Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Kapitzke, C. (2006) - Intellectual Property Rights
Kapitzke, C. (2006) - Intellectual Property Rights
Kapitzke, Cushla (2006) Intellectual property rights: Governing cultural and educational futures.
Policy Futures in Education 4(4):pp. 431-445.
CUSHLA KAPITZKE
SCHOOL OF CULTURAL AND LANGUAGE STUDIES
QUT FACULTY OF EDUCATION
[email protected]
Introduction
The mundanities of authorship and the ownership of ideas in educational institutions were
historically the province of librarians and administrators. Being privy to the mandates of
copyright law, these institutional custodians ensured organizational compliance to the
provisions of ‘fair use’ and ‘fair dealing’ for learning and research. This paper argues that
those days are gone, and that questions of intellectual property have insinuated
themselves into the creative and cultural practices of all, but especially of educators.
Because these questions have implications for educational futures worldwide, the paper
comprises a wake-up call for teachers, administrators, researchers, policymakers, and
parents to be informed and proactive about changes in intellectual property law, policy,
and practice.
A key agent of change in the field today is the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO). Established in 1967 and located in Geneva, WIPO is a specialized agency of the
United Nations whose core business is the protection of intellectual property. Comprising
181 nation member states, WIPO’s brief is to administer 23 international treaties dealing
with different aspects of intellectual property. The official WIPO Handbook (2004)
declares that the purpose of intellectual property is ‘to promote, as a deliberate act of
Government policy, creativity and the dissemination and application of its results and to
encourage fair trading which would contribute to economic and social development’ (p.
3). Note in this statement the integration of ‘trade’ with innovation and the assumption
that both the economy and society will benefit from this coupling.
WIPO actively promotes these principles. For example, its webpage entitled Intellectual
property in everyday life, states that the ambit of intellectual property includes ‘nearly
everything we do’ (WIPO, 2005). Not only has intellectual property invaded the physical
spaces and lives of ordinary people but a slice of time has been apportioned to it as well.
In seeking to enhance social awareness of the apparent ubiquity of intellectual property in
‘everyday life,’ WIPO has established an official World Intellectual Property Day to be
observed annually on 26 April. The purpose of this special day is to
reflect on how intellectual property touches all aspects of our lives: How
copyright helps bring music to our ears and art, films and literature before
our eyes; how industrial design helps shape our world, and how trademarks
provide reliable signs of quality; how patenting helps promote ingenious
inventions that make life easier, faster, safer – and sometimes completely
change our way of living. (WIPO, 2005)
Most of these statements are either exaggerated or unsubstantiated. The claim that
copyright ‘helps bring music to our ears’ is tenuous at best, and lexical association of
copyright with things recognized as having social and cultural value (‘art,’ ‘film’ and
‘literature’) functions to legitimate its formulation and widespread application. There is
little evidence also that the use of trademarks guarantees quality because they deal more
with product differentiation and promotion than quality assurance. These spurious claims
aside, recent changes to policy and law have meant that intellectual property issues will
One subset of the literature dealing with questions of world trade in relation to intellectual
property focuses specifically on the implications for developing countries (Chomsky,
1999, 2002; Drahos & Mayne, 2002; Hertz, 2001; Kufour, 2004; Qureshi, 1996;
Rikowski, 2005). Some that work within socially critical, neomarxist theoretical
perspectives focus expressly on the role played by the United States. Typically, these
analysts tend to view the United States as an advocate for unrestrained global capital and
its ‘imperialist’ order. There is a perception that powerful lobby groups are driving these
developments through transnational trade agreements like the General Agreement on
Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and, more recently, the General Agreement on Trade in
Services (Chomsky, 2000, 2003; Nederveen Pieterse, 2004; Prestowitz, 2003). McLaren
(2005) and Aronowitz and Gautney (2003), for example, examine trends in education
using global neo-colonial theory. Collectively, these texts (re)present both the promise
and the problem of supranational institutions and their capacity for global governance
through public policy and the strategic formation of bilateral and multilateral trade
agreements.
