The commons at Highway Africa
On day 1 of the Highway Africa conference, which celebrated its 10th anniversary, a discussion about the ‘commons’ was held which looked at intellectual property rights, access to knowledge, alternative licensing and FLOSS.
The panel that presented the above concepts consisted of Vera Franz from OSI, Tutwane Letshwiti from the University of Botswana, Kerryn McKay representing Creative CommonsSA and Bob Joliffe from the CSIR’s Meraka Institute. The panel was chaired by OSISA’s Ashraf Patel.
IP Maximist versus Back-to-Balance
Vera Franz discussed the importance around the concept of intellectual property and the need for balance in representation when looking at the different schools of thought operating in this arena. She highlighted two main camps of thought, namely, the IP Maximists who believe that the more IP protection there is and the more ‘products’ protected through copyright, the better, and the Back to Balance camp which, whilst respecting IP and IP protection, believe that there is a point where the benefit to society decreases.
Vera also spoke about the two treaties that are currently being debated: The WIPO Casting Treaty, which is a pro-IP Maximist treaty that looks to extend the broad rights to distributors of content rather than just the creators. The other pro-Back to Balance treaty is the Access to Knowledge draft treaty which looks at international law empowering the rights of users.
Access to Knowledge
Tutwane Letshwiti explained the movement of A2K, defining it as the movement that seeks to make knowledge, in its broadest sense, accessible to all people. He, took, called for a balance of rights and representation, most especially in Africa, where there is a need to raise the continent’s ICT standards.
Tutwane spoke briefly about the cable system to which 23 African states have contributed, which will run from Durban in Kwa Zulu Natal, to the port of Sudan. The cable, which will be over 8.000km long, will slash internet and phone costs by a third within the next 5 years. “This means digitisation will be easy. Africa will be able to realise convergence between broadcast, television and the internet.”
iCommons: joining the dots across the globe
Kerryn McKay presented iCommons to the group, explaining that it is the subsidiary organisation of Creative Commons and will aim to hosting, facilitating and highlighting international projects which are being implemented around Creative Commons licences. She explained the importance of the incubation process, and how it will bring connect communities and their various projects so that people can learn from one another, share ideas, replicate projects and build a strong ‘commons’ for issues as diverse as culture, science and business.
FLOSS in Africa: the freedom to innovate
Bob Joliffe, veteran for the Open Source movement, spoke about ‘free software’ rather than open source software and its relation to ICT development. He said that the fundamental question to ask when rolling out ICT strategies is: do these strategies make us more free or less free. Bob listed a number of issues that should be considered, such as transparency and control over systems that control our lives, the freedom to learn through unpicking and playing with software (code) and the freedom to innovate.
Bob raised the warning bells around patents in Africa, and spoke about the hundreds of thousands of patents that are registered in patent offices around Africa. He said that unfortunately in Africa there is little critical analysis around patents and Africa is being used to register patents by international businesses, which simply reinforces the perceptioin that Africa is not a place where innovation comes from. For example in 2002, 150,000 patents were registered in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe alone and all of these applications were non-African. Bob stated: “When we talk about using free software to make us more free, and the infrastructure which can lead to our development, there are dangers that we must be aware of, and patents are one of these.”