WIPO: We Don't Want To Hear It

Rolan writes "The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has announced that they will not allow most Public Interest Groups into two upcoming meetings on Intellectual Property. The EFF has a Press Release."

Kudos to EFF

[Winterblink]

... for not only reporting this to the public, but for offering to represent the viewpoints of those being shut out:

EFF is accredited as a WIPO permanent observer and will be attending the meetings. The group will be reporting on the proceedings and will attempt to represent the viewpoints of some of the other public interest groups that are being excluded from the process.

Re:Not to sound like a troll but...

[MindStalker]

Aren't these private organizations working together to run their private operations as they see fit?

This is a government organization, not a private organization.

Re:Fact - WIPO are biased

[Harodotus]

Mr. Borland seems to entirely miss the point that Open-Source software is not free and is not counter to intellectual property rights.

The OSS licence agreement requires intellectual property right laws to be in full effect to work.

Its just the the compensation of OSS licences is not in money to the licence holders, but in restricted behavior in the public interest (freedom to re-distribute, requiring derivative works to be made available to all).

Re:Well then...

[Kris_J]

Please don't refer to "us" as "consumers". We're people, plain and simple. Some of "us" even [flickr.com] create [flickr.com] stuff [flickr.com] without [flickr.com] the luxury of being part of a huge corporation. Please go buy Make [flickr.com] magazine, or visit a library or something.

Re:Well then...

[Trepalium]

people who produce art (or content, or however you want to look at it) may have dependants to support.

Yes, and their dependants may have dependants to support. No, the original rational for long copyrights was to prevent companies from merely waiting for the copyright to expire before publishing their 'enhanced' version they could copyright themselves. Supporting your dependants is a red herring, and it detracts from the real reasoning behind things. After all, people working as mechanics, accountants, or burger flippers still need to provide for their dependants, and you don't hear people suggesting that McDonald's should provide outside the original terms of employment.

Now, the big companies that want the term extension can't admit they would be so evil as to rob someone of the fruits of their labour, so this bogus story about protecting the artists' dependants is born. Perhaps we merely need to rethink how the term is applied, rather than arguing about the periods. Perhaps a term that is triggered by first publication would work better, although this fails for non-duplicated artwork like paintings and such.