Singapore to be whipped by WIPO
I am an ardent free-trade and free-market advocate, and I believe that the WTO does good work in the opening up of trade across the world, despite significant flaws. The greatest weakness of the WTO is that the balance of power still favours the rich and developed countries.
No where is this more blatant than in the sister organisation to WTO, the WIPO, where developed countries force developing countries to adopt their copyright regimes, despite the paucity of evidence as to whether such copyright laws are good for ANYBODY except the copyright cartel.
The greatest irony is the fact that copyright extensions and exansions are restrictions on trade. They are anti-competitive and anti-trade, and have no place being part of free-trade policy. Any economist worth his/her salt would be able to easily tell you that any state license granted to allow perpetual monopoly over a good is bad economics.
So I was quite sad when I learnt that Singapore has signed up to the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Both will enter into force in Singapore on the 17th of April 2005. What was even more sad was the manner in which this happened. As with the US-SG-FTA, there was no public consultation, despite the fact that such legislation would impact the lives of every Singaporean.
The REAL question that must be answered is asked by IPKat:
who will benefit most from the WIPO treaty accessions — the IP owners or the city state’s information society?
