WIPO Didn't Want The Pirate Party To Observe Its Efforts, But Happy To Include A Group Whose Mission Is To Battle Space Lizards

from the say-what? dept

You may recall five years ago how WIPO — the World Intellectual Property Organization, a UN body that is famous for its maximalist and expansionary approach to intellectual property — delayed and then rejected the Pirate Parties International request to become an “observer.” As we noted, the “observer” process is more or less a formality, and it’s pretty common to see everyone who applies get approved. So it was a bit odd that WIPO rejected the Pirates.

And it’s even odder when you consider just who WIPO allowed in this year. As noted by Intellectual Property Watch, one of the organizations whose application was rubber-stamped this year to become a WIPO observer is that of the generically named “IP Centre.” However, that group’s website at the time that it was granted observer status claimed the following as its mission:

Our mission

As a global conspiracy investigation institution with a pioneering awareness raising model, our mission is to create an environment that brings together open-minded people, cultures and ideas from around the world, in order to free individuals and organizations from space lizards? control.

Let me just repeat that again. WIPO — which rejected the application of a political party for whom intellectual property is a central plank in its platform — instead approved a group whose stated mission on its website was to free us from “space lizards’ control.”.

Space. Lizards.

The webpage has since been changed to some boring boilerplate, but here’s what it looked like before:

It’s entirely unclear what happened here, though a charitable explanation is someone posted some jokey text when the website was first being designed, and no one ever checked out the website to see what was there (or no one read enough to care) until this whole situation happened, at which time the organization got a bit more serious about its mission. However, it still does raise some questions about the due diligence of WIPO folks.

Though, conceivably, perhaps WIPO is just too busy fighting space lizards to read that carefully.

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Comments on “WIPO Didn't Want The Pirate Party To Observe Its Efforts, But Happy To Include A Group Whose Mission Is To Battle Space Lizards”

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44 Comments
Ninja (profile) says:

Re: YES, "someone posted some jokey text"; YOUR only purpose is to

Yes and we should be mocking WIPO very hard because they are willing to embrace contribution from pro-copyright morons and block opposing views (even if some may be moronic as well which I don’t believe to be the case of the Pirate Parties generally speaking). A process that only listens to one side should be discredited yes.

Jason says:

Their “pioneering awareness raising model” sure doesn’t seem to be worth very much.

On the flip side, maybe an expansive and maximalist approach to intellectual property is WIPO’s way of ensuring that some knowledge can survive the space lizards’ influence.

Fight the lizards in space so we don’t have to fight them down here!

Anonymous Coward says:

So what?

They aren’t the ONLY group of persons advancing a false narrative around here.

Maybe those pretty pink rainbow ponies will come down and save you from all this burdensome regulatory agencies you all keep clamoring for as though only the purest of driven snow would be poured out by the highest choir of angel(s) or the creator(s) him/her/themselves?

You can’t be saved from this in this way… at best you get a little lube before you are bent over… word is many of you like it that way anyways!

Anonymous Coward says:

David Icke & reptilian wingnuttery

Author David Icke is rather famous for pushing that idea of Space Alien Lizards having secretly taken over the world disguised as humans, kind of like in that 1980s TV series “V” — though I always wondered who came up with the idea first.

Though some people have speculated that ‘lizard’ was really a code word for ‘jew’ — something no modern day [Western] publisher would have ever accepted, despite being much more plausible (or at least less ridiculous).

ECA (profile) says:

HOW TO:

Hide a lobbyist group under your nose..
https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/01/28/10-strange-lobbying-groups-that-we-swear-are-real

The U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers
Cigar Rights Of America
California Cling Peach Growers
Catfish Farmers of America

https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/20-weird-associations-you-didnt-know-existed?utm_term=.ucW9wdxKD#.pdGa6q942

Association for Astrological Networking
The Association for Professional Basketball Research
Association for Christian Retail
Association for the Preservation of the Coelacanth

Lobby groups spend considerable amounts of money on election advertising as well. For example, the 2011 documentary film Hot Coffee contains interviews of former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver E. Diaz, Jr. and evidence the US Chamber of Commerce paid for advertising to unseat him.

Drug Policy Alliance, whose principal goal is to end the American “War on Drugs”.

Energy Lobby, an umbrella term for the representatives of large oil, gas, coal, and electric utilities corporations that attempt to influence governmental policy in the United States.

US Chamber of Commerce, by far the biggest lobby group in the US by expenditures.
The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is a business-oriented American lobbying group. It is not an agency of the United States government.
The Chamber is the largest lobbying group in the U.S., spending more money than any other lobbying organization on a yearly basis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Chamber_of_Commerce
GO READ THIS, its fun..

K`Tetch (profile) says:

To be fair...

The IP Center is not that more wacky than PPI. This is the PPI that has had votes on how to conduct a vote on how to conduct a vote (I’m serious!); spent 5 years to try and get a bank account (getting the UK party in trouble with UK financial regulators as PPI has been flagged for money laundering activities), but my favourite was when two of the PPI ‘leaders’ went to the Bali conference in 2013, and introduced a ‘paper’ that one of the leaders wrote himself literally the night before – https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/mc9_e/ngo_ppi_e.pdf – and then boasted about it being published, despite their policy of publishing EVERYTHING submitted. When he was criticized for the terrible submission, he tried to blame it on the 3rd member of the group, a woman, forgetting that the method used to draft it (etherpad) shows who wrote what, and when. Following his holiday in Bali, said leader of PPI then pushed for manditory financing by national parties, with the brunt on Sweden, and Iceland, despite PPI having a very German focus. That’s when Australia, the UK, Sweden and Iceland quit (the US was never a member)
Oh, and they also ‘fired’ their entire court of arbitration, when the validity of the German leadership was questioned.

When I founded PPI 10 years ago (next month), it was to provide support for parties, and be a central resources clearinghouse to aid state and regional parties in their national and regional objectives. Now it’s become an NGO lobbying group, so that its German ‘core’ can get cushy lobbying and pundit jobs.

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