Turning WIPO into a real UN agency: blogging from the sausage factory

Two of my cow-orkers from EFF and several other colleagues are attending the meeting, and they're taking copious notes on the proceedings, blogging in near-real time as the deliberations unfold. WIPO's deliberations have been secret the only public accounts available have traditionally been sanitized versions that hide all the buried bodies. The presence of blogging public interest groups is having a marked effect on the proceedings; the last time I was there participating in this, the WIPO delegates were getting phone calls from their capitals in the afternoon about the stuff we'd reported on them saying in the morning. This real-time reporting creates new levels of transparency and accountability at WIPO, something that the apparatchiks there detest -- a representative from the Secretariat called it an "abuse of hospitality" for civil society groups to tell the world exactly what they're getting up to in Geneva.

The account of today's meeting is really engrossing. A group of over a dozen poor nations (the "Friends of Development") have presented a long, substantive proposal about how to reform IP in poor nations to encourage development. The US and other rich countries have come back with the ridiculous proposal that the way to help developing nations is to assign them with "buddies" from the developed world who will lend assistance in writing American-style copyright and patent laws in poor countries where they can barely afford to feed and shelter their citizens.

The developing nations are aggressively calling bullshit on this:

We would like to refer to other proposals referred to in the meeting. They show the commitment of good will to establish a proper development agenda at WIPO. Three proposals have one common element -- to limit the scope of the DA to technical assistance. Our delegation, of course, rejects this strategy. Our own proposal is concrete, and has specific policy actions.

Our paper presents concrete ways to achieve DA goals. We encourage Member States to make proposals based on the other elements of the Development Agenda.

On the US proposal, we observe that the premise that the partnership would be based from the GFoD perspective, the US focuses on strengthening IPRs. We do NOT share the views expressed in this document. Technical assistance should be tailor-made, appropriate to development needs.

The development dimension is not exhausted in the element contained in the US proposal.