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We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin
tres3 writes "Wired magazine has an excellent four page article discussing Brazil's new approach to Intellectual Property rights. It discusses everything from battling with the international pharmaceutical industries, to song sampling, to the national adoption of Linux. Richard Stallman
stated that India's political commitment to free software is second only to Brazil's after attending a weeklong free software teach-in for members of the Brazilian national congress, where 161 out of 594 members of congress, from a broad range of parties, had signed up with the free software caucus - making it one of the largest caucuses in the Brazilian government."
Take India, for example. While they may have pop singers and the like who are enormously popular domestically, the global market for such music doesn't even begin to approach that of America's. Or technology: most of India's brightest minds emigrate to the United States, where they are educated and either join universities or private industry here to continue generating IP.
It's a lot easier to take that kind of stand on IP (I.E. that it's not worth protecting) when you have nothing of your own to protect and everything to take.
Yes, because to an average politician's mind, free Brazilian language software is a great way to foster a homegrown software industry based on earning money...
;)
The point is that Free Software will make Brazil (hopefully) more productive on computers, quicker and cheaper. The way it should be
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
is this.
Democratizing knowledge so that anyone/everyone can benefit.
I expect this trend wil continue to emerge.
"Poorer" countries will be the main adopter of Open Source. It will be cheaper; and it will encourage creativity and growth of IT.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
This should give Brazil's economy a big boost, too. Let's just hope that the usual suspects don't manage to undo all the progress in a few years. This should be popular with the populists, so maybe they won't screw it up. That still leaves the fascists and the socialists and the international corps to work to screw it up, unfortunately.
I predict that the most effective opposition will come from the U.S. and the E.U. governments. I hope Brazil stands up to them; I'd really like to be able to move South for economic opportunity!
See what I've been reading.
This is about freedom of information, freedom of ideas. Linux is a part of that in that embodies freedom in software, but to only look at Linux is to miss the broader context.
There is no marginal cost to the sharing of digital or intellectual content, beyond the cost of transmission and storage. This fight is about taking ideas out of the hands of a few powerful entities with a vested interest in maintaining their power, and shifting it to everyone.
The world will benefit. The fucked nature of the existing system is no better demonstrated than in the US - where you'd think that having all the power would make life better. But medicine is more expensive there than in almost any other Western country.
-- james
PS please don't start feeding me bullshit about how you have to be paying more for drugs to support the companies. I cannot believe people actually tow this line. It's human health, for chrissakes
I'm all for free software and cheap drugs, but we still need to respect the copyrights and patients of the developers.
Like the hell we do. It's one thing to acknowledge their contribution to the world - it's another to assume that there should be some kind of a god given right for personal monopolies - even when millions of people in Africa are dying of AIDS. Like cows to the slaughter, people just assume that because a bunch of people declare something a glorious free market property right - that it must be so. But really, do you own slaves?
And they're going to do what, exactly? Execute Linus and RMS? Firebomb the FSF? You are making totally ridiculous assertions.
Yes, if there were no companies at all, then we'd have everything we always wanted, right away... Either that, or there wouldn't be anyone doing anything. I vote for the later. You actually think companies actually don't want to run fiber to your home?
And I'm the president.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
India's political commitment to free software is second only to Brazil's
Well, it stands to reason. In the Indain sub-continent (which includes Pakistan and Banglsdesh) where they have railed against high software prices for decades (and incidentally Pakistan produced the first virus - apparently aimed deliberately at foreigners who could afford to fly in to buy cheap copies of pirate software), then "Free and legal" is better than "Free, 'cos it's pirated"
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Many of these comments are weak. It's not just about getting free stuff, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Brazil exports very little IP. It's about big, important, multinational patent holders playing fair. Notice that Roche sat on their patent throne until Brazil threatened to make their own drugs. Notice that they were able to sell the stuff at *less than half the original price* when Brazil actually held good on the threat. Is this unlike Microsoft's behaviour? I think not. They crank up the prices of their OS and Office constantly, even though they are raking in the dough - that is until emerging markets are unwilling to put up with it. All of a sudden code starts to be released, discount editions are offered, and cooperation with foreign governments begins. And guess what? They are still raking in the dough. Who would have thunk? Just because Americans are willing to put up monopolies, inflated prices, and unfair patents doesn't make it right. Maybe it's time to learn something from the third world.
