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Russia Claims IP Rights In Manufacture of AK-47
Daniel Dvorkin writes "In the latest example of over-the-top intellectual property demands, Russia wants licensing fees for the production of AK-47s. According to first deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov, the unlicensed production of Kalashnikovs (which have been around in very nearly their current form for 60 years) in ex-Soviet Bloc countries is 'intellectual piracy.' A giant but declining power starts demanding royalties on commonly used methods and materials that are widely understood, well known, and by any reasonable standard have long been in the public domain — does this sound familiar?" Wikipedia notes that the Izhevsk Machine Tool Factory in Russia obtained a patent on the manufacture of the AK-47 in 1999.
Are they also going to claim the patent on how to murder dissidents using polonium? That seems like another obvious technique that should be patented.
This is interesting. Russia... demanding IP? Wow. What are they going to do if their demands are ignored? Invade?
Open source it?
They got a patent. Doesn't matter who they bribed to get it. Its the law. Pay up.
This is what we get for playing IP games and "owning" ideas.
back during the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan there was a documentary about the neighboring Pakistan and its involvement with the Taliban & the then Ousama Bin Laden who was considered a good guy back then that was financed by the CIA to battle the Soviets in Afghanistan? and there were several machine shops that were making AK47 knockoffs that looked & functioned identical to the Soviet version...
and doesn't China make a knockoff AK47 too?
the Russians might get away with squeezing some former Soviet satellites, but i doubt they are going to squeeze some back woods frontier muslem militia garage/machine shops...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Sounds to me like it's the company with the patent that's asking for royalties, not Russia itself.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
I thought you could license from a patent for 20 years, no? The patent was in 1999 - but the design was WW2?
WTF?
hello, the horse has bolted, shutting the door now does nooothing.
besides Russia telling you to pay licensing fees is like being told to sit up straight by the hunchback of notredame*.
*shameless rip of a fine George Galloway poke at the senate there, sorry.
------
Besides, in Soviet Russia the Gun licenses you..... (kinda obligatory here.. sorry again)
Take a good look at the countries that commonly use AK-47s. You're not likely to find a whole of big fans of intellectual property rights there.
But then, the licensing of the production to its Commrade States hardly means the USSR didn't keep its IP.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Izhevsk Machine Tool Factory, referred to in the summary no longer exists as such. It is now commonly referred to as Izhmash (a collaborative of multiple guv owned manufacturing sites in the region), is owned by the government, and has been granted the right to produce contracts with whoever they want without governmental approval... giving them a leg up over most competition.
For a list of AK-47 producing sites follow the link: http://www.ak-47.us/AK47_Factories.php
Regards.
What sane nation would allow 60 year patents? Russia's claims should be laughed out of the international arena.
(I also agree with Richard Stallman that we need to stop using the term "Intellectual Property". I've seen too many people confuse copyrights, patents, licenses, trademarks, trade secrets, etc. Whenever we can be specific, we should use the correct term: in this case it's patent.)
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
From what I understand, Mikhail Kalashnikov based parts of the AK-47 design on various other weapons. The trigger group and bolt resemble those of the M1 Garand, and the pistol grip and gas assembly resemble those of the German StG44 (widely considered to be the first true assault rifle). [Source: AK47, Duncan Long, Paladin Press 1988] How much original content must a design have before it can be patentable?
During the Cold War, at least a dozen Warsaw Pact and non-aligned countries produced copies and variants of the AK47, with the Soviet Union's tacit, if not overt, blessing. Even now, new AKs are being built by blacksmiths in Pakistan and US gunsmiths (the latter do this to comply with ATF regulations that prohibit import of receivers and assembled rifles).
Now that the Cold War is over, Russia wants to get paid? I'd think that with all their oil and gas income, licensing fees would be a pittence by comparison.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Russia is not declining. Their growth rate since 1999 has been consistently significant. For example, the CIA figures for real growth rate in 2006 are US 3.4%, Russia 6.7%.
The ak47 is the most widely used and produced gun in the world. The simplicity and durability are what makes it remarkable as it can take a lot of abuse and keep on working. It's not the best but there's a reason why demand has lasted so long.
The problem is that the Russian factory isn't the only one making it and most of the countries that are making it aren't exactly the kind that bends over to intellectual property demands. I don't see how they are going to enforce this as late in the game as it is...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
I'm glad I'm not the debt collector.
Let gun production grind to a halt due to patent issues. In fact, let RIAA lawyers join the fight to express solidarity of assholes worldwide. The point is, African child soldiers don't know how to make guns. Iraq doesn't have any manufacturing capacity for AK-47s or bombs. Someone has to make those guns and sell it to all those people. If that someone goes to jail for intellectual property violations, all the merrier.
Good luck on that. Can you squeeze blood from a rock? Can you get money from mostly illegal gun makers selling AK's to poor third world people around the planet for the price of a few goats? This is idiocy plain and simple.
This reminds me of the controversy with France wanting to claim that "Champagne" can only refer to wine produced in the Champagne region of France, and not wines produced in California for instance. Perhaps the producers of the knockoff AK-47s should adopt the same solution the California winemakers did and call their product "Sparkling Machine Guns".
...
NJ Transit, PATH train schedules online
Let's see some of these pro "IP rights" NATO and Western countries talk their way out of this. Good for the goose, good for the gander.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Hey, I think I got some prior art for ya...
...SAY HELLO TO MY LEETLE FRIEND!!
You have right to flood world arms market and make profit
Step 1) Develop revolutionary assault rifle.
Step 2) Take over Eastern Europe.
Step 3) Encourage production of said assault rifle by communist means.
Step 4) ???
Step 5) Profit!
