Documents

Introduction
Copyright gives authors exclusive control of the use of a growing number of forms of artistic expression.
Often, it is not the authors who own those rights, but gigantic cultural enterprises. They manage not only the production, but also the distribution and marketing of a large proportion of films, music, theatre, literature, soap operas, visual arts and design. That gives them far-reaching powers in deciding what we see, hear or read, in which setting and, above all, what we don’t see, hear or read.

Global Auction of
Public Assets: Public
sector alternatives to the infrastructure market & Public Private
Partnerships by Dexter
Whitfield

380 pages, Spokesman Books, Nottingham. England. ISBN 978 0 85124 773 1

This book explains why public infrastructure has a vital
role in economic development, increases productivity, generates employment and
improves community well-being.

Control of seeds

Brewster Kneen

    How a society regards its seeds, whether they are  respected or abused, ‘owned’ or freely shared, is an     important expression of its culture and politics.  

Canada’s present seed policy is eroding farmers’ and communities’ abilities to select, save and use
seeds, while at the same time supporting transnational corporations’ ownership and control of seeds. The
Seed Policy Project’s aim is to gather a broad based network that can create and mobilise around a truly
public seed policy for Canada that supports seeds and seed keepers. The Seed Policy Project’s first step was
to have conversations with people across Canada who have an interest in seed policy from both a practical

C- 61, A Biased Critique

Brewster Kneen

Bill C-61, an act to amend the Copyright Act, was tabled in the Parliament of Canada 12 June 2008.

Any discussion of copyright should begin with an observation and a question:

– Every artist and creator builds on the works of those who have gone before, requiring an active
and respected public domain;
– How is a society to compensate its cultural workers for their contributions to that society and
the world at large?

The Fictions of Autonomous Invention: Accumulation by Dispossession,
Commodification and Life Patents in Canada

by Scott Prudham

by Ricardo Ramirez, Garth Graham, Fred Bigham and Daniel Pellerin

Legal and political strategies for “protecting” traditional environmental knowledge in Penticton, Okanagan Nation (British Columbia)

Sean Robertson

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. April 25, 2007.

The Bush administration is helping multinationals buy U.S. municipal water systems, putting our most important resource in the hands of corporations with no public accountability. All across the United States, municipal water systems are being bought up by multinational corporations, turning one of our last remaining public commons and our most vital resource into a commodity