We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin 297
tres3 writes "Wired magazine has an excellent four page article discussing Brazil's new approach to Intellectual Property rights. It discusses everything from battling with the international pharmaceutical industries, to song sampling, to the national adoption of Linux. Richard Stallman
stated that India's political commitment to free software is second only to Brazil's after attending a weeklong free software teach-in for members of the Brazilian national congress, where 161 out of 594 members of congress, from a broad range of parties, had signed up with the free software caucus - making it one of the largest caucuses in the Brazilian government."
RMS' endorsement (Score:5, Funny)
Not in america (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not in america (Score:3, Insightful)
And they're going to do what, exactly? Execute Linus and RMS? Firebomb the FSF? You are making totally ridiculous assertions.
Yes, if there were no companies at all, then we'd have everything we always wanted, right away... Either that, or there wouldn't be anyone doing anything. I vote for the later. You actually think companies a
Re:Not in america (Score:2)
Re:Not in america (Score:2)
Re:Not in america (Score:2)
Doesn't matter. It wasn't some widespread corporate conspiracy that made Netscape 4 unstable, Mozilla slow, and gave Opera a terrible user interface. Besides, when the browser war happened, there was no Mozilla or other major open source browser project... It was one company against another. You're just talking out of your ass once again.
No, I'm just exa
-1, Oxygen-Thief (Score:2)
VoIP is a priori desirable?
no capitalizaion?
vague references to 'corporations'?
works for the State?
All the symptoms of someone who never created anything or moved out of his parents' basement.
Re:Not in america (Score:2)
Honestly, get real. Granted, I understand that sometimes (esp. with this administration and a bit of Clinton) that the government hasn't been the easiest to adopt new technologies. But still, you can't reason
Re:Not in america (Score:2)
And that means what to me, exactly? This doesn't diminish the fact that you are still a dumbass who has no idea of the American capitalist system.
Finish grade school civics then post your policial/economic viewpoints here.
Re:Not in america (Score:2)
[1] i.e., USAian
Re:Not in america (Score:2)
See, Japan can implement a new communications network in much less time than America because of the much smaller landmass and denser population (their infrastructure was also started a while after America's, and thus had more extensibility in mind). There are regions of the US that still can't hit a 36.6 or 56K modem connection, because the economics of running new networks to the middle of nowhere for one or two customer
The most fundamental aspect of Open Source.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Democratizing knowledge so that anyone/everyone can benefit.
I expect this trend wil continue to emerge.
"Poorer" countries will be the main adopter of Open Source. It will be cheaper; and it will encourage creativity and growth of IT.
Re:The most fundamental aspect of Open Source.. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, poorer countries will adopt OpenSource because its cheaper. Period.
If you think that any third-world country does anything for their IT industry is laughable. They have bigger issues rather than breeding creativity in IT.
Re:The most fundamental aspect of Open Source.. (Score:2)
When I read the parent, I thought he meant that poor countries would adopt FOSS because it's cheaper, and then, as an unforseen side effect, the FOSS software will "encourage creativy and growth of IT."
Whether or not he made that point, I can somewhat agree with it. If kids can grow up in schools with cheap Pentiums running Linux, then they're on their way to being IT experts.
WRONG:The most fundamental aspect of Open Source.. (Score:3, Informative)
That's got to be the most asinine comment I've heard it a while.
Democracy is not about giving intellectual property rights of an (insert here: idea, song, book, etc.) to everyone.
Democracy is about giving everyone the chance to VOTE on how they will be RULED.
As for intellectual property, the idea is that A PERSON who DEVELOPS an IDEA can give it to EVERYONE.
Or THAT PERSON can RESTRICT IT to WHOMEVER they choose, be it a friend or a CUSTOMER.
Re:WRONG:The most fundamental aspect of Open Sourc (Score:3, Insightful)
Democracy is about giving everyone the chance to VOTE on how they will be RULED.
Right. So I gave a democratic choice to the ants in my kitchen. If they wanted me to be their absolute ruler, they should walk to the right, otherwise they should turn to the left. Then I dropped some sugar on the right side.
