Mira Burri

Trade and Culture in International Law: Paths to (Re)Conciliation

The UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity marks a wilful separation between the issues of trade and culture on the international level. The present article explores this intensified institutional, policy- and decision-making disconnect and exposes its flaws and the considerable drawbacks it brings with it. These drawbacks, the article argues, become particularly pronounced in the digital media environment that has impacted upon both the conditions of trade with cultural products and services and upon the diversity of cultural expressions in local and global contexts. Criticising the strong and now increasingly meaningless path dependencies of the analogue age, the article sketches some possible ways to reconciling trade and culture, most of which lead back to the WTO, rather than to UNESCO.

Digital Technologies and Traditional Cultural Expressions: A Positive Look at a Difficult Relationship

Digital technologies have often been perceived as imperilling traditional cultural expressions (TCE). This angst has interlinked technical and socio-cultural dimensions. On the technical side, it is related to the affordances of digital media that allow, among other things, instantaneous access to information without real location constraints, data transport at the speed of light and effortless reproduction of the original without any loss of quality. In a socio-cultural context, digital technologies have been regarded as the epitome of globalisation forces - not only driving and deepening the process of globalisation itself but also spreading its effects. The present article examines the validity of these claims and sketches a number of ways in which digital technologies may act as benevolent factors. We illustrate in particular that some digital technologies can be instrumentalised to protect TCE forms, reflecting more appropriately the specificities of TCE as a complex process of creation of identity and culture. The article also seeks to reveal that digital technologies - and more specifically the Internet and the World Wide Web - have had a profound impact on the ways cultural content is created, disseminated, accessed and consumed. We argue that this environment may have generated various opportunities for better accommodating TCE, especially in their dynamic sense of human creativity.

Reconciling Trade and Culture: A Global Law Perspective

This article provides an overview of the most essential issues in the trade and culture discourse from a global law perspective. It looks into the intensified disconnect between trade and culture and exposes its flaws and the considerable drawbacks that it brings with it. It is argued that these drawbacks become especially pronounced in the digital media environment, which has strongly affected both the conditions of trade with cultural products and services and cultural diversity in local and global contexts. In this modified setting, there could have been a number of feasible “trade and culture” solutions—i.e., regulatory designs that while enhancing trade liberalization are also conducive to cultural policy. Yet, the realization of any of these options becomes chimerical as the line between trade and culture matters is drawn in a clear and resolute manner.

The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity: An Appraisal Five Years after its Entry into Force

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted in 2005 the first legally binding international instrument on culture. The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions was agreed upon with an overwhelming majority and after the swiftest ratification process in the history of the UNESCO entered into force on 18 March 2007. Now, five years later and with some 125 Members committed to implementing the Convention, not only observers with a particular interest in the topic but also the broader public may be eager to know what has happened and in how far has the implementation progress advanced. This is the question that animates this paper and which it seeks to answer by giving a brief background to the UNESCO Convention, clarifying its legal and political status and impact, as well as by looking at the current implementation activities in the domestic and international contexts.

Nudging as a Tool of Media Policy

The chapter argues that although the balance between state intervention and non-intervention in the media is precarious and individual rights are to be safeguarded, there may be subtler ways of intervening and promoting exposure diversity – i.e. the diversity in the content actually consumed by audiences – under the conditions of digital media. Against the backdrop of changes in the information and communication environment brought about by the Internet, the chapter explores a number of ‘nudging’ tools as potentially more efficient as well as effective instruments of media policy aimed at diversity. In this, it seeks to contribute to the discussions on public service media design, as well as be in line with broader changes in media governance, which denote a move away from conventional command-and-control type of regulation.

Rising Economies in the International Patent Regime: From Rule-breakers to Rule-changers and Rule-makers

ABSTRACT Rising economies face a crucial dilemma when establishing their position on international patent law. Should they translate their increasing economic strength into political power to further developing countries’ interests in lower levels of international patent protection? Or, anticipating a rising domestic interest in stronger international patent protection, should they adopt a position that favours maximal patent protection? Drawing on multiple case studies using a most-similar system design, we argue that rising economies, after having been coerced into adopting more stringent patent standards, tend to display ambivalent positions, trapped in bureaucratic politics and caught between conflicting domestic constituencies. We find that the recent proliferation of international institutions and the expansion of transnational networks have contributed to fragmentation and polarisation in domestic patent politics. As a result, today’s emerging economies experience a more tortuous transformative process than did yesterday’s. This finding is of particular relevance for scholars studying rising powers, as well as for those working on policy diffusion, regulatory regimes, transnational networks and regime complexes.

