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["Damian Tambini" <damian.tambini AT socio-legal-studies.oxford.ac.uk>]

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        CALL FOR PAPERS & WRITING COMPETITION
        
        YALE ISP CONFERENCE ON ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE (A2K), APRIL 21-23, 2006
        
        THE YALE LAW SCHOOL INFORMATION SOCIETY PROJECT (ISP) and THE
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS LAW & POLICY (IJCLP) are pleased to
announce their third interdisciplinary writing competition and a call for
papers in conjunction with the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Conference taking
place on April 21-23, 2006 at Yale Law School. We invite students, scholars,
policy makers, activists and practitioners to submit papers for the writing
competition and/or for publication by the IJCLP.
        
        CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION
        In the digital era, most multinational corporations and policymakers
are of the view that the current trend characterised by increasing
intellectual property rights and corporate control over knowledge best serve
society's interests. At the same time, however, a growing number of
commentators believe that widespread access to knowledge (A2K) and the
preservation of a healthy knowledge commons are the real basis for
sustainable human development. Nonetheless, intellectual property-based
approaches continue to singlehandedly dictate global legal norms and shape
national legal infrastructures.
        
        The first goal of the Yale A2K Initiative is to come up with a new
analytic framework for analysing the possibly distortive effects of public
policies relying exclusively on intellectual property rights. Beyond this
aim, the A2K initiative seeks to support the adoption and development of
alternative ways to foster greater access to knowledge in the digitally
connected environment.
        
        The landmark A2K conference at Yale Law School will bring together
leading thinkers and activists on access to knowledge policy from North and
South, in order to generate concrete research agendas and policy solutions
for the next decade. This conference will be among the first to synthesize
the multifaceted and interdisciplinary aspects of access to knowledge,
ranging from textbooks and telecommunications access to software and
medicines. The A2K Conference aims to help build an intellectual framework
that will protect access to knowledge both as the basis for sustainable
human development and to safeguard human rights.
        
        Key issues to be considered include, among others:
        - the economics of A2K in a digital environment;
        - A2K indexes and measurement techniques;
        - the limitations to A2K;
        - digital libraries and archives;
        - government investment in information production;
        - government procurement policies;
        - open source software;
        - the WIPO Broadcast Treaty;
        - access to education and scientific knowledge;
        - universal service in telecommunications;
        - the digital divide;
        - digital rights management;
        - open access journals.
        
        A full conference description will be available on the Yale ISP's
A2K Initiative page at http://islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/a2k.html.
        
        WRITING COMPETITION
        Submissions for the writing competition must be received by noon
EST, February 15th, 2006. The author of the best paper, as well as two
runners-up will be invited to present their work at a panel during the
conference. The author of the winning paper will receive coverage of his/her
travel to and accommodations at Yale University for the conference. Selected
papers will be announced by April 1st, 2006. The authors of the
award-winning papers will automatically be invited to publish their work in
a special Autumn 2006 volume of the International Journal of Communications
Law & Policy (http://www.ijclp.org) devoted to Access to Knowledge.
        
        JOURNAL PUBLICATION
        Submissions for publication must be received by noon EST, May 1st,
2006. The selection committee, composed of the editorial board of the IJCLP,
and some of the Yale ISP Fellows, will review and consider all submissions
for publication in the special Autumn 2006 volume of the journal, including
submissions for the writing competition. Authors will be notified of
acceptance by June 15th, 2006.
        
        SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
        Papers may be submitted on any A2K-related issue, provided that they
lie within the central focus of the IJCLP - communications law & policy. All
submissions should be written in English in .rtf or .pdf format. They should
conform to academic citation standards, be no longer than 25,000 words, and
include an abstract of up to 250 words. Submissions should be e-mailed
simultaneously to the lead editors of the IJCLP, Simone Francesco Bonetti
(simo.bonetti[at]tiscalinet.it) and Sudhir Krishnaswamy
(krishnaswamysudhir[at]gmail.com). Inquiries may be addressed to any of the
above.
        
        
        
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