Monday, November 01, 2010

Pope troubled by zealous copyright protection by rich

Pope Benedict is troubled by the “excessive zeal” with which rich countries have been protecting their intellectual property rights, especially when it comes to health care in developing countries, a Vatican delegation told the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

“On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care,” Pope Benedict said in an Encyclical Letter quoted by the delegation at the 48th World Intellectual Property Organization General Assembly last month, reports the ZeroPaid website.
 
The report said copyright holdings have become the bedrock of profits for an array of business interests, multinational corporations like those in the movie and music industry in particular and there has been an increasing push to protect them at all costs, even to the detriment of society and culture.

“The raison d’être of the protection system of intellectual property is the promotion of literary, scientific or artistic production and, generally, of inventive activity for the sake of the ‘common good,’ said the Holy See delegation.

“Thus protection officially attests the right of the author or inventor to recognition of the ownership of his work and to a degree of economic reward. At the same time it serves the cultural and material progress of society as a whole.”

SIC: CTH/ASIA