James Boyle's "cultural environmentalism" metaphor laid the foundation for the recognition and protection of traditional knowledge and natural resources found in the developing world. The theory underlying the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was that while traditional communities may not have invented knowledge about the medicinal properties of local plants, they ought to be rewarded nonetheless for their preservation and conservation of biodiversity through limited rights to control and compensation. Taking a cue from the environmental justice movement, which demonstrated the disparate effects of environmental harms on disadvantaged minorities, the cultural environmental movement illustrated how Third World peoples are disproportionately disadvantaged by intellectual property law, which historically has not recognized their cultural contributions as protectable works of authorship. But while this paper credits "cultural environmentalism" with offering theoretical legitimacy for traditional knowledge protection, it further considers whether the metaphor may also disable a more dynamic and modern view of traditional knowledge. In fact, traditional knowledge is far from static and archaic and much more dynamic than the "environmentalism" metaphor acknowledges. The makers of Mysore silk sarees in India respond to new market, technological, and cultural needs, for example, offering waterproof sarees in hi-tech designs to today's global consumers. I consider how the "environmentalism" metaphor may impede an understanding of "poor people's knowledge" (a term I prefer to "traditional knowledge") as creative works of authorship deserving of ex ante intellectual property rights rather than just as rights afforded ex post to reward preservation of ancient traditions or to correct longstanding cultural and distributive injustice.

About the Speaker: Professor Sunder is a leading scholar in the legal regulation of culture. Her work traverses numerous legal fields, from intellectual property and cultural property to human rights law and the First Amendment. She asks how age-old legal doctrines impede, rather than facilitate, change and modernity within traditional cultures. Adopting an interdisciplinary method, she argues that cultural studies and globalization studies can help us to modernize antiquated laws for the 21st century.

Human rights atrocities that occur on a massive scale are often the result of deliberate policy, and international legal accountability requires that we prove not only that abuses occurred, but that violence was the deliberately planned. Statistical patterns in the violations may provide evidence of policy, but finding these patterns requires a creative use of data and models. This talk will review the use of data ranging from official border registries to cemeteries, declassified documents, and qualitative victim interviews, each analyzed by a wide range of techniques. Examples will be presented from El Salvador, Guatemala, Kosovo, Timor-Leste, and Chad.

About the Speaker: Patrick Ball, Ph.D., is the Director of Human Rights Programs at the Benetech Initiative. Since 1991, he has designed information management systems and conducted quantitative analysis for large-scale human rights data projects for seven truth commissions, many non-governmental organizations, two tribunals and various United Nations missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Peru, Chad, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Timor-Leste, and others.

Computer technologies that I collect under the heading "social software" increase the salience of informal groups. Their salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. I organize analysis of those questions around the concept of governance, and the concept of information governance in particular.

About the Speaker: Michael J. Madison is Associate Dean for Research and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where he specializes in copyright law, the law of intellectual property, the Internet, and electronic commerce. He was previously the Director of Pitt's Certificate Program in Intellectual Property and Technology Law.

Sony's latest Digital Rights Management (DRM)-endeavour earned a charge of "fraud, false advertising, trespass and the violation of state and federal statutes prohibiting malware, and unauthorized computer tampering". The technology installs, unnoticed by the user, a piece of software that prevents consumers from unauthorised copying, is able to monitor and report user behaviour back to the firm and, accidentally, holds the door wide open for Trojans. Under other circumstances one would be tempted to describe such a strategy a hostile "spy at-tack". In case of Sony BMG, this seems to be part of a business model to sell digital music to consumers. The talk will have a closer look at the charges of the EFF and a Californian lawyer against Sony BMG's latest DRM strategy. The Sony BMG case adds a number of interesting new dimensions to the 'DRM and Consumer' debate. The talk will explain why the case is so important, also against the background of similar recent case law in Europe, and why it points into an entirely new direction of talking about DRM.

About the Speaker: Natali Helberger is Associate Professor at the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam. Dr. Helberger is managing legal partner to the INDICARE project. INDICARE (Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of Rights Management Solutions in Europe) is a project co-funded by the European Commission. The objective of INDICARE is to address issues regarding consumer acceptability of digital rights management solutions; identify obstacles and suggest solutions. At the moment, she is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.