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1 J. World Intell. Prop. 3 (1998)

handle is hein.journals/jwip1 and id is 1 raw text is: Interest or Right? The Process and Politics of a Diplomatic Conference on Copyright R.V. Vaidyanatha AYYAR* In acquiring new forces of production men change their mode of production; in changing their way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill will give you a society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, a society with the industrial capitalist. Karl Marx1 Are authors and other rightholders in intellectual works one of the interest groups in a society or are they a privileged group with absolute rights? This was a basic question underlying the process of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WiPo) Diplomatic Conference. Those who subscribe to the natural- right theory of copyright take offence at rightholders being classified as interest groups. 1. INTRODUCTION As technological paradigms shift so do modes of production, and so do law, custom and habit. The property of the mind2 is no exception. The history of copyright and neighbouring rights3 is a fascinating tale of the adaptation of law to * The author is a Senior Indian Civil Servant. He was the Leader of the Indian Delegation to the World Intellectual Property Organization Diplomatic Conference on Certain Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Questions, held in Geneva from 2 to 20 December 1996, and was also Chairman of the Drafting Committee of that Conference. This article is written in his individual capacity and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the organization he belongs to. 1 Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847. 2 The title of a crisp survey on the challenge of the digital technologies to the copyright system: Intellectual Property: The Property of the Mind, The Economist, 27 July 1996, pp. 62-63. 3 By tradition, copyright is the right of authors of literary and artistic works, while neighbouring rights are the rights of performers, producers of sound recordings and broadcasters. The distinction is not exactly logical, and arose from the copyright ideology in civil-law countries unwilling to consider firms as being eligible for copyright. The scope of copyright was wider and the term of protection longer than that of neighbouring rights. In the Digital Age the historical distinction between copyright and neighbouring rights is becoming irrelevant, but the historical tradition is strong and is one of the major forces which guided the process of the Conference. More of it in Section in of this article and footnote 31.

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