[WSIS CS-Plenary] [governance] Thinking about

[Enrique A. Chaparro]

> I see these two things as contradictory. If copyright issues do not
> belong to Internet governance, then Internet governance bodies should
> not care about the copyright / patent status of any standard. If on the
> other hand, as I think, it is important that Internet standards are kept
> absolutely patent-free, then Internet governance bodies have to deal at
> least with this issue.
Dear Vittorio,
Excuse me, but I don't see the contradiction here. If you read
again, I wrote that __copyright__ issues do not belong to the
field of Internet governance. I'm afraid you fell into the
`IPR confusion', a good evidence of why RMS is right when 
insisting that the so-called `IPR' must be kept separated.
A copyrighted standard (in fact, copyrighted text and reference
code describing the standard) does not prevent the creation and
use of a program implementing it. But a standard including 
patented technologies does.
For what I see, we agree in the second point of my `wish list'.

OTOH, I also believe that PCT issues permeate all aspects of our
society. Freedom of information IS a fundamental human right (see
Articles 19 and 27 of UDHR) even if transnational corporations
and many governments make their best efforts to deny it. But,
at the same time, I insist that `Internet governance' (in the sense
of a system of mandatory transnational rules, a set of bodies 
responsible for enforcing such rules, and a public oversight
system) should be limited to whatever is necessary to ensure
smooth traffic of IP packets from source to destination. In that
sense, standards including patented technologies prevent the
required `smoothness', but copyright and trademark issues are
completely out of scope (and should be dealt with elsewhere).

Regards from the Far South (and thanks for an enriching discussion)

Enrique
-- 
Venit summa dies et ineluctable tempus.
              --Virgilio, Eneida, 2:324