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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.
U.S. Representatives Torpedo UN Information Summit
That sounds oftly violent. Why didn't they just try to screw up all the meetings using their influence?
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
"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." -Sally Shipman
When you get down to the nut and bolts all software is just 1s and 0s: there aren't different "types" at that level.
I think what Sally Shipman really means is "We want our large US software firms to continue to reap Huge profits: Open Source threatens that."
That's fine, after all it's a US delegation and they're supposed to look out for their countrymen. Now, why can't they word it that bluntly? Simple: because Open Source doesn't contribute millions to election campaigns.
Trolling is a art,
When a government, let alone a metanational body, intervenes to affect the market that is not capitalism, it is a mixed economy.
I find it mildly amusing that protecting capitalism is linked to this seeing as how our capitalist economy here in the U.S. has more than its fair share of open source development houses and they are doing just fine. I think capitalism is less to blame than big money IP special interests, they might be a better, more specific target than a particular economic system. Of course identifying the particular interests would go a long ways too....
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
make the world safe for capitalism.
When will the US gov't realize that open source is capitalistic - it reduces your costs allowing you to make greater profits.
Shh.
"Using free software to achieve the WSIS goals might get in the way of an intellectual property owner's ability to make a profit"
Thank you Captain Obvious! Using free software keeps companies that sell software from making a profit on software they don't get to sell. This guy's got to be an economics major...
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
"the UN is driving policy" and instantly reread it cause they it was wrong. Nevertheless, I am forced to agree with the opponents of the current US government and say that thier policy of intellectual protectionism to the point of intellectual imperialism is not the way to go. Japan went isolationist for a century and what did that get them? The same here, only instead of just isolating ourselves from the innovations of the rest of the world we are isolating ourselves and arresting the progres of our own innovation. There is a darwinism to nations and policies that clearly shows that nations that create policies (no matter how justified they may seem) if those current policies retard that nations sucess either those policy must go or that nations will. Laws that don't work either will collapse themselves or bring down those who attempt to enforce them. You cannot control innovation. If you try, you will fail. That is why the concept of intellectual property will colaapse. Either we must abandon are perceptions of it or face the growing threat of those who will ignore such absurd laws. Just as we can innobvate so can they and saying that we own one thought will just be laughed at by those who do not follow our laws and realize that just becuase you are the first to have a thought does not by nature give you the sole and exlcusive oweneship of that thought.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
"in other words, they want to make the world safe for capitalism." I must have missed your point. Why is this a bad thing?
"Never tell me the odds"
Sweet Don Quixote, why can't they get it through their heads that higher quality is more important than higher profit?
"A working-class hero's something to be." --John Lennon
I simply suggest more torpedos in general.
First of all, I don't think that open-source software is really going to stand in the way of making a profit. By some estimates, software licenses account for only 8% of revenues in the software industry.
Second -- why is profit at the top of the list of priorities for this particular initiative? I believe that an open democracy is possible.
I don't believe in forced sharing, but I do believe that we should be allowed to share if we so desire. The wording here seems to suggest that sharing is a significant threat to selling, and that as such, it should be disallowed entirely. I realize that hasn't been said, but it's not a big stretch from his current position... I don't want to see the world start down that slippery slope.
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
should have read:
The first is the United States' position that profit -- or even the potential for profit -- by major corporate donors to the current administration is more important than anything else.
Until we stop having this survival of the fittest idealogy, I will not be supprised by the actions of those who are top dog. Anything will be done to protect that position.
Others are of no consequence.
Using proprietary software might also get in the way of an intellectual property owner's ability to make a profit, i.e. another company. That's what happens when you make a choice between one product or another. So what are they saying, that they should only buy software if there were no competing products? That they should only buy from monopolies? Please tell us, oh wise and corrupt US representatives...
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
... 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." ... It offends the sensibilities of corporate lobbyists whose moral compass points at nothing but the bottom line.
This is merely a continuation of the point that the USA's representatives do not want to turn control of the base portions of the Internet over to another closed international organization. As the process stands right now, the current controllers happen to be capitalist, but they also happen to exist in a free enough society that we can bitch about their behaviors and impose change through democratic processes (or semi-democratic, if you include getting a congress-person to impose some new regulation that dictates how things should be). There is no such guarantee once control leaves our borders.
Furthermore, there are a handful of governments who are turning from the IBM AIX/Microsoft Windows proprietary software systems to the open source models that Sourceforge and Slashdot staff seem to champion. But, that in no way implies once the WSIS takes over, the open-source methods would be adopted either. The danger expressed by the representatives is that a 3rd party such as the UN will be in control to dictate connectivity, and that the majority of members of that UN body are not interested in the free flow of information in the form that the USA embrases it. We see nations like China filtering content into their space, nations in the Mid-East who would be even more harsh on content flow, and would these nations be in the majority on the WSIS board, it would spell an end for the freedom of content that we have enjoyed this last decade.
