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The Concept of the Public Sphere |
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According to social critic and philosopher  Jürgen Habermas "public sphere" first of all means "... a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is open in principle to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. They are then acting neither as business or professional people conducting their private affairs, nor as legal consociates subject to the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to obedience. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely."
The system of the public sphere is extremely complex, consisting of spatial and communicational publics of different sizes, which can overlap, exclude and cover, but also mutually influence each other. Public sphere is not something that just happens, but also produced through social norms and rules, and channeled via the construction of spaces and the media. In the ideal situation the public sphere is transparent and accessible for all citizens, issues and opinions. For democratic societies the public sphere constitutes an extremely important element within the process of public opinion formation.
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IIPA
The International Intellectual Property Alliance formed in 1984 is a private sector coalition and represents the U.S. copyright-based industries. It is comprised of seven trade associations: Association of American Publishers, AFMA, Business Software Alliance, Interactive Digital Software Association, Motion Picture Association of America, National Music Publishers' Association and Recording Industry Association of America. IIPA and its member's track copyright legislative and enforcement developments in over 80 countries and aim at a legal and enforcement regime for copyright that deters piracy. On a national level IIPA cooperates with the U.S. Trade Representative and on the multilateral level has been involved in the development of the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement of the WTO (World Trade Organization) and also participates in the copyright discussion of the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization).
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