[ipr-ict] What is the problem with ipr? [SYNTHESE EN FRANCAIS]

["klohento@panos-ao.org" <klohento@panos-ao.org>]

Je vous propose ci-dessous une synthèse en de l'intéressant article de 
Vera Franz (qui travaille à l'Open Society Institute) envoyé par Philipp.

KL

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Les problèmes que posent les droits de propriété intellectuelle
Vera Franz
21 July 2005


Dans son article, Vera Franz affirme que les DPI (droits de la propriété 
intellectuelle) permettent de formater la société. Ils créent des 
sociétés ouvertes lorsqu'ils favorisent l'accès à l'éducation, au 
savoir, etc. les DPI sont le produit d'un arbitrage social: ils 
permettent à la fois de récompenser les créateurs, pendant un temps 
limité, favorisant ainsi l'innovation, mais doivent également permettre 
aux citoyens d'accéder à la connaissance. Vera Franz constate toutefois 
que la tendance actuelle que prennent les réglémentations 
internationales dans le domaine des DPI contredit la nécessité pour le 
public d'accéder aux créations, ceci depuis l'adoption par 
l'Organisation Mondiale du Commerce (OMC) des accords ADPIC (Accord sur 
les aspects de droit de propriété intellectuelle qui touchent au 
commerce - en anglais TRIPs). Car aujourd'hui, l'équilibre entre les 
intérêts privés des créateurs et la nécessité de l'existence d'un accès 
public aux créations est renversé (en défaveur de l'acces public aux 
créations). En donnant l'exemple de pays africains comme le Sénégal, le 
Burkina et l'Afrique du Sud, elle affirme qu'un produit éducatif comme 
le livre coûte plus cher dans ces pays qu'en Occident. Dès lors, 
l'analphabétisme et la pauvreté s'aggrave. Elle affirme que le régime 
actuel de la propriété intellectuelle est largement responsable de cette 
situation.

Quelques conséquences des régimes actuels de la propriété intellectuelle 
sont cités :

- la réduction du domaine public : par exemple, il y  a quelques années, 
il fallait 28 ans, après la mort de l'auteur pour qu'une oeuvre tombe 
dans le domaine public . Aujourd'hui, les traités internationaux 
imposent 50 ans après la mort de l'auteur. De plus, le droit d'auteur ne 
protège plus seulement l'expression des idées, mais les idées 
elles-mêmes et mêmes les faits.
- l'érosion des droits d'accès: les limites et exceptions aux droits 
d'auteur et au respect des brevets (notamment par les pays pauvres) 
existants sont actuellement menacés. Par exemple, la mise en place de 
protections technologiques sur certains produits "numériques" limite ou 
empêche le "fair use" ou l'usage équitable/honnête, plus largement 
accepté autrefois. Et l'élimination de ces protections (pour les besoins 
d'une école par exemple) constitue actuellement un délit dans bon nombre 
de pays.
- les propriétaires des droits (ou des oeuvres?) ont maintenant plus de 
profits ou droits que les créateurs : par exemple, dans beaucoup de cas, 
les musiciens gagnent moins d'argent sur leurs produits que leurs 
maisons de disques
- l'investissement est plus prisé que l'innovation : le traité sur 
l'audiovisuel (broadcasting treaty) actuellement en négociation à l'OMPI 
induit des conséquences dans ce sens; les entreprises pouvant déposer un 
grand nombre de brevets, contrôlent l'économie du sous-secteur duquel 
relève ce brevet; ils peuvent ainsi empêcher l'émergence de la 
concurrence et l'innovation
- l'émergence de nouveaux models d'usages et de produits est aussi entravée
- chèreté des biens essentiels, notamment ceux dépendant fortement de 
l'information (comme les logiciels, les livres, etc.)
- corruption politique et professionnelle : par exemple Microsoft fait 
du "lobbying" pour s'opposer à la reconnaissance du modèle de production 
collective par les pairs (peer production) - les éditeurs font du 
"lobbying" pour que la publication ouverte ne soit pas reconnue comme modèle
- un modèle unique de la mondialisation émerge et les riches deviennent 
plus riches, les pauvres plus pauvres. Le nouveau système de la 
propriété intellectuelle est imposé aux pays pauvres qui doivent s'y 
adapter. Ces pays n'ont pas réellement l'opportunité de participer aux 
négociations. Par exemple, aucun pays africain n'était acteur dans les 
principaux groupes de négociation dont les travaux ont conduit au format 
actuel des accords ADPIC. Une commission mise en place par le 
gouvernement britannique (Commission on IPR) a d'ailleurs conclu que les 
nouveaux régimes de la propriété intellectuelle favorise les pays ayant 
un meilleur accès à la connaissance et un fort potentiel d'invention.

