By Al Alegre MANILA, Philippines,
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Without much fanfare, a group of twenty-two Asians, united under the broad objective of promoting “Access to knowledge, Information and Culture” (A2K for short), convened in Bangkok last March to 12 to 14, 2007, seeking to bring forward an advocacy agenda for Asia, and by Asians.
Dubbed “Intellectual Property and Access to Knowledge, Information and Culture: Pro-Poor Advocacy for Communication Rights in Asia” , the workshop was organised by the Foundation for Media Alternatives, one of the Philippine members of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), and the support of the South East Asian Committee on Advocacy (SEACA).
The workshop brought together different civil society organisations working around the various issues in A2K—restrictive “intellectual property rights”, media repression, corporate control of media, and barriers to digital freedom—in an effort to explore a sharper advocacy agenda in the region, and to engender a specifically Asian voice in the A2K discourse and debates.
The agenda was collaboratively finalised by the participants themselves, and focused on three things: (1) Conceptual framing of A2K, particularly for Asians; (2) Barriers to A2K; and (3) Alternatives and activisms. In the latter two areas, a political map of issues, actors and global spaces were discussed, with participants taking turns in sharing their knowledge and actual experiences in research, constituency-building, advocacy, and model-building work.
[ For a good discussion on what “access to knowledge” means please read “What is Access to Knowledge?”, a short article by Jack M. Balkin. ]
Conceptual frames
The group first explored the various conceptual frames for looking at the issue of A2K in Asia, discussing a working paper drafted by lawyer and well known A2K activist Lawrence Liang of the Alternative Law Forum in India. It explored a particular Asian analysis, which needed to be surfaced with the global discourse. The group also discussed dilemmas with which advocates have been confronted (e.g. access to knowledge vs “traditional knowledge”) and how Asians could evolve alternative agendas of inclusion. Peer to peer production, collaboration and distribution was highlighted as an empowering framework for networking. This is especially true when trying to bypass market-driven models in education and knowledge sharing initiatives.
Political spaces and emerging challenges
People in attendance shared perpectives on prevailing political and economic models and governance mechanisms. Global structures such as the World Trade Organization (and the TRIPs agreement) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) were critiqued, but also regional free trade agreements and economic blocs (ASEAN and SAARC) were also interrogated. Various participants then zoomed in on the challenges posed by the expansion of copyright regimes, software patents, “digital rights management”, threats to “network neutrality”, as well as privacy. These are the hot issues internationally, but also relevant to Asia’s many contexts.
Alternatives and activisms
Advocates of alternative frameworks and discourses (public domain, copyleft, open access/content, open standards and free/open source software; free culture; creative commons) brought their own blend of resistance, reform, and re-imagination to the roundtable.
Local and national activisms—from web-based compilation of peer to peer initiatives into wikis, to initiatives for open health standards in Malaysia, to struggles for media freedom in Thailand, to initiatives to reform national intellectual property codes as in the Philippines and India, to direct actions for fair trade in Bangladesh and against bilateral free trade agreements in Korea—attested to a strong activist base in the region.
Participants resolved to continue the process of regional framing and coordination of struggles. It was agreed that the participants would pursue and initial roadmap of actions. Most saw the need to liaise with like-minded communities and networks around the region, such as the Asia Commons community and the growing free and open source software (FOSS) movements of Asia. Included in this “roadmap” of actions are:
- Create a common repository of actors and organisations, researches and resources available in the field of “access to knowledge”;
- Continue the discourse on “access to knowledge”, starting with an audit of existing researches and conceptual frameworks (e.g. “communication rights” by the CRIS campaign; the “internet rights charter” of APC)
- Perform a region-wide joint research on “piracy” and the “commons”;
- Develop ”access to knowledge” and “commons” education and training modules, especially in popular formats such as comics.
- Regional knowledge networking on policy-level interventions per country;
- Joint initiative in building a legal support infrastructure for “access to knowledge” (for alternative licensing frameworks, to legal challenges and litigation), especially on the national level.
All agreed to help disseminate this roadmap nationally and regionally, and interphase with other networks, especially in global-level of civil society interventions (i.e. in the WTO and in pushing for a WIPO development agenda). Fundraising to support the various initiatives was also pinpointed as a key need.
Among the international organisations that participated were: Focus on the Global South, Consumers International, SEACA, South East Asia Press Alliance, Tebtebba-Indigenous Peoples International Center for Policy Research and Education, International Open Source Network, Foundation for P2P Alternatives, Forum Asia, and the Open Source Health Care Alliance.
Apart from the FMA, national organisations participating included APC members Jinbonet (Korea) and VOICE (Bangladesh); Human Rights Working Group and KPL-Jakarta Linux Users Group from Indonesia; Alternative Law Forum and Mahiti.org from India; Center for Independent Journalism (Malaysia); Campaign for Popular Media Reform (Thailand); and the Philippine Linux Users Group, Philippine Network Foundation and BUKAS (Philippines).
Note: A website will be set up to upload highlights of the workshop; for inquiries please contact Al Alegre [alalegre AT fma DOT ph]