Recent work in the analytics of social power has shifted from an understanding of
government as power exercised centrally by the state to that of distributed power applied
to the bodies of citizens. Foucault (2003a, 2003b) first drew attention to power as positive
and productive social practice rather than as a negative facility possessed by a few to
oppress others.1 His genealogical studies, for example, showed how modern liberal
governments establish systems of knowledge and classes of experts who induce citizens
to regulate themselves through the ‘conduct of conduct.’
Rose (1999) developed these ideas by examining the power of surveilling rationalities in
the creation and constraint of the modern human subject. He used the term
governmentality to refer to the project of shaping, guiding, or directing human conduct,
including the ways that people are ‘urged and educated to bridle one’s own passions, to
control one’s own instinct, to govern oneself’ (p. 3). Any analysis of power therefore
entails examining the formation and transformation of schemes, strategies, and
programmes that seek to shape the behavior of others with certain objectives in mind such
as, for example, the management of cultural activity and access through intellectual
property rights.
Even so, the exercise of governance differs from that of domination. Domination overtly
and crudely crushes the possibilities for action of the dominated. Because it entails the
management and molding of human desires and motivations in relation to particular
outcomes, the art of governance presupposes the freedom and agency of the governed and
an understanding of the ways in which they operate. This concept of power is more subtle
because it persuades people to ‘act upon [their own] action’ (Rose, 1999, p. 4). The state,
including the democratic state, is just one element in multiple circuits of power that
deploy internalized ‘moral technologies of discipline’ (p. 101) and sophisticated systems
of surveillance to track the objects of its gaze (cf. Lyon, 2001, 2003). Appeals to moral
standards produce cooperation but mild forms of coercion restrict and reform
‘pathological’ individuals who do not willingly accept the rights and responsibilities of
the freedoms in so-called free societies.
One way of analyzing this process is to examine the conditions under which it becomes
possible to consider certain things to be true as humans produce, consume, act, and reflect
on themselves in and through cultural engagement. Some of the questions that are
considered below include the following. What ‘truths’ are used as a basis for the
formation and reformulation of thinking and talking about cultural work and its artefacts?
What criteria establish these values of truth, and how are the criteria (re)presented
discursively and materially in everyday texts, activities, and events? What genres of
governance ensure their effect, and how do these genres support and contradict each
other? What rationalities of justification do governing bodies provide at local, regional,
national, and global levels to explain these directives for the conduct of cultural work and
play in homes, schools, and communities? How does intellectual property operate as a
global form of the ‘will to govern’? In what ways does intellectual property infuse policy
and practice to prompt persuasion, negotiation, and legislation on the conduct of conduct
with and around cultural work?
Considering the global parameters of the issues at hand in the current TRIPS context,
these questions entail inquiry into the ways that public policy ties cultural protocols for
the conduct of copyright to international trade agreements and, ultimately, to foreign
policy arrangements. In what follows, developments in copyright policy and practice
within Australia are used to explore these questions. The discussion begins with analysis
of a free trade agreement signed by Australia and the United States.
Tensions generated by competing local, regional, national, and global interests in a world
that remains geopolitically organized as nation states is beyond the scope of this article.