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What is the current problem with IPR?

Vera Franz
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
21 July 2005


Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) are an important open society
issue because they govern the ownership and control of knowledge.
They are powerful means to deny, delay or distort access to knowledge
and knowledge-based goods – or, alternatively, to enable affordable
access and ensure continued creativity and innovation. They affect
everything from the availability and price of textbooks, scientific
journals, drugs and software, to affordable and free communications
via the Internet, to patterns of economic growth. A healthy knowledge
ecology – one based on a balance between property rights and the
commons – is not only key to a vibrant educational system and culture
and the advancement of sciences, but ultimately shapes the economic,
social and political development of every open society.

IPRs represent a societal bargain. Rewarding and providing incentive
for invention and creative work, IPRs are a state-backed monopoly
which ensures time-limited exclusivity to the inventor or creator to
recoup returns from their work. At the same time, IPRs provide for
access rights so that the public may enjoy the fruits of invention
and creativity and may eventually build upon and improve them. But
under the global IP regime that has emerged in recent decades,
particularly since the WTO TRIPS agreement of 1994, this original
purpose has been distorted as the balance between private
intellectual property rights and public access rights has been
overturned. Further, the potential of open collaborative modes of
knowledge production is ignored by  the current IP system. The
resulting threats for open societies are significant.

Books provide a tangible example. In countries such as Senegal,
library holdings are as low as 1 book per 7 inhabitants. In Burkina
Faso, the rate is as low as 1 book per 70 inhabitants. The
correlation between library holdings and illiteracy rates is
striking.  In South Africa, a copy of Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to
Freedom costs far more than in the UK or US, making it – and most
other books – unaffordable to the majority.  Although poverty is one
reason for this situation, the new IP regime does nothing to
alleviate it. Rather, it makes it worse, deepening illiteracy and in
turn deepening poverty. In a larger frame, the new IP regime is not
only responsible for the unavailability of books, but also restricts
access to all knowledge-based goods, such as medicines, software and
patented technologies.

Here is a brief catalogue of some emerging consequences of this new
regime:

• erosion of the public domain – IP protection has expanded
exponentially in breadth, scope and term over the last century,
leading to a dramatic erosion of the public domain. In the past,
copyright protected expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves,
while patents covered inventions; IPR restrictions are now being
extended to apply to ideas themselves, and even to facts. We grant
rights over new subject matter such as gene sequences, business
methods and software patents. And we have greatly lengthened terms of
protection. For example, the copyright term has increased from the
life of the author plus 28 years to the life of the author plus 50
years (international treaties) or 70 years (US).  If we returned to
the copyright regime of, say, 80 years ago, we would have a public
domain twice the size of what we have now, in terms of the number of
works available without restriction.  In some cases, privatizing some
goods in the public domain can in fact provide economic incentives
for better exploitation of those goods.  But the public domain
provides the raw materials for future creativity and innovation, and
in most cases, privatizing it leads to the negative effects listed
below, such as inhibited innovation, higher prices, and less access
across the board.

