Is WIPO finished?
p2pnet.net News View:- Last week’s WIPO General Assembly is being rightly billed a major victory – the development agenda will continue with all issues on the table, while a diplomatic conference on a proposed Broadcasting Treaty has been made contingent on two prior meetings and the resolution of all outstanding issues (a marked departure from where things stood just a couple of weeks ago).
Matmos /
These developments – combined with the increased access and input from public interest groups into the WIPO process as well as the willingness of developing countries to assert positions that differ from the maximalist approach favoured by the U.S. and the WIPO secretariat – suggest that we may see a decreased emphasis on WIPO in the future.
As a consensus-based organization, WIPO appears to be stalemated. I suspect that the member countries that have used WIPO as a forum for steadily increasing copyright protection are likely to increasingly turn their attention elsewhere. The WTO is one such place (particularly for countries such as Russia and China) and bi-lateral trade treaties are the other.
This is particularly relevant in a Canadian context since the bi-lateral pressure from the U.S. on copyright is going to be far stronger than anything that even CRIA could muster.
The dangers associated with WIPO may be diminishing, but the fervour for increased copyright protection will no doubt continue.
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
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October 7th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
WIPO, does that stand for World Imperial Powers Organization?
Anyway, that is what it is.
The purpose? Shove down the throat of trhird world countries one sided traties through current corrupt leaders.
Because of of those treaties the copyright and papent based cash flow is in one direction, 9:1. 9 to the industrial countries and 1 to the third world.
October 10th, 2006 at 12:34 am
I pesonally prefer the WIPO process to that of the bilateral arranagements that the US has been pushing for the past few years – as an Aussie about to suffer the increased expansion of anit-circumvention law – I have to say the process was largely conducted in secret, with the trade off in relation to other markets within the economy placing intellectual property in a precarious position – of course we’ll succumb to US IP demands in exchange for agriculture. Part of the WIPO treaties should be that no other free trade negotiations are permitted to take place and the process should only be conducted within that forum.