RMS, Please find 3 parts in the email 1) Adelphi Charter 2) Director, address, and email address 3) Commision Members (includes Lessig) -Krishna
=======Part 1 ===== Adelphi Charter ================
Adelphi Charter on creativity, innovation and intellectual property
Humanity's capacity to generate new ideas and knowledge is its greatest asset. It is the source of art, science, innovation and economic development. Without it, individuals and societies stagnate.
This creative imagination requires access to the ideas, learning and culture of others, past and present.
Human rights call on us to ensure that everyone can create, access, use and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and societies to achieve their full potential.
Creativity and investment should be recognised and rewarded. The purpose of intellectual property law (such as copyright and patents) should be, now as it was in the past, to ensure both the sharing of knowledge and the rewarding of innovation.
The expansion in the laws breadth, scope and term over the last 30 years has resulted in an intellectual property regime which is radically out of line with modern technological, economic and social trends. This threatens the chain of creativity and innovation on which we and future generations depend.
We call upon governments and the international community to adopt these principles.
1. Laws regulating intellectual property must serve as means of achieving creative, social and economic ends and not as ends in themselves. 2. These laws and regulations must serve, and never overturn, the basic human rights to health, education, employment and cultural life. 3. The public interest requires a balance between the public domain and private rights. It also requires a balance between the free competition that is essential for economic vitality and the monopoly rights granted by intellectual property laws. 4. Intellectual property protection must not be extended to abstract ideas, facts or data. 5. Patents must not be extended over mathematical models, scientific theories, computer code, methods for teaching, business processes, methods of medical diagnosis, therapy or surgery. 6. Copyright and patents must be limited in time and their terms must not extend beyond what is proportionate and necessary. 7. Government must facilitate a wide range of policies to stimulate access and innovation, including non-proprietary models such as open source software licensing and open access to scientific literature. 8. Intellectual property laws must take account of developing countries' social and economic circumstances. 9. In making decisions about intellectual property law, governments should adhere to these rules:
* There must be an automatic presumption against creating new areas of intellectual property protection, extending existing privileges or extending the duration of rights.
* The burden of proof in such cases must lie on the advocates of change.
* Change must be allowed only if a rigorous analysis clearly demonstrates that it will promote people's basic rights and economic well-being.
* Throughout, there should be wide public consultation and a comprehensive, objective and transparent assessment of public benefits and detriments.
We call upon governments and the international community to adopt these principles.
=======Part 2 ===== Director================ The Adelphi Charter Director: John Howkins E6 Albany Piccadilly London W1J 0AR Tel: +44 (20) 7434 1400 E: john@johnhowkins.com
=======Part 3===== Who are We? =======
James Boyle William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, Duke Law School, and Faculty Co-Director, Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke University USA www.law.duke.edu
Lynne Brindley Chief Executive, British Library UK www.bl.uk
William Cornish Former Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property University of Cambridge UK www.law.cam.ac.uk/ipunit
Carlos Correa Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies on Industrial Property and Economics University of Buenos Aires Argentina; and South Centre Switzerland www.uba.ar www.southcentre.org
Darius Cuplinskas Director, Information Programme Open Society Institute UK www.soros.org
Carolyn Deere Chair, Board of Directors, Intellectual Property Watch; and Research Associate, Global Economic Governance Programme, University College Oxford. www.ip-watch.org
Cory Doctorow Staff Member, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); and writer www.eff.org
Peter Drahos Professor of Law, Director of the Centre for Competition and Regulatory Policy, and Head, RegNet, The Australian National University Australia http://regnet.anu.edu.au
Bronac Ferran Director, Interdisciplinary Arts Arts Council England UK www.artscouncil.org.uk
Dr Michael Jubb Director Research Libraries Network UK michael.jubb@bl.uk
Gilberto Gil Minister of Culture, Brazil; and musician www.gilbertogil.com.br
Lawrence Lessig Chair, Creative Commons; Professor of Law and John A. Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar Stanford Law School USA www.lessig.org http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu
James Love Executive Director, Consumer Project on Technology; and Co-Chair, Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) Committee on Intellectual Property USA www.cptech.org www.tacd.org
Hector MacQueen Professor of Private Law and Director, AHRB Research Centre on Intellectual Property and Technology Law University of Edinburgh UK www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrb
John Naughton Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology, Open University; Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge; and columnist, 'The Observer' UK molly.open.ac.uk
Vandana Shiva Director, Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology India www.vsnl.com
Sir John Sulston Nobel Laureate; former Director, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute UK www.sanger.ac.uk
Louise Sylvan Deputy Chair, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Australia www.accc.gov.au
--- "Richard M. Stallman" rms@gnu.org wrote:
You've mentioned several URLs--it is not convenient for me to navigate through them to find the charter itself. Could you email me the text?
It sounds like a well-intentioned activity, and it may do some good. However, if they actually used the term "intellectual property", that will tend to promote the very kind of thinking that they wish to keep in check. I would like to write to them about this; can you tell me who to contact? (Names and email addresses?)
Fsf-friends mailing list Fsf-friends@mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends
===================================== To Reflect, to Inspire and to Empower http://www.employees.org/~krishnap/
The great moral question of the twenty-first century is: If all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information, can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone -- if everyone can have everything, everywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? -Eben Moglen
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