The Gowers Review on "intellectual property" was finally published yesterday, and it's well worth a read by anyone working around free software/culture and drug/biotechnology patents. My friend Becky has written a really good interview with Gowers, in which he astonishingly states an obvious but uncomfortable truth:

In the world today, it would be absolutely impossible to negotiate something like Trips. It's amazing to me that the WTO and its members were able to pull that off... we're saying - not in so many words but this is the subtext - that if you look at the whole swathe of developing countries, from the successful ones to the poor ones, does the one-size-fits-all approach really work? The answer is, it makes no sense.

Well said! The review also touches on some of the old chesnuts for free culture activists, namely copyright term extension (the review opposes it), transformative fair use (advocated), a private right to copy (also advocated) and provisions for orphan works (you are free of legal risks if the creator/their estate disappears).

Now is the time for UK citizens to start talking to our MPs about this, for EU citizens to raise the recommendations relevant to EU legislation with their national and European representatives, and indeed for anyone else to point their legislators towards the review. It's a landmark review, and could prompt the first move by any major world government to redress the copyright balance! Of course it doesn't go nearly as far as free culture advocates argue for, and Gowers has cleverly positioned himself in between the two "loud and shallow" camps, but it's not something we can afford to see buried.