GRAIN: Toward a convergence of movements

There has never been a time of more centralised power and control. The free space in which we can create, co-operate, learn and share with other people is diminishing by the day as we lose our ability to think and live outside the reach of transnational corporations. They own the water, they control the media and they dominate our food supply. At the core of this control is the whole system of intellectual property rights (IPR) -- copyrights, patents, trademarks, broadcasters' rights and so on.

IPR are now the central source of profits in the so-called "knowledge economy", making their expansion crucial for corporations investing in new technologies and new markets across the planet. But they are killing innovation, freedom and access to essential things like culture, health and education -- our innovations, our freedom, our education. Farmers can't save seeds. Sick people can't afford drugs. Computer programmers can't modify software. Librarians won't let you photocopy a magazine article. Students can't afford textbooks. Why? Because of myriad IPR laws being strengthened every day to stop you from doing things with someone else's "creative work". Over the past decades, the drive to privatise and criminalise everything in the name of a few companies' supposed genius has gone too far. The backlash is inevitable.

Where there is oppression there is always resistance. Today, people are using all kinds of creative means to organise and push back the IPR onslaught. The free software and open source movements are directly challenging Microsoft's monopoly practices, dodgy products and sloppy standards through their own approaches to programme development and distribution. Music enthusiasts have set up peer-to-peer networks on the internet, like Napster and Kazaa, to share digital recordings. The creative commons community is promoting alternative forms of copyright to let authors put their works in the public domain and minimise restrictions on what readers can do. Librarians are campaigning hard to save "fair use" principles in the US and Europe, while AIDS activists throughout the world are demanding that medicine serve the health of people, not the advertising budgets of mega-drug firms. Farmers are ripping up fields of genetically modified (GM) crops, hitting back at Monsanto's efforts to patent, contaminate and take over the seed supply that farmers themselves developed over generations. And indigenous peoples continue to fight against the intensifying theft and destruction of their knowledge.