Fwd: electrohippies: ' World Intellectual Privateers Day', April 26th 2009

[Paul Mobbs]

Subject: electrohippies: ' World Intellectual Privateers Day', April 26th 2009
Date: Wednesday 08 April 2009
From: ehippies at fraw.org.uk
To: mobbsey at gn.apc.org

WEB SITE UPLOADED TODAY --
http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/action/privateers.shtml

See also the new discussion paper Q1. 'Intellectual Privateers' --
http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ehippies/q01/q01-intellectual_privateers.pdf


** please forward!! **


the electrohippies -- communiqué 20090409 -- no embargo

the electrohippies call on people around the globe to celebrate World 
Intellectual Privateers Day 2009

A call to action against the inclosure of human society's creativity by 
"intellectual privateering rights"

Produced by the Free Range electrohippies Project, 9th April 2009.
http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/ ehippies at fraw.org.uk


Today the electrohippies are calling upon people around the globe to celebrate 
World Intellectual Privateers Day on April 26th 2009. In a concerted action 
across the Internet, we call upon people to select a piece of information or 
other creative work which should be in the public domain, but which is chained 
by the rules of intellectual privateering rights (IPRs), and to re-appropriate 
it for the people of the world to share in common by publishing it as widely 
as possible on-line.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation[1] (WIPO) celebrates what it 
considers to be the achievements of intellectual property laws around the 
globe in its World Intellectual Property Day[2]. This year WIPO's focus is on 
"promoting green innovation as the key to a secure future"; clearly they fail 
to see the relationship between the needs of freeing up technology exchange 
and creativity and the counter-effect of tightening global intellectual 
privateering rights (or IPRs -- for privateering[3] is certainly what this 
process has become in the digital age). Today IPRs have become a means for 
large media and information organisations to extract a financial return from 
the public, using technological means such as digital rights management[4] or 
the broadcast flag[5], for the information then need to access in the modern 
world.

Rather than simply "protest" at the ever greater iniquities of intellectual 
privateering rights the electrohippies are calling on individuals around the 
globe to undertake an act of civil disobedience and free a chained work or 
publication that, for clear reasons (which they should state on its release), 
must be in the public domain. Also, given the "green" nature of this year's 
WIPO event, we're asking people to re-appropriate those works which have 
special relevance to environmental protection, conservation, or environmental 
protest rights.

We are clearly directing this action towards those uses of IPRs which seek to 
chain the use of information that should be freely available to the public. 
Participants can do this by creating a digital copy or representation of the 
chained work and posting it on-line. Then, given that WIPO states 
"organizations are encouraged to send brief reports of the events and 
activities organized", we suggest that those taking part email a short message 
to WIPO describing why they have re-appropriated the work into the public 
domain (WIPO's email address for reports is WorldIPDay at wipo.int).

For hundreds of years, from the early master builders and painters onwards, 
people have copied and borrowed from each others' work and as a result the 
knowledge and creativity of humankind has been enriched. Today, in the name of 
protecting "intellectual property rights", we are locking up knowledge using 
technological and legal locks to prevent not only illegitimate access, but 
also access which (for a paper copy) would normally be possible (e.g. 
photocopying, reading without payment, sharing with others, etc.). 
Intellectual property rights represent the last, modern-day land grab of "The 
Commons"[6] -- and we will all be intellectually impoverished as a result of 
it. As Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once said, "property is theft"; extending this 
principle to the modern day can't we fairly say that "all intellectual 
property is cultural theft", since we must not think or dream of using anyone 
else's ideas in case it offends their right to exclusively think it and charge 
others for the privilege of doing so too.

the electrohippies[7] will be marking the day with the re-appropriation of a 
"special work", chained by copyright, which has direct relevance to the 
freedoms of people to protest in Britain. We will publish it on our web 
site[8] on World Intellectual Privateering Day, April 26th 2009.



Notes:

1. The World Intellectual Property Organisation was established in 1967 with a 
mandate from its Member States to promote the protection of IP throughout the 
world -- it is the often ignored (compared to the World Bank/IMF) cornerstone 
of globalisation.

2. World Intellectual Property Day 2009 is on April 26th. For more information 
see the WIPO web site -- http://www.wipo.int/ip-outreach/en/ipday/2009/

3. For a historical account of privateering see Wikipedia -- 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer

4. For information on 'digital rights management' see the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation's web site -- http://www.eff.org/issues/drm

5. For information on the 'broadcast flag' see the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation's web site -- http://www.eff.org/issues/broadcast-flag

6. The concept of "The Commons" is something that is held in many cultures, 
although in the West it has largely been abolished by property rights. "The 
Commons" are those things that are essential to the maintenance of human 
society, and which have no specified owner, but are managed for the interests 
of all by society -- for example, common land, rights of common over fisheries, 
etc. In the "Information Age" we can extend this concept to The Information 
Commons (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Commons for examples and 
further information on this concept), where essential elements of our culture 
must be protected for the creative and cultural freedom of all.

7. the electrohippies are a non-aligned, informal group of campaigners and 
socially motivated computer users who wish to ensure that the virtual domain 
is protected from "inclosure" by proprietary control. This year is the 
electrohippies tenth anniversary -- it was formed in the run-up to the Seattle 
protests in 1999. We've come together to organise some new events an ideas 
given the threats that now exist to free expression in the digital domain.

8. For details of the action see 
http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/action/privateers.shtml


-- 

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, 
people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for 
such time as the State can shield the 
people from the political, economic and/or military 
consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important
for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, 
for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth 
is the greatest enemy of the State."
(Joseph Goebbels)

*the Free Range electrohippie collective*
email - ehippies at fraw.org.uk
website - http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/index.shtml



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