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

[Georg C. F. Greve]

Dear Milton,

 || On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:27:02 -0500
 || "Milton Mueller" <Mueller at syr.edu> wrote: 

 mm> "Civil society" as a whole has _not_ avoided the term. You have.

Not me personally, the PCT group has. 

And the PCT group was also the one that wrote the position statements
of Civil Society on these issues during the first phase.

We are aware, though, that PCT issues are among the most controversial
within Civil Society and society in general. In fact the discussions
within the PCT group can at times be quite controversial.

That is one of the reasons why it is so unacceptable to not have
anyone within the WGIG who can represent and bring in that
perspective.


 mm> The term "intellectual property" appears 7 times in the CS
 mm> Declaration.

Yes, the CS Declaration is indeed a rather inconsistent document which
partially contradicts itself, had factual mistakes and several demands
that seem strange when read in daylight.

I am aware that this is owed to the rather short-timed and chaotic
drafting period and several practical problems combined with the need
to come to an end. I know that all people involved gave their best,
the task to produce a consistent, hard document from so many sources
in such short time was simply beyond anyone's capability.

But the unbalanced viewpoint of issues around PCT was indeed why
several people and organisations could not sign onto the CS
Declaration. 

The predecessor of the Declaration, the Civil Society Essential
Benchmarks did not have that problem, which is why it still makes for
a harder document in some ways.


 mm> If the term "intellectual property," which serves as a general
 mm> grouping for copyright, patent, and trademark concepts, is
 mm> "flawed and biased," then why is it not equally flawed and biased
 mm> to lump the three things together in an acronym? 

Like the acronym "IP," which can, among other things, be misunderstood
as "Internet Protocol," the acronym "PCT" is certainly not perfect. 

But while the term "intellectual property" has no way of emphasizing
their difference, speaking of "Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks"
gives each their individual mentioning.

I am aware that Richard advocates clear thinking and avoiding to fall
into the trap of believing that the three were similar by seeing them
mentioned under one term. While I can appreciate Richards argument, I
don't think it is the only or necessarily the most important reason to
avoid the term "intellectual property."

The term has another major problem because it speaks about "property,"
subconsciously suggesting that what people learned as children about
things that were property also holds true for thoughts, ideas and
other "virtualities," which is certainly false.

In the end, avoiding the term "property" as well as "lumping them
together" are both measures to encourage clear thinking and avoid
wrong gut reactions.

You may disagree with his methods, but I think that advocating clear
thinking is not something to hold against Richard.

If you are interested in getting deeper into the subject matter,
please see the publications I mentioned in previous emails as well as
the WIWO declaration. [1]

[1] http://fsfeurope.org/documents/wiwo.en.html


 mm> Why does your working group combine them? Why not have separate
 mm> caucuses for each?

There are several answers to these questions.

One reason is historical -- the group was called "IPR" very briefly in
its beginning and then changed its name, and the people involved did
not feel the need to begin working group inflation.

There is also no reason why this group is the one that dealt with Free
Software or Open Standards, which both could have had their own
working groups, as well.

In the end, it apparently turned out that self-(re)organisation does
not always provide the most consistent names or most obvious choices
of grouping. I think such "problems" could be pinpointed for any other
working group, in fact.

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
GNU Business Network                        (http://mailman.gnubiz.org)
Brave GNU World	                           (http://brave-gnu-world.org)
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