Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
GNU is Not Unix Software Government The Courts Linux News

We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin 297

Posted by michael from the loyalty-oath dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin More

We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin

Comments Filter:

  • RMS' endorsement (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:16PM (#10664631)
    I suppose that I'd also gush over the lemony OpenSource goodness of my hosts, particularly if they flew me to Rio for a week.

  • Not in america (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jeffery ( 810339 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:16PM (#10664640)
    american corporations/government will never let something free like linux to take such a market-share that it would shut microsoft down. same thing with telco companies. there are such great alternatives out there. VOIP, way better internet alternatives to shitty 3MB cable (japan has 100MB fiber to house) american corporations hold us back, i think it's time we FIGHT! P.S. i live in america, and actually work for fed govt.

    • Re:Not in america (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )

      american corporations/government will never let something free like linux to take such a market-share that it would shut microsoft down.

      And they're going to do what, exactly? Execute Linus and RMS? Firebomb the FSF? You are making totally ridiculous assertions.

      american corporations hold us back

      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

      • And I'm the president. With the name evilviper, you'd have to be.
      • Perhaps he wasn't referring to business activity in general when he said "american corporations hold us back." Or, maybe he was. But I would agree with his specific statement. I would even shorten it to "corporations hold us back." They used to be non-entities under the law, and they used to be required to be doing something that would benefit the public. Now they have numerous rights and protections, and have no responsibilities to the society that holds them up. Maybe some of their evolution has bee
    • 3 MB cable is "shitty"?
      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.
    • And how do you suppose we "FIGHT", my sabre-rattling friend? Cause an uprising because we feel we are being deprived of bandwidth? Riot because corporations prefer paying for an operating system instead of using OSS? Start a coup de etat because government isn't just automatically embracing VoIP?

      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
    • Oddly enough, I work for an "American" [1] corporation that uses far more Linux than it does the other OSes here put together. I thought we were just doing our jobs, being innovative, building products, and here we are being subversive!

      [1] i.e., USAian
    • way better internet alternatives to shitty 3MB cable (japan has 100MB fiber to house)

      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)

    by Tracer_Bullet82 ( 766262 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:17PM (#10664654)
    is this.

    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.

    • >"Poorer" countries will be the main adopter of Open Source. It will be cheaper; and it will encourage creativity and growth of IT.

      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.
      • No, poorer countries will adopt OpenSource because its cheaper. Period.

        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.

    • Democratizing knowledge so that anyone/everyone can benefit.

      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.
      • 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.

        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

      • And silly me always thinking that you cannot protect ideas. You can protect expression (copyright), you can protect machine (patent), and you can protect name (trademark), however you can and should not be able to protect ideas. That's just silly.
        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)

    by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:17PM (#10664657) Homepage Journal
    In the '70s and '80s, they followed Friedman and and the Chicago economists and started freeing their economies and privatizing their pension systems. Their economies started to make some progress, until the populists and the socialists managed to turn things around.

    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!

    • That still leaves the fascists and the socialists and the international corps to work to screw it up, unfortunately.
      That's an amazing group of people you're lumping together. Next to the only thing missing is intelligent psychic snails from the star system of Epsilon Eridani.

      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:4, Informative)

      by wrt2 ( 150916 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:46PM (#10665036) Homepage
      Uhh... you didn't mean this [gregpalast.com] Milton Friedman, did you? The one who helped Pinochet double the poverty rate in Chile? Unlike Free/Open Source Software, which extends the purchasing power of government dollars, stimulates local industry, and builds local knowledgebases, Friedman's neoliberalism kills local industry and impoverishes local people. Cardoso's administration of Friedman's poison left his country a Switzerland inside an India [jps.net], with the widest disparity between rich and poor in the world. I am equally excited that Lula is championing FOSS and calling for trade that is both free and reciprocal (as well as noting in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos that free and secure citizens are one of the main prerequisites for a free market). Friedman just doesn't relate.
    • In the '70s and '80s, they followed Friedman and and the Chicago economists and started freeing their economies and privatizing their pension systems. Their economies started to make some progress, until the populists and the socialists managed to turn things around.

      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)

    by hype7 ( 239530 ) <u3295110.anu@edu@au> on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:18PM (#10664669) Journal
    This is about freedom of information, freedom of ideas. Linux is a part of that in that embodies freedom in software, but to only look at Linux is to miss the broader context.

    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)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:37PM (#10664933) Homepage Journal
      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.

      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.

      • Of course, when your insurance company mandates that you use the cheaper, older drug to cust costs, you'll bitch that big business cares more about profits than your health.
      • 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.

        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
        • I call BS. Can you back up this claim?

          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...

    • "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."

      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

      • Au contraire. With IP laws there is nothing stopping Microsoft/Compaq/IBM etc from taking your software/idea, and sell it (forget about them claiming it is theirs, they don't care).
        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)

      by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:53PM (#10665151)

      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).
      • 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.

        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)

          by sczimme ( 603413 )

          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
          • Duh, you get people to commission the creation of the project in advance. If all software is free after it's purchased, then people will find it perfectly normal to pay for the creation of this sort of software. You could design a spec for the software and begin accepting bids, then begin work when the bids exceed your anticipated development costs by a sufficient margin. Motivated buyers will make sure your costs are covered. You only get the money if you finish the software, but you're guaranteed a pr

    • Re:This is about a lot more than Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday October 29, 2004 @02:14PM (#10665479) Journal

      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.

