Activities

Current activities

• This Web site is part of the Global Consumer Dialog and Public Education Network on Access to Knowledge (A2Kⁱ) Issues funded by Ford Foundation. Through regional meetings and online dialogue, the Global Consumer Dialogue will identify problems consumers face in accessing and using copyrightⁱ protected materials, highlighting access barriers that require further investigation, identifying the legitimate needs of artists and content creators, and reframing enforcement debates to advance member groups’ economic, political, and cultural interests.
• With funding from the Open Society Institute (OSIⁱ), Consumers International has also developed the Consumers International IP Watch List, which identifies countries whose IP policies and practices are harmful to consumers, to counterbalance the USTR's Special 301 Report of countries that are considered by the United States government to offer inadequate IPRⁱ protection. The Access to Knowledge Watch List will be used as a tool for campaigning and advocacy at national and international level.
• Also funded by OSI, Consumers International has produced a Consumer Survey which will be used to gather evidence of consumers’ actual experience in trying to access and use materials in three areas covered by copyright: educational materials, softwareⁱ, films and music. Rather than focusing exclusively on legal barriers to the access and use of these materials, the survey will also seek to uncover evidence of other access barriers faced by consumers, and will feed into the work of the Global Consumer Dialogue.
• CIⁱ has also supported national activities being conducted by its members, including national-level case study research as well as advocacy and campaigning initiatives.
• An ad-hoc global campaign against the lack of transparency in the negotiations around a new Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement came together through the grassroots initiatives of our members during 2010.
• We are also developing a new line of work on telecommunications consumer protection, initiated at a CI-supported conference in Chiang Rai, Thailand in 2009.

Previous activities

• Access to Knowledge - Copyright as a Barrier to Accessing Books, Journals and Teaching Material was a two-year project (October 2004 to September 2006) implemented by Consumers International Kuala Lumpur Office with the support of the Open Society Institute Development Foundation (US) and the International Development Research Centre (Canada).
• Privacy@net was an international comparative study of consumer privacy on the Internet, published in January 2001.