WIPO Is Quietly Signing An Agreement To Give Hollywood Stars Their Own Special Version Of Copyright

from the why? dept

We've mentioned that the copyright maximalists of the world never stop in their ongoing efforts around the globe to expand government granted monopoly privileges. Back in April we warned about an upcoming negotiation on an "audiovisual right" that would create an entirely new -- and entirely unnecessary -- form of "copyright" for performers themselves. Copyright, of course, goes to whoever "fixes" the work. So, for movies, the studio producing it gets the copyright. But this treaty goes above and beyond that and would grant the actors in video works entirely separate rights, allowing them to control how their images are used around the globe.

And, of course, while everyone's been paying attention to things like the ACTA vote in the EU, this treaty has moved forward and may be signed as soon as today from the sound of things. I have yet to see a reasonable explanation for this, other than "gee, actors would really like it if we gave them monopoly rights." Reuters quotes WIPO's maximalist-in-chief, Francis Gurry insisting that "it's a real problem" but never actually defining how it's a problem:

They also have no rights in many countries if their work is manipulated in any way that may harm their reputation.

"It's a real problem - it's not an artificial problem," Francis Gurry, the World Intellectual Property Organization's director general, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

"The actors are the ones, in the international framework, who have not been catered for."

Wait. So this is all about some actors being upset that someone "manipulated" their work? We're creating an entirely new monopoly right for actors because they're all upset about someone creating a little mashup or parody? And this is "a real problem"? Are they insane? This isn't a problem at all. This is catering to a population of people (Hollywood actors) who already have skins too thin, who will now be able to try to stifle all sorts of protected speech, parodies, mashups, commentary and the like, just because they might not like it.

That's no reason to create new monopoly rights.

The negotiations for this agreement have been taking place in Beijing, leading Gurry to talk about why that's the perfect place for such negotiations due to China's cultural history:

The Director General said it is particularly appropriate that the event is taking place in Beijing because of the depth of China’s historical association with the performing arts, as well as the vitality and dynamism of its contemporary theatre, cinema and television. “Theatre, acting and performance in China date back to the Shang Dynasty and enjoy an unbroken historical continuity of development and adaptation, leading to the blossoming contemporary culture that saw China produce over 500 feature films in 2010 and the largest number of television series of any country in the world,” he said.

Er... isn't it worth pointing out that this "vitality and dynamism" of culture in China was built up almost entirely without intellectual property laws, since the country only introduced copyright in 1991? Why is Gurry pretending that China needs these new monopoly rights when we've already seen that culture their flourished without it? Amusingly, a Chinese official at the meetings announced that: "Respecting IP is ... a mark of our civilization," which appears to be an out and out fabrication.

The full proposal (also embedded below) is really broad, and appears to mimic many of the rights established by copyright law. Performers -- mainly actors, but also musicians -- even if they're not the copyright holders will get an exclusive right to prevent others from reproducing, distributing or performing the works. In some cases, the rights appear to be even broader than current copyright law, such as an explicit "making available right." Under copyright law there's been some dispute if merely "making available" violates the "distribution" right, or if someone actually has to download it to violate that right. However, this treaty explicitly defines a "making available" right -- showing, once again, how IP laws only seem to expand outwards. Furthermore, it establishes "moral rights" for performers -- an idea that the US has repeatedly rejected for everyone outside of a very small group of artists (such as painters). It seems troubling that we'd suddenly agree to a massive moral rights regime without any public discussion in the US.

On top of that, Article 15 of the agreement appears to include an exceptionally broad anti-circumvention provision -- something we've already found to be disastrous under the DMCA. Why would we possibly want to expand that such that performers can go after anyone for breaking DRM even if for perfectly legal purposes. This makes no sense.

And while it might sound nice that performers would get their own rights outside of the copyright, that's not how it's going to play out. One of the "differences" this time around from the last time it was discussed a dozen years ago, is that this version will allow for the transfer of such rights to producers... meaning that actors in Hollywood movies will be forced to hand these rights over to the studios anyway -- meaning more excessive monopoly rights that the MPAA and RIAA will be able to assert to shut down legitimate content.

