Tuesday morning: rising tensions at WIPO meeting on development agenda
This Tuesday morning, the situation is rather tense. The extreme positions are held by India on the side of the Friends of Development, and by the USA on the side of those who want to avoid reform. Each side has its helpers. While India simply expresses most clearly the views of the Friends of Development group, the US have mobilised interesting friends such as Sudan to perpetuate their views.
The US show themselves “concerned” with the proposal of the Friends of Development. They accuse the group of wanting to dilute the “intellectual property” system and WIPO’s work. In their view, the strict enforcement of patents, copyrights and trademarks is a precondition for development and growth.
India contests this view. It calls for a mainstreaming of development aspects into WIPO’s work. Being very clear in tone, the Indian statement described “intellectual property” as a tool for development, not an end in itself. It called the demand for stricter enforcement of patents, copyrights and trademark regulation “unrealistic”, as developing countries are grappling with far more severe problems.
Personally, I find it cynical to demand of a developing country that it dedicate scarce resources to the persecution of violations of eg. copyright, while the same country does not have the means to provide its population with a dignified standard of living (dignified not as in “DSL connections for everyone” but rather as in “not starving or dying of easily curable diseases”).
This demand – which WIPO has been obedient to so far – turns international and national agencies, which in theory are obliged to pursue public interest, into mere agents of the rights-holding industry’s whishes.
Oh, by the way: Why am I putting “intellectual property” in quotes? Because I agree with Richard Stallman in that the term is imprecise to the point of being harmful. You can find Richard’s reasoning right here. The distinctions he elaborates on are substantial to avoiding being labelled as “anti-IP” by conservative groups.