FYI.
[ http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=828 ]
Intellectual Property Watch
19 November 2007
Open Standards, Access To Knowledge Discussed At IGF
posted by William New @ 12:44 pm
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch
RIO DE JANEIRO - Intellectual property-related issues were a topic
avoided by governments during the 2003-2005 World Summit on the
Information Society, which gave way to the Internet Governance Forum
(IGF). But at the second IGF in Rio de Janeiro last week there were
several IP-related workshops.
Organisers of the dynamic coalitions on open standards, access to
knowledge and the newly formed coalition on digital education said they
were satisfied with the attention IP issues drew.
David Gross, the United States delegation lead, said he had been
interested to see how much IP issues had come up. "IP issues of course
are always an important issue," said Gross, the US coordinator for
international communications and information policy. "But there are
many other places devoted to that topic, like WIPO [the World
Intellectual Property Organization] or WTO [the World Trade
Organization]. The fact that people think that the IGF is a place for
these issues was interesting to me." But Gross called it a misused
opportunity that issues of the free flow of information had not come up
more instead.
Members of a new coalition on digital education, which brings together
teachers, academics, publishers, technologists and politicians, will
organise a survey on the influence of IP protection in classrooms
worldwide. They also intend to work on digital education publishing
channels to create a system for educational publishing, members of the
Information Society Project at Yale Law School told Intellectual
Property Watch. "Although the digital age holds great promise for
educators and learners, information policy and regulation has not
sufficiently focused on the unique context of education," the new
coalition members wrote in their first declaration.
New antitrust investigation against Microsoft
The open standards coalition invited Clifford Chance lawyer Thomas
Vinje to Rio to give insights into a new antitrust case of the European
Union against Microsoft. Vinje represented the European Committee on
Interoperable Systems (ECIS) in the first antitrust case against
Microsoft. Vinje told a press conference that the EU Competition
Commissioner's office, with the first case decided by the EU Court of
First Instance, now has started working intensively on the second case.
The new case involves three main aspects. First, Microsoft allegedly
barred providers of other text document formats access to information
that would them allow to make their products fully compatible with
computers running on Microsoft's operating systems. "You may have
experienced that sometimes open office documents can be received by
Microsoft users, sometimes not."
Second, for email and collaboration software Microsoft also may have
privileged their own products like Outlook with regard to interfacing
with Microsoft's Exchange servers. The third, and according to Vinje,
most relevant to the Internet and work done at the IGF, was the problem
of growing .NET-dependency for web applications. .NET is Microsoft's
platform for web applications software development. "It is a sort of an
effort to `proprietise' the Internet," said Vinje.
He saw this as "the same kind of behaviour" that had been judged
anti-competitive in the first case by creating barriers for competing
operating systems. But there was a difference between the two cases in
two regards, he said. "First of all, the Commission now has more
expertise and much better resources compared to when they started
investigating Microsoft in 1993," he said. "Secondly, they have a
precedent, a court decision that confirmed the principles."
Other national authorities, he proposed, could join the investigation
or start their own as the competition authorities in South Korea have
done already. "Competition authorities like company," he said. And
while he did not expect the US competition authorities to join in
before the end of this term, a new government might change the
situation. Governments also could for the moment just send their
statements of concern to the EU competition commissioner.
Vinje said a slight effect on the case could result from the decision
of the ISO [International Standards Organisation] standardisation
process for Microsoft's OOXML software currently under discussion. The
first vote was against making OOXML a standard, but Microsoft lost only
by half a dozen votes, according to Georg Greve, president of the Free
Software Foundation.
"Microsoft at the moment attempts to change as many nos to yes as
possible and we do it the other way round, trying to change as many
yeses to nos," Greve said in Rio. The votes in the ISO standardisation
process are cast mainly by representatives of national governments, but
many governments are represented by industry associations or private
organisations. The Microsoft case showed the weaknesses of the
standardisation process, Greve said.
"The process normally deals with technical issues, and there is not
procedure for a conflict like this," he said, adding that it is a
highly politicised process.
Standards as shadow governance
Awareness-raising about the effects of standards and standardisation
processes is exactly what the IGF dynamic coalition on open standards
was all about, said Susan Struble from Sun Microsystems, which is a
member of the coalition.
"Standards are invisible, they are shadow policy making, shadow
governance," Struble said at the Rio meeting. It is necessary to learn
about standardisation and understand that there were not only a few
large standardisation bodies, but hundreds of industry consortia
engaged in this. The purpose of the coalition is to educate governments
that there is an issue and that IP and standards could influence
development.
