The Yale Access to Knowledge conference has kicked off. Check out the A2K2 wiki for session notes and updates!

This morning at UCLA there was a great talk by Nagla Rizk from American University of Cairo on "The Music Industry in the Arab World." She's an economist, and wanted to get a grasp on the real structure of the musical economy in Egypt. She and her team interviewed musicians and others involved in the musical economy, both the pop star system and the underground (informal) musicians.

The Arab Music Market is basically an oligopoly, with four firms dominating: Rotana, Alam el Fan, Melody, and Mirage have 85% market share. Then there are smaller players with 13% of market share, and the underground producers with about 2%. The old value chain for Arab Music in Egypt (through the 1980s) looked like this: singer, music company, studio, permits, production. This has changed because of satellite. Now there is a star system that involves industry actively seeking out good looking young people to produce a video clip, send to satellite stations, produce albums, and play weddings. Underground musicians skip the video and satellite distro and jump directlly to an album (sometimes) and paid live performance.

There's an interesting group of folks at the UCLA conference on the WIPO Development Agenda this weekend. Carolyn Deere from the Global Economic Governance Programme at Oxford gave a good talk discussing "the political dynamics of IP reform in developing countries: the relevance and influence of WIPO." She's concerned with how to make the Development Agenda real, on the ground, and her methodology for the work she presented was cross national comparison of what different countries are doing.

She's found that developing countries are actuallly quite diverse in the types of IPR regimes they have, and whether or not they take advantage of exceptions they're allowed. Some countries are adopting TRIPS+ requirements but there is not uniformity. For example, developing countries have until 2015 to implement TRIPS but 14 of the 32 LDCs implemented TRIPS plus legislation even while negotiating for more time (!) They didn't have bilaterals with the US, they hadn't been 301 listed, so why did they go so far so fast?

-- please visit www.uottawaglobe.ca, see discussion on library access in global health and development discussions.

I was fortunate to be exposed to some interesting history that led me to abandon a notion of ‘western knowledge’, and in fact decide that what was Western was increasingly proprietary approaches of knowledge. If we trace any disciplines’ knowledge there is a seamless transmission, even through paradigm shifts, and the development of a branch of science rests on the collection of knowledge from vast sources. In my undergrad, I kept being taught the history of philosophy as tracing from the Greeks, then stalling in the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance picking it up from Aristotle/Ptolemy, restoring humanism and rationalism leading through the Enlightenment to the modern era. This is a view of the history that places the tradition and its ownership squarely in the West.

--- I created a website at uOttawa, uOttawaglobe.ca (drupal as well), it would be wonderful if people join, and there is a topic under global health and development discussions on library access for developing country universities.

I'm the conceptual side of the site, I'm also looking for someone that could help a littel bit with the technical side.

Cheers,

Arif

Somehow we're not shocked, but we are dismayed. A leaked memo reveals that developed countries are conspiring to sabotage the Development Agenda - via the [del.icio.us wipo feed]

I am a pediatrician work in medical service in Adnoc company in U.A.E ,Abudhabi,and i am planning to be a member in Doctors without borders to in plces which needs medical aid,i am nearly 65years old but i have a good health and fitness to help and work .
I need your guidence how to subscribe in this organisation. Thanks

More info on last week's WIPO meeting on the proposed Broadcaster: CPTech's Xcaster blog | WIPO press release | Final recommendations

There's been a bunch of press about this round of WIPO meetings. Check out the WIPO Roundtable Roundup from Public Knowledge. Excerpt: "Very little new ground was broken at today’s USPTO’s WIPO Broadcast Treaty roundtable at the agency’s beautiful headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia Of course I am biased, but I would say that the opponents of the current treaty got the better of the proponents. The proponents, led by NAB Senior Associate General Counsel Ben Ivins essentially justified the need for a 50 year IP right in broadcast signals on the basis that broadcasters “invest” in their signals and that because 83 countries (but not the US and 99 other countries) have signed on to the Rome Convention that gives broadcasters a 20 year intellectual property-like right in their signals, the US should have it too [...]

