My other observation is more of a question. If songwriters, publishers, recording artists and record labels all have the right to grant licenses on the market by the price they feel right, I wonder who will be the cheapest to turn to for licenses. ‘greedy’ labels? Attention hungry authors? session musicians who have the weakest rights in the current system? These actors have different bargaining power and the cost of coordination amongst them about the highest price they can extract from a wannabe licensee is prohibitively high, i would guess. If I was iTunes, I would try to find the licensor with the weakest bargaining power, i.e musicians with home forclosure in sight and et a cheap deal through them, leaving him/her and everyone else quite in a bad position. On the other hand the upside of such a system is clear: it minimizes the chance of a piece left unlicensed due to the ‘tragedy of anti-commons’.

“The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that “infringes” on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.”
- http://wikileaks.org/wiki/ACTA_trade_agreement_negotiation_lacks_transparency

‘Check my laptops content’???

What about my electronic diary, then?

Without a clear judges sentence, noone is allowed to look at my private files, and should they remove that restriction, tehy can as well remove all privacy.

And it gets worse:
“The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.”

and worse:

“Mr. Fewer and Mr. Geist said, once Canada signs the new trade agreement it will be next to impossible to back out of it.
In a situation similar to what happened in the Softwood Lumber trade dispute, Canadians could face hefty penalties if it does not comply with ACTA after the agreement has been completed.”

Ouch!
That doesn’t sound like a treaty between nations, but more like some big players conspiring to create law which binds all others, which is clearly antidemocratic.

So a big question looms: What can we do against ACTA?

Disclosure of origin debate will never end. It started in 1999 and no progress has been achieved so far.

To me, its objectives are unrealistic and can not be achieved. Both developing and developed countries need to stike a balance and agree on a hybrid of both voluntary and mandatory international instrument. Issues like disclosure in patent application and evidence of benefit sharing could be mandatory but we do not need to ensure that dsclosure of origin or PIC is incorporated in the instrument. This could be optional for special reasons because it could expose the TK holders to abuse and more biopiracy.

Fred Otswong’o
Kenya

China has closed its borders to Tibet but many in the international community know the truth about the 2008 tortures and killings in Tibet. I call on the United Nations to address the ongoing matter with full attention. Is this a government that should have the distinguished privilege of hosting the international peace games?

I’m a searcher at the USPTO, and wanted to clarify this misconception. When we are searching for prior art, we do try to get anything published, including Web publication. For example, I often use Google Groups to find information from mailing lists. The main problem, of course, is that not every published piece of literature is indexed, so whether it’s in print or on the Web, it can be very hard to find. However, if we do find it, we can use it.