The 0th World Intellectual Freedom Day is soft-launched at https://wifo.org/ifday/
Soft and zero because it has some deficiencies unacceptable for a full launch and first edition:
- No translations
- No editing of materials for accessibility
- No supplementary media and assets
- No pre-day build up
- No publicity team
- Bare-bones design
- Lots of backing material and infrastructure is lacking (to be expanded)
This should all be feasible to change drastically for the better for 2016, and the experience of this trial run will help.
Note the page above is just static HTML. Patches most welcome at notabug and github.
Rationale for World Intellectual Freedom Day (some of this is now incorporated into main WorldIFDay page linked above).
For a good future, freedom must replace property as the central paradigm of knowledge policy and the knowledge economy. World Intellectual Freedom Day promotes awareness of this imperative and urges expansion and popularization of commons-based production and policy as effective mechanisms for shifting the structure of the knowledge economy and the imagination of knowledge policy toward freedom.
In order to stress replacing property with freedom, World Intellectual Freedom Day occupies April 26, the same day World Intellectual Property Day has been observed since 2001. A 1999 proposal for World IP Day begins:
Since the 21st Century will be an era of knowledge-based economy and information technologies, where intellectual property will be one major factor for pushing forward social and economic development, to establish and improve gradually the intellectual property protection system has turned out to be of vital importance, either in developed or developing countries, to the national economy, peopleās livelihood and international relations.
This gets the nature of the era and importance of knowledge policy right (see WIFO point 1), but the impact of subjecting knowledge to a property regime is so readily assumed to be beneficial to be not called out as such. The assumption is totally wrong. IP is a major factor pushing forward social and economic inequality, control, and conflict. It is of vital importance to turn out IP, for doing so will obtain increases in freedom, equality, and security. These are precisely the outcomes needed for a good future of autonomy and abundance for all.
Trading off freedom, equality, and security for spectacle, as IP does, is making a tragic error and will lead to dystopia. It is of vital importance to replace IP with freedom, even for international relations: in the era with knowledge as the commanding heights of the economy, it is extremely dangerous to subject knowledge to a property regime: inequality resulting from IP is destabilizing, and worse, IP will lead to new trade wars, which could easily spiral into violent conflict.
In 2014 the EFF used April 26 to āhonor all the creativity and industry that is happening without a dependence on a system intellectual property.ā While a profound step in the right direction (indeed, WIFO claims that commons-based production is the most effective mechanism for tilting toward freedom and away from property), Without Intellectual Property Day genuflects to the notion that IP ācan, when calibrated correctly, promote the progress of science and the useful arts.ā But IP is calibrated for rent seeking, not promoting science. Further, trading freedom, equality, and security for some other vision of progress is an abysmally bad idea. Instead, rents must be destroyed so that the freedom infringing IP regime constituency contracts, and the progress of science and useful arts resulting from a freedom respecting regime celebrated. (See Without Intellectual Property Day [edit] for version improved without genuflection.)
In 2015 WIFO is using April 26 to launch World Intellectual Freedom Day, calling for replacing property ā an inappropriate and dangerous regime for knowledge ā with freedom.
Reply to this message, or email info@wifo.org with any kind of suggestion.
