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Weekly News Digest
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October 4, 2004 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Library Groups Endorse Intellectual Property Declaration
Four major U.S. library associations have endorsed the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization (American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and SLA). The Geneva Declaration calls for the development of a new agenda for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; http://www.wipo.int) that recognizes the importance of intellectual property for the future of humanity while stressing the importance of balance in the laws and policies governing such intellectual property.In a joint press release, the associations wrote: "Our organizations believe that these recent efforts to expand intellectual property rights have gone too far and must be brought back into balance. The development of a new agenda will give WIPO the opportunity to take a leadership role in re-crafting the necessary balance. In doing so, we urge WIPO to affirmatively seek to balance the rights of creators with the rights of users. This may call for the rollback of recent expanded protections or the development of new user rights to counterbalance them. We also urge WIPO to deal creatively with the issues raised by digital technology to provide appropriate levels of protection while also supporting the rights of users to effectively use the new technologies." [Editor's Note: The member states of WIPO are currently meeting in Geneva. You can read about the debate in WIPO on the development agenda, see the signatures of those who have already signed the Declaration, and review relevant WIPO documents at a site posted by the U.S.-based Consumer Project on Technology at http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/genevadeclaration.html.] Source: Association of Research Libraries
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Brandi Scardilli
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