Archive for March, 2008

Zoe’s Readings

CCA, Gollmitzer & Murray, From Economy to Ecology: A Policy Framework for Creative Labour. March 2008
cdnconferenceartspt1.pdf

CCCA, Part I, Definitions and Models of the Creative Economy
cdnconferenceartspt1.pdf

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Patriot Act Haunts Google Service

from Simon Avery, The Globe and Mail, March 24, 2008.

Eighteen months ago, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., had an outdated computer system that was crashing daily and in desperate need of an overhaul. A new installation would have cost more than $1-million and taken months to implement. Google’s service, however, took just 30 days to set up, didn’t cost the university a penny and gave nearly 8,000 students and faculty leading-edge software, said Michael Pawlowski, Lakehead’s vice-president of administration and finance.

U.S.-based Google spotlighted the university as one of the first to adopt its software model of the future, and today Mr. Pawlowski boasts the move was the right thing for Lakehead, saving it hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual operating costs. But he notes one trade-off: The faculty was told not to transmit any private data over the system, including student marks.

At Lakehead, the deal with Google sparked a backlash. “The [university] did this on the cheap. By getting this free from Google, they gave away our rights,” said Tom Puk, past president of Lakehead’s faculty association, which filed a grievance against Lakehead administration that’s still in arbitration.

Professors say the Google deal broke terms of their collective agreement that guarantees members the right to private communications. Mr. Puk says teachers want an in-house system that doesn’t let third parties see their e-mails.

Some other organizations are banning Google’s innovative tools outright to avoid the prospect of U.S. spooks combing through their data. Security experts say many firms are only just starting to realize the risks they assume by embracing Web-based collaborative tools hosted by a U.S. company, a problem even more acute in Canada where federal privacy rules are at odds with U.S. security measures.

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Kenza’s Readings re Patriot Act, Homeland (In)Security Complex, etc.

Nancy Chang, What’s So Patriotic About Trampling on the Bill of Rights?. Center for Constitutional Rights, November 2001.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/USAPAanalyze.html

Immigration Policy Center. Targets of Suspicion: The Impact of Post-9/11 Policies on Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the US. May, 2004 (Volume 3, Issue 2)
http://immigration.server263.com/index.php?content=f200405

Gus Hosein, Walking on the Dark Side, Index on Censorship.
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-10-25-hosein-en.html

Maureen Webb, closing chapter from Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World.
http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100798990&fa=author&person_id=5017&publishergcoicode=87286

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Readings from Phil – re Kenya Media Policy

Statement on the Draft Media Council of Kenya Bill 2006
from Article 19, London
kenya-media-council-bill.pdf

US Ambassador to Kenya Speech to Law Society of Kenya, March 2, 2008
usambassador090308.pdf

ICT Policy in Kenya Revisited, Victor van Rejswoud, October 2006
index2-ict-policy-in-kenya-revised.pdf

Sisule F. Musungu, Kenya: Media’s Role in the Election Fallout, Inter-Press Services, February 2008
media-role-in-election-fallout.doc

International Freedom of Expression Clearinghouse, Kenya-Media Being Silenced as Political Crisis Intensifies, Jan. 30, 2008
kenya-media-being-silenced-as-political-crisis-intensifies.doc

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Readings from Evan – CR Issues

Daniel Gervais and Alana Maurushat. Fragmented Copyright, Fragmented Management : Proposals to Defrag Copyright Management. Canadian Journal of Law and Technology.
gervais.pdf

Laura J. Murray. Protecting ourselves to death: Canada, copyright and the Internet. First Monday. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_10/murray/index.html

Copy/South Dossier. http://www.copysouth.org/

Intellectual Property Issues in ICT4D. Sarah Bannerman & IDRC.
–check out pgs 49-53, more if you wanna.
bannerman.pdf

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March 12 – IP – Readings

Mél – re online archivesChapter 9, “Collectors” p 108 to 155 in the book; p 120 to 127 as a PDF:Lessig, Lawrence Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and theLaw to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. London: Penguin,2004. Online: http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/freeculture.pdf[Accessed Jan 07, 2008]

blog entry:Laura J. Murray: http://www.faircopyright.ca/?p=114

interview:UbuWeb’s creator: http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=59857_0_23_0_M

From Tamara


"Regulatory Environment" portion of the OECD report on the "participative web" (pages 77-99):
http://213.253.134.43/oecd/pdfs/browseit/9307031E.PDF

...and a short explanation of the downsides of IP from Benkler's Wealth of Networks (Ch 2, pages 35-41):
 http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks_Chapter_2.pdf

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Resources Chap. 6, re Civil Society, Chakravartty & Sarikakis

From IDRC and APC, Increasing the Impact of Civil Society Organizations on ICT Policy Development, 2003.

Ca. 2005, APC and CRIS, Involving Civil Society in ICT Policy.

CIDA’s Strategy on Knowledge for Development through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Seán Ó Siochrú, on Global Information Society Watch, n.d.