Remember how they built their atomic bomb? Where did a lot of their semi conductor and avionic technology originate from? What was that exactly? Or does stealing Western IP not count as piracy under new Russian laws?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
1. What country issued the patent? (i.e., where is it enforceable?)
2. What is the patent number?
3. What, exactly, does it claim to cover?
How many lazy articles (/., wikipedia, or otherwise) must we endure until submitters learn to include basic facts?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
This has much more to do with Russian politics than with IP. Russians have always cosidered former USSR countries part of their sphere of influence and nationalists have been angered by things like the removal of statues of soviet soldiers. This is a retaliation (or at least the show of one) for the increased independence of the newly formed states.
How is an AK-47 like a QWERTY keyboard?
h tww/2007/06/01/ak_47/
S ContentServer/IW3P/IB/2007/04/13/000016406_2007041 3145045/Rendered/PDF/wps4202.pdf).
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/?last_story=/tech/
Seriously, the linked article is dated 1 June 2007. The World Bank policy paper it covers is from April 2007 (http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WD
Quote from the paper (also quoted in the salon article):
The AK-47's ubiquity [in conflicts in third world countries] could alternatively be explained as a result of a path dependent process. Economic historians recognize that an inferior product may persist when a small but early advantage becomes large over time and builds up a legacy that makes switching costly (David 1975). In the case of the AK-47 that early advantage may be that as a Soviet invention it was not subject to patent and so could be freely copied.
Either this patent story is a joke, or Sergei Ivanov is spending too much time on teh internets...
Fermat's other theorem: "I have a simple proof, but I can't write it down as I fear it's a DMCA violation to discuss it"
AK-47 (7.62) is old (very old) model, no longer in use in East Europe. In the meantime there were AK-74 (5.45) and various models roughly based upon. The only big producers of AK-47 are Russia itslef for export and probably China -- also for export.
Russia argues witch China over IP laws??
Shiny! But who's bad guy?
I get my weapons from allofrifle.com
They say it's totally legal
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Not surprising as this is the Russian weapon of choice. My fathers partner, an ex-russian citizen, was taught during High School to field strip an AK-47 Assault Rifle.
The question is, how will this "intellectual property" be protected? Will international sanctions be enforced upon any nation that does not follow suit?
... when Russia is chastising the US for restricitng freedoms, and doing so in a rather humourous manner.
We are all just people.
Unfortunately, according to their own patent laws, they can't patent the AK-47.
"The invention shall be granted legal protection if it is novel,
possesses an inventive level and is commercially applicable."
Since it's been in production for over 50 years, it's certainly not "novel."
If they argue for patentability from the initial design, then the patent time lapsed many years ago (their protection limits max out at 20 years).
So no, it's not "the law," it's just Russia being Russia.
The real man's assault rifle is the Swiss Stgw90, or SIG SG-550. Hopp Suisse!
In 1950, copyrighted works lasted for at most 56 years. So works in 1950 and before SHOULD be in the public domain. But in 1976/1998, those copyright terminations were removed, seemingly violating an implicit contract with the public.
A 95 year coyright term is no more sane than a 60 year patent term.
It is likely now that you will never see any copyright expire for any work created in your lifetime. The constitutional "limited time" has been largly ignored.
The US copyright term should be laughed out of the international arena as well, but information monopolies can be more profitable than oil, and money can purchase worldwide political support.
One of the biggest mistakes that we Westerners committed was to admit the Russians into the G-8. The original G-7 was intended to be the group of leading industrialized democracies committed to Western values.
We admitted the Russians in the hope that, although Russia was still highly non-Western (in, for example, its treatment of sexual-orientation or ethnic minorities), being lenient on Russia would encourage the Russians to modernize their society along Western lines. Well, we were wrong. Just last week, the Russian police smiled in approval as ordinary Russians violently beat up participants in a demonstration calling for rights for homosexuals. Some of the victims of the violence were European politicians who had participated into the demonstration.
The Russians make a mockery of the G-8 and its principles. This demand for licensing fees on supposed patents of a 60-year-old technology is the latest in a string of non-Western activities.
The time has come for us to end this nonsense. We should expel Russia from the G-8, restoring the orignal name of "G-7".
Have to kick in $ ever time you shoot someone... Or, how about you have to give up a % of the take if you are a revolutionary.
This is insane. The design is what, nearly 50 years old now and is perhaps the most commonly used assault rifle in the world?
Dont expect me to be paying up anytime soon.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ousama Bin Laden who was considered a good guy back then that was financed by the CIA
Actually, he wasn't. The US was funding a different set of Afghans versus the Soviets at the time (there were multiple groups fighting them), and bin Laden was getting his support from the Saudis and other Islamists. That's part of the reason he dislikes the US so much - we were funding his competition.
You mean the world's biggest gun runner will have to pay to proliferate
world conflict?
Cheney needs to know.
Thanks,
W
...except the CIA never really did what you dreamed they did (the Russian claim is like many - it never had any basis in reality).
Why manufacture AK-47s when they could buy them by the thousands in the open market, from Soviet factories, or from their clients around the world at pennies on the dollar?
The only people the Russians are going after right now are companies that, when they went into production of the rifle, were ORDERED to make them - not exactly a good argument for intellectual property rights, or any property rights at all.
And, as I pointed out below, any patent that might have been possible would have expired about 40 years back.
The whole "1999 Russian patent claim" thing comes from one unsourced comment in one Wikipedia article, anyway - I have to wonder about the actual truth of the claim in the first place.
From the posts here, it seems we have two schools: the people who think it's a bogus claim, and the ones who are still Really Pissed about allofMP3.com having problems.
Does it matter when an item is invented? If the AK47 design wasn't patented back in the 1940s (remember that in the Soviet communist state everything belonged to the state anyway) then presumably the 1999 patent would be valid.
I guess that if Russia is expected to uphold IP rights, the rest of the world should abide by Russian patents. I doubt that anyone in Russia is interested in collecting money from desperately poor third-world countries - this would be aimed at the somewhat richer countries that manufacture these weapons and sell them to all comers.
wouldn't it be hard to file a lawsuit against terrorists or foreign governments and have them appear in court to pay royalties or negotiate a fee? Sounds too little too late to me considering how long the AK-47 has been in use.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
And ONLY in the USA. Laws outside the USA are COMPLETELY different. Do you realize that USA laws are only valid in the USA, and nowhere else? Once you learn that, you'll be ok.
