From davidt@public-domain.org Wed Nov 17 05:53:56 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: upd-announce@lists.essential.org Received: from questmail.futurequest.net (questmail.futurequest.net [69.5.6.251]) by lists.essential.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 577A229B68 for ; Wed, 17 Nov 2004 05:53:56 -0500 (EST) Received: (qmail 16252 invoked by uid 12315); 17 Nov 2004 10:53:55 -0000 Received: from 193.5.93.182 (SquirrelMail authenticated user davidt@public-domain.org); by QuestMail.FutureQuest.net with HTTP; Wed, 17 Nov 2004 05:53:55 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <24510.193.5.93.182.1100688835.squirrel@193.5.93.182> Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 05:53:55 -0500 (EST) From: davidt@public-domain.org To: upd-announce@lists.essential.org User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.3 X-Mailer: SquirrelMail/1.4.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal content-transfer-encoding: 7bit content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Subject: [upd-announce] Broadcasters Try to Steal More of the Public Domain, this week at WIPO Sender: upd-announce-admin@lists.essential.org Errors-To: upd-announce-admin@lists.essential.org X-BeenThere: upd-announce@lists.essential.org Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: News and action alerts from Union for the Public Domain List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Many of you will remember the broadcasting industry's efforts to push a power-grabbing treaty through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). If the broadcasters have their way, the treaty will: * Give broadcasters copyright privileges over material they did not create, but merely broadcast, including control over public domain material. They would get these powers for up to 50 years. * Make it illegal to circumvent technology locks that enforce broadcasters' control over what users can do with broadcasts. And if a small group of webcasters gets their way, they'll get these powers too. In the last session the pro-treaty forces were pushing to move to the final stages of negotiation, while the developing countries in opposition were trying to slow down the process to get rid of the most odious positions. The round of negotiations this week is more of the same, except that now there are even more civil society NGOs in attendance and WIPO recently welcomed a "Development Agenda" that explicitly acknowledges the need for these treaties to promote access to the public domain, not inhibit it. On the other side, the webcasters are making an extra hard push, and there still isn't a great deal of transparency and media coverage to keep the dogs at bay. Stay tuned. Union for the Public Domain has two people here to make the arguments for the public domain, and we'll be posting daily updates to the UPD site (http://public-domain.org), including detailed notes on everything that happens in the assembly hall. In the meantime, don't hesitate to contact your country's copyright office to urge them to take a stand against this treaty. - David Tannenbaum, Coordinator, UPD P.S. For more details on the treaty, see: http://www.public-domain.org/node/view/47 From davidt@public-domain.org Fri Nov 19 13:12:27 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: upd-announce@lists.essential.org Received: from questmail.futurequest.net (questmail.futurequest.net [69.5.6.251]) by lists.essential.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3732F29B84 for ; Fri, 19 Nov 2004 13:12:27 -0500 (EST) Received: (qmail 14356 invoked by uid 12315); 19 Nov 2004 18:12:26 -0000 Received: from 193.5.93.182 (SquirrelMail authenticated user davidt@public-domain.org); by QuestMail.FutureQuest.net with HTTP; Fri, 19 Nov 2004 13:12:26 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <31910.193.5.93.182.1100887946.squirrel@193.5.93.182> Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 13:12:26 -0500 (EST) From: davidt@public-domain.org To: upd-announce@lists.essential.org Cc: upd-board@lists.essential.org User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.3 X-Mailer: SquirrelMail/1.4.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal content-transfer-encoding: 7bit content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Subject: [upd-announce] Three Days of Defending the Public Domain at WIPO Sender: upd-announce-admin@lists.essential.org Errors-To: upd-announce-admin@lists.essential.org X-BeenThere: upd-announce@lists.essential.org Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: News and action alerts from Union for the Public Domain List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: It was an amazing three days at the World Intellectual Property Organisation, with a strong push at the very end for transparent procedure at WIPO. The main outcomes were: * Chile successfully added an agenda item to the next meeting of the committee, to address the rights of users to access and use knowledge. * There was very little support for giving webcasters the broad new powers that the