Karsten on Free Software

“WIPO is not about creativity. It is about protection of intellectual property!” Thus spoke Mr Thomas Giovanetti, sent to the WIPO meeting by the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative think-tank in Texas, USA. It’s good to know that those opposed to reform at WIPO care so deeply about the thing they are claiming to foster.

In keeping with good sportsmanship, I’m posting a link to their latest press release, here. Read it if you want to see what the progressive part of Civil Society is up against.

This is the morning of the NGOs. The session started more than an hour late, as the regional groups of countries were working on their positions ins closed sessions. As yesterday was a conflictive day, this took a while. At the beginning of the session, Mexico – most likely on behalf of the United States – harshly complained about the tone of Brazil’s and Argentina’s comments on its position. The Argentinian emissary replied that she was just carrying out the orders of her government.

After the last few statements by intergovernmental organisations, the meeting started where it had left off yesterday: With comments by the NGOs. Mostly due to good tactics by progressive, reform-oriented NGOs, but also with a bit of plain old luck, the proponents of WIPO reform got to speak after the various organisations of the rights holders, many of which already made their statements yesterday evening – as tired delegates were out for coffee and a chat.

The progressive NGOs had coordinated their statements well. There was an almost uninterrupted string of about eight interventions by organisations calling for a better taking into account of the needs of developing countries, as well as the need to preserve – and, in many cases, give back – breathing room for creativity.

Georg made a statement on behalf of the Free Software Foundation Europe, which can be found here. Myself, I had the honor to be asked to read the statement of the FFII. The rights-holding industry emissary to my right reacted with grimaces and desperate gestures to what to him must have seemed pure lunacy: The demands for a strengthening of Free Software, and the call to see the system of patents, copyrights and trademarks not as an end in itself, but as a tool for development.

As Ellen Thoen of Medicins Sans Frontiers explained, the issue of patents on pharmaceuticals is literally a matter of life and death for people in developing countries. Having put forward the example of the Polio vaccine, which was announced almost exactly 50 years ago and, handled as a public domain idea, led to the near eradication

There was also a considerable amount of concerns expressed about the ever stricter enforcement of regulations in developed countries. An example would be the legal protection of Digital Restrictions Management against circumvention, as Volker Grassmuck explained on behalf of the European Digital Rights Initiative.

By the way: The real conservatives around here believe that there is a “communist conspiracy” to take WIPO away from the rights-holding industry. It’s always good to talk to people with such subtle and articulate viewpoints.