Coming from the right people, derision makes for a good compliment. An animated discussion Georg and I maintained with Thomas Giovanetti, a think tank from the Institute for Policy Innovation… no, sorry. The think tank is, of course, the institute, not the man. Well, anyway: Said discussion prompted Thomas (who has been amiably ignoring me Read more »
As could be expected, the first item of the morning was about the procedures of the meeting. These were rather quickly agreed on, as there were only two new proposals by Bahrain and the UK. The main focus of the morning session is how to structure the debate. There is a power struggle about who Read more »
For a long time, I haven’t been able to write anything. There was a lot of grunt work to do in preparation for the GNU/Linuxtag, which will start on Wednesday in Karlsruhe, Germany. Between now and then, however, still lies the second part of WIPO’s intersessional intergovernmental meeting (that’ll be IIM/2 for the rest of Read more »
A long day is almost over. As I’m writing this, Georg is sitting on a panel discussing about Free Software in public administrations. It’s the conclusion of a day he started with his keynote, much too early: at 9:15. This was not easy, since yesterday we had been out and about with kyrah. The evening Read more »
Half of my internship has passed already. Today I realized that this is not really what most people would call a “normal” internship. One of the people next door from our Hamburg office, whom I’ve met daily for a month now, realized only today that I’m an intern. That was already the second pointer this Read more »
Stefano just tipped me off on an interesting site. It makes quite clear why everyone should care about copyright, or at least be informed. Check out www.unhappybirthday.com. It’s also quite a laugh.
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 Read more »
After long deliberations behind closed doors, the delegates finally came up with a solution: There will be two more meetings like the one just finished, lasting three days each. The first one will take place on June 20 to 22; the second one in July, with the exact dates to be determined asap by the Read more »
The WIPO secretariat just published the summary of a draft report for this session. It says that member states need more time to “examine” the proposals “indepth”. This will take place on a second IIM on 2005-06-20 to 24. Submissions by member states possible until 2005-05-30. If the fact that another meeting is planned already Read more »
Again and again, the term “Intellectual Property” is showing itself to be misleading. In my view, it works for the rights-holding industry. Every time we say “Software Patents are not a good idea”, these people go: “So you want to tear down the intellectual property system and abolish patents, copyrights, trademarks? Are you crazy? You’re Read more »