Re: [wg-c] compromise proposal

["Kevin J. Connolly" <CONNOLLK@rspab.com>]

I have been staying out of the discussion because, pending
our reconstitution by the NC, there is not, imo, much to do.

However, I'm not going to sit back and let this one slide by.

This is supposed to be a WG.  In every WG I've ever heard
of before, the participants come together as individuals, and
positions are weighed on their intrinsic merits.

As for me, non dato anus rodentum bifurca mortuque* whether
a speaker represents 95,000 stakeholders, a corporation with
$2,000,000,000,000 in sales, or just the few cubic centimeters
of jelly inside hir cranium.

Only the last of these criteria makes any difference.

Unless, of course, we no longer pretend to be weighing positions
based on merit, but on the clout of the economic interest asserting
the same.




>>> Mark R Measday <measday@ibm.net> 09/02/99 01:45PM >>>
>Jonathan,

>Is it possible to ask that organizational affiliation be inserted into
>these emails? The weight of a measured argument is the greater for being
>supported by, say, INTA or ICC,  and the less for being an individual
>voice of someone who just happens to work for such an organization.

>I believe the same question has been asked of Dr Carrington and Jonathan
>Cohen in wg-b, for the same reasons.

>I note, for completeness sake, in applying these terms to myself, that
>although I speak for Josmarian and its clients in the OECD countries and
>Africa, I do not currently speak directly or indirectly for IBM, the UN,
>WIPO, ITU, EuroISPA or any government, bar one. Any coincidence of
>opinion is exactly that, coincidental, even if we say it first. My
>personal background has both for-profit and not-for-profit elements in
>it.

>On a separate topic, I'd be interested to hear the views of anyone in
>the constituency who was involved in the Uruguay Round, or the
>negotiation between WIPO and WTO, conceding WIPO's titular control over
>TRIPs etc to WTO.

>The point being that the relation between WIPO and other international
>bodies has changed in WIPO's disfavour. When someone can demonstrate
>that the government of the Isle of Man (to give an entirely spurious
>example) cannot invoke its absence from GAC as a reason to bring up
>TRIPs and bring the whole thing under WTO control as part of the trade
>package (largely unsigned if I recollect well) to renegotiate for the
>next fifty years (the time it took for the GATT/WTO transition), then we
>can start taking these working groups seriously.

>I know these statements are not welcome, and I hope someone can
>contradict the last paragraphs forcefully,

>MM

And maybe someone can give me a clue as to what the status of
WIPO's star has to do with _this_ WG's erstwhile activity??

KJC

*For those who were neither members of, nor have friends who were
in, the Engineer Platoon of the 1st Infantry Division, the expression is
dog latin for:  "I don't give half a dead rat's ass."


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