A World Intellectual Wealth Organisation (WIWO) has been proposed as an alternative to the World Intellectual Property Organization. It would be dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge.
Granting limited monopolies and limited control over some kinds of knowledge (e.g. with patents, copyrights, etc.) may be part of this new organization's tool-set, but not the only one, and maybe not even the most important one.
The proposal was published in October 2004. It is inspired by the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization and came from the Free Software Foundation Europe, which is dedicated to the enhancement of free software, free content, open content and other forms of libre copyright approaches by the establishment of a new worldwide organization or through a refreshed WIPO.
Famous quotes containing the words world, intellectual, wealth and/or organisation:
“Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its lustre darkened by envy and malignity.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)
“There is no wealth but life.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)