Slashdot Mirror
Lessig on the World Social Forum
Raindance writes "Lawrence Lessig has a great article up on Technology Review about the World Social Forum held this past January in Brazil. In addition to telling an engaging story, it covers topics ranging from GNU and DRM to Brazil's interesting stance on the rights of foreign copyright holders, and is a good introduction to the permission culture/remix culture debate. It also makes me want to live in Brazil."
Geez, unless you have lots of money and lots of protection, you really don't want to live in Brazil. You also will live in a country where there has been almost a wholesale genocide against Brazilian indians there.
Do some research..........
I was in Brazil last Summer. I can tell you, the food is awesome, the women are HOT and the climate is pretty good - if a bit warm for being their Winter.
:-P
Unfortunately, computers are extremely expensive - Macs esepcially. But even PCs cost way more than they do here in the States. And the import rules are ridiculous. That being said, Internet access is pretty good.
But the average income is about $100 US per month. So, if you think about really moving there, be prepared to work real hard for very little! But you can buy a Mercedes minivan for $10,000 US, you'll eat very well and you'll NEVER be lonley at night!
The woman like Americans because Brazilian men are notoriously unfaithful, cruel and not around much. One town I was in the ratio of women to men was 8:1!
Come to think of it, buy your tickets before prices rise!
Don't be fooled; the software patent folly, the monopoly of huge corporations is also present here, perhaps not as big as in the U.S. or Europe, but it's growing. In our case, the situation is a little worse: the monopoly holder is foreign! If the operating system in almost all computers in American homes was from some Brazilian monopoly, I bet you would think something is very wrong. But here, in Brazil, we live by copying others, adopting foreign technologies, and never developing our own. We don't even play catch-up, for two reasons primarily: first, Brazil is a poor country and public money is very badly managed; research and development are secondary goals to making rich people, politicians, richer. Second, so-called first world is so ahead in technology that not a few think that pursuing our own self-sufficience in tech (not only IT, but science in general) is futile. Of course, there are a few and honourable exceptions (Cesar Lattes is a very well known physicist), but in general this is how we fare.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Brazil did right, IMHO. The price proposed was simply ridiculous to Brazilian reality. Wanna make money on people's health/survival? Don't abuse on the profit.
>
So you're saying that GPL users == child pornographers???
What makes you think that licensed code from any arbitrary software vendor couldn't be used in a child pornography application? Do you really think child pornographers care about laws and IP rights?
This is a very valid point.
Companies dont want this kind of thing happening ever.
What would a company that produced a little peice of GPL code do if suddenly someone builds an illegal, child porn sharing program. Your company could wind up out of buisiness faster than Osbourne did.
Or worse yet. what if your companies custom GPLed tcp stack gets used in a malicious program / trojan / virus ? Its these kinds of issues that companies have to weigh in and consider very seriously before they start using the GPL. The spirit and "legal" meaning of the GPL and similar licences aside, Will it mean anything to the consumers that they didnt make it. That someone else used something that they made freely available will generaly place them in a position of blame in the "general public" view. Not everyone knows something bout Open Source. And we can thank the misinformation war around it for that.
The GPL is good. But before companies can start opening up, They have to feel safe about it. Theyre in it for the money after all and if it is even a possible threat to their continued revenue then its in their best interest not to do it.
We need to make the world more OSS freindly. And giving abusers of the ideals behind OSS as well as the OSS itself, the cold shoulder is a good way to start.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
I'm tempted to mod you down for this, but I'll reply instead. The article you linked to shows that Brazil disregards patents on AIDS.
Good on them! There is no way that drug companies factor profits from Brazil into their feasibility studies for the simple reason that Brazil cannot afford AIDS drugs. Since drug companies are making AIDS drugs, we know they are making a profit without support from Brazil. I'm glad that Brazil has enough guts to stand up to the US, Germany and France over drug patents.
As for respecting the GPL in kiddie porn, would it really make it that much better if they did respect the GPL? All they would have to do is provide the source code along with their kiddie porn program. The GPL permits anybody to do anything with the software, including run spam sites, distribute kiddie porn or program the guantanamo bay gas chambers.
If Brazil was taking my GPLed software, turning it into a commercial product, and then selling it around the world then yes I would be pissed at them ignoring the GPL. But guess what? Even in that hypothetical scenario I don't have to worry about Brazil not respecting copyright because I can just go to a local court to have their actions banned and a fine imposed.
Or, for the shorter story, your analogy is useless.
"It also makes me want to live in Brazil."
here is a real reason to live in Brazil
I read the article. A very different socio-political environment indeed. And I think it sounds wonderful.
