Friday, June 23, 2006

Policy workshops

Quite a good start to the policy discussions, there is too much to write, so I'll be rather brief.

WIPO discussion: Contentious session indeed! There was a good presentation from Richard Owens, but then some cutting comments from James Boyle, James Love and Cory Doctorow.
The problem is of course the WIPO Broadcast Treaty, which has been talked as an extremely difficult treaty for CC, particularly with regards to webcast issues. Richard Owens has promised to look into this, there are several problems and they know about them, the solution could be to have a treaty that applies only to broadcasts, and not webcasts.

FTAs: Good input from Claudio (Chile) and Oscar (Peru) about the problems generated by Free Trade Agreements, which go beyond existing treaty responsibilities such as the WCT and TRIPs. Exceptions have been eroded considerably to mirror US legislation and economic model.

Chilean proposal for WIPO development agenda: Create a permanent domain for "alternative" IP aspects. WIPO should look at the public domain as well (manage?) Evidence-based policy (where have I heard this before? Oh yes, here). Open licensing is still copyright, so why leave it out of WIPO framework?

Version 3.0
This is what it will have:

  • No Endorsement clause.
  • Right to prepare derivative works/adaptations
  • U.S. licence.
  • A true international Generic licence will have the language from international treaties (Berne, WCT).
  • DRM debate: The new draft will have a longer anti-technical protection measures clause to comply with Debian "free" requirements. Cory spoke against DRM, it is very difficult issue with the new draft and many leads said that the new clause is just way too long and a rather complicated solution as structured. A better definition of DRM is really needed.
  • Moral right of intgrity: This is a contentious issue because the moral right is dealt with in four different ways around the world. There is no sure way of dealing with this, perhaps creating a new element would be an option. James Boyle has suggested that we should just have a generic clause stating that "this licence does not affect your moral rights". Works for me.

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