Without free access to information, democracy is useless, it does not exist at all.
As
Re:WRONG:The most fundamental aspect of Open Sourc (Score:2)
That this is happening anyway is sad. Sadder still is that people are buying into it: "Hey, I thought of this first, it's mine, all mine!".
To figure out why owning ideas is bad is left as an exercise to the reader.
In the '70s, they followed Friedman (Score:5, Insightful)
This should give Brazil's economy a big boost, too. Let's just hope that the usual suspects don't manage to undo all the progress in a few years. This should be popular with the populists, so maybe they won't screw it up. That still leaves the fascists and the socialists and the international corps to work to screw it up, unfortunately.
I predict that the most effective opposition will come from the U.S. and the E.U. governments. I hope Brazil stands up to them; I'd really like to be able to move South for economic opportunity!
Re:In the '70s, they followed Friedman (Score:2)
Well, their president is a socialist, but he was elected democratically, so whatever they get, they get what they chose, and it's not up to you to complain about it.
Re:In the '70s, they followed Friedman (Score:2)
Bah, so much for intelligence...
Re:In the '70s, they followed Friedman (Score:2)
Re:In the '70s, they followed Friedman (Score:2)
I believe the point is to identify most, but not all, of the easily cateorizable folks who like to experiment in social engineering on a grand scale based on a vision of what things should be, rather than what they will be.
Put another way, people who want to tell you what to believe, do, and think, because they think they know what is best for you.
Next to the only thing missing is intelligent psychic snails from the star system of Epsilon Er
Re:In the '70s, they followed Friedman (Score:4, Informative)
Re:In the '70s, they followed Friedman (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazingly.. only in America..
You know, quite alot of people have argued quite well that the failures of many South American, and New Zealand show how badly the capitalistic model conforms to societies without entrenched and working courts,
This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no marginal cost to the sharing of digital or intellectual content, beyond the cost of transmission and storage. This fight is about taking ideas out of the hands of a few powerful entities with a vested interest in maintaining their power, and shifting it to everyone.
The world will benefit. The fucked nature of the existing system is no better demonstrated than in the US - where you'd think that having all the power would make life better. But medicine is more expensive there than in almost any other Western country.
-- james
PS please don't start feeding me bullshit about how you have to be paying more for drugs to support the companies. I cannot believe people actually tow this line. It's human health, for chrissakes
Re:This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here. They companies whine about how if you mandate lower prices yadda yadda they won't be able to fund their research blah blah, but they're paying more in marketing than they are in research anyway. And I guarantee you that if I go to the doctor right now with $random-ailment, they'll push some new, expensive, patented drug on me rather than an older alternative that'd probably work just as well. And they'll do that because the companies give them kick-backs.
Cheaper drugs from Canada aren't the solution to this particular problem. Putting a leash on the drug companies in the USA is the solution to this particular problem. Of course, no politician in the USA will ever come out and say this, because in all cases a drug company will be among their top campaign contributiors. And it's easy enough to find out who's in whose pockets by poking around on opensecrets.org.
Re:This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:2)
Please back up your claims with evidence (Score:2)
I call BS. Can you back up this claim?
The seperation of doctor's offices from pharmacies is designed to make any
sort of direct kick-back impossible.
Doctors give out samples of the latest and greatest when they have them, but
when prescribing, th
Re:Please back up your claims with evidence (Score:2)
I don't know where to start. [google.com] Sure, a lot of these are acquittals, but you can't possibly expect me to believe that you haven't heard this charge levelled in the media (repeatedly) in the past couple of years?
And yes, I've had doctors push drugs that I've seen advertized on TV over medications that I've used in the past and felt comfortable with (And which, it turned out, worked better.) Needless to say, I don't go to that doctor anymore...
