Just a few more days to enter a comment. My comment is below. On Wed, Jun 01, 2005 at 08:32:49PM +0200, Marcello Perathoner wrote:

Welcome to the Online Forum on Intellectual Property in the Information Society, hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) from June 1 to 15, 2005.

The WIPO Online Forum is designed to enable and encourage an open debate on issues related to intellectual property in the information society, and in light of the goals of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). This presents a unique opportunity for all to engage in the emerging debate on intellectual property in our day.

The 10 themes for discussion are listed below - scroll down to select a theme.

The WIPO Online Forum is open to participation by all interested persons ? you are invited to join in online discussions over a period of two weeks from June 1, 2005. It is hoped that the Online Forum will further inform the discussions taking place during the second phase of WSIS. The conclusions of the Online Forum will form part of WIPO?s contribution to the WSIS Tunis Summit.

I posted here, in their "Public Domain" topic: http://www.wipo.int/roller/comments/ipisforum/Weblog/theme_three_the_public_... What I posted: I agree with many of the earlier comments that question the motivations of WIPO's raising these questions. Certainly the past history of WIPO's role in copyright has shown their interests to be aligned with moneyed interests. Nevertheless, I offer a few comments. As the URL suggests, I'm affiliated with Project Gutenberg, which is an all-electronic library of digitized works. The vast majority of our 16,000+ titles are in the public domain in the US. We constantly strive to expand the accessibility of public domain eBooks by seeking older literary works. We also seek to identify public domain items that might not, at first glance, appear to be public domain. These might include: - items published from 1923-1964 in the US which did not have their copyright renewed: these are public domain. - items that are no longer commercially available or for which a copyright owner cannot be identified. Under the US Title 17 section 108(h), these may be public domain, and the US Librarian of Congress seems interested in making them accessible. - items published prior to 1989 without a copyright notice in the US: these are public domain. We believe there are more than adequate protections for copyright owners to benefit from their works. Unfortunately, copyright term extensions, combined with unduly harsh penalties for copyright-related infringement (especially in the US under the DMCA), has pushed the balance so that the public domain is deemphasized. Prior to 1998, one year's worth of copyrighted items (from 1923, in that case) would enter the public domain, even as the current year's items started their multi-year journey under copyright protection. But thanks to the copyright term extention of 1998, the most astounding growth in the quantity of information in the world -- fueled by the Internet -- has not been accompanied by any significant growth in the public domain. As others have pointed out in this topic, open source software and creative commons licenses are welcome, but no substitute for the public domain. Such items still have the full force and duration of copyright law. Simply put, a healthy public domain is pre-requisite for support of the creative arts. It is very much possible to provide for ongoing commercial potential for some works, while maintaining growth in the public domain. This can be accomplished in many ways, but the most straightforward is to return to the need for active renewal of copyrights beyond a modest term. Such procedures would give the very long copyright terms desired by moneyed interests, while the vast majority of copyrighted items without such interests would enter the public domain after a limited term. WIPO's leadership role should include fostering a growing public domain. -- Greg