Apr 27, 1998

DEVELOPMENT: PARTIAL RETREAT BY WORLD BANK-WTO ON IPR 'DEBATE'

Geneva, 23 Apr (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Bowing to the criticism from the non-governmental 'internet' community, and the adverse media publicity, the World Bank and the WTO, appear to have slightly modified their earlier attempt to manage a 'public discussion' on intellectual property rights.

The World Bank's Economic Development Institute (EDI) and the World Trade Organization had organized and announced a "TechNet-EDI-WTO Think Tank" as an "electronic discussion" forum on IPRs and economic development with invited panellists to present views on various issues, and invited the public to join, by 'subscribing' (the internet terminology for anyone to join and get by electronic mail material posted to the conference.)

But the public, active environmental and developmental groups, who responded and sought to join, were advised that the 'conference' and discussion was to be a 'broadcast only' conference the views and presentations of the 'invited panellists' would be fully posted, while the comments and views from the general public could not be submitted directly to the discussion, but through a moderator only those comments which are relevant, concise and properly addressed, would be posted.

This aroused an 'outrage' among the internet NGO community, which prides itself on its openness and ability to communicate with each other 'horizontally' without any mediation and censoring of views.

In a new announcement, the organisers have said that the messages on the issue from the public would be posted on the Conference Web page (http://www.vita.org/technet/iprs), but would not be forwarded via email to the discussion group, but that the invited expert panellists will send messages directly to the email discussion group.

The reason for the 'modification', it was announced, was because there were already 400 responses from the public who want to participate, and it would not be feasible to send their responses to the panellists.

However, added the new announcement, panellists and the public would be able to visit the web site and read all the material there.

An NGO activist commented that welcome as this modification was, it also meant that in a 'public debate or discussion', the public cannot pose questions or comments to the panellists and force them to respond, or make their non-response itself an answer.