[from Jamie Love]: On September 5, 2006, the USPTO is holding a public roundtable discussion concerning the work at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) on a proposed Treaty On the Protection of the Rights of Broadcasting Organizations. (See Federal Register / Vol. 71, No. 159 / Thursday, August 17, 2006 / Notices 47489)

Below is are the instructions to the participants, and a list of speakers. Jamie

-------

30 Aug 06

Dear Roundtable Attendees:

I attach a list of all (SEPT 5, 2006) roundtable attendees. The

WIPO Development Agenda Talks End With No Agreement For Now - After two week-long meetings and intensive consultations during the year, talks on bolstering the development perspective of the World Intellectual Property Organization ended today with no agreement, sending proposals back to the UN body’s annual meeting of member states in September. But a continuation of the debate in some form ... [IP Watch]

[from TWN:] The second day of discussions on the WIPO development agenda
witnessed continuing differences between developed and developing countries, with some differences also in approach among developing countries. Below is a report on Tuesday afternoon's discussions of WIPO's Provisional Committee that covered the remaining 4 of the 6 negotiation clusters, namely, (C) Technology Transfer, Information and Communication Technology; (D) Assessments, Evaluation and Impact Studies; (E) Institutional Matters including Mandate and Governance; and (F) Other Issues. There are 111 proposals in the list of 6 clusters that are under discussion.

I've been thinking about the way that WIPO trains thousands in the basics of IPRs. For example, see their online courses at http://www.wipo.int/academy/en/courses/distance_learning/catalog/c_index.html. There are a couple of good responses that the A2K community could develop: 1. make our own online training materials in A2K/Knowledge Sharing/Commons 101. 2. See if it's possible to force WIPO to include Commons alternatives in their own IPR training materials. That would be a real coup. (schock)

From James Love at cptech: "Today WIPO finally took a step back from forcing a restrictive Rome Convention intellectual property right on Internetpublishing... This is a victory for everyone who has opposed linking webcasting to the broadcasting treaty. There is still a lot of work to. There is a strong likihood the traditional broadcasting treaty will move forward, and the EU will clearly push to expand this to cases where broadcasters use the Internet.... and there are considerable problems with many of the proposals for the broadcasting treaty, including some very strong rights, TPMs, and other problems. However, there is now also a growing movement away from granting IP rights in the content of transmissions, in favor of theft of services protections, which is a very positive development, and a new project to examine the impact of TPMs on limitations and exceptions, which is quite important. The Internet is far safer now than before, because the threat of a new treaty for Internet middleman is now much less likely."

Negotiations to give broadcasters a new layer of intellectual monopolies, above and beyond copyright, continue this week at WIPO. The draft Xcaster Treaty is the topic of the current meeting of WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. James Love provides an overview. For more on Xcaster see CPTech's collection of Xcaster docs.

Friday to Sunday, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511

In the digital era, most multinational corporations and policymakers
are of the view that the current trend characterised by increasing
intellectual property rights and corporate control over knowledge
best serve society's interests. At the same time, however, a growing
number of commentators believe that widespread access to knowledge
(A2K) and the preservation of a healthy knowledge commons are the
real basis for sustainable human development. Nonetheless,
intellectual property-based approaches continue to singlehandedly

In response to IP Blog's story "Big IP Skeptic Lovefest is Coming," rishab posted the following response: "what would be REALLY interesting: an IPR conference which banned any and all aid from products developed without IP rights, through e.g. academic research, open collaboration, traditional knowledge, non-patented inventions, etc. i'd love to see that. but i couldn't, because i couldn't see without my contact lenses (drawing on academic optical research), listen via a international telephone (communications satellite non-patented by clarke) or watch a web conference (based on non-patented tcp/ip, http, collaboratively developed technologies).

Analysis from FSF Europe: WIPO PCDA conlusion - learning English the hard way.

WIPO Development Meeting Starts Slowly Despite Push For Strong Reform - By Tove Iren S. Gerhardsen and William New

A meeting on a development agenda at the World Intellectual Property Organization got off to a slow start after a half-day debate over who would chair the meeting. This took place in contrast to efforts of key developing nations to keep negotiations on ... [IP Watch]

Open Forum on the draft Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT)
Geneva, March 1 to 3, 2006
PROVISIONAL PROGRAM: http://www.wipo.int/meetings/2006/scp_of_ge_06/en/scp_of_ge_06_inf1.html