Some of us contribute to the cause, be it with code, with documentation, with support... Do you know who brought the wonders of Debian's APT to the RPM world? Conectiva, the leading Brazilian Linux distributor. WindowMaker? A brazilian wrote it. How about the kernel itself? The 2.4 branch is currently maintained by a brazilian, too. OpenOffice.org has received many contributions from the Brazilian team, as well as GNOME, Debian, and so far so on. Therefore, while not everyone has the skills to contribute to free software, those who have them more often than not do contribute to free software.
And yes, some of us brazilians also actually pay for our distros; the biggest problem with that is that it is more difficult to pay for a foreign (read American) distribution, due to rate changes and bureaucracy. However, when there is an easy way to pay, we do; Conectiva is there to prove it.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
I find myself caught between two desires. I love the OSC, what it stands for, and the desire to see Microsofts monopoly crumble. On the other hand, I love that I live in a country where I don't get paid $240 a month for the work I do, and I realize that Microsoft and the other companies that hold patents on drugs, and other exportable goods, bring in the money to keep the US employees... well... employed. Inherently I loath the restrictions of big companies on what I want to do with goods I've purchased... for example -- on my ability to create an MP3 from a CD that I purchased. Or rip a DVD to have on my computer in digital format instead of hard copy... if for no other reason, than because I choose to. When it comes to health care, and what hurts people, I believe in, and support, Brazils move to 'bite their thumbs' at big companies in defense of the Brazilian population. I just worry that things have gotten so far out of wack within the US in terms of patent, that people can be sued for coming up with the same idea in two different locations, and in two different ways, independently, and the person who gets to the patent office first wins... what mess. Sometimes I guess you just have to take a couple steps back from the nonsense, and use common sense instead.
How do the millions of people dying of AIDS have any claim whatsover to the drugs? The drugs that wouldn't have been there if your evil drug companies hadn't spent the $$ to make them? It's not like drugs fall from the sky and they're being hoarded, like diamonds or something. Without the drug companies you know what you have? NOT A FUCKING THING. With them, you get something, an infinite percent improvement. If you get some free, or some cheap, be grateful.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
There is no marginal cost to the sharing of digital or intellectual content, beyond the cost of transmission and storage.
I will say this as simply as possible:
The cost of reproducing a digital asset is completely unrelated to the cost of creating the asset.
People who say otherwise have obviously never created anything worth selling. If I spend 100 hours to invent a new widget, I will probably make blueprints or some other form of diagram. I can make copies of those documents in a local copy shop for ~2 cents apiece. Does that mean my time spent creating the new widget is worth what I spend for the copies? That is absolutely ridiculous: for some reason people expect commercial entities to do their R&D for free and sell the result for the cost of media. I can't imagine how that begins to make sense to anyone.
This fight is about taking ideas out of the hands of a few powerful entities with a vested interest in maintaining their power, and shifting it to everyone.
Those "powerful entities" are the ones that created the intellectual property. Their "vested interest" is completely justified: designing and developing products is expensive, and compaines recoup that expense by - get this - selling the product.
Using lofty terms like "this fight" is silly, and the result of people expecting to get everything for free. Wake up, Sparky - some things actually cost money, and trying to spin your desire for zero-cost products as some sort of noble effort makes you look like ap spoiled child.
PS I am speaking here about commercial entities and products, not F/OSS (which should be obvious).
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
How do the millions of people dying of AIDS have any claim whatsover to the drugs? The drugs that wouldn't have been there if your evil drug companies hadn't spent the $$ to make them? It's not like drugs fall from the sky and they're being hoarded, like diamonds or something. Without the drug companies you know what you have? NOT A FUCKING THING. With them, you get something, an infinite percent improvement. If you get some free, or some cheap, be grateful.
