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Andrew Rens

Andrew Rens is originally from the rough mining town of Johannesburg. More recently he has lived in the start up friendly cities of San Francisco and Cape Town. A proponent and practitioner of open lawyering; open licenses, open standards and open networks, he is busy writing a doctoral thesis on the knowledge commons at Duke Law School.

RECENT POSTS

• Q&A with Pria Chetty: Tech law, bright young minds and Geneva

  Pria Chetty is a rising star in the world of technology law. Memeburn recently spoke to her about the legal challenges which abound in delivering the benefits of IT to all South Africans, the future of internet regulation on the African continent and her goal of adding "a credible African voice to global tech law conversations".Andrew Rens: How did you get into tech law?Pria Chetty: In 2000 I saw a presentation, one slide showed internet connectivity in North ...

• Q & A with Heather Ford: Makmende, Web Ethnography and Ostrich

  Heather Ford was recently selected as one of the 10 most influential women in science and technology in Africa by IT News Africa. Andrew Rens caught up with her for a Q & A session.AR: What have you done with your life since you and I met on a misty day in the Stanford Law School canteen to discuss starting Creative Commons South Africa?HF: That was eight years ago! And it changed my life! I was a fellow at the ...

• How to find the right lawyer for your startup

  Choosing a tech-savvy lawyer for your startup isn't easy, but it's critical that you find the right person. Not all-self proclaimed web startup lawyers are equal, and some can do more harm than good. Figuring out how code and law fit together requires a great deal of curiosity and experience, and an ability to see the big picture. You will often find 21st-century lawyers playing with new technologies that don't have an obvious business case for lawyers, yet. They are ...

• Q&A with Eve Gray: The Kindle, iPad, WWII and the future of publishing

  It is (too) easy to categorise reactionary attitudes like Nadine Gordimer opining that deadtree books are better than screens as a generation thing. It’s easy to assume that an appreciation of new technologies is a generation thing, that an entire generation gets it, but that previous ones don't.I don't think it’s a generation thing, I think it’s a generative thing. There are those who understand the generative potential of new tech and those who don't. Some of those who ...

• The Fall of the 1000-year Copy Reich

  Is unintentional self parody an art form? Constantin Films, production company of an otherwise obscure movie entitled the 'Der Untergang' ('Downfall'), which spawned an internet meme, has certainly taken self parody to new heights (or is that depths?). The clip from the film which shows Hitler, exasperated by the inability of his generals to stem the advance of the Allied Forces throwing a spectacular tantrum, has been remixed so that subtitles have Hitler raving about anything from the difficulties of ...

• Open is the new black

  Open is a paradigm shift about how society is organised around simple rules that enable distributed co-operation, which breeds innovation and creates value. Open systems reduce transaction costs, allow interoperability and re-use. But open is opposed by a host of restrictive laws and practices, software patents, digital rights management and anti-circumvention provisions.An ever increasing number of open memes are changing our world.Open Source; Open Access; Open Standards; Open Licences; Open Innovation; Open Business; Open Spectrum; Open Data.What makes something open? A system is open when it uses ...