Intellectual property under fire at the WCIT 2002
Published: 01 Mar 2002 10:34 GMT
A series of apparently unrelated comments at the World Congress on IT (WCIT) 2002 signal an increased questioning about the legitimacy of current intellectual and copyright laws in the digital age.
The first came as Don Tapscott, futurist and author, ferreted through his collection of IT gadgets to demonstrate the increasingly diverse range of digital devices carried by the average IT businessperson.
Producing an MP3 player, he joked about the music industry's response to file swapping. "Rather than trying to harness the technology to their own benefit they are trying to fight it," Tapscott said. "And we are about to see the movie industry commit the same mistake."
Later that day, Dr Carlos Braga, senior manager of the Informatics program for the World Bank, called for business to confront issues surrounding IP and the distribution of ideas.
"Protection of copyright can have very negative implications for the sharing of information," Braga said. "It is not viable to try to enforce intellectual property rights in the way the entertainment industry is doing at the current time."
Addressing the social ramifications of IT in developing nations, Sun Microsystems chief researcher John Gage was extremely critical of some of the metaphors used by exponents of copyright laws.
"The notion that intellectual property rights can be equated with physical property rights is wrong, and it is stifling innovation," Gage said.
However, it was Stanford University Professor Lawrence Lessig who provided the most comprehensive call for a revision of intellectual property laws in the digital age.
"We are seeing an extraordinary concentration of the power of copyright holders, who are being granted the right to veto innovation," Lessig said.
Lessig pointed out that it is possible to protect intellectual property without granting perpetual monopolies to the holders of copyright.
He called for a depolarisation of the copyright debate. "There is a middle position, and in no way am I arguing, or have I ever argued for the abolition of copyright," Lessig said.
"However, when we have reached the point where the music industry is able to prevent the use of and creation of technology in order to protect that copyright they have become too powerful."
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