Mobilizing Civil Society

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1 Panelists
2 Panel Description
3 Speaker Presentation Slides
4 Remote Questions for the Panelists
5 Notes
6 A2K Civil society organizations
7 Resources and papers

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Panelists

Speakers

Gwen Hinze - International Affairs Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Nnenna Nwakanma - Cabinet Member & Regional Coordinator, African Civil Society for the Information Society (ACSIS)
Josh Silver - Executive Director, Free Press
Sherwin Siy - Staff Attorney and Director, Global Knowledge Initiative, Public Knowledge
Madhavi Sunder - Professor of Law, University of California, Davis

Moderator

Becky Lentz - Program Officer, Ford Foundation

A2K2 Conference Organizer

David Tannenbaum - Student Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School

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Panel Description

When people speak about the "Access to Knowledge movement," they are most likely to have in mind the civil society groups who advocate along many dimensions of the access problem. This panel will address the historical role of civil society in the movement and its role in the coming years. Panelists will focus on three issues: the scope of civil society coalitions, the conceptualization of "A2K", and the use of movement tools beyond issue advocacy.

Since the birth of the movement, coalitions have formed between civil society groups in the North and South that work in the domains of intellectual property rights (software, medicines, educational materials), telecommunications, library services, and other sectors. When are civil society coalitions across sectors most effective and when, if ever, do they interfere with effective advocacy? What are the best of examples of cross-sectoral coalitions have been successful to date? What new opportunities for cross-sectoral work are on the horizon? What are the particular challenges of working across the North-South divide? How can civil society build coalitions with other movement actors, such as government officials, firms, and technologists?

Another challenge for civil society concerns how to conceptualize "A2K" to build the movement, and to promote policy change (two goals that may require different strategies). In national and international forums governments and policy advisors often analyze A2K in economic terms. Should civil society groups insist on a broader conception of A2K that includes a cultural foundation? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a broader approach for movement building? For effective advocacy?

To date, civil society groups in the access to knowledge movement have primarily relied on issue advocacy. Is building a grassroots movement the next step? Are there promising signs of grassroots activity? What are the issues around which it is easier, or more sensible, to put resources into building grassroots support? When is grassroots activity unrealistic or inappropriate? Would it be useful to pursue more litigation in national and international fora? What are some examples of successful and unsuccessful litigation?

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Speaker Presentation Slides

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Remote Questions for the Panelists

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Notes

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Becky Lentz

(missed)

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Nnenna Nwakanma

Mobilizing Civil Society -- The African Experience

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Inward mobilization

A. Sector specific mobilization. Civil society is so widespread, you can't organize everyone in the same place. Have to focus on academia, media, NGOs, development community. Bringing everyone in the same room yields no result.

B. Reliance on local resources -- persons and expertise.

C. Civil society expertise for civil society. e.g., don't take accountants from private firms. Would rather take an accountant in a civil society organization, b/c they understand the language we speak.

D. Training in processes. From international diplomacy to international travel. How to get registered, etc.

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Outward mobilization

A. Government advisory

B. Strategic government alliance

C. Pre-civil society forum for government/ministerial meetings. Civil society arrives first to make an agenda.

D. Parallel events

E. Upholding positive results

F. Naming and shaming

G. Civil society mainstreaming. Ask civil society persons to be included in official delegations. Don't say "civil society representative."

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Networks

A. Virtual networks. Internet for those who have it.

B. Convergent use of ICT. SMS. phones.

C. Online consultations, trainings.

D. Borrowing and lending. e.g., when plane tickets need to be prepaid, civil society pools resources.

E. Civil society diplomatic envoys. Act as important we are so we are taken seriously.

F. Input through international CS fronts

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Outward 2

A. Position papers

B. Combat ready papers

C. Exhibitions -- the way they are, the way we are -- (Africa village in front of the ECA and the ADB)

D. Publications

E. Going Open Source

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Madhavi Sunder

2:30 2:35 2:38 2:40

A2K2: Postscript and Forward

Which peopel are A2K about? Ivory tower elites, technologists, advocates in global cities? Or is A2K a truly grassroots movement?

A2K is penetrating remotest villages. See technobrega.

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Honey Bee Network

Based in India, led by Gupta, Indian professor for the last 10 years. Lead treks through remote Indian villages. This network seeks to access to distribute knowledge of the poor. Finds knowledge, writes up, and tries to commercialize to benefit the inventor.

Has over 10,000 inventions on its website.

Also seeks to distribute the discoveries in local languages too.

Gupta is that Ghandi of IP.

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Superflex

Trio of Danish artists have developed world's first free beer. Distribute recipe to all.

A few years ago artists visited Brazilian village that uses Guarana for energy. Superflex worked with village to help develop commercialized drink.

Empowerment for the poor will entail the poor taking control and commercializing their own products.

The poor are not necessarily averse to making money.

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Lessons

1. Civil society is already on the move. Are these disparate efforts part of A2K? Should they be? If A2K is defined as opposed to IP, the answer is no b/c they sometimes propertize knowledge.