broadcasters are gunning for. * There was little agreement on including technological protection measures. * There was a lot of dramatic debate over WIPO's procedures, their transparency, and how much they reflected a process driven by member states. A more detailed account: On Day 1, Nov. 17, Chile proposed that WIPO take us the issue of rights for users ("limitations and exceptions") as a permanent item on the agenda of the copyright committee. A number of countries intervened in support of the proposal. A handful of NGOs were able to speak, and the chair postponed the remainder of discussion until today. This afternoon, the chair announced right before lunch that he would make users' rights an item on the agenda of the next committee meeting. So for perhaps the first time, the committee will be focused on the question of how to maintain our ability to freely access and create knowledge. This was an amazing victory in line with the Development Agenda and a step forward for the Treaty for Access to Knowledge. On Day 2, the chair moved swiftly through a number of previuos disagreements on the treaty, finding at nearly each stop that there was still a lack of consensus on everything from the length of broadcasters' new privileges to the use of technology locks. A clear consensus emerged that webcasters should not be the benficiarie of new and untested monopoly powers. Also on Day 2 we discoverd that someon had trashed the documents of several civil society NGOs, including Union for the Public Domain, EFF and IP Justice, into the trash. These documents were placed on a table as information for delegates, as is customary at these meetings. This was obviously a shock, and extremely sad given that WIPO is supposed to promote access to knowledge. A joint statement on the incident is available at http://www.public-domain.org/?q=node/view/68. On Day 3 the morning started with a number of statements by NGOs on both sides of the issue. Our statement was delivered by Shyamkrishna Balganesh, and is available at http://www.public-domain.org/?q=node/view/69. After the good news on limitations and exceptions, the chair moved on to one of the most controversial provisions of the treaty, on technology locks. The discussion was cut short by lunch, but right before the break Brazil suggested that meetings at a regional level would not be appropriate at this stage, and that there should be an intersessional meeting in Geneva of all countries before the next official meeting of the copyright committee. Regional meetings have been used in the past to whip countries into a consensus on approving a treaty. After lunch India supported this proposal, and a long and dramatic discussion ensued. Iran, Brazil, Egypt, India, and Argentina supported Brazil's proposal to include language for an intersessional meeting, and India asserted procedural violations by the committee. Brazil and India argued that a truly member-driven process would not lead to the chair's proposed language for the committee report. The chair finally took a vote, which is highly unusual in this committee, which is supposed to operate by consensus. In the end the chair's language was adopted as his own, but not as the committee's own conclusions. The ending of the meeting was quite dramatic and you can get very detailed notes of the entire proceedings at http://www.public-domain.org/node/view/66. David From davidt@public-domain.org Thu Jul 21 23:15:04 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: upd-announce@lists.essential.org Received: from questmail.futurequest.net (questmail.futurequest.net [69.5.6.251]) by lists.essential.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3107D29B19 for ; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:15:04 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 20423 invoked by uid 12315); 22 Jul 2005 03:15:03 -0000 Received: from 24.39.106.34 (SquirrelMail authenticated user davidt@public-domain.org) by QuestMail.FutureQuest.net with HTTP; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:15:03 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <1733.24.39.106.34.1122002103.squirrel@QuestMail.FutureQuest.net> Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:15:03 -0400 (EDT) From: davidt@public-domain.org To: upd-announce@lists.essential.org User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.5 X-Mailer: SquirrelMail/1.4.