I honestly like what I'm hearing from Brazil though. This sounds beautiful. We all know that free software is a good thing. I don't think there's anything wrong w/ someone retaining rights to their intellectual property. The right thing to do if you don't agree w/ how they want to license the rights to use their product, is to *not* buy it. But I *do* think there's something strange w/ someone trying to tell me how many times I can read the e-Book I've purchased, or listen to the MP3 I've downloaded, until I have to buy a new one. One could of course, liken this to renting a movie, but it's still a bit different.
I think that what we're grasping at here all comes from the folly of trying to set up of a system of rules to govern the consumption of intangibles so that they can fit our existing econonmic model built largely around the consumption of tangibles.
...
This article is vaguely reminiscent of articles published by hippies in the 60s about the wonders of the perfection of simplistic primitive cultures. Probably, ironically enough, in Brazil. And how all of our problems as a society would be erased if we'd just follow the simple principles of the __insert name of tribe here__ people.
And, of course, we merely giggle at them 4 decades later.
I suspect the same will be said 40 years from now. =P
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
"...but when your beloved GPL application turns up in a Brazilian program designed to create and share child pornography you won't exactly be laughing."
Poor argument against the GPL. Are you just pulling out the worst possible thing you can think of and sticking it in with GPL just to make it look bad?
You apparently, like many others, have no idea what intellectual property really means. And also no idea of its scope outside of where you reside.
What you are essentially "trying" to argue, is that tools (software under the GPL) may be used by people with bad intentions. I could point out many other tools that can be used with bad intentions, but I'm sure you could to.
The reality of IP is much different than people are willing to believe. Please don't throw in references to child pornography, etc. simply trying to evoke some sort of emotional response and sticking it with the GPL.
Question everything.
I'd like to second this, but also point out that American techies in Brazil make QUITE a bit more than "$100 a month", and can feel pretty safe if they stay out of the ghettos and politics.
A few weeks ago Larry Lessig gave a great talk along with Jeff Tweedy at the New York Public Library. In it Lessig talks a lot about Brazil and how they are totally nuts about open source, and how it isn't only overweight nerds with ponytails who are into it (his words, not mine). Definitely worth watching, there is some great new material that wasn't in his book Free Culture or anywhere else that I know of.
Nice to see Larry cavorting with the enemies of freedom, such as the man who closed the forum, Hugo Chavez.
Get a clue, Larry. There's more important things than non-DRM'd movies.
http://www.geocities.com/email_theguy/newportweb/
Don't put advice in your sig.
when your beloved GPL application turns up in a Brazilian program designed to create and share child pornography you won't exactly be laughing
This has to be one of the most ridiculous comments and worst modding I've ever seen on Slashdot. In what conceivable way is child porn connected to GPL software any more than paid licensed software? Even Rush Limbaugh would have trouble making a statement like this with a straight face.
If you agree with what Lessig says in this article (and it's about as uncontrovercial yet insightful as you can get, typical of Lessig), then the best way to honor it is to pass it along to family and friends (and maybe politicians) to read. I've been a fan of Lessig's for a while, and this is an excellent short summary of the issues involved, not from a technical level or an RMS-hippie-fist-raised standpoint, but from a very clear, calm, easily-approachable angle.
It's not about software. It's about culture. It's about the fabric of our lives (and I don't mean cotton).
And if the US is not careful, it will be about our marginalization as a country of any importance in the information sector. We'll have made it illegal for Americans to create or have culture. That's very sad, particularly as I am an American.
Spread the word. Then go read Lessig's book "Free Culture" (dead-tree or free electronic format). Excellent read.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
This article is filled with non-sequiturs and confusion:
1) so a guy took a bunch of his home movies, mixed them on an iMac and ended up winning an award at the Cannes film festival. Lessig asks "what if he wanted to mix someone else's video with his own? He couldn't". That totally didn't make any sense. You just proved that you don't need to be able to use other people's material freely to get into Cannes. Next time pick an example that had something to do with your point.
2) Proprietary software makes Brazilians software pirates. Yeah, and murder laws make killers criminals. What? If you really want to follow through on this line of reasoning, you have to assume that there are not any suitable alternatives to most proprietary software. He seems to be in Brazil in part to trying to convince people that there are.
3) constant mixing up of two definitions of free in the same context. Brazilian govt. are spending 1bil a year on proprietary software. Free software could solve this. Which free? You can charge for GPL software ya know. Look at the Sveasoft Linksys router firmware. You can use the GPL in software and still make sure you make lots and lots of money off people, if your product is good.