It doesn't matter if the firewall is closed source or open source, I don't want a firewall blocking a nation from my content.
the US is doing the same thing it's always done in the UN -- attempt to provide token participation in a body that is sometimes useful for achieving otherwise-difficult ends, but that can be easily bogged down or otherwise rendered useless when it tries to do something that we don't care for.
I would even go so far as to say this isn't about maintaining capitalist dominance or corporate dominance per se, so much as it is derailing something that could potentially be highly disruptive to the US position as a technological leader and controlling force on third-world technological innovation. Open Source would drastically lower the barrier to entry for pretty much any country looking to develop an information technology regime, which puts countries on a much more even footing to do things the US doesn't like (organize, provide information to people, utilize cryptography, and heavens! even provide a means for impoverished people to have true democracy), let alone making governments more effective. Strict politics-of-power thinking would suggest that other countries having strong, independent governments is not in the US' interests, because such governments and countries (and ultimately, populations) are much harder to manipulate...
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Open Source Intellectual Property (in the form of Copyright works) has owners too and they have the right to make a profit. Unfairly excluding their work from use restricts their ability to make a profit from their work, for example by selling consulting services, or add ons or their skills and services in general. Let's not pretend that OSS is anti-capitalist or in any way incompatible with capitalism. It is another component in what should be a free market where EVERYONE including free software authors should be allowed to compete on a level playing field. If the U.S. government has forgotten this or has sold out to lobbyists representing vested interests then we need to make the case for Open Source and Free Software clearly without muddying the watters with silly statements about making the world safe for capitalism.
Well, first off, when the government grants a person an unnatural monopoly on copying things, it is anything but free market. But second off, this really touches on something that has been bothering me about America lately. The path to wealth comes about by making freedom an end in itself, not greed.
If I pointed a gun to your head, took 10K, invested it, made 20K, and then gave it back to all your friends and took the credit for it - then technically speaking the group would better off financially, but they wouldn't be better off overall because they would have lost controll over their own destinies in the process. IMHO, this is what is happening to the USA. We have lost our financial freedom even though technically speaking we are wealthier than ever.
Free (as in libre) software is not mutually exclusive with capitalism. Ask RedHat. Or IBM. Or any number of companies that develop free (again, libre) software and make a profit (or, at least get a return in dollars) while operating in a capitalist system. The opponent here isn't capitalism. It's closed software and closed development methods. Of course the US (and a number of other countries, I assume) wants to promote capitalism. But it can do that and also promote free software.
The US never learned how to do diplomacy. There's just too much of the schoolyard bully inherent in the attitude.
I laugh at your silly karma.
In the sense that it's used here, making things "safe for capitalism" is a bad thing. When the government gets involved and uses it's might to shift or sway the market playing field, it's almost always a bad thing. Open source software exists and functions quite well in a free market. If it beats out more traditional software companies, it's because it out competed them in terms of value given per cost demanded.
Open source is not inherently communistic, nor is it a threat to capitalism. It's simply a threat to particular companies, just as new innovations are always a threat to older companies. Even if particular companies die, the market itself will hum along just fine.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
This isn't helping capitalism any... Open Source is part of capitalism, government is not. When government tries to protect any entity, be it a corporation or a sector, its no longer capitalism, its the American System of Mercantilism has established by Henry Clay (and furthered into the US by Abraham Lincoln).
Remember, Open Source is free market driven as well. The customer may pay nothing, but they also may want to pay for closed software so they receive some sort of guaranteed support or whatever it is they want. Just because software is free doesn't mean that there is no cost to run it.
Government picking closed source over open source really doesn't help capitalism any. In a truly capitalist society (The US is NOT capitalist in any way), open source can compete freely with closed source. Indian programmers can compete with American ones.
Both open source and closed source can happily live in a capitalistic society. However I do think that closed source and closed standards lead to a monopolistic capitalism, while open source and open standards lead to a free market capitalism. I personally would rather have the free market capitalism, but I don't think we can force a free market to be free, it must free itself. In technology this is what seems to be happening. I hope it continues.
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."
... a slashdot post.
Where does it say that it's the offical position of the US 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'? It's Joe Barr's interpretation, and the second half of that is the posters interpretation of Joe Barr's quote. I would like to see more quotes and references. The article is a lot like
"The software companies have gotten fat and lazy. Open Source came at them from left field and they still can't figure out how to honestly fight it. That's why they go crying to the politicians after contributing money to their campaigns.
