Nice man from WIPO gets off easy

A premature end to a terrific session on CC and the World Intellectual Property Organisation -- in some senses not too dissimilar from Tony's previous post about the Microsoft rep, but without any booing. WIPO director of copyright e-commerce Richard Owens set the stage, saying that he was pleased with the cooperation between CC and WIPO on issues of limitations and exceptions to rights in the digital context, and standardisation of DRM metadata. He also said the Development Agenda was underway with 110 proposals on the table, although he said nothing about US hostility to the DA's very existence.  A quick mention of the Broadcast Treaty also failed to acknowledge how contentious it is.

Ronaldo Lemos of CC Brazil followed up and made a series of very salient points -- did you that the biggest record label in Brazil, Sony-BMG, released a grand total of 13 records by Brazilian artists last year? -- but his most important was that no regulation should be implemented without an impact analysis. This is what CC can bring to the WIPO table, he said:  an awareness that policies should support cultural production at the periphery, not just seek to prevent negative impacts on established cultural industries.

Jamie Boyle asked Owens what creators that *want* to share their work can do about the proposed WIPO Broadcast Treaty, which adds a whole new layer of permissions to works even if they're released under a CC license. Owens replied that such issues probably had not had the airing they deserved at WIPO, but hoped that they would be. This didn't satisfy at least one audience member - why haven't WIPOs looked into the impact of this properly, he asked.  Cory Doctorow followed up saying that the US National Association of Broadcasters had said that no impact assess for previous WIPO treaties had been carried out, so no research is necessary for the Broadcast Treaty, and this seems to the plan for future plans of impact assessment.

Unfortunately the session ran over and we didn't get a good answer on this one. I was looking forward to that...