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FSFE Becomes WIPO Observer
wikinerd writes "FSFE, the European branch of Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation announced that it was granted observer status in WIPO, the international organisation which influences nationwide copyright laws."
"By becoming a WIPO observer, FSFE will be able to communicate with WIPO more effectivelly and may attract attention and support from decision makers." So other than the power to be informed and squawk about bad decisions, what has the free software community gained. We have been squawking already and the powers that be do not care. How will this make them care any more. Maybe I am missing something.
bad thing is that they only have OBSERVER status. meaning no control. the bright side is, when shit hits the fan, and the poo flingers try to cover it up, it'll get out anyway.
On the WIPO site there is a passage that might sound kind of scary:
Intellectual property surrounds us in nearly everything we do. At home, at school, at work. At rest and at play. No matter what we do, we are surrounded by the fruits of human creativity and invention.
I wonder if it's possible to live in a IP-free environment. Let's assume that you build your house from a public domain blueprint, you read only books written by authors who died before 1954, you use self-assembled PC running only free software, you use only generic drugs and own devices that either never were patented or whose patents have already expired. I think it's possible without resorting to Amish-style technophobia and living in such environment might even be quite comfortable and stylish (imagine all those 1960's refrigerators, air conditioning systems, eight-track stereo with nothing but folk and classic music etc.). Am I wrong? Any educated comment, please?
This can only be a good thing. WIPO's domain dispute resolution process is severely flawed , I wonder if the FSFE could bring some balance?
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Yes, it is good news. The question is how much influence they'll have in reality. WIPO seems to have quite a few members, and no small ones either. Check out this document (pdf).
Huh?
I'm confused. How does gaining formal observer status at a massive international governmental body make the OSS crowd look like greasy hippies? I'd have thought it would be the other way around -- make us look like a bunch of tie-wearing authoritarians, maybe. I agree with your post otherwise -- this is good news -- but I don't understand that first bit.
It occurs to me that the FSF is representative of an incredibly vast amount of copyrighted material. Although many people would not want to have the FSF be considered there representative, I think it's reasonable to consider the FSF to be the representative of at least a slight majority of all GPLed and LGPLed software. (I mean this in the same way that the RIAA is a representative of many other labels, yet usually doesn't hold the rights itself.)
In that light, how much copyrighted software does the FSF represent when compared to other software organizations? I would not be surprised if that would make the FSF the largest in the world. In that light, the FSF should have an enormous amount of sway in such a situation.
So, to take this further, could those of us who do have GPLed software which is used heavily denote the fact that the FSF does in some manner represent us, thus showing to the governments of the world how important they are? Governments tend not to listen to people who do not have some delineated backing, so I think so sort of declaration of this would be needed.
I agree with your post otherwise -- this is good news -- but I don't understand that first bit.
I think what Cmdr Trollco is pointing out is that the FSFE folks in WIPO will be the only people speaking out against the mainstream opinions, which will further the image of FOSS advocates as angst-ridden, head-in-the-clouds, delusional hippies. It's a variation on the same theme of discrediting dissent as misplaced discontent by labeling all dissenters as hippie/unpatriotic/out of touch/bad eggs/self-serving boat rockers/whatever.
What Trollco forgets to point out is that OSS people are already perceived as greasy hippies, and since the mainstream system has succeeded in painting them as such, having these hippie malcontents inducted into WIPO has the effect of legitimizing their positions. So dissent from those folks will be expected, whereas a "legit" organization (in the eyes of the mainstream proprietary biz world) that ends up behaving as dissenters would appear MORE hippie-ish than the hippies who are behaving as expected.
Being a greasy hippie myself, I welcome this chance for other hippies to express the views I advocate.
On a side note, TFA says:
FSF (and FSFE) advocate the use of Libre software, also known as Free software or Open-Source software.
TFA was obviously not Stallman approved!
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the size of the IP stockpile that RMS is essentially sitting on due to the GPL sounds like you think Stallman or the FSF owns the copyright of every GPL-licensed program. This is absolutely wrong. Unless you decide to transfer the copyright to someone else, all IP rights are yours.
The FSF and OSI have very different goals that happen to be the same in practice most of the time, but not all.
Do you know that the OSI definition is based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which are of course very strongly influenced by the Free Software movement?
OSI takes a much more pragmatic approach, so licenses that restrict freedom to some extent, but still provide the basic benefits of Open Source (access to use and modify code) are OSI compliant, but classified as Non-Free by the FSF.
The reason that OSI seems to be more pragmatic is that it provides a certification process based on fixed terms. The FSF doesn't do that, so they can act in a much more flexible way.
One example is the earlier versions of the Apple Public Source License (APSL version 1.x). This was OSI approved, but classified as non-free by the FSF. Similar issues arise with the (original) Artistic License.
It is interesting to see that both issues don't exist with the latest versions of these licenses.
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