2. The North/South tensions are overblown. Much of knowledge collected by Honey Bee Network is in public domain. Only small percentage of its discoveries are commercialized. Groups like Honey Bee Network are not necessarily changing the rules of IP. Rather, they are seeking to make sure everyone can benefit from the rules when they properly apply. Madhavi writes about this in forthcoming paper, The Invention of Traditional Knowledge. We can't overlook potential of people to innovate.

(Two clips of individuals whose innovations have been shared by the Honey Bee Network: better washing machine and amphibious bicycle.)

Which differences in our movement actually matter? We are all creative beings. More relevant differences: in power, status.

3. A2K is not just an end, but a means. Madhavi takes this lesson up further in paper "IP3". Ip as a tool for structuring social and cultural relations, not just for promoting efficiency of controlling knowledge.

What is A2K for?:

a. Development. Not just medicines, but tools for poor to be knowledge producers in their own right. Will this movement generate a penny for anyone? What good is knowledge if it's only in English?

b. Cultural democracy, knowledge societies.

c. A New Enlightenment. The call, in Kant's words, to "think for oneself."

These are not too lofty goals for a social or legal movement. The first English copyright law was a tool of the Enlightenment. Wrested control of books from monopolistic publishers.

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Gwen Hinze, EFF

2:48 2:58

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The A2K Community

Are we a social movement yet? An evolving movement? Meeting place for different communities?

A2K is an evolving concept. Whether you think it is a movement depends on how you conceptualize "A2K." This is a good thing.

There is a huge community of people who identify as being part of the A2K community. We may not have a single unified theory, but we share the goal of working to better human kind.

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Mobilizing Civil Society

Civil society's role so far:

1. Reframing the issues. Copyright, TK, patents, innovation, development and social justice. Gave them overarching organizing framework.

2. Affirmative policy agenda. It gave us a reason to work together.

3. Depoliticized the debate.

4. Creating a community. We've stopped thinking of ourselves as disparate and disorganized. The Yale conference was the first time I experienced an international community.

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Effective strategies and tactics

EFF is a membership organization. 60-70k members. Team of lawyers litigating in the US and do international policy work. Delegates. Activists.

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Conscious collaboration and network building

Relationships of trust, and useful resources.

Social movements don't "just happen." They rely on strong network of strong relationships borne out of personal contacts.

Going forward we should start looking for opportunities to work together, and talk more w/people outside of NGO sphere, in industry and government.

e.g., WIPO. We collaborated with other groups to make detailed set of notes available online, as a public domain work. Worked with EIFL, Union for the Public Domain, CPTech. That helped us built relationships w/people outside Geneva and US. e.g., CPSR Peru took our notes and remixed them.

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Outreach and Digital Activism

e.g., We realized at WIPO that a lot of voices not being heard. Organized open letter to WIPO from 20 major webcasters. It was now clear that they did not support proposed treaty provisions.

Started series of action alerts on WIPO Broadcasting Treaty. Constituents can send letters to reps through the website action center.

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Cross sector coalitions

Brad Biddle and Pam Samuelson talked about this.

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Social software

Important to provide opportunity for online activists to get together. We try to give people a sense of community. Let them know how many others took action.

e.g. Wizards of OS wiki of ECUD Review and Implementation.

e.g., at least two WIPO meetings KEI has organized an online Skype chat.

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Challenges and new opportunities

Sustainability: issue alignment v. long-term partnership.

Dilution.

Build on working together: openness and trust, effectiveness and venue-specific strategies, concrete successes, building links across communities and institutions.

Evolving coliations around set of issues with recalibrating IP and open/free culture.

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Sherwin Siy, Public Knowledge

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Cross sector mobilization

Isn't civil society already mobilizing? The next step is bringing in multiple sectors, forms, issues.

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WIPO Broadcasting Treaty

WIPO Broadcasting Treaty is a good example of how this works well.

In early days only a few prescient organizations keeping an eye on the treaty. National delegations seemed to be sleepwalking toward the treaty. They really came to attention only after industry groups joined civil society.

Brad Biddle noted that industry can't always be reliable b/c it's self-interested. Civil society's role is to be the vanguard and take on issues. But there is no denying that industry has the power to get issues noticed.

When delegation or legislature presented w/document that has signatures of slew of civil society, and corporate companies, that gets notice.

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Can we have long-term relationships?

I don't think we need a dichotomy b/t what is an issue-related reliance and what is a longer-term and more fruitful partnership.

Relationships develop and remain open. When you get repeat players, get a community, dialogue that keeps things civil and opens up people to the possibility of paying attention when an issue doesn't necessarily affect their intersts.

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Cross-forum mobilization

Coalition can go right to the Hill and speak to Congress people. NGOs have limited ability to speak at WIPO. We can to the Senate -- they have to ratify and implement the treaty.

Senators are stakeholders in the process. Not just another forum.

We had these meetings, and got good letter from Senators Leahy and Specter. This has been very helpful.