Yet, the question of ‘who benefits and at whose cost’ remains at the heart of much public
debate around free trade. My purpose here is to encourage discussion by providing an
Australian perspective on the implications of AUSFTA for education. In so doing, it
Most arguments against trade liberalization are based on nationalistic concerns. The belief
that allegiance to nation states impeded global prosperity and peace arose from the work
of two early twentieth-century economists, Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman,
whose ideas ushered in the current post-Keynesian era of economic rationalism and its
neoliberal policy equivalent. The following quotation is an example of this so-called
‘obstructive’ nationalistic discourse. Taken from a book examining the AUSFTA from
legal and political scientific perspectives, and polemically titled How to Kill a Country,
the writers argue:
By eroding and dismantling our key institutions, we … argue that the FTA
will effectively destroy our ability to protect and promote national
prosperity. We marvel that such vast areas of a country’s social and
economic life could be transformed so utterly, and with such minimal public
debate — all in the name of seizing a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ — to
be thoroughly integrated with American interests in a manner that is
entirely, 100 per cent favourable to the United States and in almost every
way represents a step back for Australia… [emphasis added] (Weiss,
Thurbon & Mathews, 2004, p. 22)
Public debate on free trade in both Australia and the United States has focused largely on
economic objectives and questions of market access. A growing anti-free trade literature,
however, argues the folly of this narrow conception of what are ultimately social issues
(Brown, 2004). Research from the United States totalizes and condemns ‘global capital’
by conflating it with the militaristic and imperialistic policies of the neoconservative
political right (cf. Aronowitz & Gautney, 2003; McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005).
Australian analysts of AUSFTA (e.g., Capling, 2005; Grant, 2004; Weiss et al., 2004)
argue in parallel that free trade agreements are part of a US strategy of ‘harmonization’
aimed primarily at making the world secure for big business. The following analysis of
this hypothesis in relation to copyright seeks to historicize developments and thereby to
improve understanding of the mutual long-term implications of the developments.
Unarguably, the United States government was unanimous in its support for AUSFTA.
The Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations appointed by the President of
the United States declared that the US/Australia FTA was ‘an unprecedented negotiating
accomplishment’ that was ‘strongly in the economic interest of the United States’ (cited
in Senate Select Committee, 2004, p. 23). The following quotations taken from the Office
of the United States Trade Representative website (2004) confirm this view specifically in
relation to the issue of intellectual property.
The modal construction ‘should’ in the first quotation indicates a sense of obligation for
‘worldwide’ adoption of this ‘model’ of ‘protection’ and ‘enforcement’ (i.e., control and
governance). That the officeholder responsible for Global Public Policy in the world’s
largest media corporation spoke these words also suggests a high level of regulation for
future signatories. Furthermore, how full is the ‘full’ protection afforded by AUSFTA for
the motion picture industry as the second quotation alleges? Does it mean sufficiently
‘full’ that it constitutes an impediment to the creative potential of aspiring film producers
who work outside of the United States?
Despite the media’s focus on economic issues, the real agenda of free trade agreements is
political, and AUSFTA is no exception. Comments made by Australian government
ministers throughout the negotiations consistently emphasized the point that AUSFTA
would ‘strengthen’ Australia’s political ties with the United States. The following
statement taken from the Final Report on the AUSFTA confirms the voluntary and
inherently political nature of free trade deals.
Clearly, there are costs as well as benefits to this Agreement. The US Trade
Representative who signed the deal, Robert Zoellick, has consistently stated that, to be
eligible for consideration of a free trade agreement with the United States, potential
partners must qualify on more than trade criteria. He has asserted that the United States
seeks ‘cooperation — or better — on foreign policy and security issues’ from prospective
signatories (Zoellick, 2003). What does the phrase ‘or better’ than cooperation mean
here? Does it signify a willingness to tip the balance beyond outcomes that are equitable
and mutually beneficial in order to serve US agendas and objectives? The United States
government is clear that its international interests go far beyond trade, and Zoellick
(2003) openly advocates, ‘Why not try to urge people to support our overall policies?’