Of course the AK-47 should be patented. It's the arguably the most recognizable weapon in the world. The technology is irrelevant: to credit the poster it is very well known now and nothing particularly ground-breaking, but we're talking about more of a 'brand' issue here. For better or for worse (and I'm thinking worse), the AK-47 is absolutely ubiquitous with almost every non-Western (from ex-USSR to Somalia to Iraq to Afghanistan) armed force. This is more of a trademark issue, and perhaps that's not quite what the OP was talking about. Just like the VW Beetle and the iPod, the AK-47 is one of the most recognizable symbols in the world.
That said, the Russians probably have about as much chance of getting royalties for the AK-47 as the Cuban government does for every Che Guevara shirt in the world. But imagine if they did... every Cuban would have a Corvette (well, as long as Fidel was happy with that, but that's another story).
--- Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit? | Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
Patents of well-known 60-year-old technologies are not valid.
Russia countered by demanding the US, as a member of said organization, abide by its IP laws and pay Russia royalties for all the AK's the CIA has had manufactured and distributed over the years.
This doesn't make sense. The patent was obtained in 1999, and I think they'd have a tough time proving that the CIA has ordered many AK-47s since then (and even if they did, why the CIA would be responsible for royalties, instead of the Eastern-bloc manufacturers that they were presumably buying them from).
The West doesn't really get harmed, or care very much, about patents or IP claims on the AK-47. If anything, it might be a boon to manufacturers of alternative designs, including U.S. firms.
What this seems much more like, is an attempt by Russia to apply pressure to its neighbors and former client states, in order to squeeze some more revenue out of them. With them, Russia has a pretty big stick (energy, trade, border security) that they can use if the client state doesn't pay up.
Nobody in the U.S. establishment is going to really care about this. If the Russians wanted to fight back in response to AllOfMP3.com, there are much more effective ways they could do it. I think this is probably more about relations with neighbors (including China) than the West.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
when they finish paying the royalties they owe on the Internationale.
o pyright_status
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale#C
Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
The M16/M4 might have some issues with the dust (which is pretty much fixed with new versions that are available that use a gas piston rather than direct gas impingement. ) The British L85 rifle on the other hand has been a piece of shit since it was built and the UK government should have taken HK's advice (I think HK purchased Enfield which was the original manufacturer) and replaced it with HK G36's HK, btw has a replacement upper for M16 firearms which combines the best of both the M16 and the AK. I'm a big fan of AK's in general and have built quite a few but Mikhail Kalashnikov's claim that it is an all original design is BS. Even if it was, the design is from WWII and there is no way he or the russian govt. is going to be able to enforce a patent
I'd have to see if they patented the bolt/action (the main thing that makes an AK and AK) or the entire weapon. As I recall it was licensed, to Eastern Bloc countries in the early fifties (1953?) and to China by at least 1956. Variants of the gun have been made everywhere from Finland) Valmet to Israel(Galil). This is before all the Pakistani knock-offs.
Of course all this happened during the bad days of the Cold War, maybe the licenses are expired, or maybe they're going after all the unlicensed copies. Or just maybe Russia is fumbling yet again trying to grasp the idea of capitalism. It's not like they weren't giving the things away like party favors for over fifty years, and in some areas of the world they go for a bag of rice--kind of late to try and claim lost IP if you ask me.
The AK-47 was developed under what is arguably the worst state monopoly system in history and is public domain. Specific improvements might be patented but many people paid a heavy price for it's original development and production. Ironically enough, it probably violated several western patents at the time but not even the USSR had the nerve to own ideas outside it's territory. Other nations and companies were free to make AK-47 all day long until the 1999 patent.
So yes, it was open source in a way, but real inventions should not be confused with software, business methods or grocery lists. Software patents are a bad joke and worse law.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
It doesn't much matter if the patent is enforceable in the international arena or not. It's a win-win for them. If people do pay royalties, they profit. If it's not held up then they have solid grounds for accusing others of a double-standard and they have political fodder to bandy about.
And it doesn't much matter that the gun is 60 years old. As we've seen in the US, it can be extended pretty much indefinitely if the rights holders want it. Russia has a firm grasp on current IP law it seems.
Indeed, the wikipedia article claims the design borrowed much from the US M1 rifle. The USSR no more paid royalties at the time than it demanded them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
>The question is, how will this "intellectual property" be protected?
Some facts: It's a patent, patents deal with industrial production of mainly physical items, but see sidenote.
Patents are granted country for country, not for the world. A patent may not granted
even if applied for (see sidenote).
To achieve a patent it must generally be a novelty, "old news" is generally not patentable.
Patents provide timelimited protection (20 years)
Hence, the pre 1999 (time of alleged patent) design AK-47 assault rifle cannot be protected by a valid patent (assuming patent laws as used in Europe and US).
The post 1999 design, as described in the 1999 alleged patent - can be protected by the justice system only in countries in which the patent is granted after an application.
>Will international sanctions be enforced upon any nation that does not follow suit?
Hardly likely, either you have a case - or you don't.
Sidenote:
Patent systems differs in the world, e.g. in Europe (EU) - software patents are not accepted. See European Patent Convention (EPC) article 52, 2c . This is not likely to change soon.
The Afghanistan arms manufacturers are going to pay royalties to the Russians they kicked out of their country.
Right.
Email me when this happens.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Seems perfectly fair to me. The guy who invented the AR-15 aka M-16 gets a dollar for everyone that is made...Made him utterly rich. Thanks to the communist regime at the time when Mikhail Kalashnikov invented it he didn't get one cent. He was born a poor man, and died a poor man. Sucks for him. Although, on the other hand, I think Mikhail should get the money. He truly deserves it. This is *not* Russia's invention - its Mikhail's.
in russia IP patents YOU!
127.0.0.1
...the MP5 being a popular sub-machine gun. Natch.