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Subject: [upd-announce] Updates on the A2K Treaty Negotiation in Geneva Sender: upd-announce-admin@lists.essential.org Errors-To: upd-announce-admin@lists.essential.org X-BeenThere: upd-announce@lists.essential.org Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: News and action alerts from Union for the Public Domain List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: UPD board member Shyamkrishna Balganesh is in Geneva this week for the latest round of negotations on the WIPO development agenda and the access to knowledge treaty. Below is the update he just posed to the UPD website (http://www.public-domain.org) and the statement he delivered on behalf of UPD. Update from Geneva WIPO IIM-3: Day 1 The third Inter-Sessional Intergovernmental Meeting on a Development Agenda for WIPO began today in Geneva. This is the third round of negotiations on the Development Agenda, since it was proposed at the last meeting of the General Assembly in September and the last one before the next Assembly meeting. This meeting is especially crucial since the IIM is required to submit a final report with its recommendations, for approval by the Assembly and this is its last opportunity to formulate a coherent plan of action on the Development Agenda. Brazil seems to have made its intentions for the IIM-3 very clear on the morning of Day 1, when it submitted a proposal on behalf og the Group of Friends of Development, proposing a 'Draft Decision of the IIM'in writing, covering the proposals previously highlighted by the Group. This proposal is likely to be reasonably controversial, and one hopes matters dont come down to a vote, along lines of the 12th SCCR that ended in confusion. All the same, should the Brazilian proposal go through, it would be a major victory for the Friends of Development. Among its six points listed, is one which requires the WIPO to 'immediately initiate a process to consider measures designed to improve the participation of civil society and public interest NGOs in WIPO activities'. In the post-lunch session, discussions focussed on specific development agenda proposals in clusters. Proposal 1 deals with the amendment of the WIPO Convention to reference the development dimension; 5 on the establishment of the WERO and 6 on enhancing the participation of civil society and public interest groups. A large number of countries spoke of the impracticality of proposal 1 and that 5 involved too much time and expenditure. On 6, while most countries agreed on the need to make WIPO proceedings more participatory in a balanced way, most were also very clear that the WIPO was and should always be a government-based organization and that while outsiders should be allowed to participate, they should not have a role in the actual decision-making. India, in an interesting intervention noted that WIPO had come to view itself as an organization focussing only on the expansion of intellectual property in spite of the language contained in its own Convention and that proposal 1 derived from this unfortunate development. It supported a declaration to the same effect as the amendment, that WIPO's mandate extended well beyond what it currently did. On the WERO issue (proposal 5), India noted that it was 'dismayed' to hear the negative comments of other countries on the issue. Citing the example of IMF, where an independent evaluation body was set up reporting independently to the Board of Directors, it supported the creation of an independent WERO functioning outside the secretariat, reporting to the Coordination Committee or the Assembly, to avoid being a 'ventriloquist's dummy'. Day 2 The second day of the IIM commenced with countries making further comments on the proposals of the Group of Friends of Development. Prior to the commencement of the session, the delegation of the US distributed its own draft decision for the IIM -- containing three short points -- all of which related to requiring the General Assembly to transfer all the matters currently under discussion at the IIM to the PCIPD, together with a mandate from the Assembly that the PCIPD's mandate was wide enough to cover this and that it would meet twice a year. The objective, it appeared was to propose a direct counter to the draft decision circulated by Brazil on behalf of the Friends of Development. The morning session of Day 2 saw discussions focus on the PCIPD. The Friends of Development had proposed the creation of a separate Standing Committee to study the issue of technology transfer. The US however opposed this and noted that this was under the competence of the PICPD to handle. A series of interesting exchanges followed between Brazil and the US, with Brazil accusing the US of opposing/rejecting everything being discussed in the body. Discussions then ended and the chair opened the floor to comments from NGOs and IGOs. The UPD was given the opportunity to take the floor. Several other NGO groups spoke as well -- the EFF, CSC, IPN, BSA, FSFE, IP Justice, MSF and a few others. Some time later, the chair intervended to stop NGO interventions for a while to let discussions between member states continue, and promised to let the remaining NGOs deliver their statements tomorrow. In the discussions that followed, the chair suggested taking up the two competing proposals that had been tabled by Brazil and the USA, as draft decisions for the IIM. In elaborating on its proposal, Brazil echoed its earlier interventions and also indicated that the points it had indicated there were by no means exhaustive. In explaining its own draft decision, the US delegation was dismissive of the Brazilian one and noted that it had excluded the proposals made by several other member states/groups at the meeting. The US delegation noted that