This thing has disaster written all over it... and it appears to be passing without most people noticing.

Filed Under: acta, china, dmca, drm, hollywood, performance rights, wipo

US Gov't Tells Developing Nations That Patents & High Prices Are Good For The Health Of Their Citizens

from the oh-really-now? dept

There have been plenty of studies showing how -- especially in developing nations -- patents for pharmaceuticals serve to keep important drugs (which are cheap to manufacture) out of reach of the patients who need them most. In large part, because of this, various world bodies have accepted the idea that nations may decide to ignore patents in the interest of public health and safety. And that appears to work and be helpful. For example, we were just discussing how such generic copies were helpful in massively reducing the price of key drugs in India. And, no, this did not mean that the original manufacturer was unable to profit. This was on a drug where the company (Bayer) had made many times over its investment around the globe already, yet was still pricing the drug at over $5,000, while the generics were coming in at between $100 and $200.

There have been so many studies on this that you'd have to be either ignorant or deceitful to suggest that such a plan was a problem.

So I'm trying to figure out which adjective should apply to the USPTO, who recently gave a talk to a WIPO committee on the issue of patents and health, in which they argued that such efforts actually did more harm than good, and the way to keep people safe in developing countries was to increase patent protection:

There is no easy solution to these problems. Reducing patent protection is not likely to solve these thorny issues.... To the contrary, the lack of effective patent protection can be one of the many factors which prevent the appropriate medicines from reaching the neediest patients in DC and LDCs. Weakening the patent rights granted to pharmaceutical researchers and manufacturers in certain markets not only removes or reduces the incentive to develop new medicines, but also reduces the incentives for innovative medicine developers to invest in those countries and harness their innovation to solving the public health challenges that disproportionately affect developing countries, and are not being solved in other ways.

This statement is hogwash. First of all, there's nothing stopping these companies from profiting greatly in the developed world with these drugs, as they do already. And the idea that they wouldn't, say, invest in India if they could only get $100 per drug rather than $5,000... well, who cares? Considering how much more of these drugs they'd sell at those lower prices, there would still be plenty of profit to go around. Apparently, the folks at the USPTO have never learned a thing about price elasticity. Second, if a big pharma is too stupid to know how to provide drugs (which are relatively cheap to manufacture) at a reasonable cost for a profit, it seems pretty freaking natural that other companies are willing to step in and offer generics. So, really, why should anyone care if, say, Bayer decides to ignore India because it wants $5,000 for pills that others are willing to sell at $120? We're talking about the health and safety of the public, not Bayer.

Weakening patent protection for innovative medicines is not a productive approach to improving availability of health care, because many other factors other than patents more directly affect the availability of medicines.

The proof of the weakness of that argument is that although most medicines on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines are not protected by patents, their availability in many markets is still limited. This is particularly true in DC/LDCs. Many other factors affect the availability of all medicines, patented or not.

This is a nice bit of sleight of hand, confusing correlation with causation. No one says that a lack of patents means that such drugs are automatically made available in every market. But it takes a truly demented view of the world to take that fact and assume that such drugs would be more widely available if only those non-patented drugs were in fact covered by patent.

From there, the USPTO proposed a study to show how wonderful patents are in getting drugs to poor countries, to "restore balance to the discussion by evaluating the role of patent protection in providing incentives for research and development...." Funny how they were just talking about drugs that were off-patent not being available... but now they ignore that and it's all about new drug development. But, more seriously, I find it absolutely hilarious that the USPTO wants to talk about "restoring balance." This is an organization that has always pushed for "more patents" at pretty much any cost. The whole software industry is facing a massive crisis of gridlocked development over bogus patents. If we're going to start "restoring balance" to the patent system, let's start at home.

This kind of stuff is really sickening, because it's basically the USPTO saying that poor people around the globe should suffer and die if helping them doesn't produce enough profits for big pharmaceutical conglomerates. I don't know how people taking that position can sleep at night.

