To examine the international scope of issues facing the digital environment, the Digital Liberty team organised two international conferences: one in China and the other in Canada.
The Canadian conference, ‘Knowledge Policy for the 21st Century’, was run over two days at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada in April 2007. It drew together leading figures from academia, government and industry, including Richard Stallman, leader of the Free Software Foundation; Stacie Legrow from leading software firm Redhat (USA); Jason Schultz, legal counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco; and Joseph Potvin of the Treasury Board of Canada. Topics included discussion of legal issues (particularly copyright issues) facing software developers, virtual worlds, wikis, blogs and user generated video sites such as YouTube. The conference presented an excellent opportunity for all the members of the project team to be involved (either in person or via telecommunications link) in this important international strategic forum. The papers will be published in mid-2008 by University of Toronto Press.