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----- Original Message -----
From: Robin Gross <robin@ipjustice.org>
To: <plenary@wsis-cs.org>; <wsis-pct@fsfeurope.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 10:14 AM
Subject: [WSIS CS-Plenary] IP-Watch: Intellectual Property Issues Kept Off WSIS
Agenda
> http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=158
>
> 30/11/2005
> Intellectual Property Issues Kept Off WSIS Agenda
> By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch
>
> The issue of intellectual property did not make the headlines during the
> concluding session of the five-year-long UN World Summit on the
> Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis. And some critics are concerned it
> was intentional.
>
> Discussing the future of the information society without talking about
> intellectual property seems odd and suggests an intentional omission,
> said Robin Gross, executive director of IP Justice. "We got," said
> Gross, "three minutes at the Tunis plenary, and that$BCT(B it on the topic
> of intellectual property."
>
> Symptomatic of this, according to Gross, was what happened to cyberlaw
> expert and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig. The Stanford
> University professor was told immediately before his talk at a
> "Roundtable of Visionaries" organized by the ITU during WSIS
> preparations in Geneva in 2002 to not talk about intellectual property
> issues, but instead focus on Internet governance.
>
> Lessig revealed this to reporters immediately before the Tunis summit
> underlining his scepticism about the possible outcomes of the summit
> with regard to the IP rights issue, which he deemed important. Lessig
> had said that the issue would be negotiated off the table by those who
> want to keep control over IP policy.
>
> The Internet governance debate was the focus of discussions in Tunis,
> with the creation of a global Internet governance forum and a compromise
> in the end of some enhancements in the net governance organisations to
> promote greater governmental participation.
>
> All sides in the Internet governance debate have claimed victory and
> will likely continue struggling over the issues, but intellectual
> property will not be a topic of the new governance forum. In Tunis,
> there was a consensus that work elsewhere should not be touched by the
> WSIS process. A mantra was that IP issues had to be dealt with by WIPO.
>
> While the final Tunis documents make ample references to access, they
> mainly refer to it in the context of access to infrastructure. Four
> points talk cautiously about the "numerous challenges" for "expanding
> the scope of useful accessible information content" (paragraph 15);
> about "improving access to the world$BCT(B health knowledge and telemedicine
> services" (paragraph 90.g) and to "agricultural knowledge"(90.i); and,
> finally, about "supporting educational, scientific, and cultural
> institutions, including libraries, archives and museums, in their role
> of developing, providing equitable, open and affordable access to, and
> preserving diverse and varied content, including in digital form, to
> support informal and formal education, research and innovation (90.k).
>
> Growing Imbalance Toward Rights Holders Cited
>
> But concerns like the one presented by Alex Burne, president of the
> International Federation of Libraries Association (IFLA), that
> librarians all over the world see a "growing imbalance of IP laws in
> favour of rights holders and to the detriment of the users" and about a
> "shrinking of the public domain," that in some respects increasingly was
> also barring access in developed countries, were a side issue in the
> plenary talks.
>
> Burne, like the representatives of the free software community, spoke in
> side events organised by NGOs, namely a panel organized by IP Justice on
> the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and a panel
> organised by the Free Software Foundation on free and open source software.
>
> IFLA, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), IP Justice and the
> Consumer Project on Technology all support a proposal for a treaty on
> access to knowledge proposed by the 14 "Friends of Development"
> countries as part of the development agenda under discussion at WIPO.
>
> "We shared," Burne told the participants of the WIPO panel in Tunis with
> regard to the development agenda, $BEU(Bhe frustration that after nine days
> of negotiation [in 2005] there was no result on either substance or
> procedure.” But copyright exemptions are crucial to assist developing
> and least developed countries to catch up with developing countries,
> said Burne, which in turn was one of the declared targets of the WSIS.
