U.S. Representatives Torpedo UN Information Summit

StoneLion writes "The United Nations World Summit on Information Society was established to 'harness the potential of knowledge and technology' and to 'find effective and innovative ways to put this potential at the service of development for all.' You'd think open source software would be a natural for many UN member countries. But NewsForge's Joe Barr discovered that the US is driving policy for the organization, and its official position is that 'using free software to achieve the WSIS goals might get in the way of an intellectual property owner's ability to make a profit'; in other words, they want to make the world safe for capitalism." We've mentioned WSIS before. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.

Comments

Funny World...

[netsharc]

But the US is the new evil; its actions are unilateral and goes against the wishes of the international community and it's only making things worse for its citizen and the rest of the world.

In the Soviet Russian point of view, USA is the baddie! Well I guess we're living in a joke now.

Re:Funny World...

[ackthpt]

But the US is the new evil; its actions are unilateral and goes against the wishes of the international community and it's only making things worse for its citizen and the rest of the world.

Yeah, evil, now put on your Nike's, hop in your Hummer and whip on out for a burger and fries.

There was something about the Peace Corps, years ago, that initially they taught people how to farm betrer, manage their natural resources and generally how to look out for themselves better. Then came the Peace Corps that shelved those ideals of building a better world for teaching people how to run small businesses. I wonder how it is these days...

"There you go Ahmed, a uniform, a badge and a .22 calibre Tom Mix rifle, now go defend your country from Al-Qeada while we work on exporting all your oil at cheaper than OPEC prices and hand the money over to Halliburton and Bechtel."

Re:Funny World...

[Anonymous Coward]

He gave facts. You didn't. He is right and you have nothing to say against it. Too bad for you :)

Impoverished Countries

[fatboy]

If they wish to suck on the teat of the world, yes they will have to pay the price, both libre and gratis.

However, if they choose to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, they will have no such price to pay.

Just like individuals and corporations.

Free Software Will Ultimately Cost You Your Job...

[nazzdeq]

Sure it sounds great, but when major corporations are running Linux with free applications like office suites, billing systems, CRM systems, ERP systems, etc. it's great for them, but where's the money for you?

In the maintenance you say, in the implementation? Yeah, right, that will get shipped overseas where the labor is cheap and all you'll be left with is your copy of Linux without the money to pay for your DSL connection.

The free software idiots will put you out of a job. Anybody that works on creating free software is working on their own demise, whether they want to believe it or not.

MICHAEL LIES to promote his politics

[thelizman]

Once again michael, slashdot's own resident leftist lunatic anti-american activist, slants and misrepresents the story. The executive summary here is that the writer realized that there were concerns that favoring free software over proprietary software would promote copyright infringement - that is oss developers would be encouraged to provide tools based on or derivative of non-OSS software.

Heres the context of the quoted passage:

But I was the one who didn't understand. I thought Traystmand had been saying that using free software to bridge the digital divide would violate the intellectual property rights of someone else, and I knew that was wrong. What he was actually saying was that using free software to achieve the WSIS goals might get in the way of an intellectual property owner's ability to make a profit.

Shipman quickly realized I was in over my head. She walked me through the basics and gave me background information on the WSIS meetings in Geneva. She described the preparatory process the United States team went through in reaching its position. She told me how they solicited and received public input, including letters from the U.S. Chamber of International Business and the Business Software Alliance. She noted that "we had public meetings throughout the preparatory process for the summit, and those were submitted to the Federal Registry, so those were open to the public."

Shipman even pointed me to the United States' own WSIS site, which includes the public records of the preparatory process, including copies of comments received from the public.

The comments, and there are only a handful of them, came primarily from groups like the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC), which is "devoted solely to promoting improved standards for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights."

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) also weighed in, telling the US WSIS team that "We are deeply concerned that the current versions of the documents do not recognize the leadership of the private sector in the information society."

Shipman told me, "The U.S. view is that we don't want to see government, or in this case, the World Summit, advocate one type of software over another."

My Apologies.

[thelizman]

I did not intend to insult true leftist lunatic anti-American activists. And either way, my chief complain is his inability to keep his political-hack op-ed out of news based stories. If I wanted to listen to his crap, I'd still post at Kuro5hin.