Excuse me, but your glorious pharmacutical companies are making it impossible for researchers to collaberate on AIDS remedys because they want grab key patents and lock out competitors. In addition, they actively interfere with research on cheaper and simple remidies that could be even more beneficial - but can not be patented. This is not a glorious free market forces at all - it is bullshit, and people are FUCKING dying because of it. I don't owe the pharmacuticals a Goddam thing - But people have rights and deserve freedoms inspite of them not because it suits their profits.
In order to use M$, Brazil has to pay $$ (as in "USD"). And because Brazil does not (you inconsiderate clods...) have a convertable currency, it has to convert something tangible -- soybeans will do -- into $$. Since the marginal cost of reproducing open-source software is more or less zero, whereas the marginal cost of producing soybeans (or whatever) is decidedly greater than zero, it's an easy decision.
The US, in contrast, simply prints more dollars (figuratively -- actually we sell treasury bills) and, as long as other countries (read: China, Japan) accept those freshly printed dollars, we get stuff without necessarily having to generate a comparable amount of items (a.k.a. "trade deficit").
Nice deal, as long as it works. And it will work forever, won't it? Won't it???
Start practicing your Portuguese...
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Linux is like Walmart....
it is a race to the bottom on cost. Yes their are benefits like Walmart to the pocketbook but long term are they good??
You are _so_ wrong, I have to go get my cluebat.
I use the most expensive platform on earth and the most closed (ie hardware, software), Apple's Macintosh and find it to be far more useful than Linux.
Expensive to acquire, yes, but expensive to run and use? Think again. I don't use Macs myself, but like them a lot.
The main problem I have is Linux doesn't innovate, it copies what Apple and MS do so it is always in catch up mode.
This is kind of the whole point in open source. We build on the successes of others, or get ideas on how to do it better from what other people have done. It's a collaborative, iterative process and it works wonders. Most worth while things did not just magically spring from someone's 'Eureka!' moment - they are built on previous ideas from previous 'innovators'. Software is unique in that is information that allows information to be copied and transmitted - often resulting in better information. Recursive algorithms rock.
One can't make money doing that unless you rape people on the service contracts....
And here's where the cluebat comes into play. Money is sometimes not directly involved in somethings value, you narrow minded twit. RTFA, bud - you'll find that the Brazillians want freedom, not free. Linux is actually a race to owning thier own digital future with zero regard to monetary issues. Myself, I want no gate keepers between me and my fellow humans - I want to communicate my ideas to them, so we all can learn and grow that much faster. We'll just have to make money some other way than trying to be toll collectors on communications channels.
Linux costs plenty, but when I sign up for it, I know that I'm usually Standards Compliant, I can look for back doors, add new stuff, do whatever I like with my systems. This is not so with proprietary systems - and that means that part of my systems aren't truly mine.
BTW, I think you mean "One can't make the same amount of money as Microsoft or Oracle doing that unless you rape people on the service contracts....". Some of us don't want another William H. Gates III or *shudder* Larry Ellison in this world, thank you very much.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
On the flip side, if through hard work and determination, I create something useful to others and attempt to make money from it in order to feed my family should you, who did nothing to bring about its creation, be allowed to simply take it from me without compensating me for my time and effort to do with as you please?
Yes I should, because I have a family to feed to, and your invention likely builds on zillions of things, experiences, and knowledge, that society gave you freely - now to turn arround and say they owe you a monopoly is bullshit. Not to mention that 90% of patents especially cover incremental improvements that were going to be invented anyhow with or without a monopoly. So basically, you're not benefiting society - you're just getting in the way of future innovation, why should you be rewarded for that?
Why is it that in the countries listed as most "restrictive" in terms of IP laws, that those that directly produce the least IP own the most and use/abuse the laws the most?
Take the US for example. While they have pop singers and the like enormously popular domestically AND internationally, their ownership of IP doesn't even begin to apporach that of the members corporations of RIAA and MPAA. Or technology: most of America's brightest minds take employment with large corporations and contininue to generate IP for the corporation, or have their IP taken from them ( Philo Farnsworth didn't get rich from inventing the modern television, but RCA sure got rich from his work).
It's a lot easier to take a stand on IP when you don't have to invent your own and have a crapload of money to buy it or take it from others.
