Well, three months ago it was reported on Slashdot that the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) were holding a public forum online. This was designed as a means to get the input from the consumers onto the whole IP/DRM debacle. The WIPO was the organisation behind forcing Canada to adopt Anti-TPM laws (Anti Copyright Circumvention.)
Like many others, I posted comments on the topic of my interest, DRM. And it seemed like every single consumer agreed – DRM was overall a very, very bad idea. The case was made over and over using a sleuth of well organised points, by people of various and solid backgrounds.
It’s been three months since the discussions were held. Nothing came out of it, which wasn’t of surprise. There was much attention that was spent creating a professional environment from which to discuss and “debate” [I put this in quotes as there was no debates – everyone agreed that DRM was bad]. Despite that however, the WIPO never promised that these debates would amount to any kind of further discussions within the organisation.
But that forgotten event isn’t why I’m posting this here. Why I’m posting is because of the final comments in that discussion, and most importantly their timestamps. The last four comments were posted by the “North American Broadcasters Association”, “International Intellectual Property Alliance”, the BSA (needs no introduction), and the ACT (another IP related entity). Evidently, these were all pro-DRM parties. These were the only pro-DRM parties of the 54 comments posted.
Now onto the timestamps – the forums follow a general pattern. There is an average timespan between posts, which by June 14th was about 1-2 posts/day (after the initial Slashdot onslaught) . So what I find suspicious is that all these pro-DRM articles were written on the final day within hours of each other, and the comment submission deadline. No big mystery there: the WIPO wanted to glorify the importance of the postees by placing them at the end of the commentary table.
What does that mean? Well, it shows that the WIPO highly values the opinion of these organisations. And who can blame them? Analogy time: after all, if you’re going to clearcut an endangered forest, who would you rather listen to? Treehuggers (consumers), or the guy handing you a million dollar cheque (BSA, ACT, NABA, IIPA)?
Will the consumer ultimately prevail? Will our opinions ever matter? They don’t in the senate, as we can’t afford to buy senators like the big corporations can. They don’t in the organisations that are supposed to be of higher moral integrity (WIPO). They don’t in court, because we can’t afford the lawyers that big corporation can to defend our fair rights. They don’t in the media, as they are owned by the same corporations that took us to court, bought the senators, and payed the WIPO.
Note: My power supply blew, which accounts for why I’ve been on the Internet far less lately. Must… get… replacement…
