Karsten on Free Software

Just arrived in Geneva today. The third part of the “Intersessional Intergovernmental Meeting on a Development Agenda for WIPO” (aka IIM/3) is due to start on Wednesday, July 20. This is the last bit of time officially assigned to the question if WIPO should start to seriously consider development issues when watching over copyright, patents and trademarks.

At the last meeting (IIM/2) a month ago, the delegates agreed on a list of items to be discussed, after the rich countries had played for time until it became too obvious. If these countries had their way, they would simply go on praising the current system, pointing to the size of their GDP and other benchmarks of wealth as a supposed proof that restrictive handling of copyrights, patents and trademarks makes a country rich more or less by itself.

In the process, they are likely to omit the insignificant fact that they only installed strict protection of those limited monopolies after getting rich. The system as it is conserves the status quo, and the rich countries have no incentive to change it. Neither does Big Business.

What will happen during this meeting? I would like to make an uninformed guess today. In my opinion, Brasil, Argentina and India will be pushing forward the discussion on a Development Agenda, while the rich countries will keep dragging their feet. They will also have some small, more-or-less developing country (last time it was Bahrain, before that Sudan) acting as their proxy, bringing in a statement that sounds nice, but just says “Let’s leave things as they are”.

Since this is a political process, the outcome will be a compromise of some sort; but I can impossibly guess what that will be. The traditionalist position still is “Let’s make this disappear in some committee”.

The Friends of Development would like to establish an independent WIPO evaluation and research office (WERO) that would actually bring some degree of transparency to WIPO’s work, especially to technical assistance. Not only are there certain hesitations about the notion of transparency; this would also cost money. Although this money, and much more, could probably be gained from economic growth stimulated by intelligent application of limited monopolies on knowledge, the rich countries seem somewhat hesitant about it.

Now I would like to provide you with the links to the documents that will be discussed in this meeting. However, I am sitting in a basement with no internet connection. To post this entry, I will have to sit on the stairs of Geneva’s cheapest hostel, with drunken backpackers staggering by. Not exactly a good research environment. So please try your luck at www.wipo.int. There’s a “documents” link somewhere.