On Sunday 29 May 2005 12:35, Trevor Warren wrote:
> --- Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon(a)thenilgiris.com> wrote:
> > keep it on list - i for one am enjoying it
>
> [snip]
>
> No offence meant. But just cause we do not see eye
> to eye on an issue however frivilous it may be we
> choose to take it offline.
>
> In days when as a group we learnt.....we did toy
> around with a lot more frivlous issues and that too
> with no [ot] tags.
>
> Come on boys...rock and troll....oopsy..roll.
Puneet and I agreed to disagree with two mails (offlist) of
I-said-u -said and closed the thread.
And actually GNU/Linux is becoming a bit too reliable (boring?).
All my systems continue to roll without touching them. Hardly
any tech issues.
However the future is fraught with extreme danger due to
proprietary companies - particularly M$ - lobbying for laws
assigning themselves rights which usurp rights of the commons
or fences off large areas of technology simply because somebody
else got to filing patents first. Even worse fencing of
technology which could be used for illegal acts in spite of the
fact that such users are a microscopic subset of legit users,
and the affected parties are big companies on a death spiral.
They are equating knowledge with limited + non replicable
resource - property. In reality the value of knowledge lies
in it's non expendability and replicability. The original
patent laws were created to benefit individuals by providing
them a time limited period of monopoly, so that society and
the creator could benefit from the IMPLEMENTATION of knowledge
AND that knowledge become public. Patent law required that the
patent be described in detail and with specificity. Over a
period of time the whole system was turned on it's head so
that companies became it's primary beneficiary and the patent
paper itself was anything but detailed and specific. This bad
situation was further twisted to patent business processes,
software and algorithms (knowledge) thus trying to interfere
with ones thought process. You can't think an alternate algo
producing the same result. If you think this is idiotic be
assured it IS NOT there are case against two doctors for
discussing Hormone Replacement Therapy, which is patented by
some company (HRT that is ).
The excuse made by companies is that it costs a lot of money
to create knowledge - which is directly contradicted by the
evidence in the case of software. In the case of other
knowledge like pharmaceuticals it could be shown that the
major cost of identifying promising directions of research
are borne by public bodies like universities. It's only the
commercialization which is expensive, again much of that
expense is marketing, distribution and legal costs - nothing
to do with knowledge creation. The evidence is low cost
drug mfgs in baruch / ankleshwar area often as low as 1/20th
the cost of a branded equiv.
The fight by the commons relies in the main on taking the moral
high ground. Compromise this by condoning or justifying illegal
behaviour and you will be delivering yourself a k.o. .
In essence it's a slow slide to the Feudal age where a tyrant
king and his overlords simply annexed large parts of the commons
and made it private property and you paid a tithe to farm, or
became a serf. Their power derived from wealth largely obtained
by plundering peaceful wealthy communities. Sounds familiar?.
rgds
jtd