Text 836, 52 rader
Skriven 2004-10-06 12:57:50 av Adam Flinton (1:379/45)
Ärende: 1 4 Geo re WIPO
=======================
From: Adam Flinton <adam_NO_@_SPAM_softfab.com>

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/64118/un-body-promises-greater-recognition-for-open
-source-licencing.html

"The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is promising greater
recognition of Free and Open Source software licensing in a bid to balance the
needs of copyright owners and the public.

A group of Non-Governmental Organisations led by the Consumer Project on
Technology (CPTech) successfully lobbied WIPO in its 'Geneva Declaration',
resulting in a 'development agenda' that includes alternatives such as the GPL.

CPTech's director, James Love, said: 'For years, WIPO has pushed to expand the
scope and level of intellectual property rights and told developing countries
that this would help their development. Today WIPO supported an entirely
different approach, which emphasized open source software, public domain goods
like the human genome, patent exceptions for access to medicine, the control of
anticompetitive practices, and other measures that have been ignored by WIPO
for years. It represents a change in culture and a change in direction for
WIPO. Many in the WIPO Secretariat opposed this, and few thought it would
prevail, but today we are moving forward, on a different footing and in a
positive direction, and WIPO will never be the same.'

The group had also spent some time documenting WIPO meetings in order for the
public to be better informed of the trademark, copyright, and patent policies
being adopted that affect their every day lives.

Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation's European Affairs Coordinator,
said: 'The growing presence of non-governmental pressure organizations like
CPTech and EFF at WIPO's meetings has begun to take its toll. The ridiculous
IP-at-any-cost position of WIPO has been laid bare and revealed for a sham. Now
the organization is taking its first baby-steps towards balance. In the coming
months and years, the nonprofit presence at WIPO will broaden and deepen - we
won't let them fool us any longer.'

The Geneva Declaration urged: 'We are witnessing ... hundreds of innovative
collaborative efforts to create public goods, including the Internet, the World
Wide Web, Wikipedia, the Creative Commons, GNU Linux and other free and open
software projects, as well as distance education tools and medical research
tools. ... Alternative compensation systems have been proposed to expand access
and interest in cultural works, while providing both artists and consumers with
efficient and fair systems for compensation. There is renewed interest in
compensatory liability rules, innovation prizes, or competitive intermediators,
as models for economic incentives for science and technology that can
facilitate sequential follow-on innovation and avoid monopolist abuses.'"


Adam

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