Filed Under: developing nations, generic drugs, pharmaceutical patents, uspto, who, wipo
Companies: bayer

Where TPP Goes Beyond ACTA -- And How It Shows Us The Future Of IP Enforcement

from the coming-your-way dept

ACTA and TPP have much in common. That's no coincidence, since they are both born of a common desire to move away from multilateral forums like WIPO that are relatively open to scrutiny, to invitation-only groups negotiating behind closed doors. That lack of transparency has allowed all kinds of extreme measures to be proposed without any countervailing arguments being heard about why they are neither fair nor sensible.

But in many ways, what's really interesting is how the two treaties differ, because it's clear that in many places TPP goes well beyond ACTA -- it's not simply a transposition of ACTA to the Pacific Rim. As such, those differences represent the next turn of the copyright enforcement screw, and give us a fascinating insight into where the copyright maximalists are likely to be pushing for more when it comes to drawing up successors to ACTA and SOPA, say.

That fact makes some recent work by Carrie Ellen Sager particularly useful. She has prepared a detailed comparison of the US proposal for a TPP Chapter on IP (the only information we have on TPP so far) with the relevant sections of ACTA. There are two versions: a full comparison table (pdf) and one with the highlights (pdf). In what follows, I'll be quoting from the latter.

Here's a typical way in which TPP is even more stringent than ACTA:

Under ACTA, a country may give its authorities the power to force an ISP to identify an infringer to rightholders, subject to certain conditions. Under TPP, a country shall establish administrative or judicial procedures for forcing an ISP to identify an infringer to rightholders, without ACTA’s conditions.

That's important, because much of ACTA is optional in this way: TPP indicates how the copyright industries will be pushing to turn its frequent use of "may" into "shall" when it comes to implementation. They will be able to do that because ACTA sets a floor for enforcement, but allows signatories to go beyond its terms if they wish.

On "Technological Protection Measures" TPP has two nasty turns of the infringement screw:

TPP goes beyond ACTA by applying provisions on technological protection where circumvention is carried out unknowingly or without reasonable grounds to know.

and

TPP goes beyond ACTA by explicitly limiting the possible limitations and exclusions to the TPM circumvention rules, while ACTA gives a country free reign to create exceptions and limitations it finds reasonable.

The second of those is particularly troublesome, since it reduces the scope for signatories to introduce more balanced copyright laws even if they wanted to.

In the criminal penalties section, there are the following differences:

TPP goes beyond ACTA by omitting safeguard that such penalties shall be consistent with “the level of penalties applied for crimes of a corresponding gravity.”

TPP goes beyond ACTA by requiring party members to establish policies or guidelines to “encourage judicial authorities to [actually] impose those penalties.”

TPP goes beyond ACTA by requiring criminal penalties for copyright or related rights infringements “that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain.”

The net effect of those changes is to make the criminal penalties much harsher, and to push for them to be applied in every case. The last of the above differences means that even casual copyright infringement caused by swapping files with friends might be subject to criminal penalties.

There's also bad stuff on the civil penalties side:

TPP goes beyond ACTA by requiring pre-established damages to be "sufficiently high to constitute a deterrent to future infringement." Additionally, unlike ACTA, TPP provides that in patent infringement cases, the damages may be increased up to three times the injury.

TPP goes beyond ACTA by adding patent infringement to the list of case types for which a losing party may be required to pay court costs and attorney’s fees (in addition to copyright and trademark infringement cases).

Applying ACTA to patents was made optional towards the end of the negotiations, and it's interesting to see TPP putting them back as compulsory. The other elements make losing even more expensive, which patent trolls will love when they come to make their threats against real innovators who will be forced to pay up rather than take a chance of being hit with crippling damages.

As these excerpts make clear, TPP effectively tidies up all the lose ends that ACTA left dangling -- generally imposing far harsher penalties, adding back patents, and making everything compulsory rather than optional. It also provides us with a clear sense of what ACTA 2.0 will be like unless it is negotiated with real transparency that allows all parties, including civil groups and the general public, to have their voices heard.

