[WSIS CS-Plenary] Thinking about "intellectual property" is a mistake

[Richard Stallman]

    Indications are that the WGIG will take a broad view of 
    Internet governance, and issues will include ICANN, Spam, information 
    and network security, privacy and other ICT rights issues, 
    intellectual property rights, and interconnection agreements to name 
    just a few.

To think about "an issue" labeled "intellectual property rights" is a
sure-fire recipe for unclear thinking about patent issues, about
copyright issues (completely different from patent issues), and about
trademark issues (different yet again).  If the working group uses
that terminology and the ideas it embodies, its recommendations will
be founded on confusion, and cannot be very good.

So I suggest that the first thing to be done is to urge that copyright
and patents be kept off the agenda of this group.