It's so easy to forget the original economic rationale for patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The rationale has *little or nothing* to do with fair/deserved (or outrageous/undeserved, whatever the case may be!) compensation for the intellectual rights holders. It has *everything* to do with solving a fundamental economic problem with the provision of (nearly) public goods; goods with high initial/fixed costs and near-zero marginal costs.
Intellectual rights protections are about providing incentives for innovation and production. Perhaps it's fashionable to talk about "tropicalizing" (yes, I read TFA), but we should always ask what the incentive structure for innovation/production will look like when rights protections are changed. Perhaps there's a viable model of software development (open-source) outside traditional copyright law, but is there a viable model for producing books, music, movies, technological innovation, and all the other activities protected by IP laws?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
No, my logic is like saying: their property is theirs, not anyone else's.
My geo-metro is my property - a copy of it is not. In fact, please make a copy - I won't be violated. In fact, there are 10 million coppies, I am not violated. It is bullshit morality. As far as I'm concerned - 'the pharmacuticals' can have all the property they want, and I wouldn't care. But that's not what they're asking for - they are asking for controll over who can make replicas. That is NOT a property (repeat after me, the right to replicate is not a property ... repeat after me, the right to replicate is not a property) , and it is not even good for society, and I can prove it because it has all sorts of consequences that you seem to like blowing off - but other countries like brazil can not, because people are dying over it. And your assertion that cures would never be found anyhow, is bullshit.
Democracy is about giving everyone the chance to VOTE on how they will be RULED.
Right. So I gave a democratic choice to the ants in my kitchen. If they wanted me to be their absolute ruler, they should walk to the right, otherwise they should turn to the left. Then I dropped some sugar on the right side.
Without free access to information, democracy is useless, it does not exist at all.
As for intellectual property, the idea is that A PERSON who DEVELOPS an IDEA can give it to EVERYONE.
Or THAT PERSON can RESTRICT IT to WHOMEVER they choose, be it a friend or a CUSTOMER.
What if the idea is developed independently? Ironically, in the 1970's Gilberto Gil himself sued Rod Stewart for plagiarism, and won. I'm not sure that Stewart actually copied Gil's music, perhaps it was a coincidence that the same sequence of notes occurred to both of them independently and Gil was lucky to publish earlier.
That's what I consider the biggest weak point in declaring that an idea can be considered property. The telephone is another good example, the patent was granted to Alexander Graham Bell because he filed it at the USPTO a few hours before Elisha Gray submitted a remarkably similar invention.
Ideas happen to people in a given intellectual environment, and similar ideas may happen to people living in similar environments. Elisha Gray worked hard to develop his ideas, he should not be denied their use just because someone else, working in secret, developed similar ideas.
If you begin to confiscate IP and give it away without the approval of the originator of the IP, then you remove the monetary incentive for them to create.
That practical consideration is the only reason for the whole concept of "intellectual" property. IP law is NOT motivated by any ethical reason, just practical ones. In case of doubt, read the Constitution of the USA.
And today IP law is having the opposite effect. Lobbying to prolong copyrights has a much better return on investment than creating new intellectual works.
And you'll decrease the overall total creativity in a society. (see COMMUNISM, EFFECTS OF in Wickipedia or Google. Or read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand).
You are ignoring the difference between the communization of physical property, where the giver loses the property when it's given away, and the sharing of intellectual property, where no one becomes more ignorant when they give information away.
For those people who want to establish the validity of "Intellectual Property" and have it treated as property, I say the government should levy an "Intellectual Property" Tax on your "Intellectual Property."
Here is one way it could be done:
Newly created "Intellectual Property" comes with a short "Intellectual Property" Tax exemption period. Say 18 years at the outside - could easily be much shorter.
After this period, the "County" tax assessor values your "Intellectual Property" and you start paying your "Intellectual Property" Tax.
Now, after the exemption period, you can choose to place your "Intellectual Property" in the public domain, in which case you will be exempt from paying taxes on it, or you can start paying your tax bill based on a percentage of the assessed value.
Politicians should go for this in a big way - new source of revenue. Could this have any bad side effects for the common man?
