[A2k] Alan Story: Be Creative on World IP Day - Write Copy/ South

[Manon Ress]

--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
From: A.C.Story@kent.ac.uk
Date: April 26, 2007 3:52:36 PM EDT
To: ""Manon Ress"" <manon.ress@keionline.org>
Cc: a.c.story@kent.ac.uk
Subject: Be Creative on World IP Day - Write Copy/ South

Copy/South Reader Response Project Launches on World IP Day

For release: Thursday, 26 April 2007

To mark World Intellectual Property Day (26 April), the Copy/South
Research Group calls on you to take up its slogan --- =93Encouraging
Creativity=94 ---- and send in your creative thoughts and opinions on the
role of copyright law and ideology in the countries of the global South.

Our new project, the Copy/South Reader Response ( available at
http://www.copysouth.org ) launches today as part of a global
counter-celebration of this day and its deceitful slogan.

We want to hear from you and find out whether you agree with the
viewpoint
of the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation that
creativity is impossible without copyright laws --- and the more
restrictive and punishing, the better.

For our new project, readers of the Copy/South Dossier,  which was
published in May 2006 and contains more than 50 articles giving facts
and
views on the largely obstructive role of copyright law and ideology in
countries of the global South, are asked to do TWO THINGS: :

1) send in your comments on and criticisms of the 206-page Dossier.

2) send in examples of your own personal experiences with copyright
in the
global South, whether you are a librarian, an educator, a writer or
musician, visually impaired, or a user of copyright-restricted
materials.

The comments that we receive will be posted on our open access reader
response website. Feel free to give your views in any one of eight
languages. Keep your messages lively and to the point.

As stated on its 26 April website, WIPO=92s day =93celebrates=94 the suppos=
ed
=93link between intellectual property and creativity.=94

But it makes no mention of how copyright law acts as the =93command and
control=94 apparatus for global software, publishing, and broadcasting
corporations such as Microsoft and Harper Collins or the more regional
empire of Venezuelan broadcasting billionaire Gustavo Cisneros.

Nor does it talk about how WIPO endorses such ruthless acts as forcing
overworked local police agencies across the South to raid local
schools to
enforce corporate copyright interests.

These are among the issues taken by the Dossier, which took 18 months to
research and write, and has been distributed world-wide over the past
eleven months.

It  has won praise for its accessible explanations of some complicated
issues and its plain speaking. Of course, the Dossier also has its
critics
as you will see if you read some of the initial responses posted on the
website.

To read more about the R/R project, go to:
http://www.copysouth.org and click on =93Reader Response=94.

To read the Dossier online  ( and find out how to receive a copy by
post/mail), go to:
http://www.copysouth.org/   and click on the button and links you want.

To contact Copy/South, send an e-mail to:
contact@copysouth.org


The Copy/South Research Group


>