The Bellagio Global Dialogues on Intellectual Property

Reviews Rockefeller's conference series on intellectual property and its efforts to promote policies and institutional capacities that better serve the poor, with a focus on food security and public health. Discusses global policy, development, and trade

The Bellagio Global Dialogues on Intellectual Property

This paper is an account of the Bellagio conferences and of their place within the larger arc of Rockefeller intellectual property work since 2002. In a more limited fashion, it is also an account of the transformation of IP from an obscure legal specialty into a major discourse of power and debate about the shape of globalization. The broadest achievement of the Bellagio series—and of Rockefeller Foundation work more generally in this area—has been to make this debate more open, participatory, and engaged with questions of poverty and human development

Broadband adoption in low-income communities

The social function of the Internet has changed dramatically in recent years. What was, until recently, a supplement to other channels of information and communication has become increasingly a basic requirement of social and economic inclusion. Educational systems, employers, and government agencies at all levels have shifted services online—and are pushing rapidly to do more. Price remains only one factor shaping the fragile equilibrium of home broadband adoption, and library and community organizations fill the gap by providing critical training and support services while under severe economic pressures. Commissioned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to analyze the factors shaping low rates of adoption of home broadband services in low-income and other marginalized communities, this SSRC study is one of the only large-scale qualitative investigations of barriers to adoption in the US and complements FCC survey research on adoption designed to inform the 2010 National Broadband Plan. The study draws on some 170 interviews of non-adopters, community access providers, and other intermediaries conducted across the US in late 2009 and early 2010 and identifies a range of factors that make broadband services hard to acquire and even harder to maintain in such communities