file sharing battle has not gone away you know

by steve Tue Jan 28, 2003 23:10

The question I have is: Since when is the US Government OFFICIALLY opposed to the use and development of Open Source software around the
world? Millions of Americans use it and the idea of Open Source started
in the US.

The US was the only country attending the Tokyo conference to demand
this change from "support" of Open Source to the alternative presented
below.

Extract (partial):

TOKYO -- A three-day meeting that brought together Asian governments,
organizations, companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ended
Wednesday morning with the approval of a declaration that, among other
things, calls for encouraging the development of open-source software. A
draft of the declaration had called for open source to be "supported"
but was changed after objections from the U.S. government delegation
late Tuesday night.

The U.S. opposition was largely perceived to be support for its
domestic software companies and in particular Microsoft, said officials
from other governments on the sidelines of the conference on Wednesday.
After a short debate with a number of countries, including Pakistan,
that wanted the original language to remain, all sides finally reached
agreement and the declaration was changed to read: "Development and
deployment of open-source software should be encouraged, as appropriate,
as should open standards for ICT (information and communications
technology) networking."

.....................

--
Steve Withers

by C. Wed Jan 29, 2003 11:07

Anybody know whats the current status of this type of thing in Ireland / Europe?

Anybody know what the TRIPS proposals look like?

by Terry Wed Jan 29, 2003 12:54

The problem of Open Source for the Capitalists is that they don't own it and it takes
away markets that they could exploit, because the stuff is given away free.

The second problem is that any 'worker' with sufficient knowledge can take back control
of production and so to some degree have some control over their own destiny.

The whole point of Capitalism is to take away the means of production from the workers
via the ownership of capital and machinery and in more recent times, intellectual property
(by the use of Patents and Copyright). Open Source reverses this. Therefore it will be
eventually stamped out of existence by the boots of Capitalism.

Whatever laws are enacted in the US to thwart and disrupt Open Source will be forced upon
the EU and of course Ireland, because the US are already doing just that in every other
field -i.e. via WTO/GATS etc

Incidently the laws against Peer to Peer are merely a tool to lock up anyone they don't like
on a whim, since so many people have probably used P2P networks. The beauty of it for them is
that it can be used silence and take out of currency the most vocal (activists) by locking them up.

by C. Wed Jan 29, 2003 13:36

"The whole point of Capitalism is to take away the means of production from the workers
via the ownership of capital and machinery and in more recent times, intellectual property
(by the use of Patents and Copyright). Open Source reverses this. Therefore it will be
eventually stamped out of existence by the boots of Capitalism."

Open source and copyright avoidance technologies provide a powerful weapon against a capitalism which is now heavily based on the 'information economy'. Capital formation now focuses on intellectual capital - witness the nonsense of 'traded' services - which is actually trade in the restricted knowledge of how to deliver services.

Witness the decline in music sales in the US as the P2P networks take up where napster left off and seem, both technically and legally, virtually unstoppable.

The only legal method to attack these technologies removes fair use and a range of other civil liberties. While the war on terrorism and other cons provide the means in the US, even there the DMCA is being rolled back. In Europe and elsewhere this type of repression can provide both a rallying cry for resistance and weapon against hypercapitalism. But, due to ignorance we are handing over many of these rights - article 133 of the Nice treaty not only raised the spectre of privatisation of services but also the removal of any say in Intellectual Property frameworks. So this will only be combatted on a european level.

I'm as ingorant as the next on this - but am concerned that the activist focus on the wto is always on gats etc. - when TRIPS is the way that laws like this will come about in ireland. Does anybody know?

(link below covers a few victories against the IP crowd - also check for the "peer to peer privacy act" to allow the mpaa/riaa to hack your computer if you use gnucleus / kazaa (loads of videos) etc.)

by ms Napster Thu Jan 30, 2003 00:21

So many young people are now using kazaaand Freenet etc that it will be difficult for the swine to chase everyone. Numbers are our greatest defense, so go forth and multiply. Keep this type of info coming and new readers may be attracted to indymedia.