Artist What are the implications of this scenario? The worker of the twenty first century, who has to survive in a marker that places the utmost value on the making of signs, finds that her tools, her labour, her skills are all to do with varying degrees of creative, interpretative and performative agency. She makes brands shine, she sculpts data, she mines meaning, she hews code. The real global factory is a network of neural processes, no less material than the blast furnaces and chimneys of manufacturing and industrial capitalism. The worker of the twenty first century is also a performer, a creator of value from meaning. She creates, researches and interprets, in the ordinary course of a working day to the order that would merit her being considered an artist or a researcher, if by 'artist' or 'researcher' we understand a person to be a figure who creates meaning or produces knowledge. Nothing illustrates this better than the condition of workers in Information technology enabled industries like Call Centre and Remote Data Outsourcing, which have paved the way for a new international matrix of labour, and a given a sudden performative twist to the realities of what is called Globalization. In a recent installation, called A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location)2, we looked at the performative dimension in the lives of call centre workers. The Call Centre Worker and her world3 A call centre worker in the suburb of Delhi, the city where we live, performs a Californian accent as she pursues a loan defaulter in a poor Los Angeles neighbourhood on the telephone. She threatens and cajoles him. She scares him, gets underneath his skin, because she is scared that he won't agree to pay, and that this will translate as a cut in her salary. Latitudes away from him, she has a window open on her computer telling her about the weather in his backyard, his credit history, his employment record, his prison record. Her skin is darker than his, but her voice is trained to be whiter on the phone. Her night is his day. She is a remote agent with a talent for impersonation in the IT enabled industry in India. She never gets paid extra for the long hours she puts in. He was laid off a few months ago, and hasn't been able to sort himself out. Which is why she is calling him for the company she works for. He lives in a third world neighbourhood in a first world city, she works in a free trade zone in a third world country. Neither knows the other as anything other than as 'case' and 'agent'. The conversation between them is a denial of their realities and an assertion of many identities, each with their truths, all at once. Central to this kind of work is a process of imagining, understanding and invoking a world, mimesis, projection and verisimilitude as well as the skilful deployment of a combination of reality and representation. Elsewhere, we have written of the critical necessity of this artifice to work, (in terms of creating an impression of proximity that elides the actuality of distance) in order for a networked global capitalism to sustain itself on an everyday basis, but here, what we would like to emphasize is the crucial role that a certain amount of 'imaginative' skill, and a combination of knowledge, command over language, articulateness, technological dexterity and performativity plays in making this form of labour productive and efficient on a global scale. IV. Marginalia Sometimes, the most significant heuristic openings are hidden away on the margins of the contemporary world. While the meta-narratives of war, globalization, disasters, pandemics and technological spectacles grab headlines, the world may be changing in significant but unrecognized directions at the margins, like an incipient glacier inching its way across a forsaken moraine. These realities may have to with the simple facts of people being on the move, of the improvised mechanisms of survival that suddenly open out new possibilities, and the ways in which a few basic facts and conceptions to do with the everyday acts of coping with the world pass between continents. Here, margin is not so much a fact of location (as in something peripheral to an assumed centre) as it is a figure denoting a specific kind or degree of attentiveness. In this sense, a figure may be located at the very core of the reality that we are talking about, and still be marginal, because it does not cross a certain low-visibility, low-attention threshold, or because it is seen as being residual to the primary processes of reality. The call centre worker may be at the heart of the present global economy, but she is barely visible as an actor or an agent. In this sense, to be marginal is not necessary to be 'far from the action' or to be 'remote' or in any way distant from the very hub of the world as we find it today. The Margin has its own image-field. And it is to this image-field that we turn to excavate or improvise a few resources for practice. A minor artisanal specialization pertaining to medieval manuscript illumination was the drawing and inscription of what has been called "marginalia"4. "Marginalists" (generally apprentices to scribes) would inscribe figures, often illustrating profane wisdom, popular proverbs, burlesque figures and fantastical or allegorical allusions that occasionally constructed a counter-narrative to the main body of the master text, while often acting as what was known as "exempla": aids to conception and thought (and sometimes as inadvertent provocations for heretic meditations). It is here, in these marginal illuminations, that ordinary people - ploughmen, peasants, beggars, prostitutes and thieves would often make their appearances, constructing a parallel universe to that populated by kings, aristocrats, heroes, monsters, angels, prophets and divines. Much of our knowledge of what people looked like in the medieval