• erosion of access rights – Long-established access rights (e.g.,
copyright exceptions and limitations for the general public, or
patent exemptions for poor countries) are under serious threat.
Technological protection measures (TPMs) illustrate this: they
enforce a ‘gapless’ property regime (‘gapless’ meaning a regime
without exceptions and limitations).  And governments no longer shy
away from invoking criminal law for breach of TPMs for any use, even
if it is “fair use” permitted by law. This means, for example, that a
teacher making legitimate copies of a TPM-protected digital document
for classroom use would be committing a criminal offense, as the
copying of the document would entail the breach of a TPM.

• owners take precedence over creators – Mechanisms originally
intended to compensate and support creative individuals have become
unfair to creators themselves.  Standard contracts between authors
and publishers, for example, provide for the transfer of almost all
rights from the author to the publisher. This means that even if a
publisher decides not to continue printing the work, the author often
has no means to ensure the continued availability of his or her work.
And musicians often earn no more than a very small percentage of the
profit from their own recordings, the lion's share going to the media
company.

• investment takes precedence over innovation – Rather than
stimulating innovation and creativity, the primary aim of the new IPR
regime is to protect large-scale investment, often to the detriment
of innovators.  As the building blocks of knowledge are locked up and
concentrated in private hands, this regime is blocking innovation and
creativity at a fundamental level. The latest illustration of this
trend is the Broadcasting Treaty currently under negotiation at WIPO.
This Treaty would, on top of conventional copyright, introduce a new
layer of rights protecting the investment (the signal) of
broadcasters, cable-casters and webcasters. This would mean that
public domain material disseminated over these “casters” networks
would be locked up by the casting right. The trend is further evident
in the area of patents, where over-extended patent protection favors
those who already have very large patent portfolios.  These large
patent holders can and do use their portfolios to block disruptive
technologies and innovations.

• inhibition of new models – Beside inhibiting innovation at a
fundamental level, the new IPR regime also blocks innovation at the
level of economic and social organization, by extending the life of
outdated business models and inhibiting the development of less
restrictive alternatives, such as collaborative peer production and
distribution.  The music industry provides the best-known example,
but parallels can be seen in science, software development, and
publishing.

• higher prices for essential goods – Concentrated ownership and
control of knowledge lead to uncompetitive markets, which drive up
prices for essential knowledge-based goods such as medicines,
textbooks, medical information or tools, or basic software.  This is
an inconvenience for middle-class consumers, but devastating to the
poor.

• political and professional corruption – Concentrated ownership
based on IPR monopolies creates powerful interests which invest
heavily in lobbying and marketing to maintain their market share.
The pharmaceuticals industry provides the most egregious example: it
spends far more on lobbying and marketing than on R&D for new drugs.
Large-scale lobbying of governments and international agencies leads
both to corruption of policymaking and to ever more restrictive IP
regimes. Massive marketing to physicians, some have argued, has led
to growing corruption of the medical profession.  Similar effects can
be observed in the software and scientific publishing industries
(many examples could be cited, such as Microsoft's recent
intervention at WIPO to block discussion of peer production, or the
science publishing lobby's attempts to kill Open Access at the NIH).

• 'one-size-fits-all' globalization makes the rich richer and the
poor poorer – This new IP regime is being imposed by rich countries
on the rest of the world. The movement towards “harmonization” is not
new – it has been going on for over a century. However, the TRIPS
Agreement first made minimum standards of IP protection mandatory for
WTO members. Developing countries had no fair chance to participate
in the formulation of this new global regime: when TRIPS was being
negotiated, no African country was a player in any of the key
negotiating groups that shaped its final contents.  In the past,
copyright and patent rules were differentiated according to local
cultural traditions and economic conditions; under the new regime,
poorer countries are forced to accept a one-size-fits-all paradigm
that goes against their interests and needs. As the UK Government’s
Commission on IPR concluded recently, the main effect of the new IP
regime is to benefit those who have knowledge and inventive power,
and to increase the costs of access to those without. Thus the costs
and benefits of the system are unfairly distributed and in fact
increase the gap between rich and poor.