Modern states protect their national security through a combination of military, economic,
and social measures (Foucault, 2004). The interrelation of the economy and the military-
industrial complex is historically a complicated one but it is apparent that the pursuit of
security today is linked closely with business and the media-entertainment industry in
particular (cf. Der Derian, 2001; Graham & Luke, 2003). Economic security today refers
not to the industrial sector of the Fordist economy but to information capitalism and the
Free trade has emerged therefore as an important arm of national security. Indeed, in the
aftermath of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, Robert Zoellick
characterized the Bush administration’s ‘aggressive’ trade agenda as integral to the
‘counteroffensive’ against America’s terrorist adversaries (Zoellick, 2001). This strategy
has spawned a foreign policy riddled with paradoxes to which American policy and
security analysts seem to be blind. For example, while American ‘national security’ and
‘global interests’ are a priority, they translate nonetheless into the vision of the United
States delivering ‘peace,’ ‘prosperity,’ and ‘freedom’ abroad. The following statement
from The trade front: Combating terrorism with open markets (Lindsey, 2003), published
by a ‘non-profit public policy research foundation’ headquartered in Washington DC,
illustrates these kinds of paradoxes.
How does reducing trade barriers around the world make America safer?
First, by helping the global spread of markets and liberal democracy.
Wherever it exists and in whatever form, tyranny spawns war and conflict
and terror — and, consequently, threats to U.S. global interests and national
security. Promoting promarket policies in other countries is one small but
effective way for the United States to minimize those threats by fostering
conditions more favorable to human freedom.
Second, leading the world toward closer commercial ties can reduce threats
to American interests and security by calming fears and resentment of
American power. A nation as overwhelmingly dominant as ours will
inevitably face some level of reactionary opposition — opposition that has
now intensified after the recent exertions of U.S. military. …
Seen in this light, U.S. trade policy can serve as an olive branch to the
world. (Lindsey, 2003, p. 12-13)
The problem with this ‘promarket policy’ is the assumption that its ‘other,’ ‘the world,’
wants the same outcome: hyper-individualism and corporate capitalism unhindered by
government intervention. This same unquestioned belief also underpins the National
Security Strategy of the United States (2002) which makes extensive reference to free
trade, conceiving it as a basic human right and a moral entitlement. Chapter 6 of the
Strategy, called Ignite a New Era of Global Economic Growth through Free Markets and
Free Trade, argues that free market economies and trade policies lift countries out of
poverty and political instability more effectively than traditional aid and development
approaches. Zeal for free trade has involved the United States in an unprecedented
number of trade negotiations, all of which include intellectual property rights provisions
(see Gadbaw & Richards, 1988; Ryan, 1998; Sell, 1998). At the time of writing, the
United States government was negotiating with 33 countries for a Free Trade Area of the
Americas, and was holding multilateral talks with nations of Southern Africa, South
America, and the Middle East. To date, it has signed more than a dozen bilateral
agreements — including that with Australia — and negotiations have been entered into
with numerous others.3
As part of the plan for intellectual property rights, a number of private organizations in
the United States assist the government in surveilling compliance to international
copyright standards. The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) — a coalition
representing copyright-based industries — works with the U.S. Trade Representative and
the governments of 80 countries to track and monitor ‘legislative and enforcement
developments’ in copyright on a global scale (IIPA, 2005a). As part of its brief, IIPA
prepares an annual Special 301 report of ‘rogue’ nations and their activities. Taxonomies
of classification and grids differentiating regions and nations in scales of copyright piracy
seek to
identify those countries that deny adequate and effective protection for
intellectual property rights or deny fair and equitable market access for
persons that rely on intellectual property protection. Countries… which
have the greatest adverse impact on relevant U.S. products are designated
‘Priority Foreign Countries,’ and at the end of an ensuing investigation, risk
having trade sanctions levied against them. (IIPA, 2005b)
Other lists such as ‘Watch List’ and ‘Priority Watch List’ scrutinize offending countries
without necessarily imposing ‘immediate’ trade sanctions. In their genealogy of
benchmarking, Larner and Le Heron (2004) show how comparative quantitative
techniques of audits, standards, and indicators like the Special 301 report comprise
‘calculative practices’ for global governmentality. As the previous WIPO quotations note,
to date IIPA categorizations and indices have served mainly a ‘repressive’ or disciplining
function at the level of the culturally engaged subject. The discourse of morality (e.g.,
‘fair’ and ‘equitable’ in the quotation above) is employed as the means of governance,
obliging individuals and institutional consumers to perform moral work on themselves by
changing their beliefs and attitudes to the content of text and the rules of its consumption.
