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UN Bigwig: The Web Should Have Been Patented and Licensed
An anonymous reader writes "Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has unearthed an amazing video where the head of WIPO, the UN agency responsible for 'promoting' intellectual property, suggests that Tim Berners-Lee should have patented HTML and licensed it to all users. Amazingly this is done on camera and in front of the head of CERN and the Internet Society, who look on in disbelief."
Always 20/20, especially if you're a greed-focused farging bastage.
It takes a monumental denial of reality to say something that stupid; anyone with even partial brain function is fully aware that if the underlying technologies of the web had been patented by Sir Tim (or similar) and licensed then we wouldn't be posting on Slashdot right now because nobody outside of large multinationals would even be *using* the web for anything.
He talks about the possibility that the burden of developing the web could have been shared by the users. Well, it was shared. The development of the web was as shared as it could have been. Hundreds or thousands of open source developers contributing pieces to it. Some commercial companies trying as well. All users paying for their share of the bandwidth. The web is a wonderful example for how sharing the burden can work without a traditional organization apportioning the shares. This guy simply doesn't get that. He may know something about the P in WIPO, but the I seems to be somewhat underdeveloped.
Your government voted for him.
The "UN" and it's myriad institutions is a figleaf for your rulers. It lets them do what they want and blame it on "The UN" or "WIPO" or "the WTO" or "the FMI" or "the World Bank".
Watch this Heartland Institute video
(Yes, pedants, I'm aware we don't get to vote for them)
Which is reason enough that the folks in the UN should not be dictating Internet policy.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The copy of copyright and patent supporters is to prevent systems like the internet from being founded. This is a great example: were the important protocols and general structure patented, what you know of as the internet would not have been delayed or more expensive, it would have never existed. It is quite obvious that the greater good is of no concern to IP supporters, only their own profits.
Yet these people are still given free rein of our legal system and allowed by the weak minded to claim that copyright and patent infringement is "theft," while the real theft is that of the copyright and patent holders from society as a whole. It's time that stop, before the next big innovation is prevented. End these archaic systems this decade, support the abolition of imaginary property.
Great Intellect...
A surgeon who will recommend to operate when it's not necessary, will lose his license, can be sued for malpractice and may even face criminal charges if he knew that he endangers a patient without a good reason for it.
This asshat, on the other hand, has no oversight over his whoring to corporations, and should never be placed into any such position.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Luckily Tim Berners-Lee did have a vision about his idea and probably even knew about the lack of vision of those greedy bastards.
...is to keep people from resolving their differences at the point of a gun.
If you turn laws into something that people can no longer turn to for fairness, then what?
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BMO
Except that there is often a significant degree of subjectivity and room for disagreement on decisions of whether to operate, so the surgeon who recommends unnecessary operations won't face any consequences 99% of the time.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
For your basic corporate conservative, the only things that have value are those things that are owned by somebody. And that's a private owner, not a government.
So, for instance, breathable air is worthless under this philosophy. Worthless, that is, unless you can charge people to breathe it, maybe put it in cans. I wish this were a joke, but the corporations, with the World Bank practically forcing the government's hand, already tried to do the same thing to rainwater.
I am officially gone from
web might not have grown quite so popular
I expect that would be WIPO's goal. The idea that people give stuff away, particularly intellectual property, undermines their whole existence. That something could become a standard, ubiquitous and free is their worst nightmare and they probably feel that the web's success is their failure.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The job of Director of WIPO is still open for applications (closes 18 Oct): https://erecruit.wipo.int/public/hrd-cl-vac-view.asp?jobinfo_uid_c=25114&vaclng=en
And never forget that your government that you elect[ed] is in favour of all this crap. If you don't like it, the proper remedy is to take the matter up with your friendly local pubic representative.
More than once - they called it CompuServe, GEnie, and AOL. Remember them?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It takes a monumental denial of reality to say something that stupid ...
Its the United Nations. The same U.N. that chose North Korea to head the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. The same U.N. that chose Gaddafi's Libya to chair the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
check your history, young 'un. for example, the The IMF, also known as the âoeFund,â was conceived at a United Nations conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, July 1944.
The United Nations, and the global banks tied to it, are tools by the elite to usurp national sovereignty and wealth. They should all be destroyed.
Years ago I had some serious back trouble that could have been addressed quickly with some painful surgery, or slowly with painful therapy. My surgeon (Dr. Charles Grado, and if you're reading this, thank you) was adamant that he wouldn't touch a scalpel until we'd exhausted all other possibilities. I thought that was weird and told him so. He told me that he took an oath to first do no harm, and that surgery stood in opposition to this. You can't claim you're "doing no harm" while you're cutting into flesh: you're clearly, obviously, doing harm. The only question is whether your actions are the least harmful way of restoring health. Doc Grado is one of the best doctors I've ever known.
My father and cousin are both judges. Despite their polar-opposite political views, they're agreed that any lawyer who starts off by saying, "well, let's file some legal papers" is an incompetent. A lawyer's job is to solve your problems, and jumping straight to court is a great way to multiply them instead.
My gunsmith is a career soldier who characterizes his experience in Vietnam as "99% boredom I don't mind remembering and 1% terror I'm trying to forget." Per him, only fools try to solve problems with firearms. You see, if you do that, they might try to solve you right on back with one, and you won't like that at all.
Finally, I'm an ivory-tower academic who left a Ph.D. program because I was convinced I could do better work, more meaningful work, in the private sector. My job nowadays involves taking cutting-edge research and integrating it into real-world production systems. So, "never" a connection to ground level? My own career says otherwise.
tl;dr version: Maslow said when all you have's a hammer the whole world looks like a nail. This is true only until you find nails that explode into shrapnel and maim you horribly when you hit them. Once you hit one of those nails, you get real careful before you swing that hammer again.