From:	 Wizard of OS <presse@wizards-of-os.org>
To:	 "WOS Presse" <presse@wizards-of-os.org>
Subject: press release: Wizards Of OS 2
Date:	 Fri, 25 May 2001 23:15:15 +0200

Wizards of OS 2 -- Open Cultures & Free Knowledge

International Conference at the
House of World Cultures Berlin
11-13 October, 2001

http://wizards-of-os.org/

The three day conference "Wizards of Operating Systems 2" addresses a
broad audience interested in digital media culture and the knowledge
society. It will bring together about 50 speakers from Germany and abroad
and up to 1000 participants for presentations, discussions, turorials,
artistic contributions and informal conversations.

organized by
mikro e.V., Berlin
http://mikro.org/

the Federal Office for Political Education, Bonn
http://www.bpb.de/

and the Working Group on Informatics & Society at Humboldt-University
Berlin
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/

in cooperation with
Chaos Computer Club Berlin, C-Base Berlin, Debian Projekt, Berliner Linux
User Group, German Unix User Group, V2_Lab for the Unstable Media
Rotterdam, De Waag -- Society for Old and New Media  Amsterdam,
Telepolis, Linux-Magazin, De:Bug u. a.


### CONCEPT ###

"To defend the freedom of knowledge is probably the most important task
facing us in the future,² said Prof. Dr. Norbert Szyperski, one of the
leading micro-economist, at the Wizards of OS 1.

In the "knowledge society², questions of the production, distribution,
achiving and reception of software-based knowledge enter center stage.
Among computer operating systems -- as GNU/Linux and others have proven
-- free, open solutions are a real alternative to proprietary, closed
products. How about the other building blocks of the "knowledge society²?
Radio frequencies, standards and protocols, search engines and archives,
school and universities, libraries and museums, public broadcasting and
the knowledge of public administration -- don't these things also have
the character of an infrastructure, of "operating systems of the
knowledge society², as well? How free or unfree are each of them? We need
an environmentalism of the digital knowledge environment (James Boyle)
with a political economy of "intellectual property" at its core.  How
much "knowledge as commodity² can we afford? How much public knowledge do
we need?

The second WOS conference wants to explore routes to an open culture of
free knowledge. It will center around the changes in the conditions of
intellectual creation of all kinds, the mediation of its results and
their collaborative continued development. How accessible, transparent,
participatory and extensible are any of the various infrastructural
layers? "Intellectual property² has a powerful lobby, but who will stand
up for the rights of common knowledge?


### MAIN TOPICS ###

*** free Software ***
Where does free software stand today, after its adoption by big
corporations and public administrations, and after the roller-coaster
ride on the New Market? Representatives of HP, IBM and others explain
what is still a mystery to many: how can you make money with free
software?

*** Among Equals ***
Napster and SETI@Home made peer-to-peer networks famous. By now, they
support communities of scientists, technicians and journalists in
generating, collecting, and filtering knowledge. Can we speak of a
general shift from competition to cooperation?

*** Biotechnology ***
The human genome is being explored by the international community of
scientists racing against bio-tech corporations -- some to further public
knowledge, others to protect exploitable private knowledge. Biomaterial
and knowledge from patients and ethnic groups is being expropriated and
patented. Are open source genetics and "Fair-Trade² Aggreements an
alternative?

*** The Legal Ordering of Knowledge ***
Global information flows challenges nation-state-based regulation of
copyright, patents and brand-name law and tends ever more towards
harmonization. The technical implementation of property claims hard-codes
them into the operating system and at the same time creates new
opportunities for zoning. What about the right of public access -- a
neccessary prerequisite for innovation -- that is equally protected by
many
constitutions?

*** Not For Sale: Public Knowledge ***
Libraries, museums, schools, universities and public broadcasting store
and nurture the common treasure of knowledge. Today, public knowledge
resources often appear as luxury goods that in time of tightened spending
might just as well be economized reduced -- or even better: delegated for
profit-oriented cultivation by the private sector. But how does this
compare with what the German Constitutional Court called the public
mandate for a basic provision of information?

*** Knowledge Transfer Among Rich and Poor ***
Has the  promise of free software furthered the self-determination of the
South, or countered the growth of the Digital Divide?



### SPEAKERS ###
The complete list of currently confirmed speakers is at
http://wizards-of-os.org
Here a short selection:

Bruce Perens
OpenSourceManager at Hewlett Packard, Berkeley CA

Arthur L. Holden
Chairman and CEO First Genetic Trust, Inc., Deerfield, IL

Thomas Krueger
President of the Federal Office for Political Education, Bonn

Rusty Foster
developer of the p2p system Kuro5hin.org, San Francisco

Hansjuergen Garstka
Privacy and Information Access Commissioner of the State of Berlin,
Germany

Cori Hayden
 expert on bioprospecting, biodiversity and pharmaceutical
commercialization agreements, Cambridge, UK

Lawrence Lessig
Cyberlaw Expert, Stanford University
Frank Rieger
Chaos Computer Club and gate5 AG, spezialist for geographical information
systems, Berlin

Thomas Macho
Professor of Cultural Studies at Humboldt University Berlin

Tim Hubbard
Head of Human Sequence Analysis at the Sanger Centre and Joint Head of
the open source genome annotation project Ensembl, a joint project
between the Sanger Centre and the European Bionformatics Institute,
Cambridge UK

Brigitte Zypries
UnderSecretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, in charge of the
eGovernment projects of the Federal Government, Berlin

Brian McConnell
SETI@Home, San Francisco



### THE WIZARDS OF OS 1 ###

The first WOS conference in July 1999 focussed mainly on free software
and the open, highly distributed, collaborative process in which it is
created. More than 600 members of the science, technology, business and
art comunities came together in the House of World Cultures Berlin to
talk about the foundations of the computer-based culture. Since then, a
series of workshops and seminars addressed computer science, legal,
political, artistic and philosophical facetts of the field of topics.


### WOS 1 IN THE PRESS ###

"All in all, one can certainly call the first ŒWizards of OS¹ conference,
that forms the start for a range of events, a milestone in the history of
the open source movement² (c't)

"This could be the most important event in years² (Wau Holland, CCC
pioneer in Wired News)

"An important conference because it was not a typical software special
interest conference but dealt much more generally with the social,
political and economic meaning of software, licensing, author¹s right and
copyright.² (Junge Welt)
"At a recent Berlin conference under the titel ŒThe Wizard of  OS -- Open
Sources and Free Software¹, the techno-intellectuals from the open source
movement made it clear that they are not only interested in technology,
but also and most of all in politics.² (Sueddeutsche Zeitung)



### CONTACTS ###

If you would like to know more, you can find up-to-date information at
http://wizards-of-os.org/.

You can receive monthly updates by signing up to the mailinglist
wos-announce@mikrolisten.de. Send a mail to majordom@eg-r.isp-eg.de with
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Please address general questions to presse@wizards-of-os.org, questions
on topics and organization also to wos-crew@mikrolisten.de.

If you don¹t want to receive any further information about the Wizards of
OS 2 please send a short reply to presse@wizards-of-os.org. Your address
will then be removed from the list. Otherwise, you will receive three
more press infos over this distribution list until October from

yours
Wizards of OS

Thomas Thaler, WOS Press