some delegations might consider such an omission 'insulting'. The delegation of Argentina (a member of the Friends of Development Group) expressed its view that such strong language was uncalled for, and that the proposals indicated were not the only ones which could be a part of the decision, but merely reflected what the Group thought were the most easily acceptable ones. The matters appeared to be locked, with neiter side being ready to budge. A few countries spoke in favour of each of the proposals. At one point, the delegate of Morocco stepped in to indicate that the African group (after negotiations with a group led by Bahrain) was also likely to present its own version of the draft decision and that the silence of the African countries was not to be interpreted as a sign of disinterest. The UK (speaking on behalf of the EU) then intervened to note that it had a compromise decision, where it suggested convening three more IIMs next year, but requiring that these be financed by the money set aside for the PCIPD for the year 2006-07. It also sought to direct the agenda of these meetings, by requiring the body to discuss issues which it deemed 'ripe to harvest', i.e., on which a common consensus seemed to be emerging. The Chair requested the UK to put this proposed decision down in writing and circulate it. The proceedings were then adjourned with the matter to be continued tomorrow morning. It seems unlikely that the US will be able to block the proposal to hold further IIMs (which the Group of Friends of Development and the EU seem to be in favour of) and transfer everything right away to the PCIPD. --------- The following statement was delivered by Shyamkrishna Balganesh on behalf of the UPD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman for the opportunity to take the floor at this meeting. The Union for the Public Domain (UPD) is an international civil society organization that works for the promotion and enhancement of the public domain. We continue to believe that the matters being discussed at this meeting will be of lasting significance for the future of technology and economic development in the developing world. The UPD strongly supports the proposal of the Group of Friends of Development to amend the WIPO Convention so as to include an express reference to the development dimension. We would like to echo the observations of some member states at previous meetings that the patent, copyright and trademarks systems should cease to be viewed as ends in themselves and come to be understood as means to an end =97- an end that needs to be justified by reference to WIPO=92s broader U.N. mandate of =91economic, social and cultural development=92 enumerated in Article 1 of = the 1974 Agreement. The UPD strongly disapproves of attempts made to over-simplify the content of the present discussions by portraying them as a choice between blanket support, and blanket opposition, for the diverse laws that include copyright, patent, trademark, and others. Mischaracterizations such as these obscure the true purpose of these discussions and are inimical to constructive dialogue -=96 critical to taking the present discussions forward. The UPD supports the creation of an independent WIPO Research & Evaluation Office (WERO) to conduct development impact assessments of WIPO=92s activities and report directly to the General Assembly. We do not believe that the Permanent Committee on Cooperation for Development Related to Intellectual Property (PCIPD) will have either the capacity or independence to oversee a task such as this. The UPD strongly supports the idea of an Access to Knowledge Treaty. A treaty such as this should attempt to balance the interests of rights holders and the public at large and at the same time pay adequate consideration to the needs of developing countries. In addition, it should seek to safeguard and promote the role of the public domain in fostering innovation and creativity. The UPD believes that WIPO needs to be more open to civil society participation in its policy-making activities. In specific, the involvement of public interest groups from developing countries needs to be enhanced. The WIPO should make an effort to actively solicit the views of different public interest groups working in the developing world, in its various policy-making bodies. This will of course, need to be accompanied by a comprehensive attempt by WIPO to enhance public accountability and participation. Lastly, the UPD agrees that development must not be a 'pretext for diluting international intellectual property'. We agree that it should not be a pretext, but instead the very basis from which the patent, copyright and trademark systems must seek their ultimate justification. When these systems however come to impede socio-economic development -- when they come to restrict access to essential educational tools, when they deny individuals life-saving in the poorest parts of the world; `intellectual property' is in danger of itself becoming the pretext under which we are distracted from the complicated task of promoting development.