Re:This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:2)
No its about taking power from the small developer/inventor and giving it to the big corporations. Without IP laws there would be nothing stopping Microsoft/Compaq/IBM etc from taking my software/idea and claiming it as their own and since I cant compete with the level of support and service that the big groups can offer it puts me out of buisness. As
Re:This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:2)
Imagine you have a small product, centered around your invention. Here comes the IBM lawyer, together with a truckload of patents you are violating (you're writing software, so you are neccessarily violating a couple of hundred of patents). The lawyer can instantly shut-down your business, or, if he's in a benevolent mood, sugge
BS alert! *whoop whoop* (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no marginal cost to the sharing of digital or intellectual content, beyond the cost of transmission and storage.
I will say this as simply as possible:
The cost of reproducing a digital asset is completely unrelated to the cost of creating the asset.
People who say otherwise have obviously never created anything worth selling. If I spend 100 hours to invent a new widget, I will probably make blueprints or some other form of diagram. I can make copies of those documents in a local copy shop for ~2 cents apiece. Does that mean my time spent creating the new widget is worth what I spend for the copies? That is absolutely ridiculous: for some reason people expect commercial entities to do their R&D for free and sell the result for the cost of media. I can't imagine how that begins to make sense to anyone.
This fight is about taking ideas out of the hands of a few powerful entities with a vested interest in maintaining their power, and shifting it to everyone.
Those "powerful entities" are the ones that created the intellectual property. Their "vested interest" is completely justified: designing and developing products is expensive, and compaines recoup that expense by - get this - selling the product.
Using lofty terms like "this fight" is silly, and the result of people expecting to get everything for free. Wake up, Sparky - some things actually cost money, and trying to spin your desire for zero-cost products as some sort of noble effort makes you look like ap spoiled child.
PS I am speaking here about commercial entities and products, not F/OSS (which should be obvious).
Re:BS alert! *whoop whoop* (Score:2)
Our economy needs to change a little to accomodate such a system, but the current system is intolerably bad. Everyone who says it's impossible to make a living without copyright suffers from a serious deficit of imagination.
People don't expect to get stuff for free, they just don't expect to pay endlessly for stuff that's free to reproduce.
Not feasible... (Score:3, Insightful)
So charge a lot for the first copy. Simple as that. You can even GPL it, just don't release the first copy until you get paid.
Let's say I run a commercial software company. For the sake of using round numbers, let's say I have five developers who all work full-time for two weeks, and each developer costs me $50/hour. Let's further assume that I only want to break even (i.e. not make a profit).
5 developers * 80 hours * ($50/hour) = a cost to me of $20,000.
Does it make sense for me to charge $20,0
Re:Not feasible... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
PS please don't start feeding me bullshit about how you have to be paying more for drugs to support the companies. I cannot believe people actually tow this line. It's human health, for chrissakes
I was with you up to here, but I have to respond to this inanity.
"It's human health", you say. Yes, it is. And human health has benefitted tremendously from the new drugs that have become available due to the investment of many, many billions of dollars in research. If you cut off that funding, you cut off new research and you eliminate future, continuing improvements in human health. Maybe we need to keep those dollars flowing for "human health"?
I'm not saying we don't pay too much, because we do. And I'm not saying that the current system is the only way to get important drug research done. But don't forget that a big part of the reason we have such high health care costs is because the US funds most of the world's health care research, especially with respect to pharmaceuticals. If you reduce what we pay, you will reduce the research being done, unless you find another way to pay for it.
Like most things in life, there are tradeoffs. The US currently has the best health care system in the world, for those in the middle and upper classes who can afford it. That high quality is a direct outgrowth of the facilities available and new research being performed, which both derive directly from the amount of money that is put into health care. We need to cut costs because it is getting too expensive, but we must do it *carefully*, because the reductions won't be impact-free.
Me being the hard-eyed libertarian type that I am, I think we should continue letting the free market handle it. Others prefer other approaches. But whatever we do we'd damned well better realize that slashing drug prices *will* mean fewer new drugs. And that's a bad thing for human health.
Re:This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:2)
The US currently has the best health care system in the world, for those in the middle and upper classes who can afford it.
