[wos] Massive victory at WIPO!

[Volker Grassmuck]

Massive victory at WIPO!
posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:26:39 AM
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/04/massive_victory_at_w.html

For years now, progressive elements and copyfighters have been trying 
to get the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization to start 
thinking about ways of promoting creativity and development instead 
of just IP -- to get the organization to see that its raison d'etre 
is a better world, and that stronger IP laws is just one way of 
accomplishing that -- and that IP only works sometimes.  

We've been foiled at every turn by the maximalists, the movies 
studios and the trademark offices, the patent-cops and the recording 
industry lobbyists and the IP lawyers' associations.  

Which is why this is such good news: at the general session of the 
WIPO in Geneva this weekend, the Assembly as adoped a decision to put 
development and the promotion of creativity front-and-center in its 
goals. That means that from now on, WIPO isn't an organization that 
blindly supports more IP no matter what, but rather one that seeeks 
to improve the world by whatever tool is best suited to the job.  

Jamie Love and the Consumer Project on Technology
http://cptech.org/  gets the credit
for this: they were the ones who started this fight, and they've
been the ones who led it all along.

This is the day the tide turns.  Bearing in mind the internationally 
agreed development goals, including those in the United Nations 
Millennium Declaration, the Programme of Action for the Least 
Developed Countries for the Decade 2001-2010, the Monterey Consensus, 
the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, the 
Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action of the first phase 
of the World Summit on the Information Society and the Sao Paulo 
Consensus adopted at UNCTAD XI;  

(1) The General Assembly welcomes the initiative for a development
      agenda and notes the proposals contained in document
      WO/GA/31/11.

(2) The General Assembly decides to convene inter-sessional
      intergovernmental meetings to examine the proposals contained
      in document WO/GA/31/11, as well as additional proposals of
      Members States. To the extent possible, the meetings will be
      convened in conjunction with the 2005 session of the Permanent
      Committee on Cooperation for Development Related to
      Intellectual Property. The meetings, open to all Member States,
      will prepare a report by July 30, 2005, for the consideration
      of the next General Assembly. WIPO-accredited IGOs and NGOs are
      invited to participate as observers in the meetings.

(3) The International Bureau shall undertake immediate arrangements
      in order to organize with other relevant multilateral
      organizations including UNCTAD, WHO, UNIDO and WTO, a joint
      international seminar on Intellectual Property and Development,
      open to the participation of all stakeholders, including NGOs,
      civil society and academia.

More info:
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/ip-health/2004-October/006997.html

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-- 
   WOS             http://wizards-of-os.org
   copy = right    http://privatkopie.net
   home:   http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck