WIPO wants your feedback

A recent article on slashdot refers you to http://www.wipo.int/ipisforum/en/ should you wish to make comments on things like "The intellectual property system and freedom of expression and creativity: Help or hindrance?".

Well... as usual, i thought i'd stir things up a bit. Here's what i wrote...

Wow, guys - what a mess of assumptions your simple statement is, wrapped up as a laudable goal.

i'll try to make some comments as they occur to me

1) you have no right to be the "enforcer" of who shall or shall not own "information".

2) information is energy. energy is love. love cannot be OWNED. engergy cannot be OWNED. information cannot be OWNED.

with those two simple points in mind, the whole pack of cards of your very existence and purpose comes into question.

therefore, i believe that your job should actually be to enforce countries and governments to NOT endeavour to have concepts such as "intellectual property", "copyright" and "patents", and to instead put forth punitive damages against any government, corporation or individual attempting to do so.

let me try to spell that out, clearly for you.

1) anyone wishing to exploit ideas will, if they have enough money, do so with blatant disregard for laws, patents and copyright. if they wish to, they can simply tie you - or any court - up at length for the duration of the product's lifecycle.

2) for the benefit of society, the planet, the advancement of mankind AS A SPECIES, the discovery of information should be brought to "market", "fruition", whatever AS QUICKLY as possible. FUCK the individual. most inventors are business-incompetent dickheads who wouldn't know a commercial opportunity if it slapped them with a billion dollar cheque.

so, if someone invents something, and someone else exploits it, GREAT! if they happen to be the same person, GREAT! if they happen not to be the same person, and the invention saves millions of lives, who GIVES a shit?

you want to know what makes me see RED?

patent holders like the oil companies buying up all alternative energy patents - and then burying them.

3) free software is rewriting the rulebook, by making significant and inexorable "build-on-the-shoulders-of-others" intellectual advances.

each individual owns the copyright on their own work. each individual is acknowledged as the copyright holder and as an author.

these people typically get called in to do consultancy work / provide enhancements / perform installations and assistance.

... they DON'T go around patenting everything, and if they do, then (like raph levien's "libart" patent) they provide a royalty-free license for any implementation OF that patent should anyone choose to implement that patent under a free software license...

... of course, because raph has already _done_ that [implementation] there's no point in anyone else bothering to reimplement the work - but that's an ironic side-issue, noted here for completeness.

4) free software licensing is bleeding over into ASIC design (opencores.org) and hardware design (Open Source Motor Controller) _and_ also into art (Creative Commons License).

this is a good thing.

5) you appear to want to extend copyright law into countries that don't have it. you believe that copyright law and patenting is "good".

fuck that.

copyright law and patenting only allows large U.S. corporations to EXPLOIT those countries without fear of being "ripped off by the locals".

because it provides the means for lawyers to be employed - by US corporations - to now go into a far poorer country and start buying up patents in THAT country...

you want to provide a LEGAL framework under which locals can be BULLIED.

FUCK OFF. DON'T YOU ***DARE*** PUSH YOUR SHIT ONTO EVERYONE, thinking that you're doing them a favour, wrapping up as nice "laudable goals".

dang.

6) "To the extent that copyright law promotes creativity, it also enhances economic growth and welfare."

nope - as basically hinted at above, it enhances the ability of people to start grabbing what they can for themselves, under the great system called "capitalism" which has caused more hardship than slavery ever did - mostly because it's legalised and unrecognised slavery.

why is that? well, it's mostly do do with employment law, whereby an individual works for a corporation, and if the individual wants money, they have to sign away any rights to the corporation of anything that they do, think and say.

in other words, in return for "money", they enter into enforced servitude. why? because it's the "norm". have you _ever_ tried to work for a company and get them to change the contract so that you still own your own IP? they get _real_ nervous.

... and the reason WHY these corporations do this is because they are scared of losing "copyright", "intellectual property"...

to summarise, your "laudable goals" are actually quite a serious problem: they perpetuate slavery, they hold up the advancement of mankind, they waste time and energy on an unimaginable scale, and they cause hatred, envy, lust and greed as people endeavour to control something as ethereal - yet as valuable and powerful - as "information".