That said, go Brazil.
Well, other than being one of the most bizarre straw men I've ever seen, this post demonstrates a stunning ignorance of the GPL.
This may seem good in the short term, but when your beloved GPL application turns up in a Brazilian program designed to create and share child pornography you won't exactly be laughing.
The GPL offers no means whatsoever for the programmer to limit how people choose to use or adapt their software. That is the entire point, and this applies just the same in Brazil as out of it.
Part of the responsibility of living with freedom is co-existing with ideas you find repugnant.
First pornography will be outlawed (as being unnatural), and then anything remotely violent (for the children's sake), and then anything scientific (if it isn't in the Bible, it can't be true!), and then anything that speaks out against the Kaiser (democracy is dead).
Hey, you go to illogical extremes, and so will I.
I spent two years living in Brazil, in large cities (Porto Alegre, Santa Maria, others) and small towns (Sao Luis Ganzaga, Erichim, others) and experienced NONE of the bad events you describe.
It is dangerous for any one person to claim that their experience is representative of everyone's, including those that have not expericed it yet.
This may seem good in the short term, but when your beloved GPL application turns up in a Brazilian program designed to create and share child pornography you won't exactly be laughing.
You may as well say "This may seem good in the short term, but when your beloved printing press is used to create and share child pornography you won't exactly be laughing."
The GPL doesn't differentiate with regard to what code is used for; it just mandates that derivitave code be released under the GPL.
The parent is using child pornography for shock value exclusively.
I submit that kiddie porn may be poised to replace Hitler as the new Godwinesque indefensible extreme.
-- This void intentionally left null.
Reading this comment, I am suddenly reminded of, and very glad of, my decision to stop reading kuro5hin.
One town I was in the ratio of women to men was 8:1!
Uh...what was the name of this town?
"The Waste Land" , by T.S. Eliot, published in 1923, IIRC, is one of the most prominent early examples of the "remix culture". At least a third of Eliot's text consists of quotes from other writers, including reviews on Wagner, popular songs, reformation playwrights, and translations of Eastern mystics. In today's terms, it would be a massive copyright violation, on the lines of the quote from the Rolling Stones that cost the Verve so much of their royalties from "Bittersweet Symphony".
My point is that there is a "high culture" version of this "remix culture" that has existed for a long time (classical musicians would often quote from each other). Perhaps acknowledgement of this might encourage legislators to accept that protection of the rights of older artists stifles the creativity of new ones. (This relates to the patent debate in a thread further down the front page).
Actually, the bottom line is that it is going to happen, one way or the other. Individuals may suffer from this, like the Verve, who lost the revenues from a hit album, but others will gain, like kids in poorer countries, who are not viable targets for US trial lawyers.
i am glad to have been of assistance. although i find it hard to believe you would keep reading slashdot of all places... case in point the grandparent to this comment was at one point +4 insightful :)
There is a response to this article by a Professor of Law from the University of Chicago (who holds a more moderate view about this -but nevertheless agrees to some of Lessigs view) here
You may not realize it, but you've just responded to a true White-Bread Citizen of the American Bubble..
Few photos of Lessig (2) and J. P. Barlow --mentioned in the article-- in Porto Alegre.
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
Because living in dirt huts without electronics,
and focusing on developing your nation's IT infrastructure with an emphasis on software which is or can be locally developed while allowing your people access to AIDS medication,
are really fucking similar.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
No company should make anything that could possibly have evil uses. For example, Microsoft Word could easily be used to write a pamphlet promoting child pornography. Outlook Express could be used by terrorists trying to overthrow the government. Too bad the folks in the marketing department didn't thing of these dangers before wildly releasing them into the public.
i am glad to have been of assistance. although i find it hard to believe you would keep reading slashdot of all places... case in point the grandparent to this comment was at one point +4 insightful :)
The hilarious part is that this is of all things because slashdot's moderation system works, both making the site easier to read and making it more likely that making worthwhile comments will result in people actually reading your post. In theory slashdot's moderation is controlled by an elite few while kuro5hin's is open and democratic; in practice the opposite is true because slashdot's random-selection system ensures that moderation is truly collaborative and balanced, while kuro5hin's moderation voting is entirely controlled by one or two small cadres of allied users who vote in blocs and drown out the opinions of the average users, who tend to vote only for a minority of comments.
The S/N ratio here may still be only a third of what it is on k5, but since there's three times as much content this comes out to about the same thing... as long as you don't look inside politics.slashdot (ugh)
Having waded through all 9 pages of the article I agree that it was quite fine, like most of what Lessig writes.
