This is an issue on the theme of "peer property". P2P sets in motion three inter-related social processes. That of peer production, the cooperative gathering of human effort in common projects; peer governance, the processes whereby these projects are managed; and peer property, the institutional format taken when the results of such efforts are distributed. Peer property takes the form of a number of innovative licenses, such as the GPL and the Creative Commons, which are designed to prevent the private appropriation of common efforts. These licenses create a kind of universal common property regime which differs both from private property and from public property (the state). Rather it creates a 'digital commons' of material which can be freely used, as long as the result of that use are also distributed in the same manner. Peer property is here seen as output, but it has also an input side. This aspect, the necessity of open access to knowledge in all its forms, will be discussed in the next issue.
ISSUE 113, February 10, 2006, Table of Contents
P2P News,
Issue 113, February 10, 2006
The Peer Property Issue
A monitor of P2P
developments; a continuous attempt to construct an emancipatory P2P theory; Preferred
themes: peer production, peer governance, peer property. P2P News aims to
stimulate the dialogue between the following social and cultural movements:
the participatory movement, the `open' movement (open access, open sources);
the Commons movement; the relational/participatory spirituality movement.
For
subscriptions write to compiler and editor Michel Bauwens at michelsub2003@yahoo.com
P2P News is an emanation of the FOUNDATION FOR PEER TO
PEER ALTERNATIVES
This newsletter is sponsored by WS, at http://www.ws-network.com/
-
The Basic
Income does not mean a world without work, Dale Carrico
"Now, it seems
to me that a world in which conscript and duressed labor is eliminated by the
introduction of a global basic income guarantee wouldn't in fact be a
"post-work" world at all. It isn't even clear to me how the question of
basic income has much bearing finally on the question whether or not meaningful
goal-directed activity is usually an important part of a flourishing person's
life. The public provision of
a basic life-long guaranteed income should be thought of first of all as the
implementation of safeguards against arbitrary misuses of authority in peoples'
workplaces. It would provide everybody with the means to "opt out" of the
current circumstances in which they attain their livelihoods. Thus, it
would provide a constant check on misuses of power in the workplace by
institutionalizing a permanent position of security from which workers could
renegotiate the terms of their employment and demand redress for abuses without
fear of unjust reprisals. It would also encourage people to grow and take
chances, try new things, learn new skills, invest in new enterprises to the
benefit of all, and all without the threat of utter devastation to bedevil and
constrain them. A world with a basic income guarantee would still be a world
in which many worked for profit, surely, and in which many more would work
voluntarily in projects that are especially important or satisfying to them, or
provided unique benefits for them."
Source: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/articles/carrico20060109/
-
Cory Doctorow
on the economics of free content
"I'm generating
more sales of my printed books. Sure, giving away ebooks displaces the
occasional sale but it's far more common for a reader to download the book,
read some or all of it, and decide to buy the print edition. I've given away
more than half a million digital copies of my award-winning first novel, Down
and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and that sucker has blown through five print
editions (yee-HAW!), so I'm not worried that giving away books is hurting my
sales.
My chances of
landing speaking gigs, columns, paid assignments, and the rest of it are all
contingent on my public profile. The more people there are that have read and
enjoyed my work, the more of these gigs I'll get. And giving away books
increases your notoriety a whole lot more than clutching them to your breast
and damning the pirates."
Source: http://www.openbusiness.cc/2005/12/06/cory-doctorow-and-creative-distribution/
-
The State of
the Blogosphere
Dave Sifry has published part one of his latest study
on the State of the Blogosphere. In summary:
-- Technorati
now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
-- The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
-- It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
-- On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
-- 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are
created
-- Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000
per hour
-- Over 81 Million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000
per day
-- Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have
attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers
Source: http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000419.html
CONTENTS
THE
FOUNDATION SITE
-
For a good summary of the key ideas
around P2P Theory, see the essay for CTheory, at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499;
in French: http://www.p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Le_peer_to_peer:_nouvelle_formation_sociale%2C_nouveau_model_civilisationnel.
