Karsten Gerloff and Rishab Aiyer Ghosh participated at the TACD conference, “The Reform of WIPO: Implementing the Development Agenda,” on 17 September in Geneva. The meeting followed a successful three year campaign to reorient the technical assistance programme of WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) to serve the interests of developing countries. In his presentation Rishab Aiyer Ghosh showed how Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) has successfully built an ecosystem that relies on sharing knowledge, not on monopolizing ideas. Supported by extensive quantitative and qualitative evidence he argued that WIPO will need to take alternative models of knowledge management into account if it does not want to become obsolete.

Rishab’s presentation on why it’s rational to collaborate in the production of immaterial goods is available here (pdf). IP Watch reports on the conference here.

Sisule Musungu finally has a blog; about time, too. His first post is on the WIPO Development Agenda. Though it’s a bit on the long side, it’s definitely worth a read.

He has accompanied the Development Agenda struggle at WIPO from the beginning, from his former position at the South Centre, and there are very few people on this earth who know more about it than him. He’s certainly more qualified than me when it comes to judging the process, so I’m glad we’re roughly on the same page.
Sisule recounts the beginnings of the Development Agenda process in 2004, when the initiative was received with some hostility by a WIPO that was dedicated to, in the words of Jamie Love, “mindless expansions of intellectual property rights”. He summarises the results, and ponders whether the Development Agenda is really more than hot air. Luckily, he thinks that the answer to that is no:

From the very beginning of this process, however, sceptics have argued that the proposal for the establishment of a development agenda amounted to nothing more than hot air, ideology and empty rhetoric. So far the sceptics have been proven wrong. The range of reforms and new frameworks envisaged under the now established development agenda are anything but hot air, ideology and empty rhetoric. Although like everything else implementation might entail significant challenges and failure could visit the agenda, as the dust settles, it is becoming clear that the development agenda for WIPO has the potential to significantly transform the organisation in major ways resulting in not only improvements in the attention paid to development issues and the composition of its staff but also to deliver the organisation into the 21st Century. For this reason, the development agenda is already a success. The challenge that remains is to build on this success and ensure that the opportunity is not squandered in implementation.

[UPDATE]

Looks like I could have saved some bits on this post yesterday – but you never know. IPWatch reports that the negotiations have broken down at the last minute. A diplomatic conference to wrap the treaty up in November will not take place.

Apparently, the US’ demand to extend the “broadcasting” treaty to transmissions over the Internet (”webcasting”) prompted other member states to submit lots of demands of their own, leading to a mess that became impossible to reconcile:

The discussion stalled progressively as objections and alternatives to language in the chair’s unofficial draft treaty proposal piled up, sources said. But it turned on a statement by the US delegation late Thursday night that it could not see any way to resolve differences in the time remaining. The US said that in the entire paper under discussion they saw “not a single area of agreement,” whether it was new or years-old proposals, a US official said.

But the meeting continues today, and we’ll have to wait for the final outcome. For now, this is very good news. However, this treaty has been negotiated on and off for ten years, and it’s not out of the question that this Zombie will rise out of its grave again (much like software patents in Europe, by the way).

Looks like WIPO has had a very good two weeks. With the Development Agenda underway and the Broadcast Treaty collapsed, two progressive key issues have turned out well.

I’ll raise a glass tonight to all the NGOs that helped to make this happen. Y’all have a good weekend!

[/UPDATE]

Last week, the heated negotiations on a Development Agenda for WIPO saw the organisation make some progress towards managing knowledge in the best interest of all of us. This week, it seems that the pendulum is swinging the other way.

In the negotiations on a “broadcasting treaty” at WIPO, members are debating whether broadcasters such as TV and radio stations should get a copyright-like monopoly on the things they broadcast. While this is silly enough – it will keep armies of IP lawyers clothed and fed for decades to come, with the rest of us picking up the tab -, the bigger problem is that this will badly hurt the ways in which sound and video can be used on the Internet.

Material that’s in the public domain may be re-monopolised simply because it has been broadcast by a TV or radio station. Another issue arises with sites like YouTube, which often host short clips of movies. Under the proposed treaty, a TV station which has broadcast the movie in question could then demand that the clip be taken down, even if the movie is in the public domain, or the movie’s copyright holder has no objection to seeing the clip on the net.

Who backs this treaty? Owners of TV stations, mostly. They seem to have the US government and the European Union working for them. Opposition is coming from civil society groups and library organisations, but also from some major firms in the US: AT&T, Intel, Dell, Verizon.

If this treaty is adopted in its present form, it would create a new layer of intellectual monopoly powers. Depending on how it turns out precisely, it might require you to get permission before you re-use work that is made available on the Internet in the public domain or under a free licence (such as Creative Commons). A broadcasting treaty may also introduce restrictions that in effect neutralise the exceptions and limitations provided by copyright.

I’m not sure how bad it will get, but it’s definitely a step in the wrong direction.

Here’s a brief explanation of the broadcasting treaty, and here’s the current discussion on the A2K mailing list.