Uh no, their tests are in response to NATO building missile shields right next to their borders. As for poisonings and political opposition, it seems like Europe has centuries of history in trying to impose governance on neighboring regions, which doesn't give them a whole lot of credibility in giving human rights lectures to those same areas.
It's a perfect Adobe-move. Remember? Make Photoshop easy to copy and turn a blind eye, flooding the market with people skilled with your product. Once the infastructure is in place, make money enforcing/selling licenses to the easy targets - commercial users.
At least now we can say, "IP comes from the barrel of a gun."
How is a pertinent comment pointing out the effect of cheap AK-47s flamebait ?. I don't think moderation was intended to give voice to a position.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Jews, Arabs... pick your minority to bash.
Or how about a bit of gay bashing?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It was conceived, developed and manufactured for the first time in the Soviet Union. And in the SU, being a communist state, everything belonged to the people. Read it up, it was one of their primary doctrines!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's like Microsoft recently extending Windows Genuine Advantage back to Office 2000. This is 3 generations back in office software, but now they're refusing to validate working copies that have run for years. And it's not like they're selling new licenses for O2K. Do they really think this is going to cause a mass migration to Office 2007 on terribly old hardware by today's standards?
Is there an Open Office of Assault Rifles
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That was an M16...not an AK-47
Creative Demolition
I'm just talking out of my ass here, but didn't the Soviet Union have absolutely no concept of intellectual property back in the day ? Any and all research was the property of the government, as far as I know. Considering how that government ceased to exist on Dec 25th 1991, any IP they "held" would revert back to the public domain, no ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I need to go out and file my patent for calculus and then maybe pi.
Russia doing an MS now!?
/. readers??
WTF will they think of next? Female
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Slash dot is not above the law and must cease violating solviet ip and by publishing news from Russia. Please remove all "In Solviet Russia." stories and stop publishing state secrets.
Where can I find one of those? "Reasonable"? Mortally wounded in '63, and died from its injuries in the year 2000. Shot the corpse 20 more times to make sure it was dead in '01. Still appears to be quite deceased. It's not just pinin'.
What?
Later versions of the Kalashnikov design are just different calibers of the same firearm. The differences between an AK-47 and an AK-74 are much smaller than between Office 2000 and Office 2003.
(Anyway, mine's legal: I own a Saiga-12, a 12-gauge semi-auto Kalashnikov shotgun manufactured by Ishmash in Izhevsk. It's the fastest, most reliable semi-auto shotgun on God's gray Earth, for only about $400. Even in that huge caliber, it's pretty much the same gun).
I don't know about you but when I'm holding a machine gun I have
trouble reaching for my wallet.
bad title, I know, but then I'm not a native english speaker.
So in reaction to the intro to this discussion, i.e. that ~ "Russia has not right to demand licensing fees from (US?) AK-47 manufacturers (sp?)", what would "murkans" would say if the M-16 was cloned abroad? (I almost added the P90, but then it is a belgian design.)
I don't know if you guys in north-america are aware of it, but you project a "we can copy anything we want without compensating its creator, but don't even think copying our stuff!" image.
If this is truly your mentality, don't wonder why the usa is hated abroad.
Shouldn't then Russia and LADA company pay for Fiat and their Copied cars? Or Willys jeep (GAZR-1?)
They have sufficiently large quantities of highly radioactive poison that they can afford to spread it over half of Europe in an effort to settle a single point of dispute. As motions go, the six-foot vertical displacement motion is rarely one that gets contested.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> Without IP, the only things actually worth anything in this world would be land and expensive objects (factories, etc) built on land. And that's not a world you'd like to live in.
One should not forget that the point of invention/publishing monopolies is to encourage innovation and creativity.
Specifically, what are the things that would disappear if copyright and patent terms were significantly reduced?
Did Bach, Bethoven, Davinci require a 100 year copyright? Would Einstien have invented more if he had patented his ideas for 20 years?
Have patent laws sped up the devopment of the automobile?
What would the world look like if there are no open standards and no public domain? Where things like HTML are patented. Where all information is owned. Where Happy-Birthday is owned by Time-Warner. Where there are really no "public libraries" (the libraries rent information from a global corporation), paying for the rent with tax collection.
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=RO1
What a crock of shit.
a merica/contact-information-for-50-politicians-who- take-campaign-money-from-the-riaa-264638.php)
o f_the_United_States. Once the senate (and the senators who chair select commitees) have a simlar racial makeup and you will have a valid point but until then it still amounts to public relations theory.
The current western version of democracy is just public relations theory. It is about making the public think they have some say in who rules their country without actually giving them too much. The problem is that we are given such a small selection of people to choose who will rule us from (2 in the US) that it does not actualy count as a democracy according to the strict (original) definition.
The other problem is that once a particular person / party has been elected they are very hard to remove from power even if they make some very unpopular decisions. A better description of the current system in the US or UK (or Russia for that matter) would be an elected dictatorship. Some countries in Europe do slightly better by allowing proportional representation rather than "first past the post" but these still probably would not count as a democracy in the orignal sense.
One problem with current democracy is that you need huge amounts of money to get elected, this rules out most people. This may also explain why both of the frontrunner democratic candidates (Barrack and Hillary) have taken money from the RIAA even though a great deal of the american population (I have not said majority of the US population so lets not get into semantics) voted them the worst company in the US.
(The source for this is here: http://consumerist.com/consumer/worst-company-in-
Anyone who has read this far might find it interesting too look at the definition of Democracy with respect to constitutional republics as defined on the wikipedia page here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
Please also note that I am not trying to argue that one is superior to the other, I am just trying to suggest that democracy is often overrated when used in the modern context of the word.
I also take issue with you implying that western democracies are impartial with regard to race or sexual orientation. Until the US elect a black gay man as president or the US senate is made up of the same balance as the general population I think this is a hard case to make. Wikipedia also has a good page on this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_demographics_
In many ways the US is moving away from impartiality in politics with regard to sexual orientation as religion becomes higher on the list of criteria people consider when choosing how to cast their vote.
