Earlier this month, a group of copyfighters circulated a manifesto/petition for increased openness, transparency and balance at the meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which is currently chasing in the other direction by pulling stunts like excluding nearly every public interest group from its meetings. The petition has been delivered to WIPO now, with impressive stats:
1. More than 750 signatures
2. From 53 countries:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Rep., Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saint Lucia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, Ukraine, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela.
3. From all 5 continents:
Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania.
4. Non exhaustive list of signatories’ areas of interest:
advertising, agriculture, anthropology, arts (visual / musical / film / entertainment), banking, bioinfomatics, chemistry, computer security / privacy / engineer / science, culture, education, health, human rights, information studies, intellectual property, journalism, law, library, mathematics, medicine, patent owner, philosophy, physics, politics, sociology, song writing, technology, video game industry, web development.
The link has versions of the petition in Russian, English, Spanish and Portuguese,