PUBLICATIONS

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All the materials published by ALF are on a copyleft basis, so feel free to use, distribute and circulate. We only ask that you provide proper credit if you are using it

Topic Wise List of Publications
A Note on the Civil Procedure Code Amendment Act 2002
The Juvenile Justice Act 2002 - A Critique
Regulation of Cyber - space or a medium
Ghost in the machine
India Shining: A critical evaluation of the claims made by the India Shining campaign
Of Master Plans and Illegalities in an era of Transition
Human Rights violations against the transgender community: A study of kothi and hijra sex workers in Bangalore, India September 2003
Human Rights Violations against Sexuality Minorities In India - A case study of Bangalore by PUCL -K
Labour Rights Education Manual
TRIPS, indigenous knowledge and the bio-rush
TRIPS, patents and public policy: A pot of gold and a tale of woes
TRIPS and Public health
Whats in a Champaigne that aint in a Basmati
A Basic IPR Lexicon
A History of Patent Law
Global Commons, Public Space And Contemporary IPR
Conceptualizing Law and Culture: Rajnikant and the Sign of our Times
Encountering the Sustaining Myths of Copyright
Reasonable Restrictions and Unreasonable Speech
Porous Legalities and Avenues of Participation
Media Empires and Renegade Pirates
Cinematic Citizenship and the Illegal City
Copyright, Cultural Production and Open Content Licensing
Shoot, Share and Create
A Guide to Open Content Licenses
Patently Objectionable
Patents at the Cost of Patients
ALF Reader 01: A Representative anthology of writings by members of ALF on various issues that we have been working on.
Subaltern Queer Cultures in India in the era of Hindutva: Issues of sexuality remain inextricably linked to questions of both health and human rights. The discourses surrounding health have had a deeply contradictory impact on the human rights of “queer” people in the Indian context.
Law, Sexuality and Gender: For more material on law, sexuality and gender
The Court as a theatre of struggle
Bolti Bandh: An examination of the exclusionary politics of of law and language in the Narmada case
Cyber Myths and the rest of those who also live in Silicon valley
A critical view of the new Indian Patent Act
Why software patents are harmful: The Proposed amendment to the Patents Act in india expands the scope of software patentability. Why is this harmful?
WILL THE NEW PATENT ACT DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH
Legalising the pharmaceutical drug cartel
opencontent: This presentation serves as an introduction to the world of copyleft and open content licenses
Legal Status of Community Radio in India
Working Notes: Often some of the work that we do in the form of presentations, lectures and classes don’t eventually become formal publications in the form of articles or essays. Rather than wasting them we thought it might be useful o make them available even as notes for anyone interested
Patents (Amendment) Bill 2005: A Critique: Only one more amendment was required, technically speaking, to make Indian law finally compliant with the TRIPS Agreement, i e, the introduction of product patents for pharmaceutical inventions. However, the Patents Bill made 74 amendments to the Patents Act of 1970, thus taking it much beyond the requirements of TRIPS. While Parliament has modified some of these amendments, it has chosen not to incorporate all the flexibilities that are available within TRIPS to safeguard public interest. As the bill now stands, unless the president were to return it to Parliament for consideraton, it fails to protect the public from the aggressive monopolies that patents confer on the right holders. K M Gopakumar, Tahir Amin
The Other Information City: This photo essays explores the politics of the idea of Bangalore as an information city and gestures towards multiple other information cities that co exist
Regulating Cyberspace- A Place or a medium
Fire Fighting to Build a Fire?: Indiscriminate tree cutting in Bangalore by the BMP for road widening points to serious environmental hazards. Will the recently appointed Tree Officer be able to contain this activity within neccesary limits? A discussion.
Of Master Plans and Illegalities in an Era of Transition
Terror has no boundaries: The kind of violence a Dalith woman faces in village is different from that of an upper caste women.But the law make no such distinction
Laws that lack foresight: Changes both in the policy and law would be effective if accompanied by a change in the mindset of the implementing authorities. Byatha N Jagadeesh
Beyond Representation: The Dilemmas of the Pirate: This paper raises a series of questions on the representational problem of the pirate in the contemporary discourse on law, public good and creativity. Piracy seems to allegorize an impure transgression, tainted by commerce and an inability to produce a discourse on itself. Pirate production of commodities and media objects fits neither a narrative of resistance nor normative critique, nor does piracy seem to fit received models of creativity or innovation. Piracy produces a series of anxieties: from states, transnational capital, and media industries and even in some liberal proponents of the public domain. The efflorescence of non-legal media production and circulation exists as a series of publicly articulated facts, constantly referred to in media panics, national security discourses, and everyday conversations. The paper discusses the problem of the pirate through a enquires ranging from assumptions about creativity, subjectivity and transformation, commodification and social life.
How Rambo lost to the Green Papaya: Globalization and the Cultural Politics of Copyright and piracy
Pirate Aesthetics
Guide to Open Content - Hindi version: Guide to Open Content Licenses by Lawrence Liang- Hindi Version
Of Lumpen Laws and Egg Shell Democracies: Article written after the arrest of Chandramohan, MS University Baroda under Sec. 153A of the IPS
Copyright v. The Right to Copy
Sense and Censorbility
Primer on Open Content: A Primer on Open Content written as a part of the IOSN series. For other primers visit IOSN site
And Nothing but the Truth so Help me Science: A history and critique of truth detection technologies.
Hostis Humani Generis: The Dictionary of War was a project that invited a hundred people to contribute a concept which could be used to think about our contemporary times. The concept I chose to contribute is Hostis Humani Generis or the enemy of the human race
The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Book: This paper examines the link between ideas of personhood and self that underlies western liberal property regimes. It attempts to understand the manner in which thinkers like Locke create a co-terminus between the ‘self’ and ‘own’. It then poses the question of whether we can look at alternative ideas of the self within western and non-western metaphysics, and how the move towards a relational self helps us rethink our assumptions about property and personhood, especially in relation to the world of knowledge and culture. This is a bilingual version of the paper and is in english and mandarin