world comes from the details that we find in manuscript marginalia. They index the real, even as they inscribe the nominally invisible. It would be interesting to think for instance of the incredible wealth of details of dress, attitude, social types and behaviours that we find in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, or Pierre Breughel as marginalia writ large. It is with some fidelity to this artisanal ideal of using marginalia as exemplars that we would like to offer a small gallery of contemporary marginal figures. V. Five Figures to Consider As significant annotations to the text of present realities, and as ways out for the dilemmas that we have faced in our own apprehensions of the world, we find ourselves coming back repeatedly to them in our practice - as images, as datums and as figures of thought, as somewhat profane icons for meditation. We feel that these figures, each in their own way, speak to the predicament of the contemporary practitioner. Figure One: The Alien Navigates a Boat at Sea A boat changes course at sea, dipping temporarily out of the radar of a nearby coast guard vessel. A cargo of contraband people in the hold, fleeing war, or the aftermath of war, or the fifth bad harvest in a row, or a dam that flooded their valley, or the absence of social security in the face of unemployment, or a government that suddenly took offence at the way they spelt their names - study the contours of an unknown coastline in their minds, experiment with the pronunciations of harbour names unfamiliar to their tongues. Their map of the world is contoured with safe havens and dangerous border posts, places for landing, transit and refuge, anywhere and everywhere, encircled and annotated in blue ink. A geography lesson learnt in the International University of Exile. Figure Two: The Squatter builds a Tarpaulin Shelter Tarpaulin, rope, a few large plastic drums, crates, long poles of seasoned bamboo, and quick eyes and skilled hands, create a new home. A migrant claims a patch of fallow land, marked "property of the state" in the city. Then comes the tough part: the search for papers, the guerrilla war with the Master Plan for a little bit of electricity, a little bit of water, a delay in the date of demolition, for a few scraps of legality, a few loose threads of citizenship. The learning of a new accent, the taking on of a new name, the invention of one or several new histories that might get one a ration card, or a postponed eviction notice. The squat grows incrementally, in Rio de Janeiro, in Delhi, in Baghdad, creating a shadow global republic of not-quite citizens, with not-yet passports, and not-there addresses. Figure Three: The Electronic Pirate burns a CD A fifteen square-yard shack in a working-class suburb of northeast Delhi is a hub of the global entertainment industry. Here, a few assembled computers, a knock-down Korean CD writer, and some Chinese pirated software in the hands of a few formerly unemployed, or unemployable young people turned media entrepreneurs, transform the latest Hollywood, or Bollywood blockbuster into the stuff that you can watch in a tea shop on your way to work. Here, the media meets its extended public. It dies a quick death as one high-end commodity form, and is resurrected as another. And then, like the Holy Spirit, does not charge an exorbitant fee to deliver a little grace unto those who seek its fleeting favours. Electronic piracy is the flow of energy between chained product and liberated pixel that makes for a new communion, a samizdat of the song and dance spectacular. Figure Four: The Hacker Network liberates Software A community of programmers dispersed across the globe sustains a growing body of software and knowledge - a digital commons that is not fenced in by proprietary controls. A network of hackers, armed with nothing other than their phone lines, modems, internet accounts and personal computers inaugurate a quiet global insubordination by refusing to let code, music, texts, math and images be anything but freely available for download, transformation and distribution. The freedom is nurtured through the sharing of time, computing resources and knowledge in a way that works out to the advantage of those working to create the software, as well as to a larger public, that begins swapping music and sharing media files to an extent that makes large infotainment corporations look nervously at their balance sheets. The corporations throw their lawyers at the hackers, and the Intellectual Property Shock Troops are out on parade, but nothing can turn the steady erosion of the copyright. Figure Five: Workers Protect Machines in an Occupied Factory Seamstresses at the Brukman Garment Factory in Buenos Aires5 shield their machines against a crowd of policemen intent on smashing them. The power of the Argentine state provokes a perverse neo Luddite incident, in which the workers are attacked while they try to defend their machines from destruction. The Brukman Factory is a "fabrica ocupada", a factory occupied by its workers, one of many that have sustained a new parallel social and economic structure based on self regulation and the free exchange of goods and services outside or tangential to the failed money economy - a regular feature of the way in which working people in Argentina cope with the ongoing economic crisis. Turning the rhetoric and tactics of working class protest on its head, the seamstresses of the Brukman factory fight not to withdraw their labour from the circuit of production, but to protect what they produce, and to defend their capacity to be producers, albeit outside the circuit desired by capital. VI. Significant Transgressions These five transgressors, a pentacle of marginalia, can help us to think about what the practitioner might need to understand if she wants to recuperate a sense of agency. In very simple terms, she