Power works here through the capacity to ‘name’ and ‘define,’ and thereby to exclude
other ways of thinking and doing culture.
Critics in both the United States and Australia argue that linking intellectual property to
international trade agreements — and therefore to issues of political interest and security
— is problematic and detrimental to trade, as well as to the domains of culture and
education. In what ways then do free trade agreements disadvantage countries like
Australia?
One explanation for the document’s impenetrable textual bulk is determination on the part
of the United States to raise intellectual property standards worldwide (Grant, 2004).
Increasing opposition to this agenda from developing countries in forums like the WTO
has compelled the US government to adopt the bilateral free trade agreement strategy and
the tactic of the textual ‘template.’ As previously noted, inclusion of intellectual property
chapters in trade agreements is anomalous to begin with, but the tactic of ‘templates’
complicates matters even further. This tactic seeks to cover all contingencies by building
on preceding agreements and including the same provisions irrespective of whether they
are relevant to the negotiating partner country. AUSFTA illustrates the template genre in
that traces of legal discourse from other nations sediment and ossify for the purpose of
‘covering all bases’ and eliminating semantic latitude for interpretation and further
negotiation. Differences in the General Notes sections (Annex 2–B) from each country
illustrate this point. This section of the document addresses specific exceptions or
variations to the Agreement for particular industries. Whereas the Schedule for Australia
is one page long, the equivalent Schedule for the United States comprises 29 pages.
The main changes for Australia from Article 17.4.7 of AUSFTA relate to copyright law
and especially to technological protection measures (TPMs). Prior to AUSFTA, copyright
in Australia was covered by the 1968 Copyright Act and later amendments such as the
need for compliance to TRIPS. Of most concern to many Australians is that whole
sections of Chapter 17 are copied directly from United States law. For example, parts of
the controversial 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) are reproduced word-
for-word. Many readers will know that the DMCA was devised rightly to prevent flagrant
copyright piracy but this controversial law makes it illegal to circumvent electronic rights
management information (RMI) and criminalizes the distribution of technologies that do
so.
The Australian Copyright Act previously classified the importation, manufacture, sale, or
hire of circumvention devices as illegal, but using one was not illegal. AUSFTA makes
using the devices illegal. Furthermore, AUSFTA has widened the definition of TPMs to
include technological devices that are currently understood as appliances that protect
copyright. This is equivalent to criminalizing photocopy machines or video recorders, and
it shifts the balance of rights strongly in favor of copyright owners and against users.
Another major change for Australian citizens is the extension of the copyright term.
Protection for the copyright holder was previously the life of the author plus 50 years, but
in 2006 AUSFTA increased this by 20 years. Much has been written about the deleterious
effect the gradual extension from 14 years to 70 years after the death of the author has
had on cultural creativity. The irony here is that, just when it was possible to maximize
access to cultural materials and optimize participation in cultural endeavor, media
monopolists have used copyright law to prevent this from happening. This is no
coincidence. Rather, it is the means of artificially creating scarcity within conditions of
abundance in order to keep demand high and prices inflated (cf., Lessig, 2004;
Vaidhyanathan, 2003).
Proponents of strong copyright protection couch rationales for tighter control in terms of
preventing ‘theft’ but in reality the emphasis on ‘property’ at the cost of good public
policy hampers creativity, limits scholarship, and erodes social democracy. As noted
earlier, like most social democratic societies, Australia had effective copyright and anti-
circumvention laws of its own, but Chapter 17 of AUSFTA ‘harmonizes’ these to the
dictates of US law. Despite a recent national review of Australian digital copyright law
that found no case for strengthening anti-circumvention laws, the provisions of Chapter
17 over-rule Australian law by covering more media, banning more cultural activities,
and placing limits on exceptions to infringement. Along with the positive slant
constructed around the benefits and drawbacks of increased copyright protection, how
will the Australian government convince those engaged in educational and cultural
activity to comply with the new regulations?
