Besides spreading the word about how Free Software was censored from the "Vienna Conclusions on ICT & Creativity", I also participated in a panel on the ongoing World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reform: As you may know from Karstens Blog, I’ve been working in this field for the FSFE, as part of our own "Changing the WIPO" activities
The panel was coordinated by Robin Gross of IP Justice and had an interesting speaker list, including Alex Byrne, President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), James Love, Director of the Consumer Project on Technology (CPT) and Philipe Petit, Deputy Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Since the panel used the term "Intellectual Property" in a rather uncritical way, it was necessary to point out why this term is misleading and harmful to a differentiated and diversified dialog on the various issues that are being thrown together under it. To my surprise, Mr Philipe Petit of WIPO was the first person at the table to agree that the term is problematic and that the areas of law that it refers to are actually very different.
He surprised me further when he said that he would not consider it a problem to move from WIPO to WIWO, a "World Intellectual Wealth Organisation", as a group of NGOs and people have asked in the "WIWO Declaration."
To Mr Petite, "wealth" seemed a purely economic and financial term, while I think it is important to realise that "intellectual wealth" encompasses much more, including values that can hardly be quantified or measured. But that disagreement seems one we could live with in the light of our larger agreement that Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks, as well as other limited monopolies granted by society, are merely tools which are supposed to serve society.
This agreement is quite fundamental, and indeed the Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks (PCT) Working Group has tried without success to get this notion included in the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action. It can also not be found in the chapeau of the second phase, it was much too controversial.
WIPO has in the past helped spread the ideology that sharing a CD with your friend is the moral equivalent of robbing a ship and killing the crew — an association created by the rather common "piracy" terminology. But it should be said that they are not the main source of that ideology. That questionable honor rests with the rights-holding industry and the countries that make themselves proxies of their cause: most prominently the United States of America, but also the European Union and its member states (mainly United Kingdom and Germany), Canada and Japan.
These countries are the main obstacle to benchmarking and measuring the outcome of WIPO policies, as is called for in the Development Agenda supported by countries such as Brazil, Argentina, India, Egypt, and many others.
Many people in WIPO are in fact much more open to change than any of these countries, but are forced to do their bidding. So while we need to make sure to keep pushing for reform at WIPO, we also need to uphold that momentum on the national levels. That is an epochal task for which we need everyone to support the work of the organisations that are active in this field.
