WIPO GA: Starting off by grinding to a halt
greve
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Martedì, 25 Settembre 2007
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The 2007
general assembly of the UN WIPO started off
yesterday by grinding to a halt over accusations against WIPO director
general Kamil Idris, who apparently changed his officially recorded
birth date. The United States wants that issue discussed and dealt
with at this year's assembly, while the group of African countries
moved to take this item off the agenda. You can read more about this
at IP-Watch.org
and Thiru
Balasubramaniam of KEI.
So while we're waiting for the closed door meetings to come to some
kind of agreement on the agenda, allow me to share some fun that I
came across while waiting.
If someone were to raise the idea that public transportation
providers could reduce the amount of free riders by subjecting people
to a mandatory whipping when buying a ticket, most people would
probably consider that a pretty stupid idea. It seems that different
standards for stupid exist on this planet, because this is precisely
what the so-called "reproduction rights industry" is doing with the
"piracy trailers" on its DVDs -- always vastly overexaggerating and
often misrepresenting the law.
So it comes as no surprise that many people felt annoyed by this
and reacted in a creative way to the not so creative industries,
by making alternative versions of the clips. Below is the output of
the Sydney University Law Revue 2007, courtesy of Hugh Aitken. Thanks to Luisa for pointing them out to me.
My personal favorite is probably the second clip. I should also
warn in particular my fellow Germans that the third clip is showing a
certain lack of historic sensitivity. You have been warned.
Ah, they're calling the assembly. Let's see whether we have an
agenda now.