Global Cultural Law and Policy in the Age of Ubiquitous Internet

Digital technologies and the Internet in particular have transformed the ways we create, distribute, use, reuse and consume cultural content; have impacted on the workings of the cultural industries, and more generally on the processes of making, experiencing and remembering culture in local and global spaces. Yet, few of these, often profound, transformations have found reflection in law and institutional design. Cultural policy toolkits, in particular at the international level, are still very much offline/analogue and conceive of culture as static property linked to national sovereignty and state boundaries. The article describes this state of affairs and asks the key question of whether there is a need to reform global cultural law and policy and if yes, what the essential elements of such a reform should be.

Trade governance in the digital age : World Trade Forum

1. Introduction: digital technologies and international trade regulation Mira Burri and Thomas Cottier Part I. Conceptualising Trade 2.0: 2. Principles for trade 2.0 Anupam Chander 3. Global information law: some systemic thoughts Christian Tietje Part II. Old and New Buzzwords in the Digital Trade Discourse: 4. Convergence: a buzzword to remain? David Luff 5. Network neutrality: the global dimension Pierre Larouche 6. Fostering innovation and trade in the global information society: the different facets and roles of interoperability Urs Gasser and John Palfrey Part III. The State of Play in Trade and Trade Regulation. Prospects for Change: 7. GATS classification issues for information and communication technology services Lee Tuthill and Martin Roy 8. Towards coherent rules for digital trade: building on efforts in multilateral versus preferential trade negotiations Sacha Wunsch-Vincent and Arno Hold 9. Better regulation for digital markets: a new look at the Reference Paper? Rohan Kariyawasam 10. Googling for the trade-human rights nexus in China: can the WTO help? Henry Gao 11. The puzzling interaction of trade and public morals in the digital era Panagiotis Delimatsis Part IV. The Impact of Digital Technologies on the Global Intellectual Property Regime: 12. TRIPS encounters the Internet: an analogue treaty in a digital age, or the first trade 2.0 agreement? Antony Taubman 13. Country clubs, empiricism, blogs and innovation: the future of international intellectual property norm-making in the wake of ACTA Daniel Gervais 14. New forms of governance for digital orphans: copyright litigation, licenses and legal information Jeremy De Beer Part V. Digital Technologies, Intellectual Property and Development: 15. From consensus to controversy: the WIPO Internet Treaties and lessons for intellectual property norm-setting in the digital age Ahmed Abdel Latif 16. The global digital divide as impeded access to content Mira Burri 17. Harnessing information and communication technologies for development: the trade-related technical assistance perspective Martin Labbe 18. Making use of e-mentoring to support innovative entrepreneurs in Africa Philipp Aerni and Dominik Ruegger.

Die Zukunft des Internets entscheidet sich jetzt

Das Internet pragt jede Facette unseres Lebens. Was als US-Militar-Experiment begann, ist heute eine Basistechnologie. Damit gelten die fundamentalen Menschenrechte auch im Internet, wie jungst UN-Berichte bestatigten. Andererseits haben die Enthullungen Edward Snowdens aufgezeigt, wie breit und tief die Uberwachung des Internets ist. Welche Regeln gelten nun im Netz, und wer setzt sie fest?- ...

Overview of services classifications and the role of services classifications

The second chapter looks more closely into the various services classification regimes and their impact for policy makers and regulators. Evidently, the classifications developed by the WTO build the landmark for any classifications discussions, but it cannot be overlooked that due to their time of origin, the rapid and ongoing technological developments since the Uruguay Round (1986–1994) and the lack of any adequate adjustments in the WTO regime ever since, more modern classifications of other organizations increasingly enter and are made use of in international trade negotiations. Therefore, a thorough assessment of such classifications appears to be inevitable.