An ant, they say, can infuriate an elephant. That is, if the ant choose the right target, and goes into the elephant's ear. In the Egyptian world of technology, an 24-year-old engineer is doing the same by giving a voice to protest that's otherwise stifled in that part of the globe.

South Korea is seeing some conflicts between IPR and access to knowledge (or, A2K). Over-protection of IPR may hamper access to knowledge. It is unfair to use the copyright law to prevent the public use of digital libraries.

Reporting about the heat and dust of India, a APC Annual Report 2006 ">GEM

workshop, the Taj Mahal... and some links to colourful photos of the place too.

Where the Government in Pakistan, Intellectual Property Organization, Federal Investigation Authorities and the Business Software Alliance BSA are initiating a crackdown on Software Piracy in Pakistan, there is hardly any awareness of piracy and its implications within society apart from members of the IT Industry. It is crucial to the basic Human Rights of the citizens of Pakistan that they first be provided Anti-Software Piracy Literacy and trainings on Free and Open Source Software as an alternative to pirated software. Source: APC">ICT

Software Freedom is their basic human right in the Information Society!

Here's an early initiative to flow out of the APC South Asia Consultation: BytesForAll has just launched a new mailing list, specifically focused on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS, or FOSS). Details of the group are below. We invite all interested to join.

"Whatever is the "government" in this glossary). As a general rule, "state" should not be capitalised.

Source: Governance for sustainable human development: A UNDP policy document (Glossary of key terms) and Wikipedia">state

of Source: Wikipedia ">localisation

in India, the "state" in this glossary). As a general rule, "government" should not be capitalised.

Source: Wikipedia">government

is definitely responsible for framing the policies. We have dreams of software superpowerdom, yet basic tools are not in place. They have spent crores (tens of millions by Government of India organisations) CDAC and TDIL, and that too all in the name of undertaking work in Indic computing and benefitting the people," says Ravikant of New Delhi, who has been closely keeping track of Free Software localisation efforts in India.

As far as radio waves go, South Asia could perhaps call itself the dark continent. This part of the planet has an almost-uniformly unenlightened policy when it comes to opening up its airwaves. Voices from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal....

Should people who illegally copy software onto their computer (probably because it's so outlandishly priced) be called 'pirates'? Is it fair to liken people who attack ships at high seas to those who make copies of digital products, though it's against the law? Or is illegal copying of software "infringement of illegal property and unethical, crimal and

immoral" anyway?

In the Himalayan country of Nepal, a large section of the population is deprived of the usage of computers because of the language barrier i.e. English which is the communicating language of the computers, One of the institutions there, an archive-and-library there was facing challenges in cataloging its books, and ran into hurdles with 'sort' and 'find and replace' requirements. It undertook a font stardisation project, whicih grew far beyond expected. An interesting story by Bal Krishna Bal.

A report from the workshop “Post-Source: APC ICT Policy Handbook and APC Annual Report 2005.">WSIS

and Uganda’s Way Forward” (arranged by the Collegium for Development Studies at Uppsala University Sweden, I-Network Uganda, Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), with support from the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) and Ministry of Works, Housing and Communications, Uganda) is now available as a pdf, 441kb.

http://www.kus.uu.se/pdf/publications/KUS_Bok28.pdf