[A2k] James Boyle: Obama in Cyberspace (FT)

[James Love]

William is pointing to a statement by the US which was delivered on
Tuesday the 26th.  Perhaps a better PDF of the statement is available
here:

http://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/tvi/usg_wipo_sccr18.pdf

In the Tuesday statement, the US did not express any views at all on a
treaty.  In fact, it managed to avoid saying the treaty proposal
received any support at all in the US consultations, even though it was
supported by NFB, Bookshare, DASIY Consortiun, RFB&D, ALA, KEI, PK and
EFF.

On Thursday, the US joined the Group B opposition to having a treaty
discussed at the November SCCR 19.

Late Friday (May 29th), after a very difficult negotiation where Group B
was on the wrong side, the whole SCCR agreed that the treaty would be
discussed at SCCR 19.

Now the Copyright Office and the WH "look forward" to discussing the
treaty in November at SCCR 19.   I think this is progress.

Professor Boyle's FT column does describe what the US did in SCCR 18.
One hopes that the position will continue to evolve in a positive way.
Indeed, it would be great if the Obama Administration could lead,
because if it doesn't lead, it will be very hard to get this treaty.
This requires breaking with (a unified) publishing industry.  This
requires taking the side of consumers against an entrenched lobby.  This
requires a new Group B position, or at least a new US position.

Jamie

On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 21:21 +0200, William New wrote:
> Not sure what conclusion you'll draw but it might be useful to view the US
> statement from the recent WIPO Copyright Committee meeting. Statement
> available toward bottom of this story in Intellectual Property Watch:
> http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/05/29/proposed-wipo-treaty-on-visually-i
> mpaired-access-gets-deeper-look/
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: a2k-admin@lists.essential.org [mailto:a2k-admin@lists.essential.org]
> On Behalf Of Robert Martinengo
> Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 9:00 PM
> To: Manon Ress; a2k@lists.essential.org
> Subject: Re: [A2k] James Boyle: Obama in Cyberspace (FT)
>
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Manon Ress<manon.ress@keionline.org> wrote:
> > Obama in cyberspace By James Boyle
> ... But the final straw may be the Obama administration's opposition
> to a proposal on copyright exceptions for the visually impaired. ...
> It is backed by a number of developing countries and opposed - quietly
> - by the US and most of the European Union....
>
> What is the deal here people? I will pay $10 to the first person who
> provides proof that the Obama administration opposes, quietly or
> otherwise, the WBU treaty (that is, a documented comment from a
> government official, not James Love's tweets from Geneva). Get it
> right or get off it already.
>
> People might want to read what Maria Pallante from the US Copyright
> Office wrote on Jim Fruchtermans blog:
>
> "...In the months ahead, we also will be looking at the Chafee
> Amendment to see how it (and other provisions of U.S. law) would
> interact with the treaty proposal that was tabled by Brazil, Ecuador
> and Paraguay at the WIPO meeting. Because copyright treaties are
> implemented through the national laws of member states, this is an
> essential step in analyzing the proposal and one for which the U.S.
> government will continue to solicit the views of stakeholders...."
>
> https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5979923&postID=1969469041493033599&
> pli=1
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--
James Love, Director, Knowledge Ecology International
http://www.keionline.org | mailto:james.love at keionline.org
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