Lawrence Liang

Lawrence Liang
Lawrence Liang, June 2007 taken by Joi Ito
Chinese name
Chinese	梁日明
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Liáng Rìmíng
Hindi name
Hindi	लौरेन्स लिआंग

Lawrence Liang is a legal researcher and lawyer based in the city of Bangalore, who is known for his legal campaigns on issues of public concern. He is a co founder of the Alternative Law Forum, and by 2006 had emerged as a spokesperson against the politics of "intellectual property". His family is of Chinese origin but settled down in Kolkata many years ago.

Liang's key areas of interest are law, popular culture and piracy. He has been working closely with Sarai, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the Knowledge/Culture Commons. Liang is a "keen follower of the open source movement in software", Lawrence Liang has been working on ways of translating the open source ideas into the cultural domain. Segments of an interview with Liang commenting extensively on copyright and culture are featured in Steal This Film (Two).

Liang is author of "Sex, laws and Videotape: The Public is watching" and "Guide to open content licenses," published by the Piet Zwart Institute in 2004.

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.