[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: IPR :I don't agree with Milton -> Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Strategic priorities for WGIG

[Federico Heinz]

On Fri, 2005-01-28 at 11:34 +0100, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> 1) For the first (and maybe the last) time, we have a UN
> multistakeholder group that is tasked to review the inner mechanisms of
> international governance organizations that affect the Internet (and
> it's unclear to me how you can say that IP governance does not affect
> the Internet).

A given country's copyright law affects the way the users of the
internet within its scope can use the internet. It does not affect the
internet as such, nor should it. The rules of the internet should not be
affected by any country's or treaty's copyright rules.

> 3) As a consequence, we should get WGIG to support the idea that the IP
> governance systems needs review. (WGIG would not do reforms - just make
> proposals, in this case, for example, that a broadly inclusive reform
> process is started).

Of course I expect the members of the WG to support the idea that
current copyright and some patent regimes are out of balance. This still
doesn't make it an internet governance issue.

> 4) As a counter-consequence, if WGIG decides not to review IP
> governance, opponents to a reform will be able to say "we had a group
> tasked with this kind of evaluations and it determined that the IP
> regime is fine, so that's a proof that there's no need to reform it".

It'd be hard to spin the news that way. All they could say would be "we
had a group tasked to evaluate internet governance issues, and they
decided that copyrights, trademarks and patents are not governance
issues, so they should be reviewed by other groups within WSIS".

> So now I am in front of a strange (and certainly unwanted!) alliance
> between some people from the PCT caucus and the IP owners
> representatives, both asking WGIG not to discuss possible changes in the
> IP regime.

Please, do not misrepresent my position. What I'm saying is that we
should keep the internet governance issue as narrow as possible. If we
start including copyrights as an internet governance issue, how are we
going to resist later attempts to force internet governance bodies to
enact technical requirements to enforce copyright (or censorship, or...)
in the internet infrastructure?

This could cause a lot of harm!

	Fede

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