This is a good point. I think it reflects the general laziness on the part of behemoth corporations with establish streams of revenue. Take Disney for instance. Every time the Mouse's copyright (Steam Boat Willy for goodness sakes!) almost comes up for expiry, another copyright extention gets past. Disney knows it's in hot water, especially lately because it hasn't had a mega-hit since the Lion King.
But it's not just Disney. If Linux really, and I mean really became a threat to Microsoft it would come down to either Microsoft ceasing to exist as it does now or Linux being made illegal (or tied up in the courts 'till forever). My guess is on the latter. Few people seem to point out (that I see, anyhow) that all this talk about innovation is total crap. Established corporations don't really want to innovate, because that costs money! Why innovate when you can just throw lawyers at threats to your revenue stream? This has been going on since (at least) Edison when he forced all the movie producers to move out to California to evade patents on motion picture equipment.
Linux will just have to do what it does best and no one else really wants to do -- innovate. Innovate damn well, too. Microsoft's $250-something billion market cap. is one heck of a freight train to derail.
It makes me sadder still that said people who say the U.S. is evil and makes things bad for its citizens and the rest of the world somehow never give any substantial evidence of that.
Does this count??
What?
Well, we took a stable (albeit ruled by a ruthless dictator) country with a viable economy and some semblance of order and ripped it to hell under the guise of protecting America. The goal wasn't to remove a bad man... There are plenty of bad men running countries, many of which we put there. The goal was to protect Americans.
Nukes? None... WMDs? None... Terrorism? Well, there wasn't terrorism until we wiped Iraq clean of any and all army or police. Now the infamous Al Queda is flooding into the country killing scores of Iraqis almost daily. And those 'small skirmishes' have killed more American soldiers than the pre-"Mission Accomplished" war. We'll end up spending a few hundred billion by the time we're done. The rest of the world hates us to the point where the UN is going to ask us to get the hell out. And two weeks before we started dropping bombs on this wanker who we swore up and down had WMDs and was desperately trying to kill Americans, he offered to let our own FBI come in and perform inspections... unfortunately, he had no proof of having weapons he really didn't have so that was obviously insufficient.
What the fuck you ask? The administration lied to Americans playing off their fears and sympathies to fight a war of preemption drastically changing America's position in the world and squandering any good-will towards us. Hundreds of Americans have died. Thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. Iraq is now a hotbed for terrorism so bad in fact the UN is having meetings behind our back looking for ways to get us the hell out. And our federal coffers are draining to the tune of 500b a year. Oh yeah, and Osama... a real threat to national security, no idea where he's at. What the FUCK?
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
There are three ways to get wealth: inherit it, marry it, or steal it.
Given that most of the wealthy nations of the world got that way through theft of some kind or another: colonial resources, natural (many would say aboriginal) resources, intellectual property (North America in the 19th century, witness China doing the same today) or labour (slavery or equivalents). I suspect the third world may take note of the precedent in their drive to get out of poverty.
We in the west are a little too comfy, I think, with the idea that our priveleges are entirely a product of our own innocently industrious natures. I think we are in for a painful readjustment. Even now countries like China are gathering the capability to put our currencies in the toilet. I am personally hoping it only takes stolen "intellectual" property to get the third world out of poverty.
The international community isn't about being benevolent. It's about stopping (well, trying to stop) bullies from kicking about outside of their borders. The US (among others) is *really* bad at staying out of other countries' affairs.
" It makes me sadder still that said people who say the U.S. is evil and makes things bad for its citizens and the rest of the world somehow never give any substantial evidence of that."
It makes me sad how ignorant Americans are of the most basic history of their government. There is no shortage of evidence that the U.S. has caused untold misery around the world for decades.