A Nony Mouse
" Yes, because to an average politician's mind, free Brazilian language software is a great way to foster a homegrown software industry based on earning money.."
I know you're being sarcastic, but the bottom line is that Linux doesn't mean that all software is free, it simply says that the Operating System is not the place where you can differentiate your software.
Linux does foster a software industry, because if they didn't choose Linux, the reality is they would be using Windows.
And as long as you use Windows, Microsoft will always have the edge on local developers.
Using Linux forces the Windows Monopoly to be a two-edged sword. Yes, it is big, but it means Microsoft can't compete with local software vendors.
I understand why the U.S. sees this as a competitive threat. I also understand why non-U.S. companies many not be all that eager to pay a microsoft tax when open versions of stuff are available.
So charge a lot for the first copy. Simple as that. You can even GPL it, just don't release the first copy until you get paid.
Let's say I run a commercial software company. For the sake of using round numbers, let's say I have five developers who all work full-time for two weeks, and each developer costs me $50/hour. Let's further assume that I only want to break even (i.e. not make a profit).
5 developers * 80 hours * ($50/hour) = a cost to me of $20,000.
Does it make sense for me to charge $20,000 for the first copy and then GPL the rest? Of course not, because I would never be able to sell the first copy. Would you pony up and buy the first copy if you knew the app would be GPLd immediately thereafter? I doubt it. Neither would other right-thinking people. Now what?
We are left with the idea of selling 20 copies for $1,000 each, 50 copies for $400 each, or at some other price point until I recoup the $20,000. The number of copies (and associated price point) would have to be based on a realistic assessment of the market: I wouldn't want to charge $1 and expect to sell 20,000 copies.
In the real world I would expect to make a profit through sales of the product. Let's say I decided to sell it at $400/copy, and I have sold 100 copies. That's $40,000 - a profit of $20,000. If the product is still selling well, what is my motivation to cut off the revenue stream by releasing the product under the GPL?
From an economic standpoint it really only makes sense for me to GPL the software when I will no longer make enough money from it to justify support, patches, etc. Ideally - for the F/OSS community at large - the app will be GPLd as soon as possible. However, I suspect the F/OSS community is not the primary concern of a commercial entity; if the company is public, i.e. has shareholders, the F/OSS community better not be a priority. (The primary focus should be the shareholders.)
It appears (to me, at least) that quite a lot of purported members of the F/OSS community don't give a rip about the ideals [of F/OSS] and just insist that all software should be free-as-in-beer, regardless of the associated development costs. That is a naive, irksome, and ultimately harmful attitude.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
"The seperation of doctor's offices from pharmacies is designed to make any sort of direct kick-back impossible."
So its indirect.
They send the doctors off to expensive conferences *all the time*.
The reps come to the doctor's office and give the Doctor about a zillion free samples of the latest drug.
ANd here's how it goes:
Doctor: Mrs. Smith, your blood pressure is high. Here. Take a 2 month supply of Oxyposivoidtron and here's a 6 month prescription
[note here, the doctor feels he is doing the patient a favor]
Mrs Smith: Oh, well, okay, and thanks for your kind generosity!
[note here, the patient feels the doctor is doing her a favor]
2 months later
Mrs Smith: Please fill this prescription
Mr. Pharmacist: Yes Ma'am. That will be $200!
So what did this accomplish? How is this any different than a local pusher giving out free dime bags of pot to kids?
It gets the doctor out of having to explain to Mrs. Smith that the reason she has high blood pressure is because she's 50 pounds overweight. It excuses Mrs. Smith from making life changes that would benefit her by making her body well. And the drug companies like it because now they get a million people paying $1000 a year for this magic wonderdrug, which is only marginally different than another drug that the patent ran out on.
Meanwhile, the reason the drug costs $1000/year is because $50 went to "research", $300 went to marketing to doctors and patients, and $200 goes straight to the bottom line of the execs at the company. The rest is margins on the drug and packaging.
THere's nobody "winning" with this kind of system. Its an absolute joke. And its more than a little discouraging that people can't understand that they're being treated like a sucker.