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Filed Under: acta, carrie ellen sager, enforcement, tpp, wipo

IP Above All Else: WIPO Defies UN Sanctions To Give Computers To North Korea

from the wow dept

This story is almost too crazy to believe. WIPO, the UN agency that more or less acts as the global IP maximalist agenda-setter, is now being accused of defying UN sanctions, by shipping computers and servers to North Korea. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid scrutiny over this very questionable transfer, WIPO tried to route everything through someone in China. The payment, however, was halted by Bank of America, who quickly realized that delivering computers to North Korea almost certainly violated sanctions against supplying technology to the country.

So why is WIPO giving computers to the North Korean government? Because, in its obsessively idiotic desire to expand intellectual property around the globe, the computers are supposed to help North Korea search foreign patent databases in order to abide by international patent law. Seriously. Why does NK need such computers? Because it bans the internet, so WIPO is concerned that people in North Korea can't use the internet to search through international patents. So, in an astoundingly stupidly short-sighted move, WIPO thinks that by giving North Korea computers to set up a local database of patents and trademarks, it can help the country obey international patents.

“As part of WIPO’s technical assistance program -- and through a mandate from its member states -- the Organization has been supporting IP [intellectual property] offices in developing countries to facilitate the processing of patent and trademark applications since the 1990s,” the spokesman said. “The assistance in question was part of this program.”

The assistance “is intended to enhance the efficiency of the operation of registration for patents by replacing the current ICT equipment with more efficient ICT [information and communications technology] equipment,” the spokesman continued.

Of course, as plenty of people outside the IP-maximalist bubble realize, North Korea doesn't give a damn about foreign patent and trademark applications. The country is actually well known for being a key source of counterfeiting. Second, and perhaps more important, the very reason that there's a ban on sending technology to North Korea is the fact that the government has been making use of any tech it can get its hands on to further its nuclear ambitions. Third, does WIPO really want to be in the business of supporting North Korea's ban on internet access? Are those the kinds of projects that the UN and WIPO think are worthwhile these days?

There's a full project plan that lists out all of the computer equipment being supplied, and lots of talk about how it will be used for patent and trademark databases, but does anyone seriously believe that's how it's going to be used? North Korea even sent a letter to WIPO thanking it for its support in supplying these computers.

Part of the reason that this is now being investigated is because a lawyer at WIPO raised concerns about the project, noting that it appeared to be in violation of UN sanctions (yes, a UN organization is violating UN sanctions...). The lawyer points out that the proper channels of review were not used here, and that he's:

...extremely concerned by the fact that WIPO staff may be implementing a project in violation of two UN Security Council Resolutions... and possibly in violation of staff's own international obligations, and their national laws.

The project also raises serious ethical concerns, namely whether an International Organization should be funding a project that would not be required if the state concerned allowed its population to access the Internet.

WIPO, and its director, Francis Gurry, are insisting they've done nothing (nothing!) wrong at all in supplying computer equipment to North Korea -- despite not being particularly public with the normal communication channels about the deal, and trying to route the whole thing through China. Clearly worried about the criticism, though, WIPO had another WIPO lawyer send around a legal memorandum that reads like a court filing, defending the actions. The memo whines that the decision by Bank of America to block the payment was based on US law, and it's not subject to US law. Of course, that US law is based on those UN sanctions. As for the UN sanctions, the memorandum insists that these actions were all perfectly legal -- believing that as long as you don't say the computers will be used for nuclear efforts, then everything is fine and dandy. It's as if WIPO thinks everyone else in the world is completely stupid.

That said, the very same lawyer, Edward Kwakwa, was also involved in a series of emails, in which he suggests that WIPO cancel the project, suggesting that it may violate the UN rules, and saying that:

I would suggest we go ahead ONLY if you think this arrangement is of crucial importance to WIPO. But given the sensitivities and the broad sweep of the sanctions language, I would prefer that WIPO simply desist from entering into any such arrangement, as it does not seem to be of any consequence or benefit to WIPO, and can bring more trouble than benefit ultimately.

Yes, that's the same guy who wrote the legal memo defending the deal. That same email thread has someone from WIPO saying that perhaps they should cancel the deal... but also pointing out that canceling this particular deal with North Korea would have little impact, "if we take into consideration that similar operations have already been done in the past, and others should be done in the future." In other words, it appears that WIPO has already sent similar technology to North Korea in the past -- perhaps in violations of the sanctions, and appears prepared to do so again in the future.

The whole thing is really quite insane when you go through all the details. WIPO, the IP-maximalist organization that is a part of the UN, is, at the very least, aiding North Korea's plan to keep the internet illegal, by supplying an entire computer system so that people in North Korea can research international patents and trademarks that they will almost certainly ignore -- or use for the purpose of counterfeiting. All of this is almost certainly in violation of UN sanctions against North Korea, and it seems likely that the computing equipment will be repurposed for use by North Korea in its nuclear program, where they are desperate for computing power. On top of that, even as WIPO officials themselves suggest that the deal should be dropped (while admitting more are already planned...), they are also making the case publicly that this is all perfectly legal.

This should be a pretty big scandal, and absolutely calls into question the management of WIPO. Having an economically unsupportable IP maximalist position is one thing. Aiding the North Korean nuclear program is an entirely different issue...

Filed Under: north korea, sanctions, united nations, wipo
Companies: bank of america

Commerce Department Postpones 'Africa IP Forum' After People Point Out How One-Sided It Is

from the all-stakeholders?-you-mean-we-have-to-hear-from-the-other-side? dept

A couple weeks ago, we pointed to an absolutely ridiculous "Africa IP Forum" that was being organized by WIPO and the US Department of Commerce, where it appeared the entire event was around forcing extreme IP enforcement on Africa, despite plenty of evidence that developing nations, such as most of those in Africa, are hurt by such enforcement. The whole schedule was one-sided with speakers who mainly supported extreme enforcement over looking for the most reasonable overall solutions for different economies. After widespread outcry concerning this rather non-subtle attempt to export US-style copyright maximalism to the African continent, the US Commerce Department has announced that the event has been postponed.

The African Intellectual Property Forum, originally slated for April 3-5, 2012 in Cape Town, will be rescheduled. Organizers are committed to ensuring that all stakeholders – in government, private business, the arts and the development community – are represented and engaged in the conference organization and agenda.

The organizers apparently also sent emails to those who had registered, apologizing to people who had already made travel arrangements.

While it's nice that the Commerce Department has recognized that the original program was no good and that all stakeholders should be heard from -- it would have been much nicer and a hell of a lot more convincing if they had done so originally, rather than just a few weeks before the scheduled event when people started protesting...

Filed Under: africa, commerce department, copyright, enforcement, ip forum, patents, wipo

US Begins Process Of Forcing Extreme IP Enforcement Across Africa

from the is-this-really-what-africa-needs? dept

We've noted a few times recently that over the last few years WIPO has at least appeared to be more receptive to views from developing nations that strict copyright and patent enforcement could do a lot more damage than good. There are actually tons of compelling economic evidence that developing countries are best off mostly ignoring IP laws as they grow. Hell, the US is example number one of a country that completely ignored foreign IP laws while it developed, much to its advantage. Of course, the US, which leads the developed countries these days, absolutely hates this concept and has taken a strong maximalist position that all countries must respect US IP laws (or go even further). A big part of the reason that ACTA was negotiated outside of WIPO was because WIPO was actually listening to countries like Brazil and India that were expressing concerns about over-enforcement and the harms it created.

However, WIPO itself has expressed concerns about this... but rather than working to convince the US that its approach is incorrect, it looks like WIPO may be going back in the other direction of supporting pure maximalism (i.e., the US agenda). Witness the ridiculous situation shaping up in Africa, where "WIPO" is organizing a "training" program about intellectual property that appears to have been entirely created by the US. It's scheduled to take place in South Africa in April, but it's strictly focused on enforcement and concepts that the US supports, rather than more reasoned issues about what countries in Africa actually need:

“It’s as if the last five years didn’t happen – no WIPO Development Agenda, no discussion on copyright limitations and exceptions, no proposals in favour of libraries and archives, education, blind and visually impaired people,” said Teresa Hackett, Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL). “But they did happen, and we will work to ensure that delegates attending the African IP Forum hear a diversity of opinion and perspective, and have the opportunity to debate these issues that are critically important to libraries in Africa and around the world.”

