[WSIS CS-Plenary] WE SEIZE! communique #4 <www.geneva03.net> [en / fr ]

[Sasha Costanza-Chock]

[en / fr]

Geneva03 invites you to a communicative action at the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO).


TIME: Thursday 11 December 2003, at 6.00 pm


PLACE: World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 34, chemin des
Colombettes


Under the guise of 'harmonizing' copyright, trademark, and patent laws,
the WIPO is a key instrument of the growing corporate enclosure of the
knowledge commons, the privatization and commodification of culture, and
the extension of the neoliberal paradigm across the globe.

The governmental declaration of the World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS) implicitly endorses the WIPO, despite the complete
incompatibility of WIPO's Intellectual Property Rights regime and the
goals of just, equitable development that WSIS supposedly stands for.

Geneva03 will swarm WIPO in a play of light to celebrate alternative
models of shared knowledge, free and open source software as a paradigm
for collective creativity, and horizontal communication for all.

Pirate Pride!

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Communiqué WE SEIZE #4

Geneva 03 vous invite a une action communicative a l'Organisation
Mondiale de la Propriete Intellectuelle (WIPO)


DATE: Jeudi 11 decembre 2003, a 18h00

LIEU: Organisation Mondiale de la Propriete Intellectuelle (WIPO), 34,
chemin des Colombettes

Sous l'égide d'une "harmonisation" de la propriété intelectuelle, l'OMPI
est un instrument clef dans processus d'intégration dirigé par les
multinationales à l'encontre de la connaissance commune, de la
privatisation et de la marchadisation de la culture, ainsi que
l'extension du paradigme néoliberal a travers le globe.

La déclaration gouvernementale du Sommet Mondial de la Société de
l'Information (SMSI)  enterine implicitement l OMPI  en dépit de
l'incompatibilité du régime des Droits de Propriété Intelectuelle du
OMPI et des objectifs de justice, du développement équitable qu'il est
sensé défendre.

Geneva03 va submerger l'OMPI de jeux de lumières pour célebrer les
modéles alternatifs de partage de connaissances, la gratuité du logiciel
a codes sources disponibles comme paradygme de créativité collective, et
la communication horizontale pour tous.


Pirate Pride!


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Pirate Pride

Where are the advocates of freedom in the new digital society who have
not been decried as pirates, anarchists, communists?  Have we not seen
that many of those hurling the epithets were merely thieves in power,
whose talk of ‘intellectual property’ was nothing more than an attempt
to retain unjustifiable privileges in a society irrevocably changing?
[Eben Moglen, the DotCommunist Manifesto]

Laws expanding the scope and duration of exclusive private rights in
information  [copyright, patent and trademarks and trade secrets] have
been a constant since the late 1970s.  Growing awareness of the
consequences of these laws - combined with the emerging potential for
autonomous cultural production - has produced a counter-movement in
recent years. The promulgation of formal law from above is not enough to
control human behaviour and creativity.

Everyone is an Enemy

An estimated 150 million people are now using a diversity of p2p systems
to share music, video, software, games and text files on a regular
basis.  Competition within hardware manufacturing and broadband provider
sectors is ensuring that access to the necessary commodities – storage
space for media, broadband channels for transmission – is expanding.
Copyright industry interests anticipated these developments through
their experience of software piracy and Bulletin Board based media
distribution in the late 80s and early 90s. One response was the
introduction in the United States of the No Electronic Theft Act [NET]
in 1997.  Prior to NET, copyright infringement was merely a civil
offence if performed for non-commercial purposes.

Subsequent legislation extended criminal sanctions to the development
and distribution of tools devised to defeat ‘digital rights management’
[DRM] technologies whilst technical measures were integrated into media
products to restrict their use.

An analogous introduction of criminal sanctions occurred in the area of
payTV.  Since its inception in the early 80s there has been a battle
between decryption-card hackers and companies such as Sky, DirectTV and
Canal+.  Tens of millions of people worldwide use modified cards to
avoid payment of extortionate monthly subscription fees.  Initially the
industry pursued the commercial distributors of the cards, but as this
tactic failed they shifted their attention to users. Once-docile
consumers are now to be approached as enemies.

That is the story from above. Let us look instead, with critical eyes
open, from below.

Criminal Mass

Heedless of their redefinition as criminals by the global media
godfathers and their crooked political friends, there are now an
estimated 6 million people swapping media online at any given moment.
The Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA] began their jihad
with 261 legal actions against individuals in September 2003, after
having encountered obstacles in their war against p2p software
developers earlier that year.  Instead of turning off their computers
and returning to shopping as usual, however, users’ reaction was one of
rage.  Boycotts began.  Vilification of media companies for their
capitalist rapaciousness became commonplace in innumerable forums.  One
of the victims of the RIAA attack, a 12 year old girl living in social
housing in Brooklyn, received so many donations that she ended up making
a profit despite having agreed to a $US3,000 settlement with the RIAA to
persuade them to drop the case.  A legal fund to coordinate and finance
collective defence for p2p users was set up at the tellingly titled
www.downhillbattle.com.  Lastly, and most saliently, the sharing went on
in defiance of the threat of individualised punishment, with decreases
in the numbers on public networks balanced by an increase in those
participating in semi-private spaces for exchange and distribution.
Despite the existence of the criminal provisions of the NET, they have
yet to be employed.

Likewise PayTV hacking continues unabated in both traditional and
innovative forms.  Sky Italia, launched in July 2003 and monopolist of
the Italian satellite market, have sought to use their control over
premiership soccer to infiltrate every home with their annual 600 Euro
ransom.  In response, pirate television operators in Rome connected a
television equipped with an authorized card to a transmitter and
rebroadcast signals in the clear to whole districts of the city on
several occasions throughout autumn 2003.  This exemplary action
constituted a spectacular intervention into the popular imagination -
responding to a real need for a sense of identity felt by Romans, whilst
attacking the commercialisation of popular culture by using acts rather
than words.

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<www.geneva03.net>



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