Document details

Winning the Web: Stories of Grassroots Campaigning for Access to Knowledge in the Networked Digital Age

Open Society Institute (2009), 49 pp.

CC BY-SA

"This report has looked at six successful intellectual property (IP) reform campaigns from around the world, and examined the strategies, messages and goals of the campaigners who fought them. Although each example has its own lessons to share, broad trends have emerged. Several of the most striking campaign successes employed the internet as a mobilising force. A template for such action emerges from examining these campaigns in concert. Almost without exception, campaigners worked in coalition with other stakeholders. These coalitions varied both in style and in substance, and examining those differences is instructive. The campaigns were fought on intellectual and emotional ground which was often some distance from the mechanism of intellectual property law itself. This observation should encourage campaigners to think about the merits and pitfalls of different messaging approaches. Finally, the observation that very few of the case studies emerge from countries in the developing world prompts the report to examine why this might be so, and to challenge campaigners to examine the value of a more global perspective. It’s fair to say that the issues that motivate IP reform activists go beyond the public messages their campaigns focussed upon. The upcoming campaign against the substantive issues contained in the plurilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement offers campaigners an opportunity to find and voice these concerns, concerns that have motivated them thus far to undertake the significant an impressive policy interventions in the global intellectual property space that have been detailed in this report. The time has come to for a mobilising critique against the flawed orthodoxy of tough, unwieldy global intellectual property regimes." (Conclusion, page 47)
Lessons for IP reformers, 5
Using the tools of the internet, 5
Coalition Building, 7
The message, 9
A global movement? 11
Case Study: Fair copyright for Canada, 14
Case Study: Graduated Response in France, 20
Case Study: Opening up debate in Brazil, 26
Case Study: Guilt on Accusation in New Zealand, 31
Case Study: Copyright term extension in Europe, 35
Case Study: ACTA in the USA, 41
Conclusion, 47