The coalition was happy to find the standards issue mentioned by
Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology Sergio Rezende, and
Anriette Esterhuysen, chair of the Association for Progressive
Communication.
Esterhuysen said: "Increasingly, there are standards being made outside
of public spaces that have social implications that limit what people
can do with the Internet, and the IGF needs to address this. This
touches on issues of intellectual property, and interoperability
between different applications and devices. And these are things that
impact on the cost."
IP and Development
The introduction of a Development Agenda at the World Intellectual
Property Organisation was applauded in Rio by both the open standards
and the access to knowledge (A2K) coalitions.
Both groups now look forward to implementation of the various measures
decided upon in the Development Agenda. "Open standards are in," said
Thiru Balasubramaniam of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI).
[Clarification: this comment referred to the WIPO Standing Committee on
Patents, but standards could appear in the Development Agenda] The
activists also are satisfied with the planned report to be delivered by
WIPO's committee on patents about the cost of licensing next year.
Robin Gross, executive director of IP Justice, also pointed to
implementation of the Development Agenda. "We now can talk on meat and
potatoes," she said. A proposed access to knowledge treaty mentioned in
the new agenda might take a long time, she said, yet the attention on
the issue is rising. The A2K coalition over the last year narrowed the
gap between organisations and activists working on the issue from north
and south. In Rio, the A2K coalition also presented parts of a larger
study on bilateral and regional free trade agreements undertaken by a
team under Professor Mary Wong at Franklin Pierce Law Center (US).
Concern is that more stringent IP rules may be pushed bilaterally when
they are not obtainable at the multilateral level.
Practical IP-related Results
Beside networking and some stocktaking, practical steps also were
presented by coalition members during the sessions. For instance, IP
Justice announced the first international cyberlaw clinic. Among issues
to be addressed, "law students in the programme will tackle Internet
policy issues such as protecting free expression in the introduction of
the new top-level domains (including internationalised domain names)"
at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [ICANN], and
in this effort assist ICANN's non-commercial user constituency.
Participating law faculties are the School of Law in Rio de Janeiro,
the University of Hong Kong, the National University of Singapore, the
University of Ottawa, and the University of South Africa.
Another practical project is the start of Certified Open, a
certification service designed to evaluate technical and commercial
lock-in in technology. Certified Open will allow providers of software
or services to self-rate with regard to openness. Public authorities
(and others) then could check whether products are open standard before
buying in. While there could be abuse of the self-certification
process, made inexpensive and free for non-commercials, FSFE President
Greve said answers to the openness questions of the applicants will be
published openly allowing disputes about the information given.
A Successful Outcome?
Measuring the success of the second IGF overall was difficult. Some
pointed to the high attendance, though business again lagged behind NGO
and government representatives. Others pointed to the large number of
well-attended workshops, best practice forums and presentations of
Internet governance-related organisations, like ICANN, the country code
Top Level Domain managers, the root server zone operators, as well as
the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development. Matthew Sheers, representing the Internet Society during
the closing ceremony, pointed to the interest of some government
representatives in installing root server instances and Internet
exchange points in their countries.
The UN organisers, IGF Chair Nitin Desai and IGF Executive Coordinator
Markus Kummer, adhered to the IGF's non-decision-making protocol and
said at the closing press conference that there were no recommendations
or even central messages of the IGF. "There are many messages," said
Desai, "and they come from the different workshops." Desai pointed to
substantive discussions about child protection on the Internet that
might help to bar jurisdiction shopping in the future.
There were appeals to not focus on issues related to ICANN, root server
and domain name system oversight so as not to lose the opportunity to
talk about an Internet bill of rights, a balanced approach in IP,
privacy and possible technological solutions for identity management,
digital education and child protection.
The IGF in some ways has taken on its own life distant from the
original fights at WSIS over the DNS. Yet there are those who still
seek resolution on the DNS issue, and they started to look outside of
the IGF. In a last minute statement, the Russian Federation claimed
that the UN secretary general should set up another working group
specifically dealing with the DNS oversight problem and the privileges
of the US government there. The secretary general's office, for its
part, has to decide on how to proceed with the IGF Advisory Group, the
body that is preparing and caretaking the IGF meetings. What seems
certain after Rio is that there rising hopes as to what can be reached
at the next meeting in Delhi next year.
Monika Ermert may be reached at info(a)ip-watch.ch.
___________________________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All of the
news articles and features on Intellectual Property Watch are also
subject to a Creative Commons License which makes them available
for widescale, free, non-commercial reproduction and translation.
