US Ambassador To The UN Says WIPO Too Biased Against IP Holders

Back in 2010, Techdirt reported on a fairly remarkable comment from the US ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Betty E. King, who said at a press conference: 

On Techdirt.

Opening Up ISO's Can of Worms

Nothing shows better what is wrong with the ISO, and why we need to replace it with a new global standards organisation, than the following post....

On Open Enterprise blog.

ACTA's Unspeakable Acts

It seems that the Mighty behind the imminent ACTA are aware that what they are up to is literally unspeakable:

I’ve recently heard through a grapevine that ACTA negotiants have reportedly signed non-disclosure agreements as a condition of their participation in this week’s secret closed-door meeting in Geneva.

This is an amazing and frightening step backwards in the history of global governance. It also epitomizes the ACTA negotiants’ dismissive attitude towards the importance of credible, transparent trade policy-making in the current global environment.

Anyone who would seek to radically transform the world’s trade in intangible assets without the participation of most of the world’s governments has learned little from the Asian Financial Crisis, the Iraq War, or the ongoing real estate and credit catastrophe.

Why isn't the mainstream media up in arms about this? Or are they too busy contemplating their own growing impotence and irrelevance? Some of us have been warning about this for six months....

Microsoft's New Meme: "Marketplace Relevance"

Well, you can probably guess what Microsoft's Jason Matusow writes in his post about the Geneva BRM from the headline:

The Open XML Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) Was An Unqualified Success

That, of course, was to be expected. But what interests me is a new Microsoft meme that seems to hint at how they will try to play this going forward:

ISO/IEC standards are not only technically sound, but they should also be relevant to the marketplace.

* DIS 29500, as improved through the rigorous review of the past year and the decisions made by delegations during the BRM, is a specification that meets both bars of technical quality and marketplace relevance.
* Independent implementations of the specification are already available on most major operating systems platforms and in hundreds of applications. The statement that Open XML is about a single vendor is specious and empirically false.
* Open XML has brought more attention to, and interest in, international standardization than any specification in the history of the ICT industry. The reason for this is simple - greater openness in all document formats (not just Open XML) is a good thing for everyone. There is general recognition that there will be broad adoption of this format around the world. Open XML delivers on that promise and is part of the rich ecosystem of open document formats that are driving this issue forward.
* At the end of the day, customers should be able to choose the format(s) that best meet their needs and should not be told which technology to use. Open XML, as improved through the hard work of national bodies over the past year, is an attractive alternative for them.

This seems to be preparing the ground for an eventual rejection of OOXML. The line would be well, being an official ISO standard isn't *so* important: what matters is "marketplace relevance". And we all know what that means: just keep that status quo rolling...

Geneva BRM Vote Result: It's Clearly "Zlthoy"

If anyone can make sense of what happened this week in Geneva during the BRM process it's Andy Updegrove. He has an unrivalled grasp of both standards in general and the specific background to the whole sorry business. So the fact that I don't really understand his post of what exactly the final result of the meeting was is a worrying indication that my brain has started to rot.

Here's the summary:

There are two ways in which you may hear the results of the BRM summarized by those that issue statements and press releases in the days to come. Perhaps inevitably, they are diametrically opposed, as has so often happened in the ODF - OOXML saga to date. Those results are as follows:

98.4% of the OOXML Proposed Dispositions were approved by a two to one majority at the BRM, validating OOXML

The OOXML Proposed Dispositions OOXML were overwhelmingly rejected by the delegations in attendance at the BRM, indicating the inability of OOXML to be adequately addressed within the "Fast Track" process

Oh, thanks, Andy. I think what I'm looking for here is a kind of Hegelian synthesis of those two contradictory statements.....

Document Freedom Day a Month Too Late?

It all sounds jolly japes:

On 26 March 2008, the Document Freedom Day will provide a global rallying point for Document Liberation and Open Standards. It will literally give teams around the world the chance to "hoist the flag": A 'DFD Starter Pack' containing a flag, t-shirt, leaflets and stickers is in preparation and is planned to be sent out in the first weeks of March to the first 100 teams that sign up. Sixteen teams already signed up during the preparation phase of the DFD prior to this release. Sign your team up now!

Hurry, hurry, hurry.

But I can't help feeling that they have missed a trick here. Surely the obvious time to try to raise awareness of open documents and open standards was just before the meeting beginning on February 25 in Geneva to decide the fate of Microsoft's soi-disant Open Office XML format?

Wikimanifold

Say "Wikipedia", and you probably think of an almost ungraspable quantity of undifferentiated text, but it's much more than that. A good way to appreciate its manifold glory is to take a close look at the Wikimania Awards Finalists page. Me, I'd vote for the diagram showing Han foreign relations and the animation of the Geneva Mechanism. (Via Lessig Blog.)