would need to take a lesson in breaking borders and moving on from the migrant, in standing her ground and staying located from the squatter, in placing herself as a link in an agile network of reproduction, distribution and exchange from the pirate, in sharing knowledge and enlarging a commons of ideas from the hacker, and in continuing to be autonomously productive from the workers occupying the factory. The first imperative, that of crossing borders, translates as scepticism of the rhetoric of bounded identities, and relates to the role of the practitioner as a 'journeyman', as the peripatetic who maps an alternative world by her journey through it. The second, of building a shelter against the odds of the law, insists however on a practice that is located in space, and rooted in experience, that houses itself in a concrete 'somewhere' on its own terms, not of the powers that govern spaces. It is this fragile insistence on provisional stability, which allows for journeys to be made to and from destinations, and for the mapping of routes with resting places in between. The third imperative, that of creating a fertile network of reproduction of cultural materials, is a recognition of the strength of ubiquity, or spreading ideas and information like a virus through a system. The fourth imperative, of insisting on the freedom of knowledge from proprietary control, is a statement about the purpose of production - to ensure greater pleasure and understanding without creating divisions based on property, and is tied in to the fifth imperative - a commitment to keep producing with autonomy and dignity. Taken together, these five exempla constitute an ethic of radical alterity to prevailing norms without being burdened by the rhetorical overload that a term like 'resistance' invariably seems to carry. They also map a different reality of 'globalization' - not the incessant, rapacious, expansion of capitalism, but the equally incessant imperative that makes people move across the lines that they are supposed to be circumscribed by, and enact the everyday acts of insubordination that have become necessary for their survival. It is important to look at this subaltern globalization from below, which is taking place everywhere, and which is perhaps far less understood than the age-old expansionist drive of capitalism, which is what the term 'globalization' is now generally used to refer to. It embodies different wills to globality and a plethora of global imaginaries that are often at cross-purposes with the dominant rhetoric of corporate globalization. The illegal emigrant, the urban encroacher, electronic pirate, the hacker and the seamstresses of the Brukman Factory of Buenos Aires are not really the most glamorous images of embodied resistance. They act, if anything, out of a calculus of survival and self-interest that has little to do with a desire to 'resist' or transform the world. And yet, in their own way, they unsettle, undermine and destabilize the established structures of borders and boundaries, metropolitan master plans and the apparatus of intellectual property relations and a mechanism of production that robs the producer of agency. If we examine the architecture of the contemporary moment, and the figures that we have described, it does not take long to see five giant, important pillars: (5)The consolidation, redrawing and protection of boundaries (6)The grand projects of urban planning and renewal and (7)The desire to protect information as the last great resource left for capitalism to mine - which is what Intellectual Property is all about, (8)Control over the production of knowledge and culture and (9)The denial of agency to the producer. Illegal emigration, urban encroachment, the assault on intellectual property regimes by any means, hacking and the occupation of sites of production by producers, each of which involve the accumulation of the acts of millions of people across the world on a daily, unorganized and voluntary basis, often at great risk to themselves, are the underbelly of this present reality. But how might we begin to consider and understand the global figures of the alien, the encroacher, the pirate, the hacker and the worker defending her machine? VII. Capital and its Residue The first thing to consider is the fact that most of these acts of transgression are inscribed into the very heart of established structures by people located at the extreme margins. The marginality of some of these figures is a function of their status as the 'residue' of the global capitalist juggernaut. By 'residue', we mean those elements of the world that are engulfed by the processes of Capital, turned into 'waste' or 'leftovers', left behind, even thrown away. Capital transforms older forms of labour and ways of life into those that are either useful for it at present, or those that have no function and so must be made redundant. Thus you have the paradox of a new factory, which instead of creating new jobs often renders the people who live around 'unemployable'; A new dam, that instead of providing irrigation, renders a million displaced, a new highway that destroys common paths, making movement more, not less difficult for the people and the communities it cuts through. On the other hand sometimes, like a sportsman with an injury who no longer has a place on the team, a factory that closes down ensures that the place it was located in ceases to be a destination. And so, the workers have to ensure that it stays open, and working in order for them to have a place under the sun. What happens to the people in the places that fall off the map? Where do they go? They are forced, of course, to go in search of the map that has abandoned them. But when they leave everything behind and venture into a new life they do not do so entirely alone. They go with the networked histories of other voyages and