People discussing it note that this meeting doesn't appear to really be about effective intellectual property, but about setting the stage to force ACTA or ACTA-style agreements across Europe:

A particular concern of NGOs is that the conference will advance anti-counterfeiting legislation across Africa that will lead to damaging restrictions to the local populations and economies. They also raised alarm that the conference does not appear to include discussion on how to use the hard-won flexibilities that developing countries are allowed to employ so as not to apply IP rights if not in their national interest.

Furthermore, groups worried about this meeting note that the event is sponsored by private groups who have strong interests in greater IP enforcement, rather than the interests of what's best for various African nations. Among the sponsors is the International Chamber of Commerce's Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP). From that, it's pretty clear that the entire meeting's goals are suspect.

If there's going to be an effort by the international community to explore IP issues in Africa, the least they could do is acknowledge the fact that IP laws are supposed to be about what's best for the people, not what's best for big international corporations who want to maximize profit from African markets. But thanks to US involvement, that doesn't seem possible.

Filed Under: africa, extremes, ip enforcement, us, wipo
Companies: chamber of commerce

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Would Like To Know What You Think Of Them (Sorta)

from the but-mainly-if-you-think-ip-is-awesome dept

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has a pretty long history of basically being the leading supporter of ever stricter and more ridiculous copyright (and patent and trademark laws). To be fair, in recent years, WIPO has actually been somewhat more open to at least hearing from folks actually representing the public, who have pointed out that stronger IP laws often do much more harm than good for wider society. But, on the whole, the group is still very much representing the interests of copyright, patent and trademark holders, rather than the general public. It's why the group gets called out for crazy ideas like making service providers into IP cops and suggesting that things would have been better if the web had been patented.

Either way, it appears that WIPO has hired a company to reach out to get "Stakeholder Perceptions of WIPO." It's pretty rare that WIPO actually hears from the public that its efforts and agreements really impact, so here's a chance to make sure WIPO knows what you think of its efforts to expand IP law over the years... Have at it, and let them know your thoughts.

Unfortunately, many of the questions are kind of ridiculous in the "and when did you stop beating your wife" variety. For example, at one point they ask you to "rank" how important specific WIPO priorities are -- and looking down the list, I though pretty much all of them should not be priorities, because all of them focused on expanding IP, rather than looking at more effective IP, or even exploring where IP might hurt the public. There are a few other questions like that as well, where I wanted to challenge the nature of the question itself, but was forced to choose the "least bad" or "least incorrect" answer instead. Still, there were a few opportunities to make it clear to WIPO that you'd prefer the organization not just be a representative to expand IP at all costs, but one that should pay attention to what actually helps society the most -- even if that means cutting back on some IP rules -- something that seems to be completely foreign to WIPO's world view so far.

It's really unfortunate that WIPO would stack the questions so badly such that the only thing you can really say for most of them is just how awesome IP is and how much better it would be if IP expanded. But hopefully some of you will figure out ways to make it clear to WIPO that perhaps it should be focusing on making sure the public benefits, not just how to expand IP.

Filed Under: intellectual property, survey, wipo

Philippines IP Office: Anti-Counterfeiting Meeting Isn't About Kowtowing To Corporate Interests... Except That It Is

from the that's-a-denial? dept

Earlier this year, the US government admitted that it was funding special programs in conjunction with WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) to help push anti-counterfeiting enforcement efforts around the globe, despite tons of evidence that counterfeiting isn't a big problem, and actually is massively smaller than the industry makes it out to be. That US funding led directly to a secretive meeting in the Philippines, that was entirely one-sided, focusing solely on companies and their desire for greater enforcement against counterfeits.

Over the weekend, however, Cory Doctorow called WIPO out on this meeting, noting that it wasn't even on WIPO's website, and appeared to go against WIPO's own agenda concerning recognizing the "broader societal interests." This resulted in WIPO giving a weak defense of the event -- while also distancing itself from the event (saying it was only part of the first two days -- and the rest were from the Philippines government).

