WIPO Pressured to Kill Meeting on Open Source

Posted by michael on Friday August 22, 2003 @11:23AM from the thou-shalt-not-speak-its-name dept.

panthan writes "The Washington Post has has an article about a proposed meeting of the WIPO concerning open source having been removed from consideration, apparently due to pressure from the US State Department and the USPTO. 'In short order, lobbyists from Microsoft-funded trade groups were pushing officials at the State Department and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to squelch the meeting. One lobbyist, Emery Simon with the Business Software Alliance, said his group objected to the suggestion in the proposal that overly broad or restrictive intellectual-property rights might in some cases stunt technological innovation and economic growth.'" Lawrence Lessig has some comments.

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I'm sorry Microsoft but it's over by WildBeast · 2003-08-22 12:09 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I've always been behind Microsoft most of the time and I defended them again and again but this takes the cake. I see lobby groups as anti-democratic.

On the other hand this whole thing started with the US DOJ trying to sue MS and tell them what to do, well looks like it ended with MS smartening up, pooring some money into lobby groups in order to tell the government what to do. The government shouldn't have messed with Microsoft to begin with.