Besides spreading the word about how
Free Software was censored from the "Vienna Conclusions on ICT
& Creativity", I also participated in a panel on the ongoing World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) reform: As you may know from Karstens Blog, I've been working in
this field for the FSFE, as part of our own "Changing
the WIPO" activities
The panel was coordinated by Robin Gross of IP Justice and had an interesting
speaker list, including Alex Byrne, President of the International Federation of
Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), James Love, Director
of the Consumer
Project on Technology (CPT) and Philipe Petit, Deputy Director
General of the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Since the panel used the term "Intellectual Property" in a rather
uncritical way, it was necessary to point out why this term is
misleading and harmful to a differentiated and diversified dialog on
the various issues that are being thrown together under it. To my
surprise, Mr Philipe Petit of WIPO was the first person at the table
to agree that the term is problematic and that the areas of law that
it refers to are actually very different.
He surprised me further when he said that he would not consider it
a problem to move from WIPO to WIWO, a "World Intellectual Wealth
Organisation", as a group of NGOs and people have asked in the "WIWO Declaration."
To Mr Petite, "wealth" seemed a purely economic and financial term,
while I think it is important to realise that "intellectual wealth"
encompasses much more, including values that can hardly be quantified
or measured. But that disagreement seems one we could live with in the
light of our larger agreement that Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks,
as well as other limited monopolies granted by society, are merely
tools which are supposed to serve society.
This agreement is quite fundamental, and indeed the Patents, Copyrights and
Trademarks (PCT) Working Group has tried without success to get
this notion included in the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of
Action. It can also not be found in the chapeau of the second phase,
it was much too controversial.
WIPO has in the past helped spread the ideology that sharing a CD
with your friend is the moral equivalent of robbing a ship and killing
the crew -- an association created by the rather common "piracy"
terminology. But it should be said that they are not the main source
of that ideology. That questionable honor rests with the
rights-holding industry and the countries that make themselves proxies
of their cause: most prominently the United States of America, but
also the European Union and its member states (mainly United Kingdom
and Germany), Canada and Japan.
These countries are the main obstacle to benchmarking and measuring
the outcome of WIPO policies, as is called for in the Development
Agenda supported by countries such as Brazil, Argentina, India, Egypt,
and many others.
Many people in WIPO are in fact much more open to change than any
of these countries, but are forced to do their bidding. So while we
need to make sure to keep pushing for reform at WIPO, we also need to
uphold that momentum on the national levels. That is an epochal task
for which we need everyone to support the work of the organisations
that are active in this field.