Actually, this is not an accurate characterization of the state of health care in the US. Allow me to correct myself:
The US currently has the best health care system in the world, for those in the upper middle and upper classes who can afford it, or for those in the lower class who get it free through Medicaid and Medicare. The rest of the middle class is out of luck except with
Re:This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:2)
I'm sure you don't believe this is true of software. (Pay M$ or we won't get advancements.) So why do you think it so with drugs?
Software development and drug development are completely different.
Software development is done incrementally, with predictable outcomes based on specific modifications to the code. Distributed development, with each developer adding the feature he or she wants, is perfectly achievable with a fairly minimal amount of coordination. A mailing list plus a CVS repository is ade
Of course they support Free Software (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it stands to reason. In the Indain sub-continent (which includes Pakistan and Banglsdesh) where they have railed against high software prices for decades (and incidentally Pakistan produced the first virus [f-secure.com] - apparently aimed deliberately at foreigners who could afford to fly in to buy cheap copies of pirate software), then "Free and legal" is better than "Free, 'cos it's pirated"
The rest of the story submission: (Score:5, Interesting)
Wired [wired.com] magazine has an excellent four page article [wired.com] discussing Brazil's new approach to Intellectual Property rigths. Discussing everything from battling with the international pharmacutical industries, to song sampling, to the national adoption of Linux. Richard Stallman [stallman.org] stated that India's political commitment to free software [fsf.org] is, second only to Brazil's after attending a weeklong free software teach-in for members of the Brazilian national congress, where 161 out of 594 members of congress, from a broad range of parties, had signed up with the free software caucus - making it one of the largest caucuses in the Brazilian government. Later that week Stallman donned a robe and a halo made out of a compact disc and declared himself "Saint IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs" but was surprised to be upstaged when Gilberto Gil, Brazil's newly appointed minister of culture, said: "this whole process that led to the computer, to the personal computer, to Silicon Valley, this extraordinary degree of cognition that arose from the intersection of math and design and the crystallographic structures of quartz was made possible by acid trips." It even has its fair share of MS bashing for those whose goal in life it is.
The story was pending for over five hours. I think they were waiting for someone to submit one that didn't equate drug use to computers! I was merely quoting the Brazilian Culture Minister (p. 4). Just a quick FYI.
Re:The rest of the story submission: (Score:2)
1) Arrival of Saint IGNUcius
2) The "acid trip" speech by Gil
3) Saint IGNUcius thinks the analogy to legalizing drugs was a bit to freaky
Seriously, page 4: "And Stallman was like, Wait a minute there, that's not quite the way it went," Gil recalls. "It freaked him a little to think I was associating the free software movement with the movement to legalize drugs.""
All I can say is wow. And that I wish I had more mod points.
Out of context. (Score:2)
"And Stallman was like, Wait a minute there, that's not quite the way it went," Gil recalls. "It freaked him a little to think I was associating the free software movement with the movement to legalize drugs."
But in fact, that wasn't quite the link Gil was making. He was suggesting that the free software movement and the
Insightful quote from Page 4 (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a good thing that developing nations are not overrun with banks of lawyers and corporate-puppet politicians out to abuse the legal system" in order to "enforce IP rights" and essentially abuse the legal system. Either that, or they have different more important priorities to take care of rather than pursue extreme protectionism based on artificially created property, like's happening in the developed countries.
Whatever the case is, it's good to see *somebody* take a sane stand on the issue of Shared Knowledge, which has been that way for a few thousand years in human history now.
It's not just about "free" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not just about "free" (Score:2)
Re:It's not just about "free" (Score:2)
That's GNU/Linux, you insensitive clod! (Score:3, Funny)
An interesting dilemma... (Score:4, Insightful)
FUST, the project that started it all (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft, of course, was OK with being named the sole participant in the project and saw nothing wrong with it.
But the project was changed under the new government and now it requires open source (any open source software, not just Linux).
And now you see Microsoft going around saying how wrong it is for the government to leave them out of the party. It's rich!