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Cross-issue mobilization

If we want A2K to be a social movement, we need to keep channels of communication open to each other. Not everyone has to become a generalist, but we need to exchagne ideas formally (as here) and informally.

e.g., when people ask what I do at Public Knowledge, I can say "Access to Knowledge." It covers all of what we do.

e.g., Civil society groups involved in Broadcast Treaty don't just deal w/IP.

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Looking ahead

We need to mobilize other groups, especially those that aren't here today.

e.g., Groups that work on racial and economic issues, consumer groups.

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Josh Silver, Free Press

My group focuses on providing the information necessary for democracy.

I am going to focus on practicalities: how to mobilize people.

e.g., Ownership. 2003 FCC tried to lift media ownership caps. 3m wrote Congress and opposed. It wasn't just the left. NRA, Trent Lott, Jesse Helms. Saw that ownership resonates for many reasons. Conservatives want clean media, localism. Left wants more critical journalism, less corporatism, more accountability. We focused on clean messages.

e.g., Attempts to cut funding for public broadcasting. Got cross aisle mobilization.

e.g., Fake news generated by government agencies.

e.g., Save the Internet Campaign, consortium of over 800 organizations. http://www.savetheinternet.com. We have industry/pubic interest alignment. We have almost every industry in the country aligned against cable/internet. Use video distributed online. Conveys the problem in 90 seconds, and the solution in 90 seconds.

e.g., Newspaper/radio/TV ownership regs. Use humor on the 'net. Sent on internet Valentine to FCC commissioner. We forced him into holding hearings around the US on this issue. Every time we bring out tons of the public.

e.g., Created policy tracker to track state-level issues.

We're finding that American public understands some things very clearly. That media should not be owned by huge companies. that there shouldn't be tollbooths on the internet. But we're finding it much more difficult to get people to care about IP, global trade deals. But these are arguably the most important. As far as public messaging vehicle, they don't work well for us. If we can pull people in with issues they get, and then frame IP issues under those, that's how we can win.

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Discussion plan

This panel is both strategic and tactical. As the final plenary of this conference, it will inspire discussion of two topics:

1) civil society's role in A2K so far and 2) what its greatest potential for contribution could be in the future, in other words, how to mobilize civil society groups already connected to A2K across issue areas, geographic foci, and roles in the movement.

For example, is this a global “organizing moment”? If so, would a collective proposal of what civil society's successes have been and what its future contributions could be make sense as a working group activity going forward? Would a document outlining realistic goals in the coming year for civil society, broken down into the general categories relevant to that term be worthwhile and useful to groups already engaged in this work?

Members of the panel are from organizations that have already connected to A2K discussions at various stages, from first meetings to more recent debates and convenings. There is a great deal that the civil society groups connected to A2K can learn from the successes and failures of these efforts, for example, media reform in the U.S., WSIS organizing, domestic and internationally focused IP battles, and other technology policy experiences. There are also strategic coalitions that should be cultivated - what should those be? What do we do with this wealth of participation? Where do we go with this very rich base?

Each panelist will present briefly her/his strategic vision of the movement going forward. Then we will open up a discussion that touches on the following questions

On strategy:

Strategy:

the science or art of planning and conducting a war or a military campaign
a carefully devised plan of action to achieve a goal, or the art of developing or carrying out such a plan
in evolutionary theory, a behavior, structure, or other adaptation that improves viability

Since the birth of the A2K movement, coalitions have formed between civil society groups in the North and South that work in the domains of intellectual property rights (software, medicines, educational materials), telecommunications, library services, and other sectors.

When are civil society coalitions across sectors most effective and when, if ever, do they interfere with effective advocacy? What are the best of examples of cross-sectoral coalitions have been successful to date? What new opportunities for cross-sectoral work are on the horizon?

What are the particular challenges of working across the North-South divide? How can civil society build coalitions with other movement actors, such as government officials, firms, and technologists? Would we be a more powerful movement if groups were working in coalitions across the above domains, and North-South? If so, how would we forge those coalitions? Is it feasible? Which issues are conducive to them?

What should happen when the diverse array of group in the movement clash over the meaning of A2K?

Should the movement be flexible enough to accommodate conflicting views, or should we try to develop a hard line set of principles?

When should civil society groups work with non-civil society actors, like governments and technologists?

On tactics:

Tactics -

the science of organizing and maneuvering forces in battle to achieve a limited or immediate aim
the art of finding and implementing means to achieve particular immediate or short-term aims

Most of the civil society groups engaged in the A2K movement rely on issue advocacy, rather than litigation or grassroots movement building. Is this a viable strategy?

What is preventing the movement from growing into other strategies? Some have suggested that despite the fact that the Draft A2K treaty was primarily driven by civil society efforts, having governments lead moving it forward would be most effective. Is that true? And what does that mean for how civil society should relate to the treaty?

How can A2K Civil Society influence the government member driven Development Agenda at WIPO. Should the focus of A2K efforts be on grassroots organizing, litigation, or should they continue its primary focus on issue advocacy and international treaties. Is this an either/or or an “and” construction of movement building? When is grassroots activity unrealistic or inappropriate?