>
> WIPO Vice Director General Philippe Petit said during IP Justice$BCT(B WIPO
> panel that the development agenda was one of the major work items for
> WIPO for 2006, but he did not touch on it during his official plenary
> speech. WIPO was already implementing the Geneva action plan by
> fostering IP protection in developing countries and the summit was
> encouraging WIPO to go further in this direction, he said. But
> intellectual property was not mentioned again in the Tunis documents and
> WIPO is not named in the list of UN organisations that shall address
> implementation.
>
> Free and Open Source Software Systematically Sidelined?
>
> "Some countries and some big companies from phase one of the summit
> tried to systematically turn down any discussion on intellectual
> property and free and open source software," said Georg Greve, president
> of the Free Software Foundation. "They always acted as if the
> monopolizing of knowledge had nothing to do with its distribution."
>
> The only draft expert paper of the Working Group of Internet Governance
> that touched intellectual property, written by Italian software
> developer Vittorio Bertola in his capacity as a member of the group, was
> turned down as too controversial, according to several observers.
>
> "During the whole summit process, and not only in the Geneva phase, the
> question to whom knowledge belongs in the knowledge society has been
> constantly neglected," said Markus Beckedahl, founder of Netzwerk Neue
> Medien and founder and CEO of newthinking communications, an agency
> focused on free and open source software. Beckedahl also was an awardee
> of the Reporters without Borders Freedom Blog Awards for his blog
> netzpolitik.org. "If you consider the main target of the summit to
> create an inclusive information society with access for all, the summit
> has failed," he said.
>
> Greve spoke of mixed feelings: "If we imagine what could have been
> gained with the summit, it was a disappointment." During the first phase
> in Geneva, open source software was recognized, though it was not
> declared preferential from a development point of view as proposed by
> governments like Brazil, India and the Holy See. Greve and the open
> source software advocates during the second phase saw much more
> involvement of companies like Microsoft.
>
> Microsoft brought over 70 people to Tunis compared to a small group of
> half a dozen in Geneva during the first summit and as one of the
> official sponsors got its own speaking slot in which Microsoft
> International President Jean-Philippe Courtois asked for "strict
> protection of intellectual property."
>
> Microsoft also caused a stir by getting changed a document presented at
> the Tunis summit by the Austrian Organizers of a World Creativity Summit
> in Vienna, one of the many side events in the run-up to Tunis. Panel
> members including FSFE, representatives of Austrian musicians, WIPO and
> others had compromised on the final report - "not an easy compromise,"
> said Greve. But Microsoft, despite not being a panel member, requested
> and was granted changes then presented in Tunis as a final document
> without further consultation of the panelists.
>
> The passage in question originally read: "Increasingly, revenue is
> generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be
> freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of
> them. The success of the free software model is one example, licences
> like $BA$(Breative Commons’ that only reserve some rights and permit wide
> use and distribution is another. Distributed collaborative production
> models like Wikipedia also show that there are other incentives than
> money to create quality content."
>
> The published text now looks like this: $BE*(Bncreasingly, revenue is
> generated by offering services on top of contents. Licences such as
> $BA$(Breative Commons’ reserve some rights and permit widespread use and
> distribution. Distributed collaborative production models like
> $BE8(Bikipedia” show that there are other incentives than money to create
> quality content. To ensure ongoing innovation, digital rights management
> (DRM) development and deployment must remain voluntary and market-driven.”
>
> When Austrian media professor Peter Bruck pointed to a blog where the
> $BES(Bevised” document had been posted for comment, Greve reacted by
> pointing out that with only four or five entries over two month time,
> the blog did not appear to be very public. Still, the NGOs might be
> satisfied with one point: after all there was someone paying close
> attention to the IP issue.
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All of the news
> articles and features on Intellectual Property Watch are also subject to
> a Creative Commons License which makes them available for widescale,
> free, non-commercial reproduction and translation.
> Monika Ermert, the author of this post, may be reached at info@ip-watch.ch.
>
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