That, in turn, resulted in this somewhat hilarious attempt at a defense of the event from the Philippines IP Office. The IP Office first denies that this is a one-sided event designed to help big sponsoring companies... and then goes on to admit that's exactly what it was about in the very next sentence:

“Strictly speaking, the workshops sponsored by these corporations will, of course, teach our law enforcement officers how to act in the interest of those business entities,” observed Ricardo R. Blancaflor, Director General of Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL). “However, it is also true that these brands are the most pirated in the country. They have lost a lot of profits due to piracy.”

That's very convincing.

Filed Under: counterfeiting, one-sided, philippines, wipo

WIPO Article About Manga Piracy Describes Publishers' Failure To Meet Demand In Graphic Detail

from the why-not-sell-them-what-they-want? dept

Somehow you rather expect the head of the WIPO to come out with a statement on the potential benefits of patenting the World Wide Web. But you probably don't look to the WIPO website to carry stuff like this:

Like most comics, manga (roughly translated as "whimsical pictures") is rooted in sequential art - a narrative made up of images and presented in sequence. The earliest examples of Japanese sequential art are thought to date from the 12th century Chōjū Jinbutsu Giga animal scrolls.

The term "manga" is believed to have been first used by the renowned 16th [sic] century woodblock print (ukiyo-e) artist, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).

That's taken from an article called "The Manga phenomenon" published in the September 2011 edition of the "WIPO Magazine" (who knew that such a thing existed?) But why exactly has WIPO developed this sudden interest in manga? You probably guessed this was coming:

Manga continues to enjoy a broad global appeal but the industry is suffering acutely from the scourge of piracy.

Here's the WIPO article's explanation of what happened:

When it was first launched internationally, manga occupied a niche market in many countries. However, it soon captured the imagination of readers around the world, spawning an enthusiastic international fan base that became increasingly frustrated by the inability to access the same content as their Japanese counterparts. The need to translate manga from Japanese meant there were inevitable delays in their international release. Moreover, many titles were never released internationally because they were deemed inappropriate for specific markets, were unsuccessful in Japan, or were only published locally by independent publishers.

The Internet offered fans a wonderful solution. Many learned Japanese, acquired the original manga, then scanned, translated, edited and posted them on the Internet for free downloading. Alas, what began as a practice driven by enthusiastic fans has become a serious blight on the industry. So-called scanlation - the act of scanning, translating and posting manga on the Internet - is, in fact, striking at the heart of manga and threatening its very existence.

Unauthorized scans or "raws" are typically generated by individuals who scan books into electronic format, a practice known as jisui, which translates as "to cook for one’s self." With the uptake of e-book readers and computer tablets, jisui has become a fully-fledged business with the emergence of popular scanlation aggregator websites hosting thousands of manga episodes and making them available free of charge. Those who do scanlation rake in profits through advertising on their own websites and also earn points which can be turned into cash for each download made from an aggregator website.

This shows that publishers were doing such a poor job meeting the demand for manga outside Japan that it drove some fans to go to the trouble of learning Japanese, acquiring the original manga, scanning them, translating them, editing and then posting them on the Internet. That sounds like an incredible business opportunity for manga publishers to "rake in profits through advertising on their own websites," instead of letting others profit. But unauthorized sites were left unchallenged, and flourished as a result:

Scanlation groups, of which there are now well over a thousand, are perpetuating a highly corrosive form of piracy that is threatening the industry, causing global manga sales to plummet and forcing publishers to lay off staff. From 2007 to 2009, for example, U.S. manga sales fell by 30 percent forcing a leading publisher to lay off 40 percent of its workforce.

What exactly were the manga publishers doing to staunch these losses overseas during the last four years? Absolutely nothing - they only started trying to capture all that lost revenue this year:

But major manga publishers are fighting back by reaching out to manga fans in new ways. This year, Kadokawa Group Publishing Co. Ltd. (Kadokawa) simultaneously released a large number of popular titles in key Asian markets. Companies like Tezuka Productions are making available legal, electronic English-language versions of popular manga for tablet computers and, earlier this year the Japan Book Publishers Association launched a series of initiatives to clamp down on unauthorized scanlation activities.