In my view the primary western value in recent years has been profit, and Russians have certainly embraced this with open arms. That is what the whole IP issue with regard to AK's is all about. They want money for people using what is a Russian state design (and a damn good one). The man who invented and designed the original AK was at the time of its design, a serving Russian military officer. If wanting to get money for what you or your employees invent is not a western value then where does the current US stance on copyright come from?
I dont read
when you pry them out of my cold dead hands.
Except that the riffle was designed by communist Russia, by state-owned military R&D staff and produced in state-owned factories.
Given the way politics used to work back when the AK-47 was introduced, it won't be surprising that today the patent granted in 1999 was in the name of the Russian government and not to Mikhail Khalashnikov himself.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I do not think that we should throw away all of these refinements and go back to "pure" democracy, unless we want to relive two centuries of bloody revolutions and poorly constructed political systems. (In a pure democracy, the majority could actually vote to have the minority executed en masse - and chances are from time to time they would.)
sigs are hazardous to your health
there.
Western civilization has poured a lot of time, thinking and blood into trying to get democracy to actually work, and it was found pretty early that a pure interpretation simply does not work on a large scale.
When was it tried?
I dont read
What Russia is trying to get licensed is the AK name. They say it's trademarked.
You can license from trademarks forever.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Among adult males in Ancient Athens. The finest pure democracy ever, and it still ordered Socrates to take hemlock.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Since when was Russia still a declining power? Russia's done declining already.
This explains why the AK is going for so high in Counterstrike: Source lately.
Does this mean we'll start to see greater adoption of rifles using the "Open Bullet Format" 5.56 NATO round rather than the odd 7.62 caliber that pretty much only the AK uses?
Ammunition wants to be free!
Do you honestly want to go arrest the guy who owns an unliscenced AK-47?
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
The AK-47 is probably responsible for more deaths than any other current weapon. The same factors that made it attractive to the Soviet Union make it attractive to all sorts of not so nice people. It's relatively cheap, robust, so simple it can be maintained by a trained chimp, offers good fire-power, etc. Making this weapon less affordable will probably save a huge number of lives. This may be a case where the ends justify the means.
Also, in response to the original post, the Russians licensed production of the AK-47. They did not give the design away. That the legal framework changed from state monopoly to patented technology should not bar them from now patenting the original design and each refinement. That their legal system at the time of the original design didn't recognize intellectual property is, if anything, an argument that they should now be able to patent valuable IP.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Nope, all wrong:
In Soviet Russia, AK-47 owns the Kremlin.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
I think Russia has overplayed its hand. Really, all Putin had to do was keep his mouth shut and let George Bush's self destructing presidency do the work of driving a wedge between the EU and the USA, and instead, Putin has played so badly over the last year that he actually makes Bush look good.
That's a tall order.
If Bush were to come to the G8 and have some imagination, he could improve his image drastically. He could cater to and recognize European cultural achievements, give the Europeans some concession, on -anything-, be it the war on terror, or more importantly, a commitment to do -something- about climate change. Even if the USA doesn't agree to climate targets per se, a real commitment to pay for all the research needed to meet them could ultimately prove as useful and would more politically tenable for all involved. It's not like research isn't needed - and on a number of topics from solar power, biofuels, nuclear power, wind, etc, a big mega billion dollar a year research commitment would sail through a Democratic congress. Bush, for all of his failings, seems to be handed one historic opportunity after another for greatness, and then blowing it. This one is easy. In one fell swoop, Bush could strengthen the transatlantic alliance more than it has been in a long time. Putin threw the fastball down the middle of the plate. Come on George, smack this one out the park, for once.
This is my sig.
"A giant but declining power starts demanding royalties on commonly used methods and materials that are widely understood, well known, and by any reasonable standard have long been in the public domain does this sound familiar?"
Well, except Microsoft isn't starving.
now there might be some acount ablitiy for all the guns in the world !
Good news if it means that weapons might get more expensive. That would mean that parties that wage war against each other would have to rely more on machetes and other weapons that kill inefficiently. Also good news for so called "peace-keeping" forces from rich countries that already pay license fees for their rifles. They will face ill-equipped soldiers. Might also give Russia the upper hand in future separatist wars like the one in Chechnya, of course...
The Soviets (for which the Soviet Union was named) is a more recent example of an experiment in direct democracy. Worked out great there, too.
BTW: I was being sarcastic.
Am I the only one who would like to see a preliminary injunction issued as soon as possible against the use of any AK-47 or derivative weapon that was not produced under license from the patent holders?
Firstly, the AK-47 itself is a derivative of the excellent German Sturmgewehr MP44, which came into mass production at the end of WW2. The Mp44 used the same 7.92mm calibre round as other German weapons, but with a much shorter cartridge, since it was reasoned that most small arms combat took place at ranges under 400m, and so a huge long range charge was not required. The benefits of this were many - cheaper to make, more ammo could be carried, and the sustained rate of fire could be higher due to the lower muzzle velocity.
...
So there is a strong case for prior art, with patents (?) already held by the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany.
After this point, the AK-47 used a different manufacturing technique to greatly simplify the build compared to the MP44. However, these simplified blueprints are very very closely related to the Tokarev SVT. If you have ever stripped down an SVT, and compared this to an AK, you will see they are pretty much the same construction techniques, just in a different scale.
Secondly - I dont know if anyone can remember 'The Soviet Union', but it was a communist state based on the ideals of Marxism, geographically located to the East of Europe. Its a 20th Century thing - ancient history. The 'rights' to the AK47 lie entirely with the Soviet state. NOT Russia - but the Soviet Union, which is a different animal entirely. Unless of course Mr Putin wishes to disagree
Thirdly, being a Soviet state, the 'intellectual property' produced by that state belongs to the workers, and not just the workers who form part of the collective of that state, but all the workers of the world. The AK47 was, if you like, GPL'ed to the point where all workers of the world were free (even encouraged) to make millions of copies of the people's machine gun, and use this tool to overthrow their Fascist, Capitalist, Monarchist oppressors.