      • 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

  • Of course they support Free Software (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BeerCat ( 685972 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:26PM (#10664793) Homepage
    India's political commitment to free software is second only to Brazil's

    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)

    by tres3 ( 594716 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:27PM (#10664803) Homepage
    The original story submission is below:

    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.

    • A quick timeline:
      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.
    • Or perhaps it was because it was a quote taken out of context: ..was made possible by acid trips." He laughs. "Or not only by acid trips but without the slightest doubt empowered by them.

      "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)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:33PM (#10664880) Homepage Journal
    And at the last UN World Summit on the Information Society, Brazil led a bloc including India, South Africa, and China that thwarted an attempt by the US and its allies to harden the UN's line on intellectual property rights, insisting that the final conference document recognize just as strongly the cultural and economic importance of shared knowledge.

    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)

    by groundstate ( 647252 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:37PM (#10664935) Homepage
    Many of these comments are weak. It's not just about getting free stuff, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Brazil exports very little IP. It's about big, important, multinational patent holders playing fair. Notice that Roche sat on their patent throne until Brazil threatened to make their own drugs. Notice that they were able to sell the stuff at *less than half the original price* when Brazil actually held good on the threat. Is this unlike Microsoft's behaviour? I think not. They crank up the prices of their OS and Office constantly, even though they are raking in the dough - that is until emerging markets are unwilling to put up with it. All of a sudden code starts to be released, discount editions are offered, and cooperation with foreign governments begins. And guess what? They are still raking in the dough. Who would have thunk? Just because Americans are willing to put up monopolies, inflated prices, and unfair patents doesn't make it right. Maybe it's time to learn something from the third world.
    • Excuse me, but it's absurd to blame all "Americans" for the actions of a powerful, greedy handful of major companies. Many of us aren't any more thriolled with their actions than Gil or you.
      • We are to blame. The only entity that holds more power than the US government is the people of the united states. Sadly, power does not translate to wisdom and wisdom is not driving the majority to action so if there is ANYONE who is most at blame it is in fact us.

  • That's GNU/Linux, you insensitive clod! (Score:3, Funny)

    by ggvaidya ( 747058 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:40PM (#10664968) Homepage Journal
    C'mon, man, Richard Stallman is like the *next word* in that paragraph! Show some respect!

  • An interesting dilemma... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Simkin1 ( 643231 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:49PM (#10665070) Homepage
    I find myself caught between two desires. I love the OSC, what it stands for, and the desire to see Microsofts monopoly crumble. On the other hand, I love that I live in a country where I don't get paid $240 a month for the work I do, and I realize that Microsoft and the other companies that hold patents on drugs, and other exportable goods, bring in the money to keep the US employees... well... employed. Inherently I loath the restrictions of big companies on what I want to do with goods I've purchased... for example -- on my ability to create an MP3 from a CD that I purchased. Or rip a DVD to have on my computer in digital format instead of hard copy... if for no other reason, than because I choose to. When it comes to health care, and what hurts people, I believe in, and support, Brazils move to 'bite their thumbs' at big companies in defense of the Brazilian population. I just worry that things have gotten so far out of wack within the US in terms of patent, that people can be sued for coming up with the same idea in two different locations, and in two different ways, independently, and the person who gets to the patent office first wins... what mess. Sometimes I guess you just have to take a couple steps back from the nonsense, and use common sense instead.

  • FUST, the project that started it all (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 29, 2004 @01:54PM (#10665152)
    The project that started it all is called FUST, a nationwide initiative to connect schools to the Internet. The project, in its first release, required Microsoft Windows in all servers and clients (such preferences are irregular in Brazil, by the way; one should only specify features and technical specs, not brand names).

    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)

    by ibn_khaldun ( 814417 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @02:11PM (#10665434)
    The key quote in the article is
    Every license for Office plus Windows in Brazil -- a country in which 22 million people are starving -- means we have to export 60 sacks of soybeans. For the right to use one copy of Office plus Windows for one year or a year and half, until the next upgrade, we have to till the earth, plant, harvest, and export to the international markets that much soy. When I explain this to farmers, they go nuts.

    Macelo D'Elia Branco

    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)

    by tabdelgawad ( 590061 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @02:38PM (#10665796)
    It's so easy to forget the original economic rationale for patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. 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.

    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?

    • 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)

    by abb3w ( 696381 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @02:40PM (#10665825) Journal

    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)

    by cesjavi2 ( 812385 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @03:45PM (#10666637) Journal
    America, if you dont know, its a continent. There is South America, NORTH AMERICA and Central America. So, if you say that the Bush page cant be visited by people outside America then you are referring to the entire continent! We live in Argentina, and i cant visit the Bush's page. Argentina its in America Continent!!! how could be that people who reads slashdot cant understand the difference bettwen A CONTINENT and a COUNTRY!!! The worlds go bads if the people of the most powerful country of the earth are so ignorant. Sorry my english. Here in Argentina we have subway, internet, cars, directv. For those that thinks that we lives like the indians (in old times!).

Slashdot Top Deals

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

Close