Andrew Rens's blog

Creative Commons South Africa (CC Za) is now hosted at Intellectual Property Law Research, at the Department of Private Law at the University of Cape Town Law School. Tobias Schonwetter, a post doctoral fellow at Intellectual Property Law Research, has taken over as legal lead from me. Tobias will join public lead Dave Duarte, in steering the project. Read more » about New leadership at Creative Commons South Africa

In a previous post, the Traditions of Knowledge I referred to the appropriation of traditional knowledge by means of industrial revolution intellectual property.

My friend Ethan Zuckerman explains in Turmeric, pygmies and piracy, in which he gives an example which shows just how blatant appropriation can be: Read more » about The Traditions of Knoweldge II

Conventional intellectual property laws claim to confer rights only on knowledge that is individually authored, reduced to material form and 'original'. The antithesis of that modern knowledge paradigm is traditional knowledge which is by its nature traditional, communal and frequently oral. Some developing countries have adopted sui generis legislation that attempts to craft a regime appropriate for traditional knowledge. Read more » about The Traditions of Knowledge

I am putting up (almost) daily blogposts on my blog at www.aliquidnovi.org.

Most of the posts relate to intellectual property and access to knowledge in Africa, hence the title.

I'll be cross posting some of those here on my CIS blog, usually those which I think will be of interest to readers focused on Northern hemisphere issues. If you want to follow developments in Africa more closely then aliquidnovi is blog for you. Read more » about ex africa semper aliquid novi

For the next three days I will be blogging at Icommons.org on the
Access to Knowledge Conference, held at Yale Law School, hosted by the Yale Information Society Project. Read more » about A2K @ Yale

icommons Africa is a new project dedicated to Nurturing the African Commons.

Africans living in a continent so rich in culture and heritage, often struggle to benefit from those riches. For centuries Africans have created together.
Now technology provides new ways in which Africans can continue the tradition of creative co-operation.

We plan to nurture the growth of the African commons, a treasury of collaboratively produced, open access works. Read more » about Nuturing the African Commons

"So the main idea behind the African Commons Project is about nurturing the idea of an “information commons” in Africa - discovering what that is, what it should encompass, and how it should be built and sustained.

THE AFRICAN COMMONS PROJECT is an inspiring project, but what especially impresses me about the blog is the language. Its about time IMO that ITC dicourse is enriched by a language of connectedness, nurture, and wholeness.

Full Disclosure: I am an active participant in the Project. Read more » about Nurturing the African Commons Project blog!

On July 9 2005 the Supreme Court of British Columbia issued an astonishing injunction against anyone who had bought or obtained a copy of a book. Read more » about Censorship in Canada

To anyone even remotely familiar with blogging, websites etc its pretty obvious that a blog isn't a formal statement by the blogger on ANYTHING.

Even more obviously nothing that I say in this blog is neccesarily the views of Stanford CIS, anyone who I work for, anyone I work with, anyone I teach, my family, my pets or anyone I talk to at Buzz 9, SOMA or Buzz 9 Melville. Read more » about nature of blogging

As I said in my previous blog entry, the Telkom/Helkom dispute has been settled.

Its interesting to look at the copyright issue and compare;

the Telkom image:

which constitutes an artistic work as defined in section 1 of the
South African Copyright Act 98 of 1978:

" 'artistic work' means, irrespective of the artistic quality thereof- Read more » about Telkom and Helkom logos: fair dealing?

Since going open source with software has potential benefits for South Africa it is time to consider a policy shift towards Open Knowledge for South African education. Many universities are already involved in Open Knowledge Projects but much greater opportunities are opening up for education.

Government has the chance to adopt general policies which encourage this generally. This post considers only one of these possible policies; licensing textbooks under Creative Commons licences. Read more » about Open Knowledge: Time for South African Education to go ‘Open Source’

The South African government has adopted a policy to use open source software as far as possible

As a result there will be increased opportunities for local developers, and government will no longer be dependant on proprietary software. Read more » about South African government goes Open Source

Andrew Rens, obtained BA and subsequently LLB
(equivalent of JD) degrees from the
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
before working as a lawyer in private practise.
His next real job was for the Commission for
Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration during the
start up of this independent government agency for the
resolution of labour disputes. He left the CCMA to
engage in teaching and human rights litigation as an
Read more » about Bio

According to the Mail and Guardian, Earthlife Africa, an evironmental group, has been prohibited by a court order from making public the contents of an Eskom risk assesment.

Earthlife Africa is currently engaged in protracted litigation with Eskom, South Africa's incumbent power utility, and back in June Eskoms attorney apparently gave the document to Earthlife by mistake. Read more » about Earthlife Africa prohibited from releasing Eskom risk assesment of nuke reactor

On 27 May 2005 the Constitutional Court of South Africa handed down judgment in the case of
Laugh It Off Promotions CC v South African Breweries International (Finance) B.V. T/A Sabmark International.

The judgment is significant since it is the South African Constitutional Court's first foray into the freedom of expression issues raised by parody and satire. It also affirms that no area of South African law remains sealed off from the Constitution and its values. Read more » about Can SAB Laugh It Off?