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UN Bigwig: The Web Should Have Been Patented and Licensed

Posted by timothy on from the surely-he's-been-hypnotized-by-the-yes-men dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has unearthed an amazing video where the head of WIPO, the UN agency responsible for 'promoting' intellectual property, suggests that Tim Berners-Lee should have patented HTML and licensed it to all users. Amazingly this is done on camera and in front of the head of CERN and the Internet Society, who look on in disbelief."

4 of 411 comments (clear)

  1. WIPO == Idiots by zabzonk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I worked at WIPO as a consultant for a year - a bigger collection of clueless f*ckwits would be hard to find.

  2. Well? What do you expect? by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A surgeon will recommend to operate. A lawyer to do legal work. A soldier to kill someone.

    This guy is at WIPO, patents and such is what this guy does. You won't get creative commons out of him.

    The problem is not even this guy, the problem is his opposition. There isn't one. As always, "Yes Prime Minister" has the example. Story: Hacker is given the task of coming up with a new transport policy involving road, rail and air. He soon learns that each sector is represented by a civil servant fighting not for the common good but for HIS sector.

    This story alone does not cover it. In another story his chauffeur comments on a radio story and points out that all the decisions for public transport, public schools and public healthcare are made by people that go to private hospitals, send their kids to private schools and have chauffeur driven cars. Which Hacker sayed they need because else they would have to make public transport a lot more reliable...

    The problem ain't sector reps fighting for their sector, the problem is the common man, the non-commercial, the non-status quo, has no such rep fighting for their cause.

    People who are in ivory towers have plenty of sky bridges connecting them to other ivory towers. But never ever a connection to ground level. I have seen it myself, even if some newbie tries, the disconnect is already so great once they have enough power that any contact attempt is extremely uncomfortable so they soon learn not to do it again.

    This is just how the system works, calling this guy an idiot only helps keep the system in place. Sadly getting a useful opposition in place is nearly impossible.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:Well? What do you expect? by Halo1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I also experienced very nice example of this during the fight against the software patents directive in Europe. I had a discussion with a guy from WIPO and at one point said that software patents were generally bad for small companies. Rather than denying this like EICTA (the organisation representing mostly large ICT companies), he fully agreed with that.

      But then he went off the cliff: he argued that this is actually how the system is supposed to work. By making sure that most small companies will be driven out of business or swallowed by larger ones, you get a consolidation in the market. And consolidation is good for efficiency, cost cutting etc. Basically, he considered software patents as a market optimisation tool to get rid of all the fragmentation, to speed up the "natural" evolution that any economic sector is supposed to go through (starting out with many small time independent businesses, followed by a consolidation phase that leaves a few giants to rule it all).

      That said, WIPO isn't the worst. Countries such as India and Brazil also have a say in there, and they're far less extremist than the Western world (at least for now). WIPO is in fact so annoying to the current extremists that the US, EU and friends completely bypassed it with ACTA. So anyone arguing against UN bodies with the argument that those people are not accountable should be careful, because there at least you have countries from all over the world that have a say rather than only the interests of your own administration (or rather your own "IP"-lobbyists) and some self-selected partners.

      --
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  3. Re:Hindsight by Rich0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Patents document things sufficiently to mount legal battles - not so well that it makes it easier to reproduce an invention.

    Claim - a method in which atomic nuclei are fused together releasing energy capable of destroying cities.

    Go ahead and try to build a hydrogen bomb now...

    Chemists often mine old patents looking for ways to make things, but they're usually only useful as a starting point. If somebody wants to patent some molecule they'll publish some method that creates the molecule in 0.1% yield or whatever - enough to prove by spectral observation that they made it. They don't actually publish a practical method that can be used to make it, since they don't actually want anybody to make it.

    Look here for an example of this in action. The patent (#4,444,784) describes Simvastatin/Zocor - one of the more popular drugs ever taken and due to its expiry probably one of the most commonly prescribed medications around. The first method in the patent starts with 200 gallons of mold and ends up with enough compound to make about 10 pills - at one of the lower dosages. Suffice it to say this is not economical even at $5/pill.

    I didn't spend enough time digging through it to figure out which of the large family of compounds described in the patent ended up being the final pill and how you'd have to make it following the patent, but this is just illustrative. The patent was really just intended to cover the molecule, and the method just proves that they indeed had made it and tested its activity.