Original news and analysis on international IP policy
UN International Telecommunication Union Secretary General Hamadoun Touré used a press conference on the eve of the much-anticipated World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) which starts in Dubai next week to call on the Syrian government to investigate problems of access to the mobile network and internet in Syria and do "anything necessary to restore the access."
United States Ambassador Terry Kramer, head of the US delegation to the upcoming UN-led World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) in Dubai, in a press call today warned against proposals that would invite the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to get into the business of internet governance, be it routing interventions, content control issues, or changes in accounting for internet traffic. Yet reacting to an earlier call by ex-White House official Andrew McLaughlin at a New America Foundation conference to "dismantle the ITU", Kramer said: "I do not think the ITU is the problem."
International copyright flexibilities are ill-suited to the need of developing countries to create effective access to printed materials in schools, a new book argues. The author, whose work was presented last week at the World Intellectual Property Organization, urges a normative and institutional rethinking of the current system.
After a long week of discussions, delegates at the World Intellectual Property Organization last night adopted a working draft text that could become a treaty or other instrument providing copyright exceptions for visually impaired people, and agreed to send the text to the WIPO extraordinary General Assembly next month.
All substantive documents filed for the UN-led World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) have been made public, many of them for the first time.
Negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization on the draft text of a treaty on copyright exceptions to benefit visually impaired persons are heading into the final evening of a weeklong committee meeting. Negotiators have made several modifications to the text since yesterday, and work is continuing.
Non-governmental organisations this week vehemently voiced their positions at the World Intellectual Property Organization on a text that could become a treaty increasing access to books by visually impaired people. The NGO exercise unveiled a range of stances on what the treaty should and should not do.
Despite long hours of discussions yesterday, World Intellectual Property Organization delegates working on a draft document that could become a treaty/instrument to provide exceptions to copyright for visually impaired persons will have to come back to the text (below) today to try and bridge differences. For now, the meeting has moved on to a possible treaty on broadcasters' rights.
The debates are getting more heated with the December World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) in Dubai coming closer. Google today (21 November) launched one of its big campaigns to rally support against what it says is an attempt by some countries to “further regulate the internet” and potentially limit free speech through censorship.
Pressure mounted as delegates at the World Intellectual Property Organization today engaged in what was planned to be the final day of negotiations on the text of a treaty on copyright exceptions for the blind. The ultimate outcome of the negotiations depends on the convening of a diplomatic conference, which could yield an instrument facilitating access to reading material by visually impaired and print-disabled persons.
Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons presents the United States Supreme Court with a stark and weighty choice. In the 29 October oral argument [pdf], Supap Kirtsaeng urged the court to uphold purchasers’ right to freely dispose of copyrighted works they have purchased, even when those works are made overseas. If this right is struck down, Kirtsaeng warned, museums in the US may be unable to borrow works of art created overseas, consumers may be unable to sell their used books and CDs, and many companies engaged in secondary markets, such as eBay and used car dealers, may be put out of business.
No exclusive “.baby” top-level domain (TLD) for Johnson and Johnson, no exclusive “.blog” for Google, nor “.antivir” for Symantec or “.epost” for the German Postal Service. Of 242 government early warning notices to applicants for new generic top-level domains posted last night by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the majority target “quasi-monopolies” over generic names or lack of protective measures with regard to defensive registrations.