Lawrence Liang

Alternative Law Forum

In an interview, Liang described the Alternative Law Forum thus: "(The) Alternative Law Forum provides legal support for people marginalized on the basis of class, race, caste, gender, disability or sexuality. We provide services for people who often have no access to them. Our main work is to conduct research on issues of globalization, urban studies, gender, as well as intellectual property and public domain."

The Alternative Law Forum, he says, also does some policy work, "for example with regard to an amendment to the (Indian) copyright act that basically tries to follow the DMCA (US Digital Millennium Copyright Act) model."

It has critiqued and influenced the debate on changes in the Indian Copyright Act. " We were trying to oppose that, showing how such a law would be harmful for creative innovation. Right now we are also supporting a campaign in pharmaceutical policies. But our focus is not so much on policy advocacy, because you cannot really defend the grey economy and be on policy bodies. With regard to government, we try to push for the open source model, arguing that public money should go into public intellectual property," Liang said in the December 2004 interview to World-Information.org.

Law, technology, culture, copyright

Another profile describes Lawrence Liang as someone whose "key areas of interest are law, technology and culture [and] the politics of copyright". Liang has been working with Sarai, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the Knowledge/Culture Commons.

Open source ideas into the cultural domain

The profile also adds: "Lawrence (Liang) has been working on ways of translating the open source ideas into the cultural domain. He has written a number of articles on copyright, free software and media practices, and in collaboration with Sarai also wrote the license for OPUS, an online collaborative platform for artists and media practitioners. In 2004 he was a Research Fellow at Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam."

Shoot, Share and Create

In an article titled "Shoot, Share and Create", Liang argues strongly that it makes sense for "documentary and alternative filmmakers in India (to) start licensing their works under an open content license".

The article details Liang's early interest in documentary films. His reasons for suggesting a rethink of licensing policies among alternative and documentary film-makers in India include:

Published work

Liang is the author of A Guide To Open Content Licences. This is described as a guide to how we can "share culture in a world where everything has a license". This short book(let)'s introduction says: "Scientists, writers, designers, artists, musicians and others are increasingly interested in making their work available in 'the public domain'. This booklet is an overview of the ways in which this has been done and a guide to the growing area of Open Content Licenses through which people design and safeguard access to their work."

Liang also contributes to the blog kafila.org and is a known expert on cinema studies, with several published articles on film.

He contributed the essay "Free as in Soul: The Anti-image Politics of Copyright" to the Freesouls book project.

Advisor/mentor

Liang was also group advisor/mentor of the 2006–07 International Policy Fellowship of the Open Society Institute.

Background

Liang is a graduate from the National Law School of India University, and pursued a master's degree in Warwick, England on a Chevening Scholarship. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan School of Information and the Center for South Asian Studies as part of the Hughes Fellowship in 2014 and Rice Visiting Scholar at Yale University in 2016-17. He is currently Professor of Law at School of Law, Governance and Citizenship, Ambedkar University Delhi, India