[WSIS CS-Plenary] IP-Watch: Intellectual Property Issues Kept Off WSIS Agenda

[Robin Gross]

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=158

30/11/2005
Intellectual Property Issues Kept Off WSIS Agenda
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch

The issue of intellectual property did not make the headlines during the 
concluding session of the five-year-long UN World Summit on the 
Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis. And some critics are concerned it 
was intentional.

Discussing the future of the information society without talking about 
intellectual property seems odd and suggests an intentional omission, 
said Robin Gross, executive director of IP Justice. "We got," said 
Gross, "three minutes at the Tunis plenary, and that’s it on the topic 
of intellectual property."

Symptomatic of this, according to Gross, was what happened to cyberlaw 
expert and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig. The Stanford 
University professor was told immediately before his talk at a 
"Roundtable of Visionaries" organized by the ITU during WSIS 
preparations in Geneva in 2002 to not talk about intellectual property 
issues, but instead focus on Internet governance.

Lessig revealed this to reporters immediately before the Tunis summit 
underlining his scepticism about the possible outcomes of the summit 
with regard to the IP rights issue, which he deemed important. Lessig 
had said that the issue would be negotiated off the table by those who 
want to keep control over IP policy.

The Internet governance debate was the focus of discussions in Tunis, 
with the creation of a global Internet governance forum and a compromise 
in the end of some enhancements in the net governance organisations to 
promote greater governmental participation.

All sides in the Internet governance debate have claimed victory and 
will likely continue struggling over the issues, but intellectual 
property will not be a topic of the new governance forum. In Tunis, 
there was a consensus that work elsewhere should not be touched by the 
WSIS process. A mantra was that IP issues had to be dealt with by WIPO.

While the final Tunis documents make ample references to access, they 
mainly refer to it in the context of access to infrastructure. Four 
points talk cautiously about the "numerous challenges" for "expanding 
the scope of useful accessible information content" (paragraph 15); 
about "improving access to the world’s health knowledge and telemedicine 
services" (paragraph 90.g) and to "agricultural knowledge"(90.i); and, 
finally, about "supporting educational, scientific, and cultural 
institutions, including libraries, archives and museums, in their role 
of developing, providing equitable, open and affordable access to, and 
preserving diverse and varied content, including in digital form, to 
support informal and formal education, research and innovation (90.k).

Growing Imbalance Toward Rights Holders Cited

But concerns like the one presented by Alex Burne, president of the 
International Federation of Libraries Association (IFLA), that 
librarians all over the world see a "growing imbalance of IP laws in 
favour of rights holders and to the detriment of the users" and about a 
"shrinking of the public domain," that in some respects increasingly was 
also barring access in developed countries, were a side issue in the 
plenary talks.

Burne, like the representatives of the free software community, spoke in 
side events organised by NGOs, namely a panel organized by IP Justice on 
the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and a panel 
organised by the Free Software Foundation on free and open source software.

IFLA, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), IP Justice and the 
Consumer Project on Technology all support a proposal for a treaty on 
access to knowledge proposed by the 14 "Friends of Development" 
countries as part of the development agenda under discussion at WIPO.

"We shared," Burne told the participants of the WIPO panel in Tunis with 
regard to the development agenda, “the frustration that after nine days 
of negotiation [in 2005] there was no result on either substance or 
procedure.” But copyright exemptions are crucial to assist developing 
and least developed countries to catch up with developing countries, 
said Burne, which in turn was one of the declared targets of the WSIS.

WIPO Vice Director General Philippe Petit said during IP Justice’s WIPO 
panel that the development agenda was one of the major work items for 
WIPO for 2006, but he did not touch on it during his official plenary 
speech. WIPO was already implementing the Geneva action plan by 
fostering IP protection in developing countries and the summit was 
encouraging WIPO to go further in this direction, he said. But 
intellectual property was not mentioned again in the Tunis documents and 
WIPO is not named in the list of UN organisations that shall address 
implementation.

Free and Open Source Software Systematically Sidelined?

"Some countries and some big companies from phase one of the summit 
tried to systematically turn down any discussion on intellectual 
property and free and open source software," said Georg Greve, president 
of the Free Software Foundation. "They always acted as if the 
monopolizing of knowledge had nothing to do with its distribution."

The only draft expert paper of the Working Group of Internet Governance 
that touched intellectual property, written by Italian software 
developer Vittorio Bertola in his capacity as a member of the group, was 
turned down as too controversial, according to several observers.

"During the whole summit process, and not only in the Geneva phase, the 
question to whom knowledge belongs in the knowledge society has been 
constantly neglected," said Markus Beckedahl, founder of Netzwerk Neue 
Medien and founder and CEO of newthinking communications, an agency 
focused on free and open source software. Beckedahl also was an awardee 
of the Reporters without Borders Freedom Blog Awards for his blog 
netzpolitik.org. "If you consider the main target of the summit to 
create an inclusive information society with access for all, the summit 
has failed," he said.

Greve spoke of mixed feelings: "If we imagine what could have been 
gained with the summit, it was a disappointment." During the first phase 
in Geneva, open source software was recognized, though it was not 
declared preferential from a development point of view as proposed by 
governments like Brazil, India and the Holy See. Greve and the open 
source software advocates during the second phase saw much more 
involvement of companies like Microsoft.

Microsoft brought over 70 people to Tunis compared to a small group of 
half a dozen in Geneva during the first summit and as one of the 
official sponsors got its own speaking slot in which Microsoft 
International President Jean-Philippe Courtois asked for "strict 
protection of intellectual property."

Microsoft also caused a stir by getting changed a document presented at 
the Tunis summit by the Austrian Organizers of a World Creativity Summit 
in Vienna, one of the many side events in the run-up to Tunis. Panel 
members including FSFE, representatives of Austrian musicians, WIPO and 
others had compromised on the final report - "not an easy compromise," 
said Greve. But Microsoft, despite not being a panel member, requested 
and was granted changes then presented in Tunis as a final document 
without further consultation of the panelists.

The passage in question originally read: "Increasingly, revenue is 
generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be 
freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of 
them. The success of the free software model is one example, licences 
like ‘Creative Commons’ that only reserve some rights and permit wide 
use and distribution is another. Distributed collaborative production 
models like Wikipedia also show that there are other incentives than 
money to create quality content."

The published text now looks like this: “Increasingly, revenue is 
generated by offering services on top of contents. Licences such as 
‘Creative Commons’ reserve some rights and permit widespread use and 
distribution. Distributed collaborative production models like 
“Wikipedia” show that there are other incentives than money to create 
quality content. To ensure ongoing innovation, digital rights management 
(DRM) development and deployment must remain voluntary and market-driven.”

When Austrian media professor Peter Bruck pointed to a blog where the 
“revised” document had been posted for comment, Greve reacted by 
pointing out that with only four or five entries over two month time, 
the blog did not appear to be very public. Still, the NGOs might be 
satisfied with one point: after all there was someone paying close 
attention to the IP issue.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All of the news 
articles and features on Intellectual Property Watch are also subject to 
a Creative Commons License which makes them available for widescale, 
free, non-commercial reproduction and translation.
Monika Ermert, the author of this post, may be reached at info at ip-watch.ch.

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