However, they misrepresent the situation. They were not left out of the party. All they have to do is open (really open, not "share") the source of their OS (yes, they can continue to charge for it; free as in freedom, not price). FUST is not a Linux-only project.
Microsoft IS invited to join in. They won't, of course, because they can't meet the technical requirements, but that's their choice.
Soybeans is real money (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to use M$, Brazil has to pay $$ (as in "USD"). And because Brazil does not (you inconsiderate clods...) have a convertable currency, it has to convert something tangible -- soybeans will do -- into $$. Since the marginal cost of reproducing open-source software is more or less zero, whereas the marginal cost of producing soybeans (or whatever) is decidedly greater than zero, it's an easy decision.
The US, in contrast, simply prints more dollars (figuratively -- actually we sell treasury bills) and, as long as other countries (read: China, Japan) accept those freshly printed dollars, we get stuff without necessarily having to generate a comparable amount of items (a.k.a. "trade deficit").
Nice deal, as long as it works. And it will work forever, won't it? Won't it???
Start practicing your Portuguese...
The Baby and the Bathwater (Score:4, Insightful)
Intellectual rights protections are about providing incentives for innovation and production. Perhaps it's fashionable to talk about "tropicalizing" (yes, I read TFA), but we should always ask what the incentive structure for innovation/production will look like when rights protections are changed. Perhaps there's a viable model of software development (open-source) outside traditional copyright law, but is there a viable model for producing books, music, movies, technological innovation, and all the other activities protected by IP laws?
Re:The Baby and the Bathwater (Score:3, Insightful)
The rationale has *little or nothing* to do with fair/deserved (or outrageous/undeserved, whatever the case may be!) compensation for the intellectual rights holders. It has *everything* to do with solving a fundamental economic problem with the provision of (nearly) public goods; goods with high initial/fixed costs and near-zero marginal costs.
In all fairness, I think this has failed. It is true that copyrights have led to more 'public goods' - but the public goods have become anything that gets the m
On a Mission from Gates (Score:4, Funny)
From the article:
In 1556, not long after the Portuguese first set foot in Brazil, the Bishop Pero Fernandes Sardinha was shipwrecked on its shores and set about introducing the gospel of Christ to the native "heathens." The locals, impressed with the glorious civilization the bishop represented and eager to absorb it in its totality, promptly ate him.
Now, if only they had retained that attiude for Windows missionaries. =)
please ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pinguin = Fatter wallet (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Pinguin = Fatter wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that Free Software will make Brazil (hopefully) more productive on computers, quicker and cheaper. The way it should be
Re:Pinguin = Fatter wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
yup... (Score:2)
Fatter Wallet
Re:Pinguin = Fatter wallet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pinguin = Fatter wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, some of us brazilians also actually pay for our distros; the biggest problem with that is that it is more difficult to pay for a foreign (read American) distribution, due to rate changes and bureaucracy. However, when there is an easy way to pay, we do; Conectiva is there to prove it.
Re:Pinguin = Fatter wallet (Score:5, Interesting)
There aren't "many, many more" windows admins than Linux admins in Brazil; there aren't that many of either. Brazil is a developing nation. I have good hopes for it, and it could be a major power in pushing Linux (its economy is already approaching Britain's in size).
There seems to be a strong "cooperative" sense in Latin America, as opposed to in the US. A friend of mine from Argentina started an organization called Cooperarte (Cooperar + Arte). I asked about the name, and he mentioned that every other organization in Argentina these days, it seems, has a reference to cooperation in it.
Now Brazil has, by a significant margin, elected a Socialist leader (Lula), who if anything is criticized for not being socialistic enough. Brazil often hosts counter-WTO events; there's a strong sense of "fighting for the common man", instead of for corporate interests (especially foreign corporate interests, which have been seen as trying to use Latin America for cheap labor and resources)
Congrats to Brazil for taking a stand on so many issues; I wish Brazil the best on its attempts to make Open Source their standard, and offer them my congratulations on their recent successful rocket launch (it's about time there was a Latin American space program!)
Re:Good for them, not so good for us (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, a spelling error that still makes sense on a completely different level.
