Background Information on the WIPO Development Agenda Development Agenda in 2004 Led by Brazil and Argentina (and the Group of Friends of Development), developing nations issued a strong call for reform at the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) and adopted a “Development Agenda” in an effort to replace WIPO’s mission of automatically increasing intellectual [...]
OpenForum Europe are pleased to invite you to a conference on: "Standards and the Future of the Internet - the role of open standards, standards development and standards organisations for innovation and healthy marketplaces" 25-27 February at the International Conference Centre, Geneva In a keynote session on 26 February, OFE Chief Executive, Graham Taylor, will moderate a panel of highly distinguished speakers: Vint Cerf (Google), Bob Sutor (IBM), HÃ¥kon Lie (Opera Software) and Andy Updegrove (GesmerUpdegrove)
Links to Audio, Video, and Photos of IGF-Rio. Where 2007 IGF Excelled: High Quality of Independently Organized Workshops, World-Class Technical Capabilities, Offline Interactions & Networking Opportunities; But: Human Rights & Controversy Avoided, Glaring Lack of Gender Balance & Youth Voices, Last' Year's Speakers ...
Today I’d like to address a few issues that are specifically relevant to the positive development of the Internet and a healthy information society. 1. Freedom of Expression Rights. 2. Access to Knowledge Rights. 3. Communication Rights. 4. Privacy Rights and Data Protection. 5. Anonymity. 6. Excessive and unbalanced intellectual property rights. 7. Open Technical Standards. 8. Democratic Values. I cannot emphasize enough that the enforcement of our existing legal rights is the first and most important step we can take to ensure human rights are protected in an information society of the future.....
"The purpose of this letter is to express our support for changes to WHOIS services that would protect the privacy of individuals, specifically the removal of registrants' contact information from the publicly accessible WHOIS database. It is also to propose a sensible resolution to the long-running discussion over WHOIS that would establish a bit of "policy stability" and allow the various constituencies to move on to other work. Both the WHOIS Task Force and the WHOIS Working Group agree that new mechanisms must be adopted to address an individual's right to privacy and the protection of his/her data. Current ICANN WHOIS policy conflicts with national privacy laws, including the EU Data Protection Directive, which requires the establishment of a legal framework to ensure that when personal information is collected, it is used only for its intended purpose. As personal information in the directory is used for other purposes and ICANN's policy keeps the information public and anonymously accessible, the database could be found illegal according to many national privacy and data protection laws including the European Data Protection Directive, European data protection laws and legislation in Canada and Australia...."
IP Justice Recommendations for the 2007 WIPO General Assembly on the WIPO Development Agenda In 2004, at the General Assembly of the WIPO, two member nations Brazil and Argentina submitted proposals for establishing a Development Agenda for WIPO. This proposal found wide support from most member nations to WIPO. As you all know, the proposal [...]
"The "Keep The Core Neutral" campaign officially launched this week with an educational workshop at the 29th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. ICANN handles technical coordination of the Internet and sets policy surrounding the domain name system (DNS), the Internet’s basic addressing system that allows people to locate web sites and use email. The DNS is informally called the technical “core" of the Internet. The Keep The Core Neutral Coalition launched with over 100 members from around the world, including both individuals and organizations. Coalition members signed a petition urging ICANN to resist efforts to evaluate applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) based on non-technical criteria such as ideas about morality and competing national political objectives. ..."
We call upon WIPO delegates to reject the proposed WIPO Broadcast Treaty. After more than 9 years of discussions, efforts to find a treaty formulation that deals with piracy of broadcast signals, but which does not harm copyright owners and the legitimate users of broadcasts have failed.
Before I make observations specific to these recommendations, I would like to offer some general remarks about the overall incongruence between trademarks and domain names. It is important to note at the outset this general lack of equivalence between trademark law and domain name policy. For instance, trademark law the world over is fundamentally based on the concept of territoriality. Thus trademark law seeks to protect regionally and market-based marks without implication for the protection or availability of that mark in another region. In contrast, domain names have global reach, are accessible everywhere and have implications for speech around the world. ...
A Finnish Court has ruled that the Content Scrabling System (CSS) computer code, which unlocks DVD movies, is lawful in Europe. The decision was a first to interpret the legality of DVD decoding software under the 2001 European Copyright Directive. .... This ruling is good news for consumers and innovators who want to build interoperable tools that will permit consumers to engage in a full range of lawful activities with their digital media collections, like making digital movie archives and video "mash-ups". Besides applying across the EU, European experts believe this ruling will apply across media platforms and not restricted only to DVDs.