Lawrence Liang is a professor of law at

Ambedkar University Delhi Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi, formerly Bharat Ratna Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi and Ambedkar University Delhi, and simply AUD, is a state university established by the Government of the NCT of Delhi through an Act of the Delhi ...

. He 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". In 2017, he received the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to r ...

for Social Sciences in recognition of his creative scholarship on law and society. Liang's key areas of interest are law, popular culture and content 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 ''Steal This Film'' is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property directed by Jamie King, produced by The League of Noble Peers and released via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol. Two parts, and one special The ...

'' (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.

Work

He has critiqued and influenced the debate on changes in the

Indian Copyright Act The Copyright Act 1957 as amended governs the subject of copyright law in India. The Act is applicable from 21 January 1958. The history of copyright law in India can be traced back to its colonial era under the British Empire. The Copyright Act 19 ...

. " We were trying to oppose that, showing how such a law would be harmful for creative

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entit ...

. Right now we are also supporting a campaign in

pharmaceutical A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field an ...

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 Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

, arguing that public money should go into public intellectual property," Liang said in the December 2004 interview to World-Information.org. In 2004 he was a research fellow at Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute,

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...

Advisor/mentor

Liang was also group advisor/mentor of the 2006–07 International Policy Fellowship of the

Open Society Institute Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a st ...

JNU Protests

During the famous 2016 protests at Jawaharlal Nehru University where he was a PhD student at the time, Liang gave a public speech as part of an 'Alternative Classroom' on laws relating to sedition.

Background

Liang is a graduate from the National Law School of India University, and pursued a master's degree in

Warwick Warwick ( ) is a market town, civil parish and the county town of Warwickshire in the Warwick District in England, adjacent to the River Avon. It is south of Coventry, and south-east of Birmingham. It is adjoined with Leamington Spa and Whi ...

, England on a

Chevening Scholarship The Chevening Scholarship is an international scholarship, funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, that lets foreign students with leadership qualities study at universities in the United Kingdom. History The Chevening Scholarship ...

. He obtained his PhD in Cinema Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics at

Jawaharlal Nehru University Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is a public major research university located in New Delhi, India. It was established in 1969 and named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. The university is known for leading faculties and r ...

in 2017. He was a visiting scholar at the

University of Michigan School of Information The University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI or iSchool) is the informatics and information science school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It offers baccalaureate, magisterial, and doc ...

and the Center for South Asian Studies as part of the Hughes Fellowship in 2014 an
Rice Visiting Scholar
at Yale University in 2016-17. He is currently Professor of Law at School of Law, Governance and Citizenship,

, India.

References

External links