[A2k] [Fwd: [CNI-(C)] Re: WIPO: Friends of Development Submission - PROMOTING DEVELOPMENT AND ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL]

[Manon Ress]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [CNI-(C)]  Re: WIPO: Friends of Development Submission -
PROMOTING DEVELOPMENT AND ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:50:59 -0400
From: John T. Mitchell <mitchell@interactionlaw.com>
Reply-To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
<CNI-COPYRIGHT@cni.org>
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
<CNI-COPYRIGHT@cni.org>

It's seems to be arguing:

(a) IP law is supposed to benefit private interests for the sole purpose of
benefiting the public good.

(b) WIPO has become terribly one-sided, assuming without discussion or
debate that what's good for the large media conglomerates who own copyrights
is good for all copyright owners and the general public welfare.

(c) The United States and Europe keep beating up on developing nations to
have stronger copyright laws and stronger enforcement, but only pay lip
service (substantial, consistent, pervasive lip service, but still just lip
service) to the principle that copyrights and other IP rights are supposed
to serve people (and not the other way around) and that each developing
country should be given some flexibility, such that if their average annual
income is less than what a U.S. Consumer spends on entertainment in a year,
they should, perhaps, not have to structure their own copyright laws based
upon the economic models that work in the developed world.

(d) That a bunch of them have stepped forward and pledged to hang together,
since up until now each has been hanging separately, and demand that balance
be restored. And

(e) That, by the way (and you need to jump to the last section to see this
one) there are huge antitrust and misuse issues abounding in the way a lot
of major copyright and patent holding companies are exploiting their works,
so perhaps it's high time the developing world also modernized its laws,
under uniform WIPO auspices, to break up the oppressive activity that
constitutes misuse of IP rights and impoverishes the masses in order to
profit from the higher-paying elite.

Something like that. And though it is lengthy and somewhat repetitive, and
stalks the points at length hoping they will become evident by the reasoning
(rather than offend anyone by just making the points and then supporting
them with reasoning), if you stay with it, I conclude that what it says
makes a lot of sense. To say it another way, it is certainly bureaucratese,
but certainly not gobbledygook. I found it to be a refreshing statement to
the effect that this Emperor has long had no clothes, and it is high time
WIPO did what the U.S. Supreme Court has done and declare that it is just as
important to prevent copyrights from being extended beyond their bounds as
it is to enforce them up to their limits (Fogerty v. Fantasy). (And for
bureaucratese, there was some remarkable candor in condemning what is
perceived as an incestuous relationship with only one side of the copyright
balance, together with organizational management that relegates the
delegates of developing nations to the waiting room while the developing
nations hash out their differences in the back room and expect the others to
go along. That part was bureaucratese in style, but not in substance.)

John

John T. Mitchell
http://interactionlaw.com
1-202-415-9213



On 4/8/05 6:20 PM, "Mike Bradley" <mbradley@techpubs.com> wrote:

> Huh?
>
> After stripping away the gobbledygook and bureaucrateze, exactly
> what's this about?
>
> = Mike Bradley
>   www.techpubs.com
>
>
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--
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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