WIPO Pressured to Kill Meeting on Open Source

panthan writes "The Washington Post has has an article about a proposed meeting of the WIPO concerning open source having been removed from consideration, apparently due to pressure from the US State Department and the USPTO. 'In short order, lobbyists from Microsoft-funded trade groups were pushing officials at the State Department and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to squelch the meeting. One lobbyist, Emery Simon with the Business Software Alliance, said his group objected to the suggestion in the proposal that overly broad or restrictive intellectual-property rights might in some cases stunt technological innovation and economic growth.'" Lawrence Lessig has some comments.

Misinterpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

That someone who doesn't understand them is at a high level of this government just shows...

That the Bush administration's appointees and advisors are working out exactly as planned. Governmnent by the lowest common denominator, for the lowest common denominator. It's sort of democratic, in a set-theory sense. What people really want in a leader is someone who can unabashedly screw up just as badly as they themselves would. ;)

Re:I thought WIPO was dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Krisha [religioustolerance.org] to you. Philistine.

Re:I thought WIPO was dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops, mispelled Krishna. That's gonna cost me in my next life. Christ.

Re:there's nothing left that you can do for free

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn in your expensive AAA membership for Free AA membership.

But is that free as in beer? ;-)

Re:oh my god!

[digitalunity]

Can Microsoft challenge 180 groups from 180 nations?
Yes. They probably have a larger income than at least the bottom 10% of those countries.

*Shoots himself* argh someone run Windows on this gun - it is not killing me
If GNU made a gun, it would shoot perfect, it would never need to be reloaded, and it would be free. If anything, the Unix gun would kill you on the first shot, even if you aimed it away from yourself, via the GNUaim loadable module!

Re:To all americans ....

[_xeno_]

I'll keep that in mind when choosing between the canidate that supports strong IP laws, the canidate that strongly supports IP laws, the canidate that believes in strong IP laws, and the canidate who has a snowballs on an overclocked Athlon playing Quake III of winning.

To be slightly more serious, most people seem to equate intelectual property with "good for the economy" so finding someone who doesn't support "strong IP laws" is rather difficult. Especially if you add "who can actually win" as a requirement.

Since most people seem to believe the general equation that "good for buisness" = "more jobs" = "more money for me" - I can't imagine a politician who would make loosening IP laws an issue. The other side would cream him, saying that he's against improving the economy and would hurt buisness.

Maybe I'm just overly cynical. I rather hope I am.

Re:IP

[pHDNgell]

Given that the US Constitution justifies IP on the basis of promoting progress, we can't be asking the question of whether our laws actually do that, now can we?

It doesn't matter, once IPv6 comes around, we won't have to worry about justifying IPs anymore.

Re:oh my god!

[Skater]

Yeah, but the dependencies on the trigger module, barrel module, and grip module would be hell. And don't forget the command-line switches you'd need to actually FIRE the thing... ;)

--RJ

Re:there's nothing left that you can do for free

[Mikeytsi]

Free as in coffee.

Done!

[karmavore]

All your IP are belong to us!

Re:oh my god!

[Guppy06]

RMS: "Guns don't kill people, GNU/Guns kill people."