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
What everyone should know about DRM (http://DRM.info)
Dear Adriaan,
Thank you for agreeing to become a member of the Certified Open
Governance Council. I am pleased to advise that we just announced the
formal launch of the 3 month trial period for Certified Open. [1]
Certified Open is designed to help measure and encourage competition
through the provision of a framework for evaluating technical and
commercial lock-in, covering both proprietary and Free Software/Open
Source solutions.
The issue of 'openness' and avoidance of lock-in has never been more in
the public eye. The decision by the Court of First Instance in respect
to the appeal by Microsoft is yet one more announcement that is ensuring
the topic is never far from the headlines.
Included in this email you fill find the links for the Terms of
Reference for the Governance Council, and we would welcome any comments
you might have as to their improvement. But as you will see the
Governance Council becomes the overriding guardian of strategy and
equality for Certified Open.
We are in the process of inviting further individuals to join the
Council and we hope to have a representative quorum by the end of the
calendar year. Our intention is to ensure full representation from all
quarters - user and supplier, proprietary and community, government and
private sector. We are looking to hold our first meeting of the Council
in early January, but will check availability of dates and location with
you well in advance of that.
The 3 month (beta) trial period is an important step towards the full
global launch of Certified Open planned for early Spring 2008. Part of
that trial is to encourage suppliers and community developers to sign
up, and validate their products within a period of confidentiality. It
also allows user organisations to validate the use of Certified Open
against their current solutions. But it also allows us to monitor the
content, questions and processes in real life.
We would very much welcome your personal involvement in the trial. This
might be by encouraging colleagues and partners to directly participate,
or for yourself to review the content and processes.
Certified Open has been established as not-for-profit, but also for the
programme to cover its outgoings primarily by certification fees. We
recognise that such a plan is inevitably back end loaded. To date both
OpenForum Europe and Free Software Foundation Europe have covered all
costs, but we are looking to identify potential 'supporters' who may be
able to assist in the first year of operation. Such discussions have
already started but we would welcome any further suggestions you might
have.
We are delighted you are participating in the Governance Council and
would welcome any suggestions you might have.
With best regards,
Georg Greve
[1] http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q4/000189.html
[2] http://www.certifiedopen.com/downloads-1/framework-1-13.pdf
[3] http://www.certifiedopen.com/downloads-1/principles-of-operation-2-16.pdf
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
What everyone should know about DRM (http://DRM.info)
Dear Alan,
Thank you for agreeing to become a member of the Certified Open
Governance Council. I am pleased to advise that we just announced the
formal launch of the 3 month trial period for Certified Open. [1]
Certified Open is designed to help measure and encourage competition
through the provision of a framework for evaluating technical and
commercial lock-in, covering both proprietary and Free Software/Open
Source solutions.
The issue of 'openness' and avoidance of lock-in has never been more in
the public eye. The decision by the Court of First Instance in respect
to the appeal by Microsoft is yet one more announcement that is ensuring
the topic is never far from the headlines.
Included in this email you fill find the links for the Terms of
Reference for the Governance Council, and we would welcome any comments
you might have as to their improvement. But as you will see the
Governance Council becomes the overriding guardian of strategy and
equality for Certified Open.
We are in the process of inviting further individuals to join the
Council and we hope to have a representative quorum by the end of the
calendar year. Our intention is to ensure full representation from all
quarters - user and supplier, proprietary and community, government and
private sector. We are looking to hold our first meeting of the Council
in early January, but will check availability of dates and location with
you well in advance of that.
The 3 month (beta) trial period is an important step towards the full
global launch of Certified Open planned for early Spring 2008. Part of
that trial is to encourage suppliers and community developers to sign
up, and validate their products within a period of confidentiality. It
also allows user organisations to validate the use of Certified Open
against their current solutions. But it also allows us to monitor the
content, questions and processes in real life.
We would very much welcome your personal involvement in the trial. This
might be by encouraging colleagues and partners to directly participate,
or for yourself to review the content and processes.
Certified Open has been established as not-for-profit, but also for the
programme to cover its outgoings primarily by certification fees. We
recognise that such a plan is inevitably back end loaded. To date both
OpenForum Europe and Free Software Foundation Europe have covered all
costs, but we are looking to identify potential 'supporters' who may be
able to assist in the first year of operation. Such discussions have
already started but we would welcome any further suggestions you might
have.
We are delighted you are participating in the Governance Council and
would welcome any suggestions you might have.
With best regards,
Georg Greve
[1] http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q4/000189.html
[2] http://www.certifiedopen.com/downloads-1/framework-1-13.pdf
[3] http://www.certifiedopen.com/downloads-1/principles-of-operation-2-16.pdf
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
What everyone should know about DRM (http://DRM.info)