Pranesh Prakash is a Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit research and policy advocacy organization. He works primarily in areas where technology and public policy intersect. This includes the areas of access to knowledge and reform of the current intellectual property rights’ regime, and exploring alternatives to copyright- and patent-based creativity and innovation including open standards, free/open ource software, open access to scholarly literature, and open content. He also works in the areas of governmental transparency through means such as open government data, and freedom of expression in the digital sphere. He holds a degree in arts and law from the National Law School, Bangalore.
Through his work he seeks to establish that copyright law as it exists today cannot serve an a useful edifice for the publishing industry, especially with e-publishing, because it serves as a barrier to access to knowledge while deepening the inequalities of the global knowledge flows. He believes that developing countries should make full use of the flexibilities the international copyright regime affords to help ensure that persons with disabilities, students and teachers, librarians and archivists, researchers, and persons in the Global South have access to knowledge to enable them to participate in cultural self-expression.