WIPO Conference Archive Missing Video Critical Of Artificial Intelligence, Social Media Giants

This morning at the World Intellectual Property Organization General Assemblies, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry commented on the success of the WIPO Conference on the Global Digital Content Market, which took place in April. But the full video of the keynote speaker, who had sharp words for corporate internet giants and other new technologies, is missing from the archive.

His comments were made during the WIPO General Assembly, as delegates were about to discuss the report of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. A short video was then aired presenting a summary of the conference. The keynote speaker [pdf] of the conference was Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, music composer and performer, and author of numerous books, the latest “Who Owns the Future.”

During the conference, Lanier said artificial intelligence does not exist, and presented what he sees as a new concentration of wealth through a new risk distribution model, in which users bear all the risks, pointing out examples such as Uber. He also suggested that intellectual property is broadened and becomes fine grained and distributed widely, and in which people from whom data is mined would be remunerated.

The highlights, although picking up the main points of the presentation, left the most contentious parts out, such as the advice to quit Facebook and using Google, or his remarks about the capture of the internet by “the Googles, the Facebooks, the Amazons, the Ubers” by which “you enter into a new kind of command economy where algorithms tell people what to do” (IPW, WIPO, 21 April 2016).

WIPO keeps archived video of the webcasts of its conferences and most of its committee sessions. However, if one wants to listen to Lanier’s keynote speech, it will not be found on the archived video of the conference. It appears that all that can be found is a link to a 15 minute YouTube video presenting “highlights” of Lanier’s presentation on the WIPO general webpage dedicated to the conference.

[Update:] WIPO gave an explanation of why the full video was not available. They said: “While the speech was livestreamed during the Conference, the full video of the speech is not available due to restrictions placed by Mr. Lanier on the archiving and making available of the content.”