Thai and Italian versions also available.
-
A completely updated bound version of
the P2P manuscript is available in PDF format, in print, for EURO 20.
Send me an email with your postal address. Please support this initiative by
ordering a copy.
-
The Foundation site now has available: a
Directory of P2P Individuals; a first listing of P2P Books; a
directory of P2P Movements; a directory of P2P Resources (tools and
software); a P2P Encyclopedia; and thematic access to the main
themes covered by the special issues. Contributions are welcome at http://www.p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Main_Page
-
Statistics on readership of the related Integral
Visioning material is available at http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=stats
-
Changes to the Foundation Wiki can be
tracked by subscribing to the following feed through bloglines or an RSS
reader: http://www.p2pfoundation.com/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&limit=150&hideminor=1&feed=rss
. It's a good way to keep track of new encyclopedia or directory entries
NEWS
AND ADDITIONS
-
Chris Smith has created a wonderful
overview page of the many-to-many communications infrastructure. It's still
under construction but already a marvel, summarizing an enormous amount of info
in just one page. We'll be helping him to finalise it. See at http://www.shambles.net/p2p/
-
Timothy Wilken of
Synearth.org has created a new site for cooperative dialogue, called `Community
of Minds', which features our introductory essay on P2P, see http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/02/03 ; See also http://www.synearth.net/index.html which
carries important news for the planet, from a `synergetic' perspective.
-
You want to know
where P2P-sympathisers are physically located, then join our Frappr group,
created by James Burke at http://www.frappr.com/peertopeer
-
Our P2P
Personality of the Week is Sean Fitzgeral, for his tireless promotion of open
networked learning models, at http://seanfitz.wikispaces.com/
-
Brice Le
Blevennec, the generous contributor to our technical infrastructure, has a
blog, at http://www.brice.org/ . If you have not yet seen it, have a look at the
link to the video of the Back Dorm Boys, an excellent example of viral diffusion.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=221
The notion of the Commons
is crucial in P2P Theory. It is interpreted as a universal property regime insuring
that everyone can taste the fruits of the freely provided cooperative labour of
peer production. It is in fact the institutional or legal framework of peer
production, a form of property which is neither private, nor public but
`common'. Even though many software programmers are libertarians produce in
this manner, using the General Public License or other Open Source licences,
they do not accept the concept of a Commons, as explained by David Bollier,
himself commenting a text by Eric Raymond. Nevertheless, it is easy to
understand his concerns, he is worked of a `collective expropriation' of
individual rights, afraid that `representatives' of the Commons start acting
independently of the interests of the individuals participating in it. But such
expropriation, through the emergence of a `collective individual' that
separates itself, transcends itself, is in fact largely avoided in peer
production processes. This is topic that I discuss more at length in my
manuscript where I try to show the new technosocial procedures employed by peer
production projects, in order to avoid such a transcendence of power. Please
then also read the other entry, clearly distinguishing the common from the
collective, as clearly distinguished concepts.
Comments by David Bollier, http://onthecommons.org/node/748
"Raymond's post, "Why `Commons' Language Gives
Me the Hives,"gives some useful insight into why conservatives and
libertarians are so squeamish about the idea of the commons. (It's worth noting
that Raymond is an ardent libertarian advocate for gun owners' rights. Perhaps
that says it all.) I obviously disagree with much of Raymond's critique of the
commons, but his comments and the string of reader responses constitute
illustrate where many people's heads are at.
Raymond writes: My problem with the language of "the commons"
is that to me it sounds, at best, like idealistic blather. At worst, and far
more usually, it sounds like an attempt to conceal all kinds of individual
decisions about cooperation under a vague collectivist metaphor so the
individuals who made those decisions can be propagandized and jerked around. The
moment you start talking about "the commons", you almost automatically start
attributing needs and wants and rights to "the commons" that aren't simply the
needs and wants and rights of the people who made the decisions that define
that commons. And that's dangerous -- before you know it, you have power-seekers
telling you that your needs and wants and rights are overidden by those of "the
commons", even if (or especially if) that commons was partly your creation in
the first place.This is the same reason I never talk about "society" -- because
"society" does not, properly speaking, exist as a moral or ethical agent.
Talking about "society" as though it has needs or wants or rights of its own is
simply a form of ventriloquism used by some individual to seek power over
others -- oh, no, I'm not pursuing my personal agenda, I'm acting for the good
of "society", and please avert your eyes from anything I gain by so doing."
Bollier: I found it ironic that Raymond, an advocate of open
source software, has such trouble recognizing the organic social reality of
groups of people making decisions for themselves. I regard this as the essence
of the commons; he senses a dark conspiracy or power grab ("a form of
ventriloquism used by some individual to seek power over others").
In any case, one respondent to Raymond, "Shenpen," raises the
idea that the commons expresses a very deep-seated human need: "If we
stopped talking about society, "the commons" or communities in any sense then
we would deny a very basic human instinct: to alleviate our ego-based fears and
anxieties by wishing to become part of something bigger. It is quite normal I
think: as Buddhism is about dissolving the ego into space itself, as
Christianity is about dissolving the ego in God, it is a quite normal non-spiritual
way of overcoming the ego to dissolve ourselves into a nation, tribe, community
or society. This is about freedom. Freedom is not a philosophical or legal
term, but a feeling: if you ever ridden a motorbike or a horse at gallop, or
ever take a parachute jump or bungee jump, or ever been in love, then you
surely know it. Dissolving our ego into some kind of community gives a very
profound, very yummy feeling of freedom, of feeling "you cannot be hurt
anymore, because you ceased to exist as a separate, vulnerable `you'."
This is a good thing, I think. To which Eric Raymond responded:
"No, Shenpen, that feeling is a dangerous lie. The second I am (say) hit by
a bus, I will discover that I damn well do exist as a separate, vulnerable me,
no matter how ego-dissolved into a warm'n'fuzzy community I feel."
Shenpen: "Why optimize our minds for the worst case?....
Actually, if we look at how happiness or unhappiness works, unhappiness is
always a kind of tension arising from the separation of "I" and the "world",
which appears as a kind of anxious feeling of missing something that would make
us happy. The most typical human reaction for this feeling is wanting to
"internalize" things: to "consume" the world in the form of wealth, fame or
sexual conquest. The second most typical reaction is wanting to "externalize"
the ego - this is what I am talking about."
I've always sensed that the commons really does have some
serious metaphysical implications. Raymond is quite adamant in his belief about
our irreducible isolation and disconnection from each other. Shenpen argues
that the spiritual and social realities of human life suggest otherwise. In
fact, this is a key reason - I would argue -- why a discourse of the commons is
experiencing such a surge in popularity these days. It enables people to assert
an intersubjective connection with each other, and with nature, in the face of
a market metaphysics that treats others and nature as meaningless, insensate
objects.
http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html
"One of the great
tragedies of socialism has been the confounding of common rights (natural
rights common to each individual) with collective rights (those that have been
delegated to the community or its government). Common rights are inalienable,
individual rights -- the very opposite of collective rights. Classical
liberalism was based on the idea of common rights."
"A parallel confusion exists between common property and
collective property, and the classical liberal concept of common property has
been all but obliterated. An open park perhaps comes closest to the idea of
common property, for anyone has an equal right of access to the park. However,
restrictions on what one may do in a park, to the degree that they are
arbitrary, render the park a collective property. A government maintenance building, on the
other hand, is truly a collective property. Nobody is granted a right to
trespass except on government-sanctioned business. This is another distinction
blurred by socialists, who refer to "common property," but who
propose to put that property under the control of governments, collectives, and
majorities.
Common
Property and Common Law: Prior
to the degeneration of common-law communities into feudalism, land other than
royal estates (government property) was held, not collectively, but "in
common." This meant that any person had a right to take up land and use
it, and in so doing, hold it in his exclusive possession for as long as he
continued using it. The limit to this right was that he could not hold land out
of use, nor take up so much as to deprive others their own right to similarly
take up land. "Lords" (literally "great people") were given
responsibility to serve as land stewards, and to settle disputes over access to
land. (The royal family name "Stuart" is an early spelling of
"steward.")
Gradually, however, lords exercised more and more control over
the common property, sometimes converting it into collective property, and
sometimes allocating more land to themselves and their assigns, thereby
converting it into private property. Much land that had not been claimed as
property of the nobility was set aside "for the preservation of game"
(a precursor of modern wilderness preserves). In both ways, they violated the
common-law right of access to the earth."
http://onthecommons.org/node/771
An exemplary case of what
the commons is about and how it challenges private property metaphysics, by
David Bollier.
"Does the water that falls from the sky and runs through the
ground belong to all of us - or only to those companies with the capital and
technology to seize it for themselves? If a pending ballot initiative in Maine is certified,
voters in that state will have the chance to answer this question in November
2006. The initiative proposes a new tax on large-scale water bottlers for the
free use of Maine's
groundwater. The tax money would be put into "Maine's Water Dividend Trust," which
would use the money to protect the water, help develop the state's economy and
give a direct dividend to Maine
taxpayers. The Maine
initiative is directly inspired by the successful Alaska Permanent Fund,
which receives royalties from oil taken from state lands. The Alaska Fund
manages a diversified portfolio of $32 billion in assets and distributed a
dividend of $845 to every citizen of Alaska
in 2005.
In Maine,
the proposed water tax would be 20 cents for every gallon of water extracted
for containerized resale. The tax would apply only to those companies - perhaps
ten - that extract more than 500,000 gallons of water a year. H2O for ME
estimates that the tax would generate $100 million in its first year based on
the current levels of commercial "mining" of bottled water from Maine's groundwater
inventory, estimated at 500 million gallons. Large water bottlers in Maine are already
squealing bloody murder at the prospect of the tax. Poland Spring, for example,
warns that the tax could force it to leave the state and take hundreds of jobs
with them. This threat is darkly ironic coming from a company that markets
itself with the tagline, "What It Means to Be From Maine™." What a joke! Poland
Springs is owned by Nestle Waters North America, a Greenwich, Connecticut
based firm, which in turn is owned by the Paris-based Nestle Waters. Let's be
clear: the parent company's commitment to Maine extends only so far as the state's
branding image and access to free water. It don't live in Maine, and its fiduciary duty is to absentee
shareholders. None of the water bottling executives quoted in a Christian Science Monitor story (December
14, 2005) could really explain why any business ought to have free, perpetual
use of a resource that belongs to the public. Nor do they explain why the
public should spend millions of dollars managing the state's environment and
assuring that the finite supplies of water are safe and clean - yet absentee
shareholders should reap all the equity benefits. Say what?
On its website, H2O for ME does a great job of explaining the
rationale for the water tax and trust fund: For nearly 35 years, Maine people have
invested billions of dollars, privately and publicly, in the stewardship of our
groundwater resource -- making sure it is as plentiful and pristine as the
glaciers left it ten thousand years ago. In this century, water is to Maine in importance, as oil has been to Saudi Arabia in the last one. For
years, companies have been making significant margins bottling free water for
consumption around the world. It is now time for Maine
people to receive a dividend from their equity in Maine's groundwater. The point of Maine's
Water Dividend Trust is to help Maine
citizens reap some long-term equity benefits from the assets that they
collectively own. Trust funds will therefore be earmarked to
- Strengthen Maine's laws
regarding the sustainability of our groundwater supplies;
- Compensate Maine taxpayers for their vision and financial
commitment to preserve and protect Maine's
fresh water resource;
- Form and fund a
State Water Resources Conservation Commission; and
- Create an
ongoing trust for our children and grandchildren that helps them to remain
in Maine
and prepares them to compete and thrive in a global, knowledge-based
economy.
The Trust fund will also be used to help the state's economic
development. The majority of the Trust would be invested within the State of Maine, and would include
loans to small businesses and family farms. Like the Alaska Permanent Fund, the
Maine Trust fund would also pay every resident Maine taxpayer a dividend."
The Alaska Permanent Fund is at http://www.apfc.org/
http://ricshreves.net/content/view/118/59/
This excerpt from the
excellent blog of Ric Schreves, is about a conflict between the core developers
of a project, and their community. After giving an example of a recent
conflict, he proposes a new pledge reflecting the ethics of the relationship
between the core team and the community that supports it.
1. The Mambo case
"The recent Mambo debacle, in which the DevTeam essentially walked
off with the project without prior disclosure or consultation with the Community,
got me (and a number of other people as well from the looks of the Forums) to thinking
about the nature of the relationship between the Developers in an Open Source project
and the members of the Community. What sort of obligations exist? To whom does one
owe duties and loyalties? Is there -- god forbid -- some sort of contract implied
in the relationship?"
2. The OS Developer's Pledge to the Community
Ric Schreves: "I did some research into the topic and found very
little directly on point. By extending my reading into other relationships, between
voluteers in organizations, between parties in cases where courts have found implied
contracts, and in broader arrangements like the Debian Social Contract, I started
to form a picture of what a best practices approach might look like. I present the
ideas, below, to the community for consideration..."
We recognize that the Community needs a stable DevTeam with open management that follows the needs and trends of the Community. We understand that we are looking to the Community for help and support, and we also understand that it is important to be a responsible member of the Community. We also recognize that failure to respect these rules of cooperation and trust can result in considerable disadvantages for Community. Accordingly, we pledge to respect the following principles:
We will maintain the best source possible: Our
most fundamental duty is to maintain the integrity of the source. We believe in
giving our Community the best product possible at all times.
We will strive for stability and longevity: For
a distribution to be useful to the majority of the Community, longevity of compatible
versions is a requirement. We pledge to not only maintain professionally the software,
but also to help promote longevity and reliability.
We will communicate openly: In
a community-driven project, transparency is the key to freedom, trust, and honesty.
We will keep communication channels open. We will take an active role in fostering
communication between the DevTem and the Community. DevTeam members will be responsive
to the Community and will be available to the Community.
We will consult with the Community: We
pledge to keep the Community involved, to seek the Community's views, and to incorporate
the Community's desires in everything we do. We will make every effort to listen
carefully to the Community, and make changes when necessary to help them use the
software to its full potential.
We will take no step which harms the Community: We
work to benefit the Community's best interests. The Community comes first in all
our decisions. We pledge that we shall take no actions that harm or have the potential
to harm the Community, nor shall we fail to take actions necessary to avoid harming
the Community.
We will disclose our plans: We
work on behalf of the Community and we need the Community's guidance. Accordingly,
we will present our plans for development (our "roadmap") for Community feedback
and commentary. Where needed, we will revise the plan based on the Community feedback.
We will provide full disclosure of all relevant information explaining why we recommend
the steps in the plans and what the potential consequences might be. We will discuss
with the Community alternative plans and our reasons for not recommending them.
We will not hide problems :
We will keep our entire bug report database open for public view at all times. Reports
that people file online will promptly become visible to others. We will similarly
not hide problems with relationships between our team and our sponsors, vendors,
or community members, where those problems have the potential to negatively affect
the community.
We will foster communication among developers
and strive to identify technical leaders: Our
team is a meritocracy. In an attempt to promote optimal efficiencies, we will assign
jobs and responsibilities based on merit and commitment wherever possible. We will
mentor less experienced members of the team so that they can improve their skills
and may assume greater responsibility in the future.
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/?a=a&resource=proprights1
Bubble
Generation provides one of the most intricate pro-market analysis of peer
production. The article "New Strategies for Property Rights: Gray Markets and
the Net" is just one of the many stimulating pieces to be found there. It is