Access to Knowledge and Human Rights Conference
February 11-13, 2010 at Yale Law School
This conference seeks to lay the groundwork – conceptual and strategic – to build bridges between the A2K and human rights communities pursuing common goals of promoting greater access to knowledge, culture, technology and tools for innovation worldwide.
Screening & Discussion: “In the Family”
Thursday, Feb. 11 @ 6:30 p.m. — Room 129 at Yale Law School
Sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union Women’s Rights Project, the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, and the YLS Law and Health Initiative.
A2K4: Welcome and Opening Remarks
Yale Law School’s fourth major conference on access to knowledge, A2K4: Access to Knowledge and Human Rights, was kicked off by professor Jack Balkin, founder of the Yale Information Society Project.
Blogging, video, and discussion of the conference may be followed at http://yaleisp.org. The best link for accessing these materials is: http://yaleisp.org/2010/02/a2k4main.
A2K4 Panel I: Perspectives on Access to Knowledge and Human Rights
To date, the intersection between intellectual property and human rights has been analyzed from several perspectives. Some claim that intellectual property is a human right; others object that IP protection conflicts with efforts to realize the rights to health, food, education, or free expression. A consensus perspective on how to view the intersection [...]
A2K4 Panel II: Technologies of Dissent: Information and Expression in a Digital World
This panel explores A2K issues relevant to classic civil and political rights, particularly freedom of expression.
Political expression and dissent are increasingly exercised online, through technologies ranging from social networking tools, blogs, email, and cell phones to more concealed and complex technical approaches such as the use of distributed denial of service attacks to disrupt [...]
A2K4 Panel III. The Right to Health: Promoting Innovation and Equity
International human rights treaties, as well as domestic constitutions in many countries, recognize a universal right to the highest attainable standard of health, which includes a claim to effective and equitable access to health care. Realization of this right guarantee, however, has been complicated by the high costs of health care, in the context of [...]
A2K4 Panel IV: Right to Education: Realizing the Potential Digital Tools
International human rights instruments recognize a right to education. Within this concept, primary education should be “universal, free and compulsory.” Opportunities for secondary and higher education, however, are recognized to be contingent upon the resources available to states. This panel explores how the power of digital technologies, social networking and peer production may be leveraged [...]
A2K4 Panel V: Freedom to Innovate: Knowledge, Technology, Culture
We live in an age of decentralized innovation in which civil liberties and cultural freedom depend on the freedom to innovate and share innovations with others. Increasingly, cultural freedom, access to knowledge, and freedom of expression depend on the ability of entrepreneurs to create new tools for sharing, producing, and distributing content. Increasingly, new ideas [...]
A2K4 Panel VI: The Right to Science and Culture: Access and Participation
Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right of everyone to take part in cultural life, and to share in the benefits of scientific progress. This “right to science and culture” has great relevance for access to knowledge issues, but is still in the early stages of development.
This panel will [...]
A2K4 Workshop: Identifying Challenges and Opportunities for an African Information Ethics
Organized by the UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies
As our contemporary information society continues to take hold on the African continent, there is a pressing need to recognize and formalize an “African information ethics”, that is, understanding and applying principles of information ethics (access to knowledge, intellectual property, information literacy, intellectual freedom, privacy) within the [...]
A2K4 Workshop: The Right to Read: Copyright and Access for Persons with Disabilities
This panel will discuss the proposal for a WIPO treaty for disabilities, as well as other topics concerning the right to read for persons with disabilities.
A2K4 Workshop: The Right to Development and the WIPO Development Agenda
Organized by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
The right to development (RTD), proclaimed in 1986, is “an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and [...]
A2K4 Panel VIII: Rights-Based Strategies for Advancing Access to Knowledge
The final panel of the conference focuses on Rights-Based Strategies for Advancing Access to Knowledge. Much of the conference has focused on synergies between access to knowledge and human rights goals in specific subject areas. The concluding panel will discuss more generally the broader challenges and opportunities implicated by attempts to promote A2K goals [...]