I think there is something going on, which he barely hints at, that will come to be important. The World Social Forum is not an event mainly focused around copyright law or free software. It is an event organized for a myriad of global popular movements of a generally leftist character -- for economic justice, environmental preservation, indigenous rights, gender and racial equality, and so on. It is one of the focal points of what is sometimes called (I would say erroneously) the "anti-globalization" movement.
What we are seeing here is a convergence between those movements and free software. From the standpoint of leftists, it is quite natural: If you are interested in alternative forms of social organization (to unrestricted free-market capitalism) both the way open-source communities function and the nature of the software itself as a public resource are a prime example of how such an organization could work.
On the other hand I imagine parts of the open-source community would be very wary of the association: After all, many community leaders go to great lengths to be as apolitical as possible, or even are outspoken conservatives or libertarians, and have spent years trying to persuade major corporations that supporting open-source does not mean destroying capitalism. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
What a choice. Good for open/libre software, bad for the Amazon, bad for US agriculture.
Marie Claire Insults Guam
The women of Guam have denounced an article in the international women's fashion magazine, Marie Claire, which stated that Guam women may not marry as virgins and that a man travels the island "deflowering" future brides. The article appeared in the December issue of the magazine and was under the caption title: "Jobs your boyfriend wants".
Lt. Gov. Madeleine Bordallo described the article as disgusting. "It was written in ignorance and I think we have to do something about it," she said.
The Colonised Chamoru Coalition called on Guamanian organizations nationwide to join in protest and boycott the magazine. It has also asked business houses to cease carrying the magazine in their shelves.
Coalition members are seeking legal assistance to determine what action can be taken against Marie Claire.
"If Brazil was taking my GPLed software, turning it into a commercial product, and then selling it around the world then yes I would be pissed at them ignoring the GPL. But guess what? Even in that hypothetical scenario I don't have to worry about Brazil not respecting copyright because I can just go to a local court to have their actions banned and a fine imposed."
Um, no you couldn't. The only way to prevent a sovereign nation from doing any damn thing it wants is via diplomacy or, ultimately, war (unless you have a structure similar to that of the EU, where an individual can petition the court against a nation under certain circumstances). You might get your government to restrict imports, but that's about all you as an individual or company could do.
As you yourself point out (and praise, rightly IMO) above, Brazil has disregarded IP rights over the production of AIDS drugs. What exactly is your local court going to do to stop them doing the same to your copyright program if they so desire? There is no way they will respect a fine imposed at that level, even if it came from a Brazillian court, let alone an extra-national one. The very idea of an injunction against a nation is laughable. Many national legal systems (the UK for one) grant the Government immunity from IP rights in any case, restricting their liability to damages if anything at all.
So unless you have a private army, or can persuade your government to risk an international incident, or are Brazillian and the legal system over there allows that kind of litigation, then Brazil, or any other nation, can do with you software anything they like.
that's part of the stereotype, after all: child pornographers flock to Brazil. It's in the water; the parents, the authorities - they're all waiting at the airport to embrace Michael Jackson.
Since the end of June 2002, when I saw that goal on the big screens either side of the stage at Glastonbury, I have known the Brazilians had it right. {The fact that in my locker at work was a slip of paper with the word "Brazil" on it, which had cost me a pound -- twelve minutes' wages in that hell-hole -- and was now one blow of a whistle away from being worth sixteen times that, was perhaps also in some measure responsible for the way I felt.} Brazil winning the works sweepstake -- sorry, the World Cup -- made everything worth it.
The fact is that it is very possible to survive without Microsoft. We'd already been doing it for tens of thousands of years before they came along. {For that matter, IR1 wasn't held up for lack of patent protections.}
Once upon a time, the way to make money was to have an idea that nobody had had before. Now it seems that all the ideas worth having have already been had; and the new way to make money is to find something that people currently do all the time without having to pay for it, and find a way to make them pay you for it.
That little fad will soon be over, but not without a lot of name-calling, hair-pulling, below-the-belt punching and general dirty fighting. Those who have chosen to stay clear of the whole mess will undoubtedly be seen in the long run to have made the right choice.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This may seem good in the short term, but when your beloved GPL application turns up in a Brazilian program designed to create and share child pornography you won't exactly be laughing.
You mean like the Canon software that came with my digicam (real pictures), or Photoshop (fakes)? Oh wait - that's just like every other photograph out there, only difference is what was in front of the lens. That is the same absurdity that makes people want to make p2p nets ban piracy. Well, graphics software understands red, green and blue dots (RGB). p2p apps understand 0s and 1s. They have no concept of "child pornography" or "copyrighted work" and can never have.
