Intellectual Property and access to knowledge: Why and how does it affect your life?

By Pedro de Paranaguá Moniz

Almost everything that we touch, use or simply see, even eat is directly or indirectly protected by what has come to be known as intellectual property (IP). Almost everything is now protected: the chemical formula in wall paints, the songs we listen to on the radio or mp3 players, these devices themselves, the books we read on airplanes - and the dozens of airplane parts like the engines, landing systems etc. – the medicines we take, genetically modified foods, as well as fertilizers and pesticides used in agriculture, the photograph on a postcard we send our families, the film we see at the movies as well as the screen projector and the list goes on. It’s human knowledge being made concrete.

How did this all come about? Intellectual Property rights, all put in the same basket: patents, copyrights, software, databases, location detectors etc. It’s the consolidation of intellect, thoughts or even ideas. It’s the protection of investment. There would be nothing wrong in protecting such areas of knowledge, for limited time, if it weren’t for the abuse of these rights that we’ve recently seen.

Even copyright lifespan has now been increased; they’ve already been protected for 14 years. Now, in Brazil, they’re protected during the entire life of the author and then 70 years after his death. Who is the government trying to incentive to produce culture? Not the dead author at least!

http://www.a2kbrasil.org.br/ENG/Intellectual-Property-and-access

Food for thought

At a time when meters controlling access to water for communities is considered a viable and ethical business model, I suppose food NDA's should not surprise anyone. Chefs are exploring their rights to copyright recipes:

A Recipe for Intellectual Property Madness Posted by Ed Foster on October 12, 2006 10:46 AM

New Era of the Recipe Burglar

So I went looking for creative commons recipes:

Creative commons recipes:
http://www.cehwiedel.com/factualreports/Recipes/

Creative commons recipes with no derivatives??:
http://ilforno.typepad.com/il_forno/

In Australia the GM foods people are making the most of farmers in drought as an opportunity to further their cause. 'they'd have been fine with our GM product'.(I heard this on a JJJ interview but haven't found a copy of it) opening the debate on another strand of subscriber or read only culture. GM products, as with software DRM and TPM enable the seed supplier to create a subscription relationship with the farmers, often requiring parallel subscriptions of custom fertilisers. In Canada neighbours of farms carrying GM crops were threatened with legal action if the seed blew or bees cross pollenated into their paddocks and grew GM derivative plants. Given that Australia has a strong organic industry I hope this represents too strong an asset and that the inverse is true here. ie GM farming should not be a threat to other models of farming and GM product suppliers should be held responsible if their products pollute non subscriber crops.

Here is a website by farmers fighting GM products in their own IP 'make' .v. 'buy', read write .v. read only culture campaign:
http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_details.asp?ID=808

France: Carayon Report advises technological independence.

In the report, Carayon also recommended the government fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security, and set up a system to help national and local government agencies exchange information about best practice in the use of open-source software.

He also suggested that the European Union should create an agency with the ambitious goal of ensuring its technological independence.

Separately, Carayon has also pushed for the French National Assembly to give deputies the choice of proprietary or open-source software on the workstations provided for them, beginning with the next parliamentary session in 2007.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/03/HNfrenchodf_1.html

Janis Ian on the music industry and the internet

Bravo Janis for these.
These articles are four years old. I'm behind the times.
Was great to read the ideas for music internet businesses.
I wonder if these articles preceded iTunes.


The Internet Debacle - An Alternative View
Originally written for Performing Songwriter Magazine, May 2002

FALLOUT - a follow up to The Internet Debacle


http://www.janisian.com/