Re:Good for them, not so good for us (Score:2)
And i have no problem respecting patients of developers
Good for everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for free software and cheap drugs, but we still need to respect the copyrights and patients of the developers.
Like the hell we do. It's one thing to acknowledge their contribution to the world - it's another to assume that there should be some kind of a god given right for personal monopolies - even when millions of people in Africa are dying of AIDS. Like cows to the slaughter, people just assume that because a bunch of people declare something a glorious free market property right - that it must be so. But really, do you own slaves?
Re:Good for everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
You may also consider that consumer debt is the newest form of slavery. The beauty of this particular form is that the slaves are responsible for their own problems and upkeep, they just send money. The best part is that the new slaves get in voluntarily.
hanzie.
Go to hell (Score:4, Insightful)
How do the millions of people dying of AIDS have any claim whatsover to the drugs? The drugs that wouldn't have been there if your evil drug companies hadn't spent the $$ to make them? It's not like drugs fall from the sky and they're being hoarded, like diamonds or something. Without the drug companies you know what you have? NOT A FUCKING THING. With them, you get something, an infinite percent improvement. If you get some free, or some cheap, be grateful.
Excuse me, but your glorious pharmacutical companies are making it impossible for researchers to collaberate on AIDS remedys because they want grab key patents and lock out competitors. In addition, they actively interfere with research on cheaper and simple remidies that could be even more beneficial - but can not be patented. This is not a glorious free market forces at all - it is bullshit, and people are FUCKING dying because of it. I don't owe the pharmacuticals a Goddam thing - But people have rights and deserve freedoms inspite of them not because it suits their profits.
You DO owe 'the pharmacuticals' something... (Score:2)
Re:You DO owe 'the pharmacuticals' something... (Score:2)
It's easy to owe them nothing; never claim any of their property as yours.
No I dont, as I said, it's not a property and it violates innocent people, so I'm making it my business. Your logic is like saying - if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves.
Re:You DO owe 'the pharmacuticals' something... (Score:2)
YEAH I owe 'the pharmacuticals' the finger (Score:4, Insightful)
No, my logic is like saying: their property is theirs, not anyone else's.
My geo-metro is my property - a copy of it is not. In fact, please make a copy - I won't be violated. In fact, there are 10 million coppies, I am not violated. It is bullshit morality. As far as I'm concerned - 'the pharmacuticals' can have all the property they want, and I wouldn't care. But that's not what they're asking for - they are asking for controll over who can make replicas. That is NOT a property (repeat after me, the right to replicate is not a property ... repeat after me, the right to replicate is not a property) , and it is not even good for society, and I can prove it because it has all sorts of consequences that you seem to like blowing off - but other countries like brazil can not, because people are dying over it. And your assertion that cures would never be found anyhow, is bullshit.
Re:Riddle me this Strawman: (Score:2)
New word: BIOPIRACY (Score:5, Interesting)
Biopiracy, n. The smuggling of species of plants, animals and fungi, typically from tropical, 3rd-world countries to temperate, 1st-world ones, for the purpose of isolating substances which are then patented as inventions and levied as taxes on the same countries where the substances came from.
Yes, kids, it exists. You'll find it nowhere in US and European media because it's not convenient to anyone, but people are arrested regularly for it in international airports of developing nations for it (including the selfsame Brazil). The pharmaceutical industry isn't quite the paragon of correctness and hard effort you make them out to be.
Re:Riddle me this Strawman: (Score:2)
what about what you owe us (Score:5, Insightful)
On the flip side, if through hard work and determination, I create something useful to others and attempt to make money from it in order to feed my family should you, who did nothing to bring about its creation, be allowed to simply take it from me without compensating me for my time and effort to do with as you please?
Yes I should, because I have a family to feed to, and your invention likely builds on zillions of things, experiences, and knowledge, that society gave you freely - now to turn arround and say they owe you a monopoly is bullshit. Not to mention that 90% of patents especially cover incremental improvements that were going to be invented anyhow with or without a monopoly. So basically, you're not benefiting society - you're just getting in the way of future innovation, why should you be rewarded for that?
