[WSIS CS-Plenary] UN Official Document System is online

[Milton Mueller]

>>> greve at fsfeurope.org 1/11/2005 6:27:57 AM >>>
>Side note: it is one of the fundamentally important positions that
the
>concept which is spread by the term  "intellectual property" is
flawed
>and biased, which is why Civil Society has been careful to not use it
>in its publications during the summit.

"Civil society" as a whole has _not_ avoided the term. You have. Don't
project your own language onto civil society as a whole. The term
"intellectual property" appears 7 times in the CS Declaration. 

>Within Civil Society at the WSIS, it is the PCT working group that is
>most responsible and most representative for the issues of Patents,
>Copyrights and Trademarks (PCT), Free Software and Open Standards.

This shows clearly that your argument is full of holes, anyway. If the
term "intellectual property," which serves as a general grouping for
copyright, patent, and trademark concepts, is "flawed and biased," then
why is it not equally flawed and biased to lump the three things
together in an acronym? Why does your working group combine them? Why
not have separate caucuses for each? 

Let's stop the semantic debate NOW. It's unproductive. 

--MM