The U.S. has installed a non stop cavalcade of ruthless dictators since the end of World War II. The standard criteria is any government that "isn't with us is against us" so we arrange to topple democraticly elected leaders, who are usually nationalists or socialists and replace them with right wing dictators who are willing to do what we tell them, who are friendly to big American corporations and wealthy landowners, and are willing to ruthlessly kill anyone in their country who doesn't see things that way. Sometimes our puppets go bad, as in they stop doing what we tell them, for example Noriega in Panama and Sadam in Iraq and we even have to topple them:
Here are just a few examples, its a much longer list than this:
The Shah of Iran was installed in to power by a CIA sponsored coup in 1953 when they helped topple a democraticly elected nationalist leader,Mohammed Mossadegh . The Shah rivaled or surpassed Sadam in torture and oppression of the Iranian people and was a key reason why they seized they U.S. embassy when he was toppled and why the hate the U.S. with a passion to this day:
http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/htdtisirancoup.ht ml
In 1973 a CIA sponsored coup in Chile removed a democraticly elected, very popular, socialist and nationalist leader, Salvadore Allende and replaced him with General Pinochet, another ruthless military dictator and a 17 year reign of terror:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/chile/story/0,13755,10 38 615,00.html
In 1954 a CIA coup overthrew the democraticly elected leftist Jacobo Arbenz, once again to be replaced by a string of ruthless military dictators in to the 90's:
http://www.nsulaw.nova.edu/iachr/background.cfm
The CIA was also involved in the 1963 coup in which the Bathists took control of Iraq. The CIA apparently gave the Bathists a list of people, mostly left leaning, who were to be exterminated when they took power. Control of the Bathist party was eventually seized by Saddam Hussein:
http://www.bnfp.org/neighborhood/jmoore.htm
Lest you think this is all ancient history all indications are that the unrest in Venezuala a couple years ago which once again nearly toppled a popularly elected socialist leader was being stirred by the Bush administation through the CIA and the U.S. military which was meeting with the opposition leaders trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez who is very critical of the U.S. on all fronts:
http://www.icl-fi.org/ENGLISH/Ven787.htm
We are also on pretty reasonable terms with the dictator of Turkmenistan who surpasses Saddam in cult of personality:
http://archive.tol.cz/transitions/thedict1.html
It should also be pointed out President Mushareef of Pakistan, out close ally in the war on terror is also a military dictator who seized power in a coupe. So much for our advocacy of democracy and freedom. Its ironic that we took down Iraq for an imagined WMD threat while Pakistan has been actually selling critical nuclear technology to North Korea and Iran. Did we do anything about it, no. Mushareef just pardoned the man responsible and we look the other way.
Bottomline is if your government protects the wealthy 1% in your country that own all the land and industry, and you open your country to exploitation by American corporations and you do what the U.S. government tells you, you will have no problems with the U.S. Otherwise you are headed for a world of hurt.
All of this was well documented by the Church commission in 1975:
http://history-matters.com/store/store
@de_machina
"Iraq, the situation there is not especially comparable to that of Pakistan"
I agree with this statement a 100%. what Pakistan was doing was a hundred times more dangerous than what was going on in Iraq. Pakistan 's Khan was shopping working nuclear bomb designs and manufacturing centrifuges in Malaysia for sale to the highest bidder, which could easily have included terrorists. North Korea presumably has nukes now thanks to Pakistan so we have a really dangerous unstable regime with nukes thanks to Pakistan. Is there any evidence anyone has WMD's thanks to Iraq?
Iraq doesn't seem to have had any nuclear program since it was dismantled in the mid 90's. They certainly weren't real cooperative with the U.N. over time but as Bush was rushing to war they were cooperating with all the U.N inspections. Iraq offered to let CIA agents come in and find all the weapons the Bush administration claimed were there and claimed to know where they were. If this was really about WMD's the CIA would have just gone in, found the WMD's and proved their case. They didn't. This was about taking down Saddam and the fact he was trying to fully comply with inspections was an inconvenience as Bush/Cheney rushed to war. There is NOTHING Saddam could have done to comply with the U.N. to stop the invasion.
As Wolfowitz has said since, WMD's were just a convenient pretext for invading. It was one everyone could agree on.
Laying WMD charges against a country is a delightful rationalization for aggressive warfare. Its a charge you can lay against ANYONE. All you do is say "WE KNOW" they have chemical or biological weapons. Its impossible for the accused country to prove they do not no matter how much you inspect them. If you don't find any you just say, "They must have hid them really well". After all little vials of Anthrax can be hidden anywhere.
@de_machina
You know, I went one step beyond RTFA and clicked the link to the actual WSIS declaration of principles here:
1 16 1|1160.asp
http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_multi-en-
I think the article by Barr misrepresents what the WSIS declaration says. At best, he's confusing what the declaration actually says with what the US representatives may have wanted it to say (or at least what *he* thinks they wanted it to say!). The declaration includes plain language about
1. The importance of public domain: "A rich public domain is an essential element for the growth of the Information Society, creating multiple benefits such as an educated public, new jobs, innovation, business opportunities, and the advancement of sciences. Information in the public domain should be easily accessible to support the Information Society, and protected from misappropriation."
2. The role of open source: "Access to information and knowledge can be promoted by increasing awareness among all stakeholders of the possibilities offered by different software models, including proprietary, opensource and free software, in order to increase competition, access by users, diversity of choice, and to enable all users to develop solutions which best meet their requirements."
3. The only mention of Intellectual Property in the declaration is followed by noting the importance of knowledge dissemination: "Intellectual Property protection is important to encourage innovation and creativity in the Information Society; similarly, the wide dissemination, diffusion, and sharing of knowledge is important to encourage innovation and creativity."
But who am I to spoil the fun of everyone straw-manning the declaration?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.