So don't pay attention to the lawyers good people - if you find yourself slaving away 60+ hours a week to make other people rich whilst you can barely put food on your table - then by all means, get together with your comrades and build yourselves some AK47's. Anyone that denies you that basic right is a Capitalist oppressor and a Fascist invader of the Motherland.
(Preamble: We are NOT talking about AK-47's here. There are very very few AK-47's on the planet, as production of them ceased many years ago... Kalashnikov's design has been used for about 60 years now and the new rifles based on his action are NOT "AK-47". "AK-47" refers to "Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947". My own favorite Kalashnikov in my collection is a Chinese MAK-90, not referred to as an AK-47 but easily recognizable as a Kalashnikov design.)
This is not a response to allofmp3.com or anything of the sort. Russia has been trying to lay claim to the ownership of the Kalashnikov design for years now, much to the chagrin of other former Soviet states who feel they have equal claim to the design.
Part of the problem is that Kalashnikovs are incredibly popular in the US gun community. Not full-auto machine guns as the press and the anti-gun lobby would have you believe, but semi-automatic rifles that only fire one bullet for each pull of the trigger. Anyway, Kalashnikovs are VERY cheap to manufacture and even the full auto variants frequently sell NEW for about $75 (USD) in other markets. In the US market, a cheap Romanian Kalashnikov will sell at a gun show for about $300 or more depending on how it is outfitted. With a Yugoslavian underfolding stock and a bayonet lug, it could be closer to $500. The Russians are furious because they cannot get in on the very healthy US firearms market. There is a ban on Russian firearms imports (China, too) that has got to be really frustrating for them. The Romanians are making a killing selling guns of Russian design on US soil. Big $$$! So when money changes hands this rigorously, anyone with even a tenuous interest is going to try very hard to get their hand in there somewhere for a payout.
As was pointed in many posts, it's funny that anyone would even try to enforce IP on the AK-47.
What makes it even funnier is that Russia created the situation in the first place: during the Cold War, the USSR actively, and intensively, distributed the plans for it (along with plans for the RPG7 and other types of weapons) at a cheap rate or for free, to kickstart arm industries in many of its satellite countries. The strategy was successful as it is estimated that over 90 million AK-47s have been produced worldwide since its invention, and dozens of countries had licencing agreements for it.
Fast-forward to today: when the USSR collapsed, all licences for production of the AK-47 were revoked. Of course, many producers have just conveniently ignored this fact(because their own armies rely on the AK-47 or, more likely, because the demand for AKs on the international market, both legal and illegal, has never been higher than since the end of the Cold War). Izhmash, the state-owned Russian company that retains the exclusive rights to the AK, recently complained that "out of the million AKs that are produced every year, only 10 to 12% are authentic", all the others being knock-offs.
Of course, they know they can't really do a thing about it. Copying designs of other countries' weapons is an established practice (just look up "Norinco CQ rifle" or "Khaybar M16" on google for unlicensed copies of the M16) that no-one ever really tried to suppress. What's more, the AK's simple design means it's not much of a challenge to produce them.
Izmash might go against one or two large, established producers that have been stupid enough to call their guns AK-47 (not sure they'll find one though) and press trademark charges against them. But the scores of small-to-medium-scale AK producers located around the world will probably simply continue to produce it regardless. It's not like most of their trade is legal anyways.
For more on the international trade in light weapons and its implications, read (in French) Armes légères, syndrome d'un monde en crise (disclaimer: I'm one of the co-authors of this book).
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
I am not surprised. When you have a patenting office that allows patents on rice and yoga that have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years, why not on Kalashnikovs?
Because it is absolutely correct. AK-47 is whatever you want, but not the ripoff from anything.
Switzerland's variant on direct democracy is certainly the best contemporary example of how it could work.
They didn't have to bribe anyone. They invented the design. Author of this rifle was a Soviet officer, and since the very first day this design was the property of USSR, now it's Russia.
... got their patents to create a limited amount of AK-47. Just like Venezuela now got the right of creating the latest design of AK. However, they didn't limit themselves in creating a limited amounts, and continued to manufacture more than they paid for. They thought that if USSR is over, its IP became a public domain. But obviously that is wrong.
Romania and China and
So don't compare this to US IP. AK-47 is not an idea. It is a design created by author. And author wants his money. What is wrong with that?
Russians just good students, isn't it? If West breaching they own rules (in IP), how you could West ask Russians to stop copying just piece of platic(CD)? West copylefting weapons for money? Piece of plastic or deadly weapon. Who hold a smoking gun(copylefted)?
I wonder where they get the ideas from?
The saddest poem
If the AK-47 was the property of the Soviet Union, why does Russia get the monopoly on it? Surely all the states of the former USSR have a proportional share of the assets of the former country...?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
when the NRA weighs in on this one.
That story you heard from an oldster has been passed around since the Cold War and before. Supposedly the Soviets (or Chinese, depending on the storyteller) would manufacture arms that could use captured ammo from NATO countries while making their ammo just enough larger that the reverse would not be true. There's no truth to it, though the Russian 12.7mm round was (last I checked, 20 years ago, and my menory may not be reliable) somewhat similar to our .50 Browning. Still, you'll occasionally hear armchair warriors repeat these old, false notions even today. Don't beat up on yourself about it.
I'm browsing at +3, over 50 comments visible, and NOT ONE "in soviet russia" joke? What's wrong? I'm not good with jokes, but there's GOT to be one in there somewhere.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
it does count as a pseudo-democracy
The problem is that we are given such a small selection of people to choose who will rule us from (2 in the US) that it does not actualy count as a democracy according to the strict (original) definition.
You do have other choices! Vote for who you really want, and work to promote alternative choices--don't accept a two party system. Your two-party overlords want your apathy. Don't give it to them.
