[WSIS CS-Plenary] FYI: The Vienna Conclusion: Sponsorship+Politics=Influence

[Georg C. F. Greve]

Resending on request FYI.

[ http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/the_vienna_conclusion_sponsorship_politics_influence ]

   Vienna Conclusion: Sponsorship+Politics=Influence

The Vienna Conclusion: Sponsorship+Politics=Influence


   Wednesday 16 November 2005

   In June 2005, the Austrian government has been holding a very
   high-level conference on "ICT & Creativity" as part of the [24]WSIS
   process. The dignitaries included Austrian chancellor Wolfgang
   Schüssel, Director-General of UNESCO Koichiro Matsuura,
   Director-General of UNIDO Carlos Magarinos and many others.
   Contributions came from people as renowned as Peter Sloterdijk or
   Professor Joseph Weizenbaum. You get the idea.

   The conference had multiple panels on different issues, and I
   participated in the panel on "Digital Rights / Creative Commons" along
   with Richard Owens (Director of Copyright E-Commerce, Technology and
   Management Division, WIPO), Georg Pleger (Creative Commons Austria),
   Peter Rantasa (Managing Director, Music Information Center Austria),
   which was chaired by Nii Narku Quaynor (Chairman and CEO, Network
   Computer Systems Limited, Republic of Ghana).

   The rapporteur of my session was Ralf Bendrath
   ([25]http://worldsummit2005.org), who summarised the findings of the
   panel for the conference outcome, coordinating it with all the
   panelists before sending it in.

   After sending it in, we never heard back from the conference, so this
   is the first time I see the end result myself. Surprisingly, the text
   I now found in the "ICT+CREATIVITY=CONTENT" labelled brochure "The
   Vienna Conclusions" is remarkably different from what the panel
   actually concluded. For your reference, the text is included below.

   For one: Notions of Free Software have disappeared entirely. In its
   place you now find the following sentence:
To ensure ongoing innovation, Digital Rights Management (DRM)
development and deployment must remain voluntary and market-driven.

   Wait a minute. Not only does Digital Restrictions Management have
   nothing to do with innovation, the [26]Sony Rootkit Case has also
   shown that hardly anything is ever voluntary about it. But it does
   have severe implications to several essential civil and human rights.
   That is why the panel in Vienna was very critical of DRM.

   So where did this come from, you may wonder? I have an idea.

   One of the main sponsors of the events happened to be Microsoft, and a
   few of the organisers confidentially told me they were very unhappy
   about my participation; to the extent of threatening to leave the
   conference.

   So instead of getting to throw my person out, it seems they now got to
   rewrite what the panel actually said.

   The conference used lots of formulas like "ICT+Creativity=Content",
   which implied also that "Content-ICT=Creativity". In this light, I
   guess what we've seen here is the good old formula

Sponsorship+Politics=Influence

   And this is definitely not something that can be blamed on the
   Tunisian government, which has received a lot of heat during this
   summit. It goes to show things are never black and white here.

   So this is the entire text of the workshop. Not the best text I've
   ever participated in, but -- especially considering all players
   involved -- also not the worst. You're invited to pick up the printed
   version and compare:

Text of Workshop 2 for Vienna Conclusions

Digital Rights and Creative Commons

   Human creativity in its expression, results and distribution thereof
   is currently undergoing a massive transformation. This fundamentally
   affects the rights of all of humankind. The rights of artists,
   musicians, scientists, writers, designers, programmers and other
   creative people must be preserved and strengthened to express
   themselves freely in their work, to develop and communicate through
   all media, and to determine how their works are used, including
   whether they are used for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
   Because we all can be producers and distributors of content now,
   everybody should also have a right to get education that builds
   capacity and enables these cultural expressions. The public - as
   users, consumers, and citizens - has a right to access and use
   information and knowledge. This includes fair access to culture, but
   also a protection of fundamental human rights and civil liberties like
   privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of information, and the rule
   of law.

   The new possibilities of content production and distribution also
   impact incentive structures and underlying economic models. The
   worldwide copyright system is currently undergoing a transformation
   giving more choices to creators and users. Increasingly, revenue is
   generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be
   freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top
   of them. The success of the Free Software model is one example,
   licenses like "Creative Commons" that only reserve some rights and
   permit wide use and distribution is another. Distributed collaborative
   production models like Wikipedia also show that there are other
   incentives than money to create quality content.

   In the digital age , the business models of copyright intermediaries
   will only be viable if they offer quality services on top of the
   content. The challenge ahead is to develop an economy of sharing,
   collaboration and service that will, at least in the near term,
   coexist with the traditional economy of scarcity, control and
   technological restrictions. Our knowledge and culture is the reservoir
   from which new content is created and in which creativity finds its
   fertile ground. It must therefore remain accessible to the public
   under reasonable and fair conditions. Copyrights and patents were
   developed in part to create incentives for production of quality
   content, and their role should be reexamined in order to meet this
   goal in the future while safeguarding the public interest in access to
   information and culture.

   Software must be understood as the cultural technique of a digital
   society. With ICTs permeating all aspects of everyday life, software
   acts as social regulator. Similar to law it controls essential parts
   of human interaction and creativity. Unlike law it knows no exceptions
   and is ultimately binding. It is therefore seminal for society to
   shape, make transparent and control the codified rules that in turn
   shape society. This is where freedom as a fundamental human right and
   prerequisite of democracy meets collaborative creative approaches.
   Political freedom in the digital age depends upon technological
   freedom, which ensures access to the cultural heritage of humankind
   for present and future generations.
   [27]Creative Commons License 
   This work is licensed under a [28]Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
   License.


-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!     (http://www.fsfe.org)