Swiftly following Monday's post, here are further updates from our anonymous friend on WIPO-coordinated activities relating to African countries.
Evaluating the CMO project
One of the evaluation
reports, prepared by Lois Austin, was based
on a project involving 11 African countries. The idea of the project was to make
copyright work better in developing countries by empowering the collective
management organizations (CMOs) to aspire to “international state-of-the-art
standards” and to assist them learn how to “deliver timely, effective and
efficient value-added service to national creators, copyright industries and
consumers”. Austin’s report reviewed the
various objectives of the project and the extent to which they've been
achieved.
The busy bees in charge of the project
thought they had everything set up and ready go, but, as is all too common,
they discovered that the technical infrastructure necessary to support their
plans was lacking. Time and funding was spent on attempting to build this
underlying infrastructure, particularly upgrading the WIPOCOS (WIPO
Software for Collective Management Organizations or Societies). This was,
however, accomplished, and the remainder of the original plan was “re-oriented”. The re-oriented program was deemed complete,
but it’s going to take quite some time to actually realise an increase in
capacity and efficiency at CMOs in developing countries.
More related events to look out for in May
and June
There will be an Inter-regional
Expert Meeting on South-South and
Triangular Cooperation for Access to Information and Knowledge, Innovation
Support and Technology Transfer in Lima, followed by the WIPO-NORCODE
training on Exercise
and Management of Copyright and Related Rights for Developing Countries in
Oslo.
Stay tuned!