transgressions, and are able at any point to deploy the insistent, ubiquitous insider knowledge of today's networked world. Seepage in the Network How does this network act, and how does it make itself known in our consciousness? We like to think about this in terms of Seepage. By seepage, we mean the action of many currents of fluid material leaching on to a stable structure, entering and spreading through it by way of pores. Until, it becomes a part of the structure, both in terms of its surface, and at the same time continues to act on its core, to gradually disaggregate its solidity. To crumble it over time with moisture. In a wider sense, seepage can be conceived as those acts that ooze through the pores of the outer surfaces of structures into available pores within the structure, and result in a weakening of the structure itself. Initially the process is invisible, and then it slowly starts causing mould and settles into a disfiguration - and this produces an anxiety about the strength and durability of the structure. By itself seepage is not an alternative form; it even needs the structure to become what it is - but it creates new conditions in which structures become fragile and are rendered difficult to sustain. It enables the play of an alternative imagination, and so we begin seeing faces and patterns on the wall that change as the seepage ebbs and flows. In a networked world, there are many acts of seepage, some of which we have already described. They destabilize the structure, without making any claims. So the encroacher redefines the city, even as she needs the city to survive. The trespasser alters the border by crossing it, rendering it meaningless and yet making it present everywhere - even in the heart of the capital city - so that every citizen becomes a suspect alien and the compact of citizenship that sustains the state is quietly eroded. The pirate renders impossible the difference between the authorised and the unauthorised copy, spreading information and culture, and devaluing intellectual property at the same time. Seepage complicates the norm by inducing invisible structural changes that accumulate over time. It is crucial to the concept of seepage that individual acts of insubordination not be uprooted from the original experience. They have to remain embedded in the wider context to make any sense. And this wider context is a networked context, a context in which incessant movement between nodes is critical. VIII. A Problem for the History of the Network But how is this network's history to be understood? To a large measure, this is made difficult by the fact of an "asymmetry of ignorance" about the world. We are all ignorant of the world in different ways and to different degrees. And that is one of the reasons why the "Network" often shades off into darkness, at some or the other point. This is what leads to global networks that nevertheless ignore the realities of large parts of the world, because no one has the means to speak of those parts, and no one knows, whether people exist in those parts that can even speak to the world in the language of the network. Thus the language of the network often remains at best only a mobile local dialect. A media practitioner or cultural worker from India, e.g., is in all likelihood more knowledgeable about the history of Europe than could be the case for the European vis-a-vis India. This is a fact engendered by colonialism that has left some societies impoverished in all but an apprehension of reality that is necessarily global. The historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has reminded us, "Insofar as the academic discourse of history is concerned, 'Europe' remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories, including the ones we call 'Indian', 'Chinese', 'Kenyan', and so on. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variations on a master narrative that could be called 'the history of Europe'."6 But this very same fact, when looked at from a European standpoint, may lead to a myopia, an inability to see anything other than the representational master narrative of European history moulding the world. The rest of the world is thus often a copy seeking to approximate this original. All this to say: not merely that we have incomplete perspectives, but that this asymmetry induces an inability to see the face in the wall, the interesting pattern, produced by the seepage. We may inhabit the anxiety, even be the source and locus of the destabilization and recognize the disfiguration, but the envisioning of possible alternative imaginaries may still continue to elude us. IX. Towards an Enactive Model of Practice Recently in a book on neuropolitics7, we came across an experiment which is now considered classic in studies of perception, (The Held and Heims Experiment) which might give us an interesting direction to follow now. Two litters of kittens are raised in the dark for some time and then exposed to light under two different sets of conditions. The first group is allowed to move around in the visual field and interact with it as kittens do - smelling things, touching them, trying out what can be climbed and where the best places to sleep are. The kittens in the second group, (though they are placed in the same environment) are carried around in baskets rather than allowed to explore the space themselves, and thus are unable to interact with it with all their senses and of their own volition. The two groups of kittens develop in very different ways. When the animals are released after a few weeks of this treatment, the first group of kittens behaves normally, but those who have been carried around behave as if they were blind; they bump into objects and fell over edges. It is clear that the first group's freedom to experience the environment in a holistic way is fundamental to its ability to perceive it at all