Dear friends,

Korakora.org is revitalizing the Kuro meetings and will begin with on-line exchanges of ideas via a new sub-heading "Kuro't Palaisipán." For comment, we have three discussion articles:

(1) Statement on the Philippine IP policy and strategy
(2) So What's the problem?
(3) Is there anything left after property rights?

Abstracts and links below.

If you have a paper, short article, draft statements or other research document that you would like to place in a discussion-study group, just let me know.

Mabuhay!
Fatima Lasay

Here are some music I made in 1999-2002. Included is a 4-minute recorded excerpt from a sound installation in 2004. Feel free to share with others.

If you need help with the files or if you find anything wrong on the website, please let me know. Thanks!

Dear Joel Tenenbaum,

My name is Fatima Lasay, artist from the Philippines.

Reading about the transformation of your life under this trial brought about by the American legal system and the American recording industry, I am reminded of the history of the transformation of life in the Philippines brought about by American expansion in the late 19th century.

It seems far fetched, but your account makes me think that Expansionist Corporate America is now fiercely colonizing its own people.

Dear colleagues,

Below, I make an intervention of the news announcement from European Commissioner Reding about "re-working" copyright law in Europe.

I use the text of Paul Bigioni, a lawyer who wrote a book about the persistence of fascism.

My intention is to show that we are on our way to a neo-fascist world.*

I'm sorry it is only in English.

Best wishes,
Fatima Lasay

????????????
??????????????????? (Media Art )????? ????
Trevor Batten (Amsterdam, Jan/July/Aug, 1996)

Translation by Than Ohn. Thanks also to Khin Mya Zhin.

Download RTF document What is Media Art? by Trevor Batten.

i. Loving one's Job more than ones Friends

I've just finished reading "Oppenheimer The Story of a Friendship" by Haakon Chevalier -written in 1965/1966.

The book is an account (using official transcripts) of what happened between two friends as a result of the conflict between Oppenheimer's earlier Communist sympathies and his need for security clearance after he became scientific leader of the US team that developed the Atomic
Bomb in WWII.

A philosophy professor in Argentina, Horacio Potel, is facing criminal charges for maintaining a website devoted to translations of works by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. His alleged crime: copyright infringement. Here is Professor Potel's sad story.

Dear friends,

The Intellectual Property Office-Philippines has been very active in their push towards a culture of "intellectual property" (IP), spreading their advocacy of IP and of culture and the arts as important IP assets of the nation. The IPO-Philippines' National IP Policy Strategy on "Copyright and Other Creative Industries" also highlighted Intellectual Property Rights violations as high on the list of concerns of IP stakeholders.

I would like to invite everyone in the creative sectors to reflect on the advocacy of the IPO-Philippines and such groups as the Intellectual Property Coalition, and examine carefully what they put forth as largely unexamined assumptions about "intellectual property." These assumptions are: (1) the system of IP is "good" in the social, economic and juridical sense; (2) the system of IP is the only and best way forward in stimulating creativity and providing economic incentives to artists; and (3) the system has worked well and continues to work well through history and all over the world, and must therefore be enforced in places where the system is not in full implementation.

Some Personal Observations Regarding the CopySouth Workshop: Trivandrum, Kerala, December 2008
(first draft)

An Important Note for the Reader:

Please note: This is not an objective report of the presentations within the workshop. It is a highly subjective collection of notes and thoughts based on the issues raised by various speakers. My personal notes have been edited and restructured (even extended with my own viewpoints) afterwards. This text is therefore purely a reflection of my own interests and obsessions as manifest through, and by, the CopySouth workshop. However, hopefully, it may also be of interest and use to others.

This presentation is a critique of the concept of "free society" and its technology of propaganda. This presentation is therefore also a critique of ICT, information and communications technology, the technology underlying the free and open-source movement.