Wording on software and IPR reflects tough battle

GENEVA – The reality of the World Summit on the Information Society here in Geneva is not just about bringing computers and Internet access to the poor. It’s also about making money from selling hardware, software and services. That partly explains the long and often heated debate over two particularly thorny issues: open software and intellectual property rights, or IPR.

Opinions vary on why agreeing over the two issues was so difficult. It depends, arguably, on what side of the fence you’re on — whether you believe software and other forms of content should be accessible to virtually everyone on the planet regardless of income or only to those able to pay for it.

Here’s the viewpoint of Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Europe, who took part as a lead-member of the Civil Society in the preparatory talks on both issues and is participating in the ongoing negotiations at the summit. The Civil Society represents a wide variety of interest groups, ranging from women and youth to education and free software.

Earlier language advocating the wide use of open-source software has been toned down in the final draft because of demands by U.S. and European Union government delegates that commercial software interests receive fair representation in the plan, according to Greve. The language in the endorsed declaration of principles has gone from outright “support” of open-source software to “promoting” an “increased awareness” of the “different software models, including proprietary, open source and free software,” he said.

The fact that free software is listed in the final draft in addition to open source is the result of intensive lobbying by several groups, including FSF Europe.

What differentiates free software from open source, according to Greve, is basically the freedom it gives users to modify, distribute and use the software in an unlimited way. Open source is a term that even Microsoft Corp. is using when it talks about opening its code for governments to view, he said, adding that “Microsoft software is proprietary software.”

If the pre-summit talks on software were a tough fight, those on IPR were a major battle, according to Greve. “I don’t know of any group that met more often and argued more intensively than this group,” he said. “The U.S. delegation went so far as to invite a group of motion pictures executives to attend a session and argue their case.”

To avoid any wording that would undermine current international IPR accords and efforts by big content holders, the U.S. delegation agreed to “let us squeeze in the word ‘free’ ” in the paragraph on software in return for “a very general statement on intellectual property right protection,” Greve said. He referred to the final draft as “a very tender steak that has been beaten for a long time.”

But, for the untrained eye, the paragraph seems to lack meat altogether: “Intellectual Property protection is important to encourage innovation and creativity in the information society; similarly, the wide disseminating, diffusion and sharing of knowledge is important to encourage innovation and creativity. Facilitating meaningful participation by all in intellectual property issues and knowledge sharing through full awareness and capacity building is a fundamental part of an inclusive information society.”

Get the message? Don’t worry, more details on IPR will follow in the months ahead of the second phase of the summit, to be held in Tunis, Tunisia, in 2005.

“What can water down such political documents is the fact that under the U.N. (United Nations) system, every country has a veto right,” Greve said. “It’s a totally consensus-driven process. If one country says no to some wording, then that wording is dropped.”

So was the tremendous work involved in the draft declaration of principles and action plan worth the effort? “When it comes to software and IPR, I have to admit that we haven’t made a quantum leap,” Greve said. “But we have taken steps nevertheless in creating an awareness at a very high political level of the need to make software and content more easily available to poorer nations, and that’s better than we expected.”