This section offers a succinct assessment of how five international institutions have performed in relation to information and communication technology (ICT) policy, including the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). A theme of special interest is participation in policy-making, particularly the participation of civil society, of women, and of actors from the South.

Our authors examine the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The World Trade Organisation (WTO), an important institution with extensive and complex relationships to ICTs spread over a number of its agreements, is notable for its absence here and will be included in the next edition of this publication.

One World ICT Resources

Markle Foundation Policy Participation reports

APC Women’s Networking Support Group Gender and ICT Policy

Lisa McLaughlin – great research on the corporatization of development from a feminist perspective

Civil Society and Feminist Engagement at WSIS – Some Reflections
Anita
Gurumurthy, IT for Change

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Gender and WSIS

wnsp_wsis_para11.jpg
During the various deliberations surrounding the development of the WSIS Draft Principles, many women’s groups were adamant that Paragraph 11A, which dealt with gender equity, be included. In September 2003 a t-shirt campaign was initiated by the NGO Gender Srategies Working Group. As you can see by the photo above, the t-shirts contained the message “WSIS has a missing paragraph” (on the front) and the text of paragraph 11A (on the back). They were worn by several NGO delegates.

Add: New Para 11A
A focus on the gender dimensions of ICT is essential not only for preventing an adverse impact of the digital revolution on gender equality or the perpetuation of existing inequalities and discrimination, but also for enhancing women’s equitable access to the benefits of ICT and to ensure that they can become a central tool for the empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality. We therefore resolve to establish policies, programmes and projects that consider, identify and analyse the gender differences and inequalities in the access to and use of ICT and that these are fully addressed
(Language proposed by Canada during the WSIS Intersessional Meeting in Paris from 15-18 July 2003)

For an overview of WSIS and Canada’s involvement, see the paper I co-wrote with Marita Moll called Vision Impossible which is published in Seeking Convergence in Policy and Practice: Communications in the Public Interest, Vol. 2. M. Moll and L.R. Shade (Eds.) Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. (Scroll down here: http://www3.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp/cracin/publications/final.htm to find chapters).The WSIS Gender Caucus focused on advocacy and lobbying on six key recommendations for action, based on the fundamental areas where gender integration and the empowerment of girls and women in the Information Society are most important. These recommendations included:
1. Gender must be a fundamental principle for action
2. Equitable participation in decisions shaping the information society
3. New and old ICTs in a multimodal approacj
4. Designing ICTs to serve people
5. Empowerment for full participation
6. Research analysis and evaluation to guide action
Why is gender important to include in WSIS? An interview by Daphne Plou of Chat Garcia Ramilo, 2003.

On WSIS Gender Caucus at Tunis in November 2005:
http://shade.flinknet.com/archives/000615.html
(some links may be defunct)

There’s been a bit of academic writing on gender and WSIS, see scholar.google.com

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Resources for Chap 5, Info Society, Chakravatty & Sarikakis

IT for Change has launched a beta version of Information Society Watch, a resource portal providing a Southern perspective on information society (IS) issues. IS Watch attempts to address the imperative of catalysing new perspectives, frameworks and concepts rooted in the development experience of the global South. It is a response to the need for building a Southern discourse on the information society phenomenon, which so far has mostly been interpreted by Northern actors.The Drum Beat’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) National Policies & Case Studies.

The Global Knowledge Partnership

International Development Resource Centre (Ottawa)

How do the poor use their phones

United Nations Development Program ICT for Development

UNDP Human Development Report 2001

Universal Access: The Next Killer App. A Discussion Paper for Defining and Maintaining Universal Access to Basic Network Services: Canadian Directions in an International Context. Invitational Workshop Sponsored by Industry Canada and the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto. Toronto: 14-16 March, 1996.

Resources on World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) at Area 808 - note many of these links may be defunct; there is a lively academic body of work on WSIS. But you can take some of the defunct links and plug into the Way Back Machine…

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Resources – Chap 4- Broadcasting Policy – Chakravarty & Sarikakis

Media Ownership Resources from COMS 225 blog

Our Cultural Sovereisngty: The Second Century of Canadian Broadcasting. Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, Clifford Lincoln, M.P.Chair, June 2003. and blurb from COMS 225.

UNESCO Portal on Public Service Broadcasting

The 2004 Spry Memorial Lecture – Graham Murdoch, BUILDING THE DIGITAL COMMONS: PUBLIC BROADCASTING IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET

EU- Television Without Frontiers Directive

UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity – resources from Area 808 blog, note, some links are defunct

International Network for Cultural Diversity
http://www.incd.net/

Culturescope.ca a portal of information about Canadian cultural policy.

Canadian Conference of the Arts.

CBC Archives. Ruling the Airwaves: The CRTC and Canadian Content.

Statistics Canada. Canadian Framework for Culture Statistics, 2004.

Statistics Canada. Data Tables on Government Expenditures on Culture, 2000-2004.

Spotlight on Canadian Documentaries, presented by Telefilm Canada at the 2005 Doc Policy Summit during the 12th Annual Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.”

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