[Upd-discuss] #2 Copyright Brief History

[Richard Stallman]

    In sum, WIPO indeed enjoys a certain degree of autonomy, but its 
    convention, its decision making procedures and the global satisfaction 
    index from states concerning it makes it a tool of member states.

WIPO gives funds to national patent offices, and provides junkets to
fancy resorts for the officials from patent offices.  (I think the
funds come to a large extent from the US government or from business.)
And the representatives to WIPO have usually come from these patent
offices.  As a result, they have tended to vote for what WIPO wants,
rather than trying to represent their countries' "national interests".

To some extent this is starting to change--some countries are
recognizing that WIPO could hurt them, and are now sending
representatives to WIPO with orders to work for a specified agenda.
One would have expected it to work this way all along, but apparently
it did not.