Abstract
Running at almost a thousand pages, the two volumes of The WTO, Intellectual Property, E-commerce and the Internet, edited by Rohan Kariyawasam, are the very definition of massive. The volumes offer a comprehensive compilation of some of the most influential articles dealing with the World Trade Organization (WTO), telecoms regulation, antitrust, electronic commerce, intellectual property and the new economy. The scope of the collection is vast, and it contains some of the top writing on those topics. This reviewer has just recently used the materials contained in one of the volumes to prepare for a seminar on the topic of electronic commerce, and found the referenced articles both authoritative and informative.
With a compilation of such size, it is almost impossible to review the contents in detail, as this is not an edited book of new chapters, but a collection of published material; the content is well selected and comprehensive. Volume I is separated into two sections. The first is ‘WTO, telecommunications and antitrust’, which contains several articles on telecommunication policy at the WTO level. The second section is entitled ‘The classification of electronic intangibles in the WTO’, which includes several of the most authoritative articles that deal with the important and relevant topic of international trade in intangible goods, such as the transmission of data through the Internet. This section does not disappoint, and it deals with the issue of these intangibles being treated as services under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in a comprehensive manner.
The second volume is divided in three sections. The first covers exclusively the subject of the ‘WTO and electronic commerce’. While slightly shorter, this reflects well the struggle at the WTO level with the issue of electronic commerce, and the articles serve to illustrate the neglect that the subject has had at that international organization. The second section is named ‘Intellectual property rights, bilateralism and technology transfer’. As with the other sections, the articles selected do exactly what is advertised and they include some of the top writers dealing with the subject of bilateral agreements and so-called TRIPS-plus treaties. Finally, the last section is titled ‘Developing countries, the new economy and the WTO’, which does not disappoint either as it contains top articles on the subject of the interface between the WTO and developing economies.
As has been hinted in the above paragraphs, there is nothing wrong with the content, the editor has done a sterling job of choosing some of the most important and relevant articles on the subject, and has managed to put the material together in a very useful collection. If there is anything to criticize on the content, it is that we are spoilt for choice.
There are however a couple of problems with the compilation. As already mentioned, the book’s content consists entirely of previously published articles. This is not a problem in itself; there is always room for the existence of collections of this nature, and the casebook and materials edited tome is an integral part of many legal courses in jurisdictions around the world, a fine tradition in existence for example in US publishing. However, this particular compilation seems excessively priced given the quality of the presentation. I found little justification for the asking price of £295.00, particularly when one considers that the quality of the typography is uneven. As the editors have chosen to reproduce the original articles, there is a large diversity in styles, fonts and white space. While this is to be expected to some degree, I found some articles with too much white space around them, while the reproduction in others is not perfect, ranging from blurry fonts to overly small print. It must be said that the quality of most of the articles is very good, but this only serves to highlight those where the quality is lacking.
Cost has to be an important consideration when thinking about purchasing a book such as this. We are entering the age of open access, and there is a wealth of resources publicly available. It is a difficult time for academic publishing, but it is precisely because of the changing nature of the market that editors should think twice about producing such an expensive book. This reviewer is sympathetic to the costs involved in such a volume, but it is a pity that such a great compilation will not be accessible to more people.
Nonetheless, this would be a good purchase for libraries that specialize in WTO, information technology law and intellectual property issues. The level of the content is superb.