Back to your first point, pharmaceutical companies let people die for profit. The government makes the law, they decide what, if anything, is patent protected and how. If they decide "we can remove patents if they kill people", let them. As long as it is applied fairly.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Dude, TFA is about the "World Social Forum", not the "World Sexual Forum"...
Insightfull? Maybe he went visit the amazon rainforest. I'ts just like to visit Alaska and saying that all the USA is made of ice.
when I submitted this story back on the 6th, it was rejected. You should read Lessig but note that in the same issue of TR, there is a rebuttal of sorts to Mr. Lessig's interpretation authored by Richard Epstein.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
After readin the story, I have to say that I am very encouraged. I for one could not point to a US politician like Gilberto Gil (the Brazilian Minister of Culture) if my life depended on it. I have lost hope that any real improvment of personal freedoms can begin in the US anymore (we're more likely to lose some in the current climate). I must say, however, that the stranglehold the US has on commerce (yes I know, them's fight'n words) will end up being a blessing in disguise as countries like Brazil move to get out from under that control. It sure feels like Brazil, along with India and China, will be bringing sorely needed competition to the US economic policies and the laws behind them.
Hmmm...I've always wanted to learn Spanish...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
You're missing the point. Brazil can disregard US IP rights IN BRAZIL. If they tried to sell their AIDS drugs (or this hypothetical software) in the US you can be damn sure that the US courts would put a stop to people being allowed to import the stuff.
Story tellers have always had a remix culture. They nearly always borrow and remix other people's stories and adapt them to the audience they're telling the story to.
There are even tools to help story tellers find the stories they want. Look up the story motif-index in your local library (My favourite is the Story Teller's Sourcebook). You'll find dozens of various of just about every story imaginable. It's the sourceforge of the story world, except that it's actually organized in a useful way.
You can't argue with the numbers when it comes to abstaining.
We have corporate socialism. In the end its really no better then medieval systems of governance. Its just wrapped up in platitudes about democracy and the market.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Nonsense, as soon as I see gun makers being locked up for manslaughter I'll start to believe you were trying to make a sensible point.
The farther a person is to the left, the more they seem to like Chavez and the more they seem to hate Bush.
This is despite Chavez actually having done some of the things, that Bush is being accused of secretly wanting to do -- most infamously changing the Constitution of his country to increase his office's power. Chavez has done it twice already...
Prof. Lessig has done a disservice to his cause by attending the gathering, which featured this dictator as a key speaker.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Actually yes you can. The numbers are a central point to abstaining since so very few people are capable of living their lives without sex. Keeping in mind that many people who claim to be chaste are simply lying, the small number of people who manage to make it to marriage without any sexual encounters are not just ineffectual they're also not normal.
So why advocate a type of behavior that most people cannot adhere to considering the stakes which are disease? Its much more logical to give people who are sexually active the information and tools they need to protect themselves then to expect them to live up to some ridiculous conflicted fundamentalist standard of sexuality.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
PLEASE! Won't someone just think of the CHILDREN?
Good comment about culture.
I'm an American, and my impression is that, in general, Brazilians seem to have healthier family lives than Americans.
The person who wrote the grandparent comment said, "One town I was in the ratio of women to men was 8:1!" This is just a cultural misunderstanding. The single Brazilian women thought he was exotic, and they were interested in meeting him. Only that. In most towns, the most interesting things to do are social. It just seemed like there were more women in the town than men because the single women were more interested in meeting him. His popularity was connected to the interest that Brazilian women have in marrying.
I've read other comments to this Slashdot story, and I feel uncomfortable with the implication in some of them that the Brazilian culture is less developed. I feel uncomfortable with the idea that the Brazilian government is more corrupt than the U.S. government.
I write a column about culture, called "Duas Culturas", for a small Brazilian newspaper. The column compares Brazilian and U.S. culture. It's a new column and I will soon try to sell it to other newspapers, so most of the articles are not online. However, one of them is below, slightly modified for online reading.
Here is a translation to English of the first paragraph:
"My Brazilian friends talk a lot about corruption in the Brazilian government and violence in Brazilian society. The things that they say seem reasonable. However, the way that they speak frequently implies that corruption and violence are much worse in Brazil than in other countries. In truth, corruption and violence are very serious problems in the U.S., also."