Re:one would think (Score:2)
If you think that's bad, see this [cnn.com].
Dog names really are a stupid thing to be legislating, the choice of software is certainly not. Linux will (if its advocates are right) create jobs and save large amounts of taxpayer money. That could free resources to fight corruption and poverty.
Re:one would think (Score:2)
Why the straw man tactics?
Re:one would think (Score:2)
I felt lucky and got a different conclusion [cdc.gov].
Re:lies is a pretty poor debate tactic (Score:2)
Still, I don't think their relatively high murder rate means they shouldn't look into other ways of advancing their society. Relative to some other nations, the US has tremendously high murder rates - should our politicians also stop talking about other issues until our own murder rate goes to 0?
Re:I have to wonder, though (Score:3, Insightful)
America did same thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I have to wonder, though (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because it's not in english doesn't mean it doesn't really exist, or is worthless, or doesn't make a lot of money for their makers. A billion people in your domestic market can make you quite rich.
You think anyone outside of America, has even heard of a quarter of the people you think are famous?
Terry Pratchett, makes a lot of money from his books, how many do you think he sells in India?
Re:I have to wonder, though (Score:2)
Do they know power chords in India?
Re:I have to wonder, though (Score:2)
http://www.bhangra.com/ is a good place to check out the latest in Indian style music. Some from the UK, others from India. Its quite popular here, BBC has the Asian Network Radio station.
Cart/Horse (Score:2)
And when India's pop singers become wildly famous internationally, thus multiplying the available funds, a local influence aggregator will take interest in passing laws to "protect" them.
Re:I have to wonder, though (Score:5, Insightful)
This reeks of blissful ignorance. Lets get some facts straight. Repeat after me: India's population is slightly higher than North America and Europe put together.
Consequence ? Even if they sell one CD outside india, the "global" sales can far outstrip any artist in US. You think Britney is popular ? How about Madonna ? Ever heard of Rahman ? [rediff.com] Quoted from the article: "In terms of sales, Rahman is already bigger than the biggest. His music has already sold over 200 million cassettes. That's more than Madonna and Britney Spears put together."
What I wonder about even more: (Score:3, Insightful)
Take the US for example. While they have pop singers and the like enormously popular domestically AND internationally, their ownership of IP doesn't even begin to apporach that of the members corporations of RIAA and MPAA. Or technology: most of America's brightest minds take employment with large corporations and contininue to gener
Re:I have to wonder, though (Score:4, Insightful)
Before we begin, perhaps you can let us all know why you believe that some people's material is worth protecting more than others. Shouldn't all of it be protected exactly the same?
Take India, for example.
Yes, lets.
While they may have pop singers and the like who are enormously popular domestically, the global market for such music doesn't even begin to approach that of America's
First of all, that's complete bullshit. Please provide a link to back up your claims. And even if you were correct (which you are not) are you saying that popularity is relevant as to whether something should receive copyright? As in "if something is more unpopular, then it shouldn't receive copyright protection" - if so, your hypocrisy is palpable.
It's a lot easier to take that kind of stand on IP (I.E. that it's not worth protecting) when you have nothing of your own to protect and everything to take.
So what have *you* come up with? What songs/stories/movies have you written/perofrmed?
Yeah, I thought so.
Re:I have to wonder, though (Score:2)
When someone in government (not the US, you can be sure) actually seems to represent the interests of the governed, it is kind of hard to adjust to. It's a lot easier to glibly package th
Re:Linux is like Walmart.... (really flamebait?) (Score:2)
Re:Linux is like Walmart.... (Score:2)
Re:Linux is like Walmart.... (Score:2)
Compare OSX whith the previous mac OSs (which in my experience were the most unstable OSs that are commercially available) and then you will see what a difference open source makes and whether open source innovates or not.
As far as the h
Re:Linux is like Walmart.... (Score:3, Insightful)
it is a race to the bottom on cost. Yes their are benefits like Walmart to the pocketbook but long term are they good??
