GUATEMALA GOES FOR PCT; WHO CONTROLS THE INTERNET?

Guatemala goes for PCT

The IPKat is delighted to learn from WIPO's PCT Update 277 that Guatemala has now become the 133rd contracting state of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), having duly deposited its instrument of accession. The Treaty will enter into force for Guatemala on 14 October 2006.

Full list of 133 PCT countries here
PCT official text and data here
Guatemala coffee industry inventions here
Guatemala Baked Bananas here


Who controls the Internet?

Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World is a new book by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, published this summer by Oxford University Press. Both authors are of illustrious pedigree: Jack Goldsmith is Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law, Harvard University, while Tim Wu is Professor of Law in the Columbia Law School.

The publisher writes:

"Will cyberanarchy rule the net? And if we do find a way to regulate our cyberlife will national borders dissolve as the Internet becomes the first global state? In this provocative new work, Jack L. Goldsmith and Tim Wu dismiss the fashionable talk of both a 'borderless' net and of a single governing 'code'. Territorial governments can and will, they contend, exercise significant control over all aspects of Internet communications. Examining policy puzzles from e-commerce to privacy, speech and pornography, intellectual property, and cybercrime, Who Controls the Internet demonstrates that individual governments rather than private or global bodies will play that dominant role in regulation. Accessible and controversial, this work is bound to stir comment".

The IPKat says: I'm not convinced either that individual governments will dominate the internet, or that private or global bodies will hold the regulatory trump cards. Nor do I subscribe to the global free-for-all position. The IPKat thinks that this book's data and constructive analysis supports an alternative theory: there is a creative tension between (i) governmental forces, (ii) the powers of private enterprise and (iii) the users, which ensures that none of these groups ever actually gains the upper hand over the others.

This book also suffers from the twin curses of all modern internet-related scholarship: first, the subject of study is also the source that provides most of the data relating to it. Secondly much of the source material is inevitably of varied reliability and often unverifiable. Having said this, the authors have done a terrific job of focusing their analysis on a vast, uncooperative and moving target, for which they should be fully congratulated.

Bibliographical data: Price £16.99 (hardback), ISBN-10: 0-19-515266-2, ISBN-13: 978-0-19-515266-1. Publication date 29 June 2006. xii + 226 pages. Rupture factor: not an issue, since the book is of comfy proportions. Cover design -hideous and must have been produced by a professional designer, since no amateur would ever come up with anything so ugly.

Full details of the book here