Duas Culturas
Two Cultures
"Um americano compartilha pensamentos e opiniões sobre o Brasil e os EUA"
Meus amigos brasileiros falam bastante sobre corrupção no governo brasileiro e violência na sociedade brasileira. As coisas que eles dizem parecem razoáveis. Porém, o modo que eles falam freqüentemente insinua que corrupão e violência são muito piores no Brasil do que em outros países. Na verdade, corrupção e violência são problemas muito sérios nos Estados Unidos também.
Desde que o presidente George Bush foi eleito, o governo norte-americano tem pedido dinheiro emprestado a uma velocidade sem precedente. Os EUA devem hoje mais dinheiro do que qualquer outro governo na história do mundo. No momento, os EUA devem mais de US$ 7 trilhões. O dinheiro vai para os ricos; as pessoas da classe média ficam mais pobres. (Na internet: U.S. Debt Clock ). O empréstimo é a razão porque o valor do dólar está se desvalorizando rapidamente.
Há uma discussão sobre violência na sociedade e prisões brasileiras demonstrada no excelente filme brasileiro "Ônibus 174". Para comparação, se você sabe inglês e tem acesso à internet, você pode assistir um documentário norte-americano mostrado na televisão de lá, chamado The New Asylums . O documentário discute o fato de que o governo americano põe as pessoas mentalmente doentes em prisões. De todos os países no mundo, os EUA têm a porcentagem mais alta de seus cidadãos em prisões. Você pode comparar a superpopulação e tortura em prisões brasileiras com o tratamento extremamente agressivo em prisões norte-americanas. Houve também muitas histórias sobre o governo norte-americano torturando prisioneiros no Iraque e em Guantánamo, Cuba. Qual governo tortura mais? O governo dos EUA matou estimadas 3,000,000 de pessoas desde o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Qual governo mata mais?
Dê sua opinião: Michael Jennings, Caixa Postal 122, Campos do Jordão, SP 12460-000. duasculturas AT gmail DOT com. ©2005. Duas Culturas e Two Cultures são marcas de serviço.
"The Waste Land" was written during a time when copyright law was in force, yet T.S. Eliot wasn't sued. Thus disproving your and Lessig's argument.
The Simpsons episodes contains spoofs and twists on other "works" and the program continues to be on the air, again disproving your argument.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
What, exactly, is so unapproachable or unclear about RMS' talks and essays?
Digital Citizen
we do gain over 13 times less money, but u have to consider that many things here are cheaper. Indeed electronics are more expensive, but food, land and employees (a maiden, working 40 hours a week, costs about 140 dollars/month, just as an example) are much cheaper. I would say we gain about 6 times less, if u consider the goods u're buying, not the money itself. That could be a lot more if we didnt pay so much taxes to sustain a corrupt and inefficient government
Is that he reminds me of those in the 1850's who cried foul about the abuses of the plantation system, but refused to accept the need to get rid of slavery.
Today, all the problems of copyrights are obvious and clear, and not just a misunderstanding, but the very belief in the "right to controll what other people copy" being brought to its logical conclusion. Lessig, for all his ability to point out the abuses and wrongs of the system, seems completely uncapable of accepting the copyright controlls simply must die in the information age just like the plantation system had to die in the industrial age.
1. I'm sure I'm not the only person interested in reading your article. Any reason why you couldn't have translated it into English for us?
2. So you honestly see no difference whatsoever in the corruption levels in Brazil contrasted to that of the United States?
Edit:
Ok so I threw your article into Babel fish and was able to read it and it is as I feared. You are confusing actual corruption with your own political opinions. Bush being elected to office does not make the US corrupt no matter how much you dislike the guy. Your article really goes all over the place. One minute you are talking about the percentage of citizens the US has incarcerated to Guantanamo Bay and then the number of people the US has killed sicne World War I. There's no cohesion whatsoever.
I am really really really disapointed in this. I was looking forward to a real, thoughtful discussion on foreign rates of corruption vs our own but instead you use the topic as an opportunity to lambaste everything you think is wrong with US Policy. How on earth you can equate deaths in war to corruption I have no idea. I suppose we should have just let the Germans take over the world in WWI or WWII. The high percentage of incarcerated citizens also has nothing to do with corruption. We're just tougher on drug crimes then other countries are.
Do you even know what REAL corruption means? It means having to pay off a local official in order to get them to do something they already should be doing as per their government salary, or paying them off to break the rules. It can also mean local crime/drug lords having such sway that they are able to get the police to look the other way while they go about their illegal business. The topic does not cover nor is it appropriate to be used as a broad attack on that nation's entire federal policy.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
This was a Technology Review debate-in-print between Lessig and Epstein. To appreciate Lessig's argument you really need to follow Lessig's article with a reading of Epstein's answer and then Lessig's rebuttal.
