Intellectual Property Rights and Communication

James M. Wall

Opportunities to discuss cinema-going experiences are usually confined to friends and family. The following article describes an innovative seminar organised by ecumenical church partners and which takes place during the Montreal International Film Festival. It shows that reflecting on film can be enriching, enlightening and rewarding

Tive Sarayeth

Working in gender lobbying and the media in Cambodia is not easy, and people in the media sector are not the most receptive of audiences when they think you are trying to change their behaviour. The author of the following article discusses the six years it took her to make them understand the aims of her project and to make a difference to the presentation of women in the media. Nevertheless, its success might offer a model for similar work in other countries.

Eric Loo

September 1998 marked a watershed in Malaysian politics with the arrest of the Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim on corruption and sodomy charges. Street protests by Anwar loyalists found their way to the Internet with unexpected proliferation of pro-Anwar reformation (reformasi) sites and online news outlets, such as Malaysiakini and AgendaMalaysia. This article discusses the Internet’s influence, or the lack of it, on the democratisation process in Malaysia where its citizens and the mainstream media are fundamentally apprehensive to challenging authority, which is inclined to use its punitive powers to circumscribe what is politically correct discourse in the public sphere.

Philip Lee

Why are we indifferent to the horrors inflicted on countries and peoples in more parts of the world than we care to remember? Reviewing a recent controversial book by French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, the following article asks why it has not been possible to call a halt to the perpetual degradation of what makes us human, of our very humanity.

Steven Gan

Malaysia is a democracy. There is freedom of speech, but no freedom after speech. There is freedom of movement, but no freedom of assembly. There is a plethora of publications - about a dozen or so newspapers in four different languages - but no free press. Until the emergence of the Internet, the government had a complete monopoly on the distribution of information But while this technology has enabled Malaysians finally to break through government barriers, they are still no nearer to breaking its monopoly on power. The following article explores this situation in detail.

Camilo Zamora

Si el señor Bill Gates alguna vez hubiese pensado que el mundo se rebelara en su contra, quizás habría dedicado su tiempo y su dinero a otro tipo de industria. Y es que el gran negocio de la producción de programas de computación puede estar dando un giro de 180 grados. Esto es lo que se puede concluir tras conocer la fuerza que está tomando en el mundo el desarrollo de los programas libres o de código abierto.

Ravi Srinivas Krishna

It needed a crisis like the AIDS crisis in Africa to alert the international community to the fact that Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), if taken to extremes, would hinder health rather than promoting it. The author of the following article argues that there are other cases which may not catch the public imagination like AIDS but which nevertheless demonstrate that IPRs are emerging as hindrances to equality and fair-play in the global commons of in intellectual innovation.

Christine Morris
 
The study of Indigenous intellectual property can be said to be made up of a set of questions and propositions: what is knowledge in a clan; how is it determined; how is that knowledge protected rather than defended in the courts; and what are the duties and roles of custodians in this realm of protection? Furthermore, it can be said that authenticity of intellectual property is not the issue but rather who does it inform and who is the audience? In other words which community is involved?

Global commons, public space and contemporary IPR
 
 
 
Lawrence Liang
 
 
 
Globalisation has made possible the emergence of the idea of a global commons being articulated in the context of the politics of IPR in software and cyberspace, and yet the conditions of globalisation also create a new visibility for practices which have always existed on the margins of legality in terms of IPR. The author of the following article argues that any attempt at understanding the ‘emancipatory’ possibilities of the global commons will have to understand and attempt to resolve these tensions and conflicts as well.

 
Appropriation is a term used to describe the public use of copyrighted and non-copyrighted ideas, images and meanings. Since all new ideas and expressions are based on prior ideas and expressions, copyright helps cultural industries extend their control over symbols and meanings that originated in the public domain. A current US Supreme Court case filed by Eric Eldred and represented by Lawrence Lessig has challenged the unconstitutionality of perpetual copyright. If, as has been argued, Walt Disney made a multi-billion dollar industry by freely plundering the works of Hans Christian Andersen, then, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck ought to become public property.