The teacher resource contains over 120 lesson plans, interactive games, and other
activities. The website creators claim the activities ‘integrate with the curriculum, reduce
workloads and enhance the quality and the outcomes of the time that teachers and
students spend in the classroom.’ No information is provided on how this program of
copyright education is to be integrated into an already crowded curriculum, how the extra
time and effort on the part of teachers translates into better educational outcomes, or how
Nonetheless, a cartoon character, Ippy, has been devised to assist teachers in the process.
Ippy makes an appeal to students to ‘help protect my big idea from the evil rip off.’
Notice the attribution of moral deficiency to the discursive ‘other,’ the ‘evil rip off.’ This
metaphorical signifier of iniquity is depicted visually by a related cartoon character, one
which bears not a cute baby curl on its head as Ippy does but the symbol of satanic
depravity: a pair of horns.
IP Australia is also ‘concerned about protecting your privacy.’ Note that ‘your’ refers to
the teacher or student visitor. In a lengthy disclaimer of some 1156 words, the website
informs the reader how it handles ‘clickstream data.’5 Clickstream data are the paths that
users take when navigating the Internet and, as the website states, IP Australia’s Internet
service provider logs and records information on all visitors to the site. This information
includes server addresses, the top-level domain name (for example, .com, .edu, .au), the
date and time of visits to the site, pages accessed, documents downloaded, the type of
browser used, and the previous site visited. The purpose of this data is purportedly to
‘deliver better services’ by ‘performing statistical analyses to establish priorities and
allocate resources.’ Visitors are assured that ‘no attempt will be made to identify users or
their browsing activities except, in the unlikely event of an investigation, where a law
enforcement agency may exercise a warrant to inspect the Internet Service Provider’s
logs.’ The statistics and log files are ‘preserved indefinitely’ and used ‘at any time and in
any way necessary to prevent security breaches and to ensure the integrity of the
information supplied by IP Australia.’ This raises the question about what security
breaches school teachers and students are likely to commit while learning about copyright
with Ippy? It is evident, then, that while IP Australia engages in the pedagogical work of
getting teachers and learners to self-scrutinize their cultural resource uses and to self-
govern their practices, it is also surveilling them.
As well as the social costs in terms of privacy, mention should be made of the financial
cost of the Agreement to the Australian economy and the education sector. Despite the
positive outlook on the part of the Australian government,6 there are those who remain
skeptical about its long-term benefits. US comment on AUSFTA that was cited earlier
indicated the possibility of inequitable outcomes. Trade figures support this. Whereas
Australia is typically considered a relatively affluent ‘developed’ country, it purchases
more goods from the United States than from any other trading partner and has a current
goods and services trade deficit to it of some $9 billion. From 1996 to 2000, Australian
royalty payments to the United States increased 84 per cent (Weiss, Thurbon & Mathews,
2004, p. 134). As a net importer of intellectual property rights, the financial cost of
outflows in 2002 alone exceeded US$1 billion (Weiss, Thurbon & Mathews, 2004, p.
180). With these new changes, Australian consumers — including its schools,
universities, and libraries — will be subject to exponential increases in royalty payments,
the already disproportionate trade balance will ramp up and further severely inhibit
Australia’s ability to create and innovate.
