Cory Doctorow im Interview über WIPO-Activism

Die Seite Worldchanging hat Cory Doctorow zum Thema WIPO-Activism befragt. Das Interview ist sehr interessant und liefert einige Einblicke, wie man als gut vernetzte Zivilgesellschaft internationale Organisationen ein wenig aufmischen kann.

They’re accustomed to strong arming developing world countries. They’re unused to the power of citizen networks.

One of the truly subversive and amazing things the NGOs did is that we set up open WiFi networks that weren’t connected to the Internet — because there was no Internet access at the meetings when we started — and then we would take exhaustive collaborative notes on what was said. It’s very hard to take notes at these events.

So we’d have teams of three or four people using collaborative note-taking software, and one would be taking notes, one would be adding commentary and another would be following behind and correcting typos and formatting and the like. Meanwhile, we’re all of us checking each other as we go — filling in the blanks, noting discrepancies and so on — and then publishing it twice a day at lunch and dinner.

Now, the delegations there were accustomed to the old WIPO regime, where the notes would be taken by the secretariat, sent out for approval by the delegates, sanitized — all the bodies would be buried — and then published six months later. And what happened once we started working together like this is that delegates would get calls on their lunch break about things they’d said that morning. Suddenly, they’re immediately accountable for their words, which completely changed the character of the negotiations.