The question has to be: if it was clear that the scanlation groups were "raking in" profits from online manga, why weren't the publishers offering authorized copies to meet this huge demand back in 2007?

This is a classic tale of old-style media companies refusing to seize the opportunities offered by the Internet's "wonderful solution" to foreign distribution. Instead, the manga publishers assumed their customers would passively wait until some far-off day when authorized versions were finally made available. And they seem to regard it as extraordinary that, being denied manga through official channels, those fans should be driven by their passion to find other ways to obtain the latest productions of the art form they loved so much.

Of course, the WIPO article is silent on this massive failure by the publishers; instead, it falls back on the tired old rhetoric that piracy is "killing" manga:

Rampant manga piracy is making it increasingly difficult for manga artists (mangaka) to earn a living from their work. Many rely on royalty payments to survive. These are modest at the best of times, especially for new artists, and are generally insufficient for most to make ends meet. Of Japan’s estimated 3,000 professional mangaka, only around 10 percent earn enough to be able to devote all of their time and energy to their art. The simple truth is that if manga artists cannot earn a living from their art, there will be no manga.

The simple truth is that manga artists could have earned much more from their art had manga publishers not been too lazy to consider changing their old business models, and had started selling international customers online products they were clearly desperate to buy.

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Filed Under: demand, manga, publishers, wipo

No, WIPO Boss Did Not Say The Web Would Have Been Better If Patented... But His Comment Was Still Nonsensical

from the setting-the-record-straight dept

A whole bunch of you have been submitting this BoingBoing post which claims that WIPO director Francis Gurry claimed that the World Wide Web would have been better off if it had been patented. That was an interesting claim based on two things. First, a couple months ago, we had put forth a hypothetical about what would the web look like, if Tim Berners-Lee had patented it. Second, WIPO boss Francis Gurry has shown in the past to be much more thoughtful and realistic when it comes to intellectual property -- so the arguments seemed a bit out of character from what I'd heard from him before.

So I listened to the session, which you can find as the top righthand video on this page. Gurry's comments are a little silly, but he does not say that the web would have been better off if it were patented. Instead, he's responding to the point raised earlier in the session about the importance of investment in basic research, and noted that CERN -- where the web was first developed -- might have been able to invest more in basic research if it had been able to receive a small bit of revenue from patenting the web. In that context, his comments make slightly more sense:

Intellectual property is a very flexible instrument. So, for example, had the world wide web been able to be patented, and I think that is a question in itself, perhaps the amount of investment that has gone into or would be able to go into basic science would be different. If you had found a very flexible licensing model, in which the burden for the innovation of the world wide web had been shared across the whole user community in a very fair and reasonable manner, with a modest contribution for everyone for this wonderful innovation, it would have enabled enormous investment in turn in further basic research. And that is the sort of flexibility that is built into the intellectual property system. It is not a rigid system...

He certainly is not arguing that the web would have been better off -- just that it's possible that CERN and its investments in basic research would have been better off. Of course, there is a counter argument to that -- which is that if it had locked up the web in such a manner, the web that Berners-Lee created would not be "the web." It's doubtful that Marc Andreessen would have paid a license fee, no matter how "reasonable," to build the first "successful" web browser, Mosaic. It's likely that something else would have come along instead -- perhaps similar, but not the same.

Separately, I'd argue that, in an indirect manner, it's quite likely that the widespread success of the internet and the openness that it embraced has contributed significantly more back to the ability to do basic research than if CERN had been able to collect a few dollars for the invention. What the web did do was certainly raise CERN's profile even higher around the globe, and that likely opened up new opportunities for research and funding, among other things. Gurry's mistake, here, is in assuming that the necessary ingredient for increased basic research is merely money -- and also only money that comes directly in return for a concept. That's not true. As the rest of the panel he sat on discussed, the key ingredients of innovation tend to be openness, sharing and access to information. All of those contribute back to lots of different areas, including basic research. So I doubt his conclusion is accurate, but it's unfair to accuse him of saying something he simply did not say.

Filed Under: basic research, francis gurry, patents, web, wipo