Indeed the Australian copyright collection agency, Copyright Agency Limited (CAL),
and the body representing Australian schools on copyright matters, the Copyright
Advisory Group to the Schools of the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment,
Training and Youth Affairs currently have taken their case to the Supreme Court on the
Consistent with Rose’s theory of governance, Australia entered into this Agreement freely
as an autonomous nation states.7 One must assume that Australian trade representatives
believed the deal would benefit their national constituencies. Nonetheless, concerns have
been raised about the erosion of Australia’s national sovereignty through a loss of control
over legislative and regulatory power across a range of social domains. Culture and
education are two of these domains. Condemnation of the US policy of harmonization
and of the negotiation process has used the language of ‘bribing, bullying and
browbeating opponents,’ ‘gagging debate,’ ‘intimidating the press,’ ‘ridiculing
opponents’ (Weiss, Thurbon & Mathews, 2004), and described legislation as being
‘rammed through parliament’ without proper debate (Weatherall, 2004/05).8 In an attempt
to stem the rising tide of anti-Americanism (Hollander, 2004; Ross & Ross, 2004) cited as
a concern by Lindsey (2003) above in his argument to use trade policy as an ‘olive branch
to the world,’ US educators and researchers might think about whether similar terms were
used to describe negotiations there? If not, what does this say about the process? Would
the incidence of words of concern constitute evidence of a fairer and more equitable
outcome for both signatories?
It is apparent then that trade mechanisms at the global level and their subsequent
legislative and policy changes at the national level function as ‘great machines of
morality’ (Rose, 1999, p. 103) in their will to regulate the creative impulse of the
populace through intellectual property law. At the same time, however, the notion of
governance underpinning this paper opens a space for consideration of counter-measures
that differ in viewpoint and practice from institutionalized technologies of normalization.
These counter-positions materialize as action that is not necessarily against, but rather
emerges from, juxtaposes, complements, and infuses systematized legal injunctions. The
literature is peppered with simplistic dichotomies, examples of which are positive or
negative effects, ‘us’ or ‘them’ ideologies, and pre-FTA or post-FTA periodizations, all
of which fail to account for the incongruities, ambiguities, contradictions, and exceptions
in the outworking of these complex social issues. Rose (1999, p. 6) eloquently describes
these complexities and diplomacies as a ‘delicate and complex web of affiliations
between thousands of habits of which human beings are composed — movements,
gestures, combinations, associations, passions, satisfactions, exhaustions, aspirations,
contemplations — and the wealth, tranquility, efficiency, economy, glory of the collective
body.’ It is to some of these contrapuntal developments in the area of copyright activism
that I now turn.
One of the more important Australian initiatives is the Creative Commons project (see
Kiel-Chisholm and Fitzgerald, this Issue).9 Traditional media companies and
Coalitions and foundations are other discursive and material spaces for contesting the
politics of intellectual properties. The Electronic Frontier Foundation in the United States
and its Australian counterpart, Electronic Frontiers Australia, are non-profit groups and
platforms for activism in policy and law.12 At an international level, the civil liberties
organization, IP Justice works to promote balanced intellectual property law in digital
environments.13 Dominant players such as publishers tend to consider these spaces and
practices of counter-conduct as ‘irrelevant.’ These initiatives nonetheless constitute
significant political and discursive symbols of deconstruction and reconstruction of what
would otherwise seem an incontestable regime of knowledge regulation limiting cultural
participation.
Concluding remarks
This paper has shown how intellectual property rights and questions of copyright
permeate the micro spaces of social, cultural, economic, and political life. Changes in
Australian international trade and copyright policy were examined as a case in point.
Story (2002) claims that copyright is the ‘sleeping giant’ of the international education
agenda. The questions canvassed here seek not to impute blame but to invoke a sense of
transnational professional interest and agency. Indeed, if the purpose was to find cause or
to apportion blame, then the European Union might have been a more productive focus
considering that it historically has been the source of some of the more egregious
developments in copyright policy. Furthermore, as representatives of the people,
Australian trade negotiators are responsible for AUSFTA and Australian citizens are
answerable for its long-term educational outcomes.14 It might be a salutary exercise
nonetheless for US educators to consider whether strategies and deals made by their
leaders are as conducive to harmonious long-term bilateral relations as they might be.
