On December 1, 2009, I presented a proposal for a WTO agreement on the supply of global public goods, at a joint KEI/IQSensato side event at the Geneva WTO ministerial meeting.

The text of the proposal is available here. The slides are available in PDF format.

On the 24th of November, 59 U.S. Senators wrote the European Union, asking that the Oracle/Sun merger be allowed, without addressing the anticompetitive aspects of the Oracle acquisition of MySQL. The letter reflects the enormous influence wielded by Oracle, a company that generates enormous fees licensing database software to the federal government.

On November 23, 2009, Pablo Lecuona from Tiflolibros Argentina sent a letter to Kareem A. Dale, the Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy, asking the Obama Administration to support the WIPO Copyright treaty for the blind, visually impaired and people with reading disabilities. Mr. Lecuona has also submitted this letter to the U.S. Copyright Office, and the USPTO as a reply in the request for comments on the WIPO Treaty proposal. Among other things, the Tifloibros letter says:

Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have written to USTR, asking that the ACTA text be made public. The strongly worded letter was sent to Ambassador Ron Kirk, the head of the United States Trade Representative, an office of the White House.

The letter states:

As the U.S. considers health reform legislation, it is useful to review how countries rank in terms of life expectancy at birth.

From the 2009 UNDP Human Development Report statistical appendix:

Now that we know who are the people opposed to an international treaty to facilitate access and sharing of accessible formats of works for blind people and people with reading disabilities, let’s read what their arguments against the treaty are.

I was able to highlight 10 main arguments and you can check in their own words below if you do not believe me:

The Fourth Session of WIPO's Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) is taking place from 16 November 2009 to 20 November 2009.

Among the projects under consideration this week is is the project on Intellectual Property and the Public Domain based on recommendations 16 and 20 of the Development Agenda.

Recommendation 16 states:

I am often asked "who on earth would oppose a treaty to facilitate access to information and knowledge to people with reading disabilities?" Please read my selected quotes from the comments posted today on the Copyright office page here. But I would also like to highlight some really positive and supporting comments about the treaty. There are more of them than the negative ones but do they have the same weight?

November 17, 2009

The American Council of the Blind (ACB) and the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) submitted their comments in response to a Notice of Inquiry put forth by the United States Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). ACB is a leading U.S. consumer organization of blind or visually impaired individuals. Access to information is a critical area of interest for ACB, and expanding the availability of accessible format materials is viewed as highly beneficial to the blindness community in the United States and throughout the world.

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) consists of the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries.

Collectively, the ALA, ACRL and ARL represent over 139,000 libraries in the United States employing approximately 350,000 librarians and other personnel.

Today Benetech, a leading Silicon Valley technology nonprofit and operator of the Bookshare online library for people with print disabilities submitted comments to the US Copyright Office and the USPTO on the topic of access to copyrighted works for people with print disabilities. Here are the major points, the submission is attached at the end of this blog.

Today five groups filed the attached comments to the U.S. Copyright Office and the USPTO regarding the WIPO draft proposal to facilitate access to copyrighted works for persons, who are blind, have visual impairments and other reading disabilities in response to the Federal Register Notice of October 13, 2009.

The comments were signed by

• Dr. Manon Ress, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)

On September 11, 2009, KEI submitted a FOIA request for the daily calendar of USTR head Ambassador Ron Kirk. On Friday afternoon, November 6, 2009, we received a response to that FOIA. This complements our earlier FOIA which covered his calendar from March 20 to May 1, 2009.

November 9, 2009

Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman
Senator Jeff Sessions, Ranking Member
Senate Judiciary Committee

Senator Max Baucus, Chairman
Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member
Senate Finance Committee

Representative John Conyers, Chairman
Representative Lamar Smith, Ranking Member
House Committee on the Judiciary

Representative Henry Waxman, Chairman,
Representative Joe Barton, Ranking Member
House Committee on Energy and Commerce

Representative Charles Rangel, Chairman
Representative Dave Camp, Ranking Member
House Committee on Ways and Means