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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."
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
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
"...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.
Don't put advice in your sig.
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.
"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.
It's not about software. It's about culture. It's about the fabric of our lives (and I don't mean cotton).
Ironically, the multi-billion dollar cotton subsidies to US farmers is one of the biggest hitches in completing the Doha development round of the WTO.
For the cost of these subsidies, America could pay the farmers a golden parachute of twice what it costs for them to work, and buy it from the 3rd world at a tenth of the price. Everyone benefits. Except the American farmer's lobbists.
(Note, this isn't just a problem with America; it's just notable that its' cotton in the USA. Other rich countries have their own caveats.)
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
It might be more accurate to liken it to the DIVX rental system (not the coincidentally named unrelated codec).
;-) for a reason... If you recall, divx 3.11 was a illegal hacked-up MS codec, and the name was a pun on the divx DRM system. Strangely enough, they've managed to build their own codec (4.0+) and a legal business model on top of that using the same name. Really shady way to build a corporate brand IMO. Of course, now people should use XviD (which is obviously a pun on the DivX name) instead. It is GPL'd, spy/ad/crapware free, though to use it in an official capacity you still need a patent license.
Since when did 'coincidentally named' mean 'intentionally identically named'? It was called DivX
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You can't argue with the numbers when it comes to abstaining.
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.
This is a common mistake -- although you *could* outsource to some other country for your cotton, the result would be to make that country spontaneously richer than it had been, resulting in massive inflation and then wage hikes and then a loss of savings on the purchase of said goods from said country.
Countries the size of the US *can* have this much of an effect on a foreign country that is significantly smaller. China is notable here -- although *huge* even compared to the USA, China's economy has grown considerably with textile outsourcing, etc. even with state limitations imposed on personal revenues.
In a completely chaotic free market 3rd world country, try to picture the effect of suddenly putting *that* much demand out on the market for product.
Lobbyists are also a problem however, since they prevent actual thinking and debate from happening -- think about the sugar industry. The USA is losing many major candy companies to Canada where sugar is about 1/4 the price it is in the protectionistic USA.
(And my history tells me Canada was always blamed for being protectionists)
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)