Enjoy,
Richard
I didn't have time to translate the entire article to English, due to a problem called work.
Here is my opinion about U.S. government corruption. It is a review of 35 books from respected publishers and 3 movies: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
My understanding is that the U.S. government is extremely corrupt, but most U.S. citizens just don't want to know. They've been told for so long that theirs is the best country in the world that they have difficulty believing otherwise.
The U.S. government hides its corruption. For example, see this article: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories.
The present terrorism was caused by U.S. government support for violence against Arabs and others in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, there were people there who decided to fight violence with more violence. I think that violence is caused by mental illness, but it is easy to understand that Arabs don't like to be killed, and that some of them would decide to do to the U.S. what the U.S. government was doing to them.
I would be very interested to know how you view the information at this web site: U.S. Debt Clock. Do you say, "Oh, well, that's not real corruption. They are just stealing money?" Has the $7 trillion dollars borrowed made you richer? If it hasn't, where did the money go? It is a fact that people who were already rich got most of the money.
The U.S. government is stealing money from its own people and killing people in other countries. Can that somehow be considered moral?
See the Downing Street Memo. The U.S. government lied to the American people to justify its violence. Congressman like John Conyers are unhappy about that, even if you aren't.
The U.S. and British governments have a long history of destructive involvement in the mideast. Those who don't know that don't have the means to understand what is happening today.
You said, "There are a lot of great things about Brazil, but I feel safer in the USA, and I don't see the government in the USA as being nearly as corrupt."
I agree about being safer in the United States. However, have a look at my earlier comment: Corrupt, but U.S. citizens don't want to know.
There's a serious problem with corruption in the U.S. government, I think.
Basically, any country trying to get U.S. AIDS relief dollars is required to teach =only abstinence=.
The policy you are refering to is called the "ABC" (Abstain, Be faithful, use a Condom) condition, and only requires that the education/prevention money provided by the US be split equally between teaching abstinance, monogamy and condoms. And the US is most definately not demanding that safe-sex programs funded my other means be halted in order to recieve US funding as that quote suggests.
At worst, some of our tax payer money is not being used as effectively as it could be, but that does not take anything away from the rest of the money that is being spent on medicine, infrastructure, and safe sex education. Concidering that a significant majority of the tax payers in this country think that abstinance should be included as at least part of a safe sex education, I think the government has every right to spend this money as the populace sees fit.
and still is abstaining is 100% effective. Not driving after you have been drinking is 100% effective in not being arrested for DUI.
Everyone is telling me that people just don't abstain. Well duh. That still doesn't make abstaining ineffective.
I'm hoping to go to Brazil in about 3 years in a study abroad program. Then depending on how things go I may go back. But first I need to learn Portugese.
FalconShould there be a Law?
which is most likely to be imposed soon
As much as Bush is trying and pushing for it, for now the FTAA isn't much more than a pipe dream. CAFTA, Central America Free Trade Agreement, has a better shot. There's Brazil and Venezuela Bush has to contend with. The WTO meetings in Cancun "fail apart" because Brazil wasn't about to bow down to Bush and Lula isn't about to start anytyme soon. Neither is Chavez. Instead they are work on Mercosur, a trading block of South American nations. Brazil's government is getting fed up with Washington:
Brazil Considers Suspending Copyright on U.S. Products
2005/6/13
By Jerry Hirsch Los Angeles Times
Angered by subsidies to U.S. cotton growers, Brazilian lawmakers said Thursday they are considering suspending the intellectual property rights of American products in their country if the U.S. government does not explain how it intends to change subsidy programs by July 1.
The deadline was set earlier this year by the World Trade Organization, which found that U.S. assistance to cotton farmers distorts world prices by encouraging overproduction. If implemented, Brazil's plan would negatively affect a range of U.S. industries, from entertainment to software to pharmaceuticals.
"Essentially, the Brazilian position would be, "We're going to have state-sanctioned piracy,'" said Neil Turkewitz, an executive vice president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry's largest trade and lobbying group.
While it's not unusual for nations to slap high tariffs on a marketbasket of goods as retaliation in trade disputes, sanctioning the copying of one country's products is unconventional and possibly illegal, trade officials said. At the minimum, the move would require a new law in Brazil and WTO approval, they said. The plan was the topic of a legislative committee meeting in Brasilia, the nation's capital Thursday.