The fruits of victory frequently carry within it the seeds of its own defeat. There is the
possibility therefore that current intellectual property policy in the United States — while
reaping big profits for media conglomerates — could be contributing to the social malaise
within, and international hostility without, that many refer to as the ‘end of the American
century.’ Work by educational researchers, economists, and political and social theorists
indicates that this possibility is worthy of further inquiry (see Balakrishnan & Aronowitz
2003; Johnson, 2004; Mann, 2003; Pollin, 2003; Slater & Taylor, 1999; Soros, 2004;
Todd, 2003; Wallerstein, 2003; White, 1996). The present paper was written in the belief
that nobody wants, nor can afford, for this malaise to continue or deepen. One way of
preventing it is to become critically informed and politically active about the local and the
global educational implications of ‘property’ approaches to symbolic work and
intellectual resources.
References
Aronowitz, S., & Gautney, H. (Eds.). (2003). Implicating empire: Globalization and
resistance in the 21st century world order. New York: Basic Books.
Balakrishnan, G., & Aronowitz, S. (Eds.). (2003). Debating empire. New York: Verso.
Bollier, D. (2005). Brand name bullies: The quest to own and control culture. Hoboken,
NJ: J. Wiley.
Brown, S. (2004). Myths of free trade: Why American trade policy has failed. New York:
The New Press.
Bylund, A. (2006). Aussie rumble over copyright fees for educational web use. The
Australian, Tuesday 28 February.
Capling, M. A. (2005). All the way with the USA: Australia, the US and free trade.
Sydney: University of NSW.
Chomsky, N. (1999). Profit over people: Neoliberalism and global order. New York:
Seven Stories Press.
Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue states: The rule of force in world affairs. London: Pluto.
Chomsky, N. (2002). Pirates and emperors, old and new: International terrorism in the
real world (2nd ed.). London: Pluto.
Chomsky, N. (2003). Hegemony or survival: America's quest for global dominance. New
York: Metropolitan Books.
Der Derian, J. (2001). Virtuous war: Mapping the military-industrial-media-
entertainment network. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Drahos, P., & Mayne, R. (Eds.). (2002). Global intellectual property rights: Knowledge,
access, and development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Features, IT Broadsheet. (2005). Copyright cops launch 2100 cases. The Australian, 22
November, p. 11.
1
“Social practice” here refers to stable and patterned forms of social activity. Peters (2003) provides a
critical typology of competing views of practice and examines their differing politico-ethical implications.
2
Rose illustrates this point with the example of the World Bank, whose funding for developing countries is
conditional upon the reduction of public enterprises and an increased emphasis on the private sector.
3
The US government has rejected calls from industry to negotiate a free trade agreement with New
Zealand. Two reasons for this were New Zealand’s independent stand on foreign policy issues such as
refusing to allow US nuclear powered ships into its harbors and its refusal to support the Iraqi War. Robert
Zoellick refers to these as “political and security impediments” (see Inside US Trade, 23 May 2003).
4
See http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ retrieved 20 July 2005. See also InnovateED at
http://www.innovated.gov.au/Innovated/html/i01.asp retrieved 21 July 2005.
5
See IP Australia, Private Policy retrieved 12 June 2005 from
http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/about/site_privacy.shtml
6
See Australia – United States Free Trade Agreement: Advancing Australia’s Economic Future. Retrieved
25 June 2005, http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/ausfta_brochure.pdf
7
As “free” as one can be while functioning within the constraints of discursive positioning which frame
social agency and efficacy.
8
Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon, and John Mathews have local and international credibility as scholars of
international relations, politics, foreign economic policy, and strategic management.
9
See www.creativecommons.org.
10
See http://www.publicknowledge.org/
11
See http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/
12
See http://www.eff.org/; http://www.efa.org.au/
13
See http://www.ipjustice.org/
14
The Australian government had two years to fulfill its obligations to the Agreement, and opportunity still
exists through forthcoming legislation to moderate its projected impact.