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Pakistan

11 april 2007

Fouad Riaz Bajwa*

COPY SOUTH DOSSIER – A DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO THE DIGITAL COMMONS OF THE SOUTH – A REGION LOCATED ONLY 15 KILOMETERS AWAY FROM PLANET EARTH!

I shouldn’t just step-up and initiate criticism for something that has long been missing attention from the common man’s eye in the South. Various issues related to Intellectual Capital have been a great source of fortune making as well as pain in the developed world that are now soon to reveal their evil and ugly faces far more extensively and disastrously in the South in light of global modalities either in place or in their emergence. Every observation has either positive or negative sides and what may have seemed positive in one era tends to be surely negative in another. A major evil face has been that of the Closed Source or Proprietary Software world that I commonly refer to as ‘Public Domain Code and Process Hijackers’. They even have the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policies and international lobbying to support their endeavors. But all hope is not lost, the realization of the existence of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) development and collaboration paradigms and the impact that software has had on economic, political and developmental issues, has lead not only towards policy development with new forms of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) governance in the developing world, but is setting ground in parallel for the evolution of a ‘Free’ and/or ‘Open’ Information Society.

Just to share an example of the state of affairs on both FOSS and IPR, today when I reconcile on our advocacy efforts for FOSS or struggle to initiate a localized Creative Commons Project for Pakistan, all is being done amongst a dilemma where we are positioned within a community that is unaware of what its rights in the Information Society are. Both the academia and civil sectors of society are alien to the concept of open or cultural production, alternate forms of intellectual property rights, making available learning materials and their research, knowledge and resources open to the public, freely in open formats so that people within the community irrespective of ethnicity, race, religion, political or economic situation and location can collectively learn as well as build new knowledge from that very small but very important contribution, that, has always been continuing the process of knowledge creation and transferring it to future generations through the public domain. Unless the people are aware of their rights or their freedoms as well as limitations, how will they be able to approach the public policy and legislation development activity?

The emergence of an Open Information Society in the region is still in its stage of infancy and the baby is yet to open its eyes to experience the light of true open knowledge and wisdom. In my personal view, the Copy South Dossier is not just a research publication, it’s a guide with each part presenting both extensive knowledge and narrating experiences that have happened or are to happen, as they say, there are signs for the wise and this publication is full of signs. Now, it is only a matter of understanding whether readers can benefit productively from such a contribution. On an ending note; as software code has witnessed hijacking while in the Public Domain from the commercial closed source world, the Internet itself is also composed of a software layer, is vulnerable too and may also witness the ‘Hijacking of the Internet’, my message, learn to open up, collaborate and share for the development of knowledge deeming the Copy South Dossier as your affective resource on how to do so! But at the same time, protect the public knowledge and domain from the Hijackers!

*Independent writer and researcher. fouadbajwa@gmail.com