Just before lunch, we enjoyed a panel about “The politics of new technologies”. Or rather, most of it. Kenneth Cukier, a journalist with The Economist gave a presentation about… nothing in particular. By no means do I mean to offend Kenneth, who, I am sure, is a fine journalist. But that profession’s innate generalism did Read more »
The second day of TACD‘s conference is in full swing. There have been several interesting presentations, and I can’t possibly keep up with all of them. So I’ll just raise the points that seemed most interesting to me. Forgive my liberal omissions. Mark Cooper of Stanford University gave a passionate presentation, talking about how digital Read more »
When I saw this on BoingBoing, I was too busy with WIPO to write about it. Though the news is slightly old already by now, this is still so great that I can’t hold my tongue: There is a new, easy Free Software tool for viewing and publishing Internet video. Democracy aim to be as Read more »
It is with a sour tone not quite in the Olympic spirit that Tom Giovanetti, everyone’s favourite lobbyist around here, has announced that he has detected a world record in the repetition of the term "Free Software". Predictably, the prize goes to Georg Greve, FSF Europe’s president. If you ever wondered how many times someone Read more »
Two NGOs have commented on the US proposal: FSF Europe and EDRI, the European Digital Rights Initiative. FSF Europe appreciated the US statement as a good starting point for consensus, yet contradicted the US on the view that WIPO had no need for analysing its own activities. Inspired by last week’s Internet Governance Forum, we Read more »
The thursday morning session starts with the Chairman’s announcement that, as the discussion of the individual proposals is nearing its end (we’re well into the US proposal, and after that only that of the Friends of Development is left), he will seek to draft a list of topics that have been discussed or are to Read more »
Being steeped in WIPO stuff for the moment (I think there’s IP on my shirt), it happened that the topic of the prospective Broadcasting Treaty came up in a number of conversations. Coincidentally (I swear), BoingBoing has an interview with a US Copyright official. Until now, the US have generally shown themselves strongly in favour Read more »
Now Brazil is taking apart the US proposal, and sparks are certainly flying. Where the proposal waxes lyrical about economic growth, the Brazilians remind the delegates that economic growth is not really within the mandate of WIPO. This is a nice twist on the well-established US tactic of claiming that development issues in copyright and Read more »
ZDNet has a story about some negative consequences of DRM. Libraries and the blind suffer especially from digital restrictions management. "DRM limits the ability to enjoy legally purchased material, andpunishes behaviour widely seen as normal. It will simply criminalisemore people, but do nothing to change behaviour, because people willstill think it’s fair and reasonable," Charman Read more »