Back in Hamburg. More reading for you.
Back in Hamburg, and tired. Luckily, the issues I had to deal with today were relatively straightforward, compared to the extremely complex situation in Geneva. My recovery from a diplomacy overdose was also greatly helped by half a thursday spent relaxing at the sunny shore of Lake Geneva.
Georg Greve is still in Geneva, attending another WIPO meeting: That of the Permanent Committee on Cooperation for Development Related to Intellectual Property (PCIPD). (They do have catchy names, don’t they?) As the word “Development” in the committee name implies, the discussions begun during the Intersessional Intergovernmental Meeting carried on to some degree. Georg delivered a statement of the FSFE, demanding not only the proprietary, but also the Free Software model should be promoted, and that all WIPO activities should be fully available with Free Software. The statement highlights Free Software’s essential role for development and growth.
In case you’re still not over the last meeting from Monday to Wednesday, I have some links for you. IP Watch brings you a comprehensive overview over what happened. I tip my hat to the Electronic Frontier Foundation people, who have been working hard to summarize almost all (!) statements delivered during the meeting. Their posts can be found here. The WIPO story also made it onto heise.de, one of Germany’s most important tech/society news sites, yesterday.
Most PINGO statements (as mentioned before: “Public Interest NGOs”) are by now to be found on A2K mailing list archives. There, you will also encounter India’s statement, which in my opinion is the shortest and punchiest summary of the issues raised by the Friends of Development group.
Want to know more? Looking for something beyond the minutiae of the WIPO process, I was pointed to IPRsonline.org. Many people will already know this resource site for “IP” issues. Those who do not might want to pay it a visit.
More on the immediately practical side of things, today I would like to point out to you a site that many Free Software users may have yearned for, without knowing it already existed. The FSF/UNESCO Free Software Dictionary is an excellent overview of Free Software packages, ordered by what they’re used for. Very usable, and extremely useful. Whoever set this up deserves more respect than she or he is getting.