[Ecommerce] News from UNESCO

[Manon Ress]

Sasha posted excellent notes from UNESCO meeting:

http://www.mediatrademonitor.org/node/view/173

UNESCO intergovernmental session II, Fourth Day: Thursday, February 3, 2005
Summary: The day began with the chair's report that yesterday evening's
drafting committee came to consensus on the first part of the article of
the convention that deals with its objectives. Then the discussion moved
for the first time into the meat of the convention: the rights and
obligations of the states.

SNIP

At the end of the plenary there were 15 minutes of discussion on article
7, 'obligation to promote the diversity of cultural expressions,' which
contains a dangerous clause on intellectual property and piracy. This
will be taken up again tomorrow morning, after a reportback from this
evening's drafting committee, which is continuing its attempts to
redraft the objectives, in theory according to the will of the plenary
discussion.

SNIP

Canada circulated a proposal for revision of this article, and Saudi
Arabia made a scary proposal, supported by Egypt, about the right States
to control and prohibit cultural works and productions. This proposal
was opposed by India and then the USA, after which the chair ruled that
it would create internal contradiction in the convention and would not
be sent to drafting committee. This created a bit of a stir but the
ruling held.

SNIP

Discussion then began on Article 7.

Article 7, Obligation to promote the diversity of cultural expression.

This article is important because it's the first operative clause that
could proactively push states to adopt better cultural and media
policies. However, it's dangerous because it has a subparagraph, 7.2(b),
on intellectual property rights that would tie states to the current
unbalanced copyright system and also push them further to crack down on
'piracy,' without defining the term. Of course, there's no mention of
fair use or the public domain.

Going into the discussion of this article, I had been optimistic from
conversations with various delegates that the clause could be deleted,
for the most part under the argument that IPRs should be discussed in
WIPO, not at UNESCO.

At first, several spoke in favor of deleting the IP language. However,
Australia spoke in favor of retaining it; Benin made an awful proposal
to extend IP granted in each country to all other countries, and the US
weighed in in support of the article, with a long speech about how IP is
fundamental to cultural diversity and development, current IP law has
served artists well and enriched the public domain (!) They did say that
new IP law should not be created in this document, but that contradicts
their support for the piracy language. The US position is internally
contradictory, which most likely stems from internal divisions on the
delegation between, for example, the US Patent office and others (maybe
the librarians?)

India's proposal was to redraft the IP clause to say that IP would be
protected, according to international instruments (note the change from
'existing' international instruments, which is an interesting twist and
would allow some leeway, for example, given the pressure to reform
WIPO). Happily, they would delete the mention of 'piracy,' but because
'IP disputes should be dealt with in the WTO.' They also gave a speech
about how WTO negotiations on IP are to ensure that the "poor starving
African artist" is protected by intellectual property law, which is, to
put it gently, laying it on a bit thick.

The EU proposal was to delete the IP clause from Article 7, but put a
strong statement supporting IP into the preamble.

It's impossible to tell at this point how the piracy clause will shake
out. It's hard to lobby on it since there are so few NGOs here and three
quarters of them are industry associations that would like strengthened
IPR and a crackdown on 'piracy.' I do get the sense that some IP
language will stay in the convention, which maybe means we should start
lobbying to get mention of public domain, fair use, the rights of the
public, the commons etc. in there to balance it.

Tomorrow we'll hear back from tonight's drafting committee meeting, then
go on with Article 7 and probably through 8, 9, maybe (but not likely) 10.
Posted on February 3, 2005 | Filed Under: English | News Item | UNESCO
Convention on Cultural Diversity
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Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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