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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.
"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
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
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
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.
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.
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
" 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