Jeremy Malcolm's blog

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke in Washington today about the Obama administration's  commitment to promoting online rights and freedoms, including freedom of expression and access to knowledge - and, as a necessary precondition, access to the Internet itself.  In her speech she said:

According to a press release issued by Microsoft last week to announce its "Consumer Action Day" against counterfeit softwareⁱ, "consumers want action", and are relying on Microsoft to "give people a voice in the fight against software counterfeiting". Whilst we do agree that counterfeiting of any kind can endanger consumers when they believe they are purchasing original products, we have to question Microsoft's credentials to represent consumers' interests here.

Consumers International and the African Copyright and A2Kⁱ Project (ACA2K) this week held a successful workshop looking at the Global State of Copyright and Access to Knowledge at the 2009 meeting of the multi-stakeholder United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. The session was moderated by Dr Bassem Awad from ACA2K, who is also Chief Judge at the Egyptian Ministry of Justice.

Responding to the pressures of the culture industry lobby, a huge international coalition has come together to urge respect for the civil rights of citizens and artists in the digital era.

Today we are disseminating throughout the world the Charter of the Culture Forum of Barcelona for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge.

CI believes that a knowledge society can be developed only when access to knowledge is unhampered and inclusive, and that the role of consumer organisations in making this possible is vital. To this end, we have developed a concise survey of consumers designed to pinpoint where the barriers that prevent consumers from accessing knowledge lie.

Consumers International, with the support of UFC-Que Choisir and La Quadrature du Net, is holding a Business Roundtable on the Consumer Interest in IPRs on the afternoon of 22 October (just before the TACDⁱ's second Paris Accord meeting), to bring together representatives of the entertainment, publishing, information technology and communications industries to discuss and debate the role that consumers' interests play in their decision-making

Consumer groups from around the Asia-Pacific region are currently meeting in Chiang Rai, Thailand for a conference on The Next Wave of ASEAN Consumer Protection in Telecommunications, at which I presented today on the relationship between consumer protection and Access to Knowledge (A2Kⁱ). As promised to conference delegates, I am posting the slides from that presentation below, in two open formats.

Here is a brief roundup (with links to further information) on some of the most important and interesting topics on the copyrightⁱ and A2Kⁱ radar this month:

The highlight of the 18th meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCRⁱ) of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPOⁱ) has been the proposal today by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay of a WIPO Treaty for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons that was drafted by the World Blind Union and presented for discussion at the previous SCCR meeting last November.

Law firm Taylor Wessing’s description of its Global's IPⁱ Index (GIPI) is highly misleading and its criticism of the Consumer Focus UK survey (which forms part of the 16 country Consumers International IP Watch list) unfounded.