Richard Mills, a spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, called talk of Brazilian action premature. ``We intend to comply so there will not be any need for retaliation,'' he said.
U.S. cotton farmers received $1.6 billion in federal subsidies last year, according to Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks the data.
Brazil's proposed strategy is designed to draw Hollywood, Silicon Valley and big pharma into the trade battle, said Pedro de Comargo Neto, the head of a large farm organization and a former trade official who oversaw the nation's successful challenge of U.S. cotton payments.
"We want other parties in the United States to understand that what the cotton lobby is doing is not in their interest," Comargo said Thursday.
Rather than enlisting allies, the strategy could have the opposite effect.
Any Brazilian move against U.S. copyrights or patents probably would draw retaliation from the U.S. government on key Brazilian exports, said Dan Glickman, chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America and agriculture secretary during the Clinton administration.
"They sell a lot of airplanes in the U.S.," Glickman said, referring to commuter aircraft maker Embraer. "This could become a pretty serious tit-for-tat trade dispute."
A trade war would be the last thing Brazil wants, said Alan Tonelson, a trade expert at the U.S. Business and Industry Council in Washington. "They need the U.S. market far more than we need them," he said.
Brazil is America's largest trading partner in South America and ranks 14th overall, according to the World Institute for Strategic Economic Research. About $35 billion of trade occurs between the two nations each year.
Ordinarily, Brazil would raise tariffs on U.S. goods, the typical WTO-sanctioned remedy for ge
Should there be a Law?
Two problems here. "Just say no", or in this case abstinence, doesn't work very well. And two, sex isn't the only way AIDS is contracted.
Falcon
There are three types of lies, lies, damn lies, and statistics.Should there be a Law?
I hope you never need a blood transfusion, or get stuck by a dirty needle or instrument, because they are ways you can get aids without sex. Therefore abstaining isn't %100 effective.
FalconShould there be a Law?
And if you can't get your friends to read all nine pages, the 9th [technologyreview.com] is particularly worthwhile. Talk about a stunning portrait of democracy.
Yea I read all four articles a few days ago.
FalconShould there be a Law?
2) Many people don't have enogh money to spend on sotware on Brazil. They can be pirates or use FOSS. Your analogy is right, but people are not forced to murder (and when thay are - legitimatee defense - the law don't declare them criminals).
Ah but some places are classifying those who defend themselves as criminals:
Self-Defense vs. Municipal Gun Bans
When Hale DeMar shot an intruder in his house, he may well have saved his children's lives. So why was he charged with a crime?
The article goes on about how he was charged, not with having a firearm or defending himself but because he used a gun for defense. Now I don't know how many have used a rifle for self defense in close quarters such as in a house but it can be get to be clumsy trying to. In close quarters a handgun is much more effective.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Actually it's Portugese that's mostly spoken in Brazil. Because I want to go to Brazil as a student in a study abroad program, I'm looking forward to learning Portugese.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Ah well, Americans and geographical knowledge don't go together very well. Blame it on your educational system.
Unfortunately it's all too true. Though not all of us "Americans", ie those in the US, most don't see the need to learn another language because everyone else "knows English". NOT!!! "Transitions Abroad magazine has a good article on this:
Why You Need a Foreign Language
Edward Trimnell on the Myth of Global English and the Costs of Americans' Monolingualism
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oh, as though the US has never done anything like that. NOT!!! Ever since Columbus "Discover" (NOT, the Vikings and more than likely the Basques were here before Columbus) America some European settlers have massacred Native American Indians while a few have tried to help them.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oh, I think both governments are incredibly corrupt. But really, Brazil takes the cake. Or the puddim, or bolo, or what have you.
Lasers Controlled Games!
"There are around 10,000 commercial radio stations in the US. In urban areas there are stations to satisfy almost every musical taste, language preference and world-view. News, sports and talk stations predominate on the mediumwave (AM) dial, with music on the FM band ... Freedom of expression in the US is guaranteed by the constitution, and some stations give airtime to extreme hues of political - often right-wing - and religious thinking."
Boy, could I write a whole article about what is unspoken in just this small portion of the BBC coverage. I wouldn't make a move/don't-move decision based on this tripe.
What you define is not abstaining, but actual sex.
If not doing A means B won't happen. Then Don't do A. I'm not debating on whether or not people can or can not do A.
Sheesh, do you people fill in your own info for my replies or what? How does getting AIDS from a needle suddenly mean that not having sex is ineffective?
If person A gets AIDS from a needle and I know person A but don't have sex with person A, I'm pretty sure I'll not get AIDS from person A.
Was that so hard?