You are _so_ wrong, I have to go get my cluebat.
I use the most expensive platform on earth and the most closed (ie hardware, software), Apple's Macintosh and find it to be far more useful than Linux.
Expensive to acquire, yes, but expensive to run and use? Think again. I don't use Macs myself, but like them a lot.
The main problem I have is Linux doesn't inno
Re:Linux is like Walmart.... (Score:2)
In an industry where the behemoths have stopped innovating (witness the dramatic scaling back o
Re:Linux is like Walmart.... (Score:2)
Yes, and Apple copies what BSD does?
One can't make money doing that unless you rape people on the service contracts
And how about the FOSS people who invented pop-up control and tabbed browsing? I suppose IE doesn't have those functions because they never copy any ideas, only create new ones, right?
Re:Linux is like Walmart.... (Score:2)
That's the stupidest thing I've heard today. Linux is free and Free, sure... but do Redhat , SUN, et. al. give away installations for free? NO. They charge for things that cost money (support, consulting, customization, apps built on the OS, training, you name it). They don't charge for the core kernel... because they can't. Look at Tivo, Linksys, hell, even Apple.
I'll bite - You're missing the bigger context (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately this article, while interesting does not show the context of the series of articles in which this one appeared. The series was talking about Gilberto Gil and how he (and Brazil) have embraced the Creative Commons copyright licenses.
Creative Commons is based on a few simple principles, one of which being that new things are built from the past. Copying/stealing ideas and modifying or improving them is how we get new and better technology, art, and other things. Very little of what you see today is truely innovative and not based on anything prior.
The Linux pricetag isn't a marketing scheme (or at least wasn't Linus' intent originally). It's free because Linus (and others) wanted to share what a collective of people worked together to build, and invited others to help improve it. As mentioned by others, Apple does some innovation, but mostly they innovate by taking what exists and modifying it to look cool and be hip.
Apple didn't create the GUI interface, Xerox did - Apple stole it and MS stole it from Apple. Apple didn't create it's OS X core, they took the BSD kernel, tweaked it, and then slapped on a shiny UI. Don't get me wrong, I really like OS X and what Apple's done with a BSD kernel (especially after my own attempts at running FreeBSD) and a nicer UI than X. But I would not say I ever thought twice about owning a Mac prior to OS X - I didn't. They were ugly and underpowered without the ability to do true multitasking (much like Windows 3.1).
Finally, your analogy is weak in that WalMart is a large (multi?)national chain owned by a single, small group of people/stakeholders. Linux is an open, community-owned system that cannot easily be contributed to one person anymore. Yes, Linus is still in charge of what gets into the kernel, but he's not developing it all. He's not writing all the kernel modules for new devices and hardware.
My apologies for misspeaking.... (Score:2)
But my argument isn't affected -- OS X borrows from others, be it BSD for the whole core or just the user portion and Next for the core.
Re:Linux is like Walmart.... (Score:4, Funny)
1. Cheats me out of overtime
2. Uses labor that doesn't come from the U.S.
3. Ask the people who work with it about anything and they are little help and are often annoyed that you even asked.
4. Makes me work off the clock
5. Devalues the neighborhood
6. Raises the crime rate
Okay, I'm really struggling here... can't come up with any really good ones...
Re:Now if only they could get inexpensive hardware (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know what you mean by "hardware piracy", but most of the hardware sold in Brazil is contraband from China. I mean, Dell, Compaq, HP, Epson and others sell hardware here, and these are doing it the right way, paying their taxes and really helping brazilian economy.
But if you go buy MoBo's, NIC's, video cards, memory, HDD's, you're almost 100% sure to be buying product from contraband. It's the only way to get a cheap computer here. Tax rates for
Re:Now if only they could get inexpensive hardware (Score:2)
I have lived in Brazil, so I know what the software market is like there. I am also aware of Brazilian politics, having met and conversed with FHC. I agree that Lula's government (PT) is more likely to being on friendly terms with the free sof