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
Isn't the only direct aspect of their democracy that they have referendums on some issues? That's not terribly close to the Athen's model. (Not that that's a bad thing.)
Actually, a better example of what a "pure democracy" would vote for is:
A majority would vote to enslave a minority.
As happened in the South. Which is why we fought the Civil War. We fought this war, to prevent the popular will of the people of Southern states, to be enshrined into law.
The Constitution in general, and the Bill of Rights in particular, are the components of our government intended to counteract and limit Democracy. Sure; Democracy is fine and dandy, but if everyone could have what they would vote for, we'd all vote for Ice Cream and A Pony, now, wouldn't we? And then this country would be deeply in debt.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I say. That's not a British rifle, you frightful bounder. If you want to put the wind up the bally fuzzy-wuzzies, This is what you need.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
we have non-proportional voting systems (e.g. to protect cultural minorities)
Oh, is that why we have non-proportional voting? Then we're stupid, because it does the opposite of that. See, in proportional voting if a certain minority represent 10% of the population, and for the sake of argument vote the same way, then they get 10% of the representation. In a non-proportional voting system, because they are a minority and thus unable to win any singe election they get 0% of the representation. Truly, we have looked out for the needs of the minorities.
Well if it doesn't represent minority populations as a whole, what about neighborhoods? Surely a minority district would win a representative for itself that represented the people. Except thanks to gerrymandering it isn't difficult to always ensure that the minorities of the population as a whole remain minorities within each district as well. It's basically the modern equivalent of Jim Crow laws. But instead of preventing blacks from voting in the first place (which is bad), we simply make it a mathematical certainty that their vote is irrelevent and ultimately ignored (which is fine, apparently).
If you accept non-racial minorities, I'm a Texan non-Republican. Guess how much my vote matters!
I do not think that we should throw away all of these refinements and go back to "pure" democracy, unless we want to relive two centuries of bloody revolutions and poorly constructed political systems.
I agree that we do not want "pure" democracy any more than we want "pure" anyother-ism. Yet the system today is poorly constructed. From top to bottom the system is designed such that it supports only two deeply entrenched political parties. Winner-takes-all voting of Presidents and Representatives means that only the Encumbant and a single Challenger have any mathematical hope of winning. By having only a single alternative, an alternative from the same party that was kicked out in the previous election and is part of the same power structure, means that we have lost our ability to be represented because we don't really have choice.
I doubt it would take anything less than bloodshed to change the situation. Yet who is going to revolt? "Proportional representation or death!" doesn't roll off the tongue. Thus the system remains as the seeming least available evil, and Democracy as PR Stunt continues.
The enemies of Democracy are
"...small selection of people to choose who will rule us from (2 in the US) that it does not actualy count as a democracy..."
Does the party you vote for have primary elections? There is often, but not always, multiple candidates vying for the nomination for the general election. The current Democratic Presidential Race has around 12 people struggling for supremacy. Is this not enough? Would 50 be enough for a democracy, in your view?
"[Once a] person/party [is] elected they are very hard to remove from power..."
Wasn't there a transition in power in the US Congress this past year from Republican control to Democratic Control? Won't George Bush be leaving in a year or so?
"better description of the current system in the US or UK (or Russia for that matter) would be an elected dictatorship."
No, I think the US/UK could be called a Liberal (representative) democracy. Russia is also a liberal democracy, but IMHO, it is edging closer and closer to a failed state, partially because there haven't been very many non-violent transitions of power, and the liberal elements of the state continue to fail.
With all due respect, I don't think you truly understand the politics or the institutions you are attempting to describe.
Why do you keep posting this same thing over and over?
I think it is no like a situation in software patents. AK-47 is an unique machine gun, patents do not protect the general principles, but the way it is made, the system it use and some unique technologies. It is like smbd copies BMW. Copies completely, and then says "Hey, all the engine technology is known, and all the other stuff, why can't I do it" All such talks about patents especially in the military sphere are bullshit (sorry for that), there are a lot of military secrets, which can not be patented due to th fact they are secret. Sorry for my English
Basically yes, but afaik every citizen can call for a referendum if he can collect 50,0000 signatures supporting the proposed new law within three months. So it's a bit more that that.
That is essentially what the title of this story should be. The USSR built the AK47 first to equip their own peasants, then exported it as a cheap and easy-to-produce tool of destabilization in other countries. It was designed to be copied... very hypocritical now to claim IP rights to it.
Do the entire general populace get to vote for who becomes the democratic presidential candidate? I thought that was selected by members of the democratic party.
Is it not the case that by the time the entired populace is asked to vote there are only a few viable candidiates. Is it also not the case that at the last election the war in Iraq was going badly and Bush was unpopular, but the only effective choice that was put to the American public (as a whole) was Bush or Kerry.
I also thought that the way the political system in the US was structured so that if you live in the swing states your vote counts for more than if you live in either candidates political heartlands. Where I live it doesnt matter who I vote for, one party will always win due to the nature of the area and the way other people vote. The same party has won the seat since I was 18 (14 years ago).
I actually understand a fair bit about politics after having been to election counts since I was a nipper and having been brought up in very political household. I also used to live with a fringe party electoral candidate so have been to more electoral counts than I care to remember. I have even been a political candidate for local council elections, not that I ever expected to win but I felt it important that people have the right to express them selves even if it was by wasting a vote.
I was not saying the a true democracy was a workable solution, I was merely pointing out that we do not live in one so should stop calling it as such and forcing it on other nations through the barrel of a gun.
(By the way, thanks for drawing attention to my piss poor spelling with a bit of latin. If you look hard enough you can probably find more than a few spelling errors in this too. Maybe try looking for grammatical errors too and then giving me marks out of ten at the end in red.)
I dont read
A non-proportional voting system means that even if your ethnic group constitutes only 1% of the population, their political voting power is larger than that - say 2%. By the same token, then another ethnic group that constitutes 20% of the population may only have 19% of the political voting power. (The fine tuning is left as an exercise for parliament
sigs are hazardous to your health
You know what, I should start fighting for my ideas on a new potato gun. Like the AK it can fire even after being submerged in mud, and like the AK its only accurate on your first shot.
