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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."
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
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.
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.
...
"...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.
Don't put advice in your sig.
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?
You should do some research on the situation in Venezuela before accusing someone of being an enemy of freedom. Let's just remeber the fact that Mr. Chavez got back from a "coup d'etat" because of the peoples support. Besides, the ones accusing him of authoritarism (not that I think he's perfect, in fact I also think he should handle the situation in a different manner) are the ones that held the power before him. Best regards to everyone.
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.
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!
You've got to be shitting me. THIS is modded insightful?!
I'm Argentinian - that's right, we're Brazils' next door neighbours. Been there myself a lot of times. How the fuck can you tell that Brazilians are "cruel and unfaitfhul" to their women? How many couples have you met? Because i've meet a lot, and they were quite happy. Where were you visiting anyway? If anything, they're mostly great people, which is more than i can say of other countries i've visited. And yes, Brazilian women are usually fun and sexy. Not bimbos.
These bullshit generalizations drive me mad. So, all Americans treat their women like shit, dress like fucking idiots and shoot each other? Because they surely seem to do in those nifty rap videos!
And yes, electronics are expensive (not insanely expensive though), mainly because of the dollar-real ratio and import taxes. Deal with it. And you can have a decent salary as well - just stop thinking in dollars for two seconds.
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.
I think the point he was trying to make is that if content were "free" to begin with, one would not have to rely on one's own personal collection of media to create a "remix." You would be able to elaborate upon the work of others, much the same way that functionality is added to existing free software. While Lessig's example may not have been delivered in the clearest of context, I still believe it is a valid example.
Side Note: I create music, and while I have done remixes of existing songs, the goal was never to overshadow the original, but to reflect whatever inspiration I received from the original as an accent to that song. Very much the same way two different people can read the same book and walk away with different insight.
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
I agree with you and Lessig on remixing. "remixing" has been the constant through history, the fact that it's frowned upon today is the aberration. Classical composers "ripped off" each other all the time, and apparently it was popular with Shakespearean era playwrights and singers as well. Look at Jazz--I can't describe the type of liberation I felt when I realized that it was OK and good that people mess around with each others' stuff. TV fan fiction, it's usually better than the TV show, which is a win for culture in some small way.
I fucking love the Japanese concept of Doujinshi, where someone else can just make their own comic stories using someone elses characters. Premise is that no one buying the doujinshi instead of the real thing, which is demonstrably true. Japanese society hasn't collapsed, someone should take note of that.
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.
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
Portugese may be more useful for Brazil.
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.