Access to Knowledge’s third conference (A2K3) has launched an blog to cover the proceedings.  I recommend reading it if you have an interest in IP and social justice issues.  This years conference is being held in Geneva and has an impressive line up of academics.  The posts cover the panel discussions and speeches in considerable depth, it is the next best thing to pod casting the conference (which I hope we will see next year).

Here is a sample post:

Access to Knowlege and Human Rights Panel

The Panel

The second panel of the day will examine the relationship between human rights and A2K, featuring Molly K. Beutz of New York Law School, Christian Courtis of the International Commission of Jurists, and Marisella Ouma of the Kenya Copyright Board. The panel is moderated by Caroline Dommen of 3D-Trade-Human Rights-Equitable Economy.

In particular, it will consider how human rights can be affected by impediments to A2K, and how human rights mechanisms can be harnessed in support of the objectives of A2K. The presentations on the panel, which will include case studies, will be both insightful and educational for both the A2K community and the human rights community. Many people from the latter community will be in Geneva to attend the sessions of the Human Rights Council.

The questions to be addressed will include:

• What are the conceptual and practical links between human rights and A2K?
• In which ways do intellectual property laws, rules, practices and policy impact important human rights such as the right to education, health, information and the right to take part in cultural life?
• How can human rights tools, processes and mechanisms be harnessed to promote and support A2K goals?

Caroline Dommen
• The relationship between A2K and human rights involves shared concerns, themes, and underlying approaches.
• This includes a pro-public interest approach to policy making, which includes seeking outcomes consistent with development commitments. There must also be a commitment to transparency in policy-making by giving individuals and groups the means to claim their rights.
• Shared themes include education, indigenous knowledge, linguistic and cultural diversity, freedom of expression, and gender issues.
• The shared underlying approach incorporates Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to human development – looking at quality of life, especially of the most vulnerable, rather than overall economic figures or quantitative data. In some cases, access to knowledge may not always be desirable (example: traditional knowledge).
• Measuring achievement with a human rights approach must include availability, physical accessibility, economic accessibility, and acceptability.
• Obligations of action include: respect, protect, fulfill.
• Legal bases for advocacy:
o Right to Education
 Art. 26 UDHR, Art. 13 ICESCR, & Art. 29 CRC
o Right to Adequate Food
 Art. 25 UDHR, Art. 11 ICESCR, & Art. 27 CRC
o Right to Health
 Art. 24 UDHR, Art. 12 ICESCR, & Art. 24 CRC
o Right to Development
 Art. 28 UDHR & Art. 2(1) ICESCR

Marisella Ouma
• Access to knowledge is a cornerstone of economic progress, affected by education, politics, laws (especially copyright law). Education is so important – so why is it that we cannot access educational materials?
• One of the issues is that there are not strong policies allowing for access to education. This is based on economic and natural right arguments framing copyright as a proprietary right; you can take the human rights approach to even say that they have a right to appreciate property, but even this comes with rights and obligations.
• The right for one to own property does not mean you can exclude others. A well-constructed copyright law will find the right balance for the rights-holders while facilitating access to knowledge (for example: compulsory licensing and other similar schemes). This can only happen if you have a strong copyright policy that acknowledges the right to education.
• Look at the African copyright and access to knowledge Project, covering eight countries in Africa. The main mission is to use the evidence to engage evidence-based copyright policymaking to increase access to knowledge. What A2K envisions is influence over national copyright policymaking.
• What do we understand as the copyright environment and access to learning material? We want to study the policy statutes and case law practices – what happens in practice is what influences access to knowledge. For example, there are education policies that do not specify up to which level they apply. These policies are limited to basic education, so anything beyond the first eight years is not concrete.
• When you talk about access to learning materials, you must take into account learning sites, gender dynamics, access to information.
• Internet is also important – when it comes to technology, it is basically a double-edged sword. Most developing countries are at the bottom of the queue. No broadband means that downloading available materials is very difficult – though wireless technology has helped revolutionize things in remote areas.
• It is very important to have empirical data and draw the nexis between access to knowledge, copyright, and human rights. This project has the research component as well as policy engagement. We are not going to collect data and leave it hanging around – it will inform policymakers .

Christian Courtis:
• Education should enable people to participate. The basis and core of Article 26 is to make primary education compulsory and free to all. How higher education should be made available is based on capacity.
• The Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights issued a general comment which is authoritative, unfolding a scheme that was then called the 4A (availability, economic accessibility, physical accessibility, and acceptability)
• This ensures that in changing societies, we can respond to students with diverse cultural backgrounds, and provides some sort of standard under the label of adequacy of education. The most extensively ratified is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by all but U.S. and Somalia, and also other traditional non-discrimination conventions such as the Convention Eliminating Discrimination Against Women and Rights of those with Disabilities (which also promote integrated education).
• The state has to promote, protect, and provide obligations. Obligations to protect exist between the rights-holder and the rights already there (removing third-party interference). Obligations to provide exist when the state has to create link between the rights-holder and the owner of that right. IPRs can be seen as an obstacle to enjoy rights.
• There are also the rights to health, to food, and to water, which are technology-dependent.
• Access to knowledge is already a component of binding rights in the covenant. We also need procedural mechanisms to make these obligations and rights supervisable, transparency, and complaint mechanisms to enable states to provide explanations.

Molly K. Beutz:
• The right to participate in cultural life is affected when states engage in censorship – and there are many dimensions of this right, including minority cultures and languages. The focus here is primarily on copyright.
• Why is this process important? What does it add to the debate? Understanding and evaluating the way IPRs can harm states’ ability to comply with human rights is necessary – but how can human rights law limit states’ ability to enforce IPR? What must states do or refrain from doing in their domestic laws?
• This can raise a range of questions: for example, are states required to use compulsory licensing, and what extensions can they agree to? This can give additional bargaining power regarding the extension and enforcement of IPRs and provide advocates with legal and rhetorical basis to advocate for A2K in domestic life.
• What obligations do states assume to remedy these harms?
• The right of access to cultural goods is central. IPR can affect this through cultural goods availability determined by profitability. Use of cultural goods can thus become excessively complex, especially if navigating many ownership rights is required. States have an example to address these barriers through the use of compulsory licensing.
• A right of access includes state obligation to take steps to protect public domain. Restrictions limit ability to share, consume, and inform cultural goods – because it leads to less material and less diverse material to use. Look at access to the internet, sharing cultural works. Access to the internet should be not only available but also geographically accessible.
• The right to share and transform cultural works is also important – cultural works involve interactions within a community. Communities must be able to share goods with one another. Culture does not exist in a vacuum – instead, it develops and changes as it is transformed. States have to do more than just ensure access, and individuals must have the ability to use and transform goods. Finally, states are not only required to refrain from violating rights of individuals, but protect them. States would need to regulate third party measures through digital rights mechanisms.
• The right to progressive realization – rights are protected by international social and cultural rights, and so a state is only required to “take steps with a view to achieving the right rights in the present covenant.”
• The states might not be able to immediately realize all rights – but some are immediately realizable. States are required to slide forward, not backwards. Any measure that would limit existing protections would have to be strictly justified. This could be used by advocates to be change IPR under domestic law.
• How might the committee address conflict between rights? States might enact limits on human rights values to promote the public welfare. If the state justifies restrictions to promote innovation for public welfare: any limitations must be provided by law, so the treaty has process and purpose limitations. Conflict might result if a state restricts rights to protect others. They key here is to provide the committee as advice to the states: give them discretion but guidance.

check it out for yourself at a2k3.org

PS: the blog is not under CC or other public license, I hope they intend that the blog be shared.