And let me nip it in the butt before anyone tries to argue that point. Have you fired one? Go head, shake your heads no(besides you few who have), but I bet while shaking your head no your typing up an arguement. Being a prior Marine I've had the chance to fire it often. I win!! Resistance is futile!!! All your bases belong to me!!!It's only effective in very short bursts. Much the same as the M-16, after all...if the M-16 were more accurate it'd be automatic. As it stands if you managed to get one to jimmy rigged into an automatic, aftr the first 4 rounds it wouldn't matter anyway. At 500ft after that 4th shoot your now lucky if you could hit within 2ft of your first shot.
This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
It seems to me that this comment is based on some antiquated winner-takes-all type election system. If so, then that is your problem, not the distribution of the votes.
:-)
Well that's what we have, yes, and it is in fact the system that I am calling the problem. Also I assumed you meant non-proportional as the opposite of how the UK Parliament works. If Labour Party gets 40% of the votes, they get 40% of the seats, and so on. Here in the states, for Presidential elections then whoever gets the most votes in a state wins the entire state, but also Senators which are elected by state-wide popular vote, and Representatives which run to represent individual districts within a state. In no case are seats/electoral votes given out on the basis of percentage of the votes, i.e. what I was calling proportional.
I bolded the part of your comment that made no sense to me, as in I really don't know what you were trying to say.
A non-proportional voting system means that even if your ethnic group constitutes only 1% of the population, their political voting power is larger than that - say 2%. By the same token, then another ethnic group that constitutes 20% of the population may only have 19% of the political voting power. (The fine tuning is left as an exercise for parliament
That sounds like you are describing the current state of a system, not a system itself. How do you grant the 1% ethnic minority 2% political power? What does Parliament decide exactly? Explain how this non-proportional voting system works.
You probably need to move a lot of power from the president over to congress. It then becomes less of a winner-takes-all situation and even smaller parties can jockey for power within the committees and whatnot.
Eh... Congress is somewhat better, and we actually have a few Independent representatives. But like I was saying, the same problem exists with winner-take-all voting and districting. Politicians understand demographics, and like to screw around with the borders of the districts to split up concentrations of minorities into multiple districts such that within each district they remain a minority. It's called "gerrymandering". My state, Texas, is particularly bad where they have some districts that are a couple miles wide and a hundred miles long so that the tip of the district in traditionally liberal Austin is diluted by 90 miles of traditionally conservative rural Texas.
Even without that, it is still fundamentally difficult for a politician from outside the two major parties to get elected. If 10% of the population votes for an independent, that won't be enough to win even a single seat in that state. So 3rd parties are marginalizd. They can't win, so nobody votes for them, and the two main parties become even more deeply entrenched.
The enemies of Democracy are
Mexicans may not break American law by definition. "Illegal immigrants" do--that's why we call them illegal. Whether the current law is reasonable is still up for debate, since Congress is considering amending it. (We know Mexico doesn't think much of it. I've heard tales that Mexico's gov. issues guides on how to cross the border without documents. Take with salt.)
The groups of Mexicans in America and illegal immigrants overlap, but they are independent. There are a few legal Mexican immigrants. (There would be more if we didn't grant amnesty so often to illegals.) Not all the illegal immigrants are Mexican--not even all the ones that cross the US-Mexico border.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
* - I can sort of understand this for the senate as theres's simply too few senators per state (two?) for the representatives to be proportionately distributed along the percentages of the votes, but it should be doable for the house of representatives? Explain how this non-proportional voting system works. In Norway, we are worried that people that live far away from the capital receive less influence over government because they're so far removed from it and it from them. We therefore tend to give more seats in parliament (per capita) to far-off regions. This effectively means that if you live in northern Norway, your vote has more direct political impact than if you live in the capital. Likewise, we are worried that regions with low population counts will have their concerns overrun by the more urbanised regions and so we tend to give them more seats per capita also. It's called "gerrymandering". I never quite understood why politicans in the US can get away with this. It might just be the extreme political polarization that leads to an "anything goes" type of political climate I suppose. The opposition party becomes the enemy and you'll basically do anything to defeat an enemy.
sigs are hazardous to your health
And the SCOPE of adding patents (building an AK-47 on teh internets!) and where trademarks are appliccable (see Windows (tm) or cybersquatting on thiscompanysucks.com ("oh noes, people will think we're saying we sux!!!").
In the US, we have civil rights laws and they are enforced. They ensure fair treatment in employment, housing, lending, education, treatment by public officials, etc.
Specific to GP's point, that the Russian police did nothing to stop a mass gay-bashing. I never like to say "never", but this would be really unlikely to happen in the US, even in the South. Given the number of gay rights rallies in the US each year, I think it's safe to say that if they were allowed to turn into gay-bashings, we'd have heard about it by now.
Personally, I see no reason that we need a gay, black president or the demographic makeup of the senate to match the general population. The idea of a representative democracy isn't that the demographic makeup of any particular branch of government must match the general population, it's that the entirety of the general population is well represented by its elected officials. I think the US does pretty well in this regard.
Of course, minorities don't get every law they want, but they do wield way more influence then their numbers indicate they ought to. Take gays, for instance. Gays represent, at most, 10% of the general population. But most elections are decided by a margin of way less than 10%. Now if a candidate can support legislation that gays like, they can count on the support of that 10% and win the election.
This is why you see issues like same-sex unions even being discussed, even when 90% of the country would not be affected by them. You've got your 10% population of gays who care, and probably 10% population of bigots who care to try to block it, and the other 80% of the population collectively yawns. But you've got the Democrats trying to win over gay voters by supporting same-sex unions, and you've got evangelical Republicans trying to rally their armies of bigots against the unions, and the rest of the country wondering why all of a sudden this became a national crisis.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock