[DMCA-Activists] A2K Treaty Expert Consultation Notes (Harald Alvestrand)

[Seth Johnson]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Random-bits] Impressions from a new consensus -- Harald
Alvestrand notes fromthe "a2k" expert consultation
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 12:19:41 -0500
From: James Love <address@hidden>
To: Random-Bits <address@hidden>,ecommerce
<address@hidden>

On February 3 and 4, CPTech, the International Federation of
Library Organizations and Institutions (IFLA), and the Third
World Network (TWN) held an "experts consultation" on possible
elements of an Access to Knowledge (a2k) Treaty.  The two-day
meeting featured discussions of dozens of specific proposals for
such a treaty.  The archives and list info for the a2k
discussions are here:
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/a2k/
http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/a2k

The proposal for an "a2k" Treaty gained prominence when it was
embraced in the Geneva Declaration on the Future of WIPO and
included in the proposal for a WIPO Development Agenda (DA).  The
WIPO DA advanced in the 2004 WIPO General Assembly, and will be
evaluated in a number of WIPO meetings from April to September of
2005.  Last week's discussion of the a2k Treaty brought together
diverse stakeholders and experts. The following is the report of
day two by Harald Tveit Alvestrand, the Chair of the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF).  Jamie


-----------

http://www.alvestrand.no/reiser/geneva-feb-2005.html

Impressions from a new consensus

Preparatory meeting for input to WIPO IPR deliberations, Geneva,
Friday, February 4, 2005

First impressions are strange beasts.

Wandering into this somewhat run-down, enthusiastically-placarded
"Maison des Associations" building in downtown Geneva was a very
different experience from wandering into the 60s-stylish,
expensively decorated lobby of the World Intellectual Property
Organization headquarters in the same city.

And the motley collection of civil rights activists, law
professors, representatives of ISPs and IBMs, 3rd world
governments, free software movements and less easily classifiable
people in the white-painted meeting room didn't seem like a
committee with the power to change how the world treats
intellectual property - patents, copyrights, industrial secrets
and so on. One would imagine such changes being wrought by
tie-wearing corporate lawyers and high government officials
meeting behind security barriers, admission badges and visitor
logs.

But this forum might still prove to be a significant reshaping
force in the way we treat IPR.

Context - where did it come from?

Recent years have seen a significant increase in the willingness
of industry to wield intellectual property as a tool - and a
significant increase in the public perception of their doing so.

The actions of the MPAA and RIAA against the "pirate lawless wild
west of Internet filesharing" has been the most written-about
aspect of this battle; less ballyhooed but perhaps more
significant has been the ownership of genes in GM crops, patents
on AIDS medicines available at prices only the rich world can
pay, restrictions on the rights of public libraries to lend out
copies of works for free, attempts to use patents as a means to
hobble the free software movement, the various schemes for
preventing recording of TV broadcasts, and so on and so forth.

Where there's action, there's reaction - the 2001 Doha
declaration calling upon WTO members to implement patent laws in
a manner "to promote access to medicines for all"; the W3C's
"royalty free licenses only" policy; the EU and US lawsuits
against Microsoft over monopoly tactics, just to mention a few.

This particular group came from a campaign spearheaded by CPTech,
IFLA and others  - which led to a surprising success when
Argentina and Brazil introduced a motion into WIPO for a
"development agenda". As part of the job of preparing for WIPO's
meetings in pursuit of this agenda, this group was gathered to
share information, ideas and possible ways forward.

So what was this meeting about?

The theme of the gathering could be described as "limiting the
harmful effects of assertions of intellectual property" -
striking a balance between IP as a tool to protect the right to
reap the fruit of genuine innovation and IP as a tool to prevent
others from pursuing different opportunities and goals.

People present vere from various bacgrounds - EFF activists,
professors of international law, a man from IBM, a woman from
BellSouth, representatives from a number of non-first-world
governments..... the thing they had in common was having
encountered situations where intellectual property had been used
as a weapon against themselves, their causes or their companies.
In many different ways - ranging over the lawsuits brought
against ISPs for "complicity" in filesharing, getting a fair
price for AIDS medicines for Africa, worry about the ability of a
patent holder to stop legal distribution of open-source software,
worry about the chilling effect of the fear of patent issues on
research and standardization.

The format was presentations focused around various - and diverse
- topics, and discussion around these.

  To wit:
        •       A panel where the most talkative member was Cory Doctorow of
EFF talked about deep linking and the chilling effects of linking
policies, as well as effects of attempting to make ISPs police
their customres
        •       A panel where I was part talked about the effects of patents
on the standards process - I described the chilling effects of
patents disclosed during the standards process, as well as the
issue of "submarine" patents and how the standards process is
powerless to prevent those from happening.
  A specific proposal on "forcing disclosure" was on the table,
but definitely "not baked".
        •       A panel talked about limiting what could be patented,
including such requirements as filing all genetic material
involved in a public gene bank, disclosing related R&D costs and
assisting with knowledge transfer after the expiry of the patent
(this was plainly aimed at the rights-to-medicines discussion)

I understood that the problems of libraries (which are heavily
hit by DRM technologies, which makes it impossible for them to
exercise their legally protected excemptions from copyright
restrictions) had been discussed the day before I arrived.

The last session was a "what now?" session - it was clear that
the rather diverse set of participants would have to organize
their efforts quite a bit in order to make progress towards
influencing WIPO's future events - the target envisioned was
"shifting WIPO from seeing its mission in terms of expanding the
power of IPR to a mission that involved finding a fair balance
between IPR holders' rights and the rights of others".

Next steps?

Hard to tell. Some specific proposals were put on the table at
this meeting; those need refinement and scoping in order to make
sense in the whole IPR contex; other proposals are needed to
specifically address other known issues, such as alleviating the
chilling effect of IPR even when held by "friendly" parties.

And the whole thing needs to be brought to a forum where the
people who argue for a more powerful protection of IPR are able
to enter into dialogue with those who seek to restrict it. A
logical target is the half dozen WIPO events beginning mid April
through September 2005 where WIPO will evaluate the proposals for
change.

Watch this space.

Background material

  http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/genevadeclaration.html

http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/

-----------------


--
James Love, Director, CPTech, http://www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA
Tel.:  1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176

Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva
1 Route des  Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 791 6727

Mobile +1.202.361.3040
address@hidden

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