Vera Franz is Program Manager of the Open Society Institute's Information Program. In this capacity she leads the Open Information and Intellectual Property Reform programs.

The Information Program supports four initiatives which enable access to knowledge in poorer countries: a project on the reform of intellectual property; the eIFL library consortium; the Open Access Initiative, and an East-East translation program.

Vera Franz talked to me about the detailed problem with the current intellectual property/policy regimes around the world and the OSI's strategy for combatting the issues. Her experience monitoring and working with trade organizations such as the WTO and WIPO provides perspective on how the people drafting these regulations and policies deal with Open Source, Free Culture and transparent processes in general.