Section 5 – Resistance from the South to the Global Copyright System

Countries of the South have not recently learnt about the problems associated with copyright; resistance has been present for some time. Resistance from the global South can, and does, take many forms. Resistance happens within the framework of copyright and intellectual property. For example, the General Public License (GPL) turns copyright on its head by providing incentives to share ideas instead of own them, but the GPL resists copyright from within the paradigm of copyright. A second way of looking at resistance is to see the system of copyright as a system of rights which legitimates a type of violence as people round the world are forced to adhere to the law. Thus, one should ask: how do you go outside copyright and intellectual property rights? Third, given the commonalities with other traditions, it is important to consider building alliances with other areas of resistance to IPRs. This ‘environmentalism for the net,’ as described by James Boyle, seeks to formulate a diverse movement working towards the same cause. Just as the early days of the environmental movement saw people from different paths of life coming together for a single cause, it is possible to conceptualise resistance to copyright along similar lines. One possibility is to think about intellectual property in the context of the International Information Order as a way of building convergence around the topic.