[Reader-list] Contested Commons, Trespassing Publics: A Public Record

[Monica Narula]

Contested Commons, Trespassing Publics: A Public Record
Available for free download at www.sarai.net/events/ip_conf/ip_conf.htm

A rapporteur's account of the Contested Commons conference (6-8  
January 2005, Delhi), along with a range of interviews, links a wide  
spectrum of political, social and cultural issues embedded in "the  
property question". It deconstructs the capital-driven processes of  
enclosure in the contexts of software, file-sharing, patents,  
biopiracy, Indigenous knowledge, cyber art, virtual exchange,  
literary history, theology and law, among others.

Varied voices explore new paradigms of practice in relation to the  
global intellectual property regime, its enforcement as well as its  
violation and subversion by a compelling array of resilient figures.  
These include the hacker, the pirate, the solitary "genius", the  
reformer, the artist, the prisoner, the heretic, the thief, the  
"transformative" author, the theorist, the migrant,  the vendor, the  
critic, the aesthete, the scribe, the citizen, the tenant, the  
worker, the chairman, the rebel, the coder, the squatter, the  
inventor, the farmer, the smuggler, the spectator, the judge...

This detailed account describes the radical contemporary shifts in  
the production, distribution and consumption of cultural materials  
through the networks of digital media.  It complicates the meaning of  
"community", and narrates how technology continues to enable an  
unprecedented levelling of exclusionary hierarchies and hegemonies  
all over the world.

Paperback, 170 pp, Euro 10, US$ 10

Monica Narula
Raqs Media Collective
Sarai-CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110 054
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net