A distinguished group of academics, government representatives and businesspeople this week came out with a set of recommendations which, if taken seriously by governments around the world, could have a drastic effect on the software industry.

The proposals, by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, would also have a drastic effect on the lives of millions of people in the developing world. All areas of intellectual property are addressed in the Commission's report--including health, as well as agricultural and genetic resources and traditional knowledge. All these issues receive intermittent coverage in the mainstream Western media (usually when some tribal uprising threatens to affect a company's stock price) and most had an airing at the recent summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg.

What is less often talked about is the effect that technology has on development. The opportunity is vast: it took centuries, if not a full millennium, for books to reach an audience of millions, thereby spreading knowledge, scholarship and development throughout the Western world. Television accomplished a similar degree of penetration within decades, and the Internet in a matter of a just few years.

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took centuries, if not a full millennium, for books to reach an audience of millions, thereby spreading knowledge, scholarship and development throughout the Western world. Television accomplished a similar degree of penetration within decades, and the Internet in a matter of a just few years.

But while the opportunity for developing nations to benefit from the spread of the Internet and IT in general is huge--witness India's software industry--Western corporate interests threaten to stymie the Internet revolution in developing nations before it starts. This is why the Commission's proposals are so interesting, and why they should be applauded.

Basically, the Commission's proposals would see the dreaded shrink-wrap contracts that restrict what people can do with the software they buy declared void; reverse engineering would be encouraged, as would government sponsorship of open-source software; and copyright protection would be significantly relaxed. For a start, that would mean a stop to the spread of laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it illegal in the US to circumvent copyright protection mechanisms, even when the purpose of circumvention does not violate copyright laws. That particularly heinous piece of legislation is currently making its way to Europe in the form of a new directive which is likely to be enacted in the national laws of member states next year.

Whatever the claims for protection of intellectual property in the West, copyright laws have--with a few exceptions like Bollywood--failed to stimulate the growth of copyright-protected industries in the developing world, according to the Commission on IP Rights.

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