The most civilised gift you may give or receive :- "IDEAS"

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Friday July 15, 2005 15:45 by .:. iosaf ·.· ipsiphi

this is between 2 categories - "rights and freedoms" and "tech".

On the 6th of july the EU parliament rejected software patents, another step in the struggle for ideas & information.

It wasn't reported (by me) as it that time the G8 seemed more important, and the Irish MEP votes on this issue which effects all europeans and all users of indymedia were already long decided on "party political ground".

In the end 14 votes were cast in favour, 648 against and 18 abstentions.

Most of the information on the attempt to pass the software patents law which would have mirrored such laws in the USA and Japan and the succesful campaign against that - is available here-

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html

No-one can claim to "own an idea".

Equally no-one can claim to "own the genetic material of a life form".

I have long attempted to explain that such concepts of "property" and the struggle against their acceptance are what make anarchism, and anarcho-syndicalism relevant to the XXI century.

& as usual i wasn't alone in this. Nope. Big crowd on this one.
Stallman argued "information wants to be free"
Equally another writer Lessig argues "culture wants to be free".
I just ask "whose letters & numbers do you think you're using"?

"the questions of the age":-

Who are the free software/culture lobby?
Where do they live? what do they do?
Are there eating requirements? Do they need help with development? Do they know about good governance? Is there any girl on girl action?

Some Answers:-
The free software/culture lobby are made up of all those who have connected in a political and cultural sense the inherent wish and need of "information to be free", that the advancement of humanity is best served by the sharing of inspiration, innovation, technology and ideas. The free software lobby ought find support in
*Everyone who uses Indymedia, Wikipedia, Unix based systems, and everyone who has downloaded music, images, or text from the internet. Or fought the culture industry and internalisation by capitalism of culture.
*Everyone one who has contributed to the great profits of the entertainment industry hardward manufacturers by buying a CD burner, tape to tape recording machine, MP3, digital video camara.
*Everyone who has bought a CD or tape in the recent years and made a copy.
*Every migrant in precarious and black market exploitation who has survived the last years by selling pirate entertainment products on the street.
*Every worker in the globalised production industry of these entertainment products and technology.

The Free internet and intellectual patent lobbies are closely tied, work together and are found globally, wherever there is an internet connection, an electricity supply or a need for information, the production of essential drugs, the education of future children appropriate to the needs of their developing societies.

There are no special eating requirements, most people eat shit, and a few claim to be vegetarians.
There is indeed thanks to the way in which the internet was expanded by unscrupulous hardward manufacturers and those who wished to use one the greatest tools to common understanding humanity has developed, been an excessive use of the medium to offend populations globally through illegal use spam and inappropriate marketing of technology to children in both first and third world of cybernetic "lifestyles" which raise serious questions on privacy and individual versus collective protection.

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Under the introduction "If intellectual property had always existed, humanity would have never known the Gilgamesh epic, the Mahbharata and the Ramayana, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Popol Vuh, the Bible or the Quraan" a three day meeting of minds called "copyfight" is occuring now in Barcelona one of only many such meetings of minds which are occuring throughout our societies to address the issues, legal, cultural, political of our "drive and will" to achieve a :-

"free society".


Let me bring the theme out of the "cultural arena" of such august institutions as the CCCB down my road in Bcn, and into the realpolitik of both zeitgeist and future.

Africa, and South America and Asia to achieve freedom at any level, need information and access to information. Their schools and universites may value such initiatives as wikipedia and project Gutenberg and all those who are willing to extend word, data, teaching resources and more for free.

The educational, health and administrative bodies of no state, but most particularly developing economies ought not pay software giants huge amounts of money for the computer systems they use, when other superior systems are available for free.

There are many who argue most selfishly against these ideas. Claiming that the movement to free information is a threat to "popular music".
By telling us, there would be no U2 or would not have been a Boomtown Rats or hours of wasted time waiting no microsoft windows to work without the right of globalised corporations to make more money in less than 10 years than is needed to-

Cure the sick.
Feed the hungry.
Give water to the thirsty.
Cloth and Shod the naked.
Give vaccines to all children.
Let all people regardless of creed, race, ethnic origin or tastes in food or music, gender or sexuality, move to prosperity, peace and justice.

In short.
POLITICISE YOUR TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE. FREEDOM BEGINS WITH YOU.
and then you'll help make poverty history.
There is presently a generation who have no idea of the power to change our humanity for the better which is the proper potential of our use of software and information exchange. They are of the age which merely sees "entertainment".
TEACH THEM.

some links of groups, and some articles too -
http://elastico.net/copyfight/eng_home.htm
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com
http://www.gnu.org/
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
http://www.debian.org/
http://wikipedia.org/
Http://platoniq.net
http://indymedia.org
http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-1.html
http://creativecommons.org/
http://riereta.net/tiki/tiki-index.php
http://network23.org
http://www.indymedia.ie/oscailt/faq.html
http://www.opencontent.org/
http://mako.cc/writing/mute-indymedia_software.html
http://www.beyondtv.org/

the last is an example of a european regional government and current cultural initiative at global level using free software and inthe process saving lost of money for schools and stuff.
http://www.donquijotedelamancha2005.com/