Slashdot Mirror

minna writes "In a recent article for the major German daily FAZ, Andy Mueller-Maguhn, newly elected ICANN board member for Europe, declares "What lawyers call "intellectual property" is -- as every Latin student knows -- no more than theft from the public domain. And because we, the netizens, now have no intention of letting these thieves destroy the public domain, we had to take a little corrective action; everybody goes their own way and we're all linked to the network. Through the public domain, through the collective unconscious and through Eris, the goddess of conflict, of discord, of argument. ... I intend to keep the public domain free of commercial rules, to guard the free flow of information and to give the bits their own domain. We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. Those are the cultural aspects of my government policy." The English version of his program for ICANN was distributed on the nettime list."