[WSIS CS-Plenary] Petition Online -- open letter to WIPO

[Carlos Afonso]

People, regarding the WIPO decision to block access from civil society 
organizations to their April meeting, there is an open letter being 
circulated through the Petition Online site (see link below) -- 
currently with 430 signatures. Below is the message from the people who 
organized this petition. I think it is very important we sign it.

Fraternal rgds

--c.a.

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Dear Colleague:

An open letter will be sent to WIPO, the World Intellectual Property 
Organization, calling for TRANSPARENCY, PARTICIPATION, BALANCE and 
ACCESS in its work. Prior to a large and ambitious publicity campaign, 
your sign-on to this letter is essential.

WIPO is locking NGOs out of its negotiations, using tactics to isolate 
those governments who stand up for you, and hiding the evidence by 
deleting it from their website. The mentioned letter goes into great 
detail on this.

If you are a computer programmer or politician; if you are ill, if you 
have an audio/visual or motion impairment, if you are a student, 
academic, or citizen concerned about access to knowledge and the absence 
of balance between rights holders and the public interest within 
developed countries and mainly in developing/least developed countries, 
please take a moment to read this and consider signing into it.

Things you can do:

   1. sign onto the open letter (now available in English and Portuguese 
and, if send an email to wipomanifesto2005 at eff.org, we will send you an 
Spanish version) by visiting this link:

==>> http://www.petitiononline.com/wipo/petition.html

   2. spread it all over the world by sending e-mails and putting in 
your webpage a link to the online petition.

Gandhi said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they 
fight you, then you WIN." This is the fighting part, and your help is 
essential.

Pedro de Paranaguá Moniz
Brazilian citizen
Post-graduate student at Queen Mary, University of London
lc04013 at qmul.ac.uk

Cory Doctorow
Canadian citizen
European Affairs Coordinator, Electronic Frontier Foundation
cory at eff.org
www.eff.org

Pedro Antonio Dourado de Rezende
Brazilian citizen
Professor of Computing Science
University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil
prezende at unb.br
http://www.cic.unb.br/docentes/pedro/sd.htm

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Carlos Afonso
diretor de planejamento
Rede de Informações para o Terceiro Setor - Rits
Rua Guilhermina Guinle, 272, 6º andar - Botafogo
Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brasil         CEP 22270-060
tel +55-21-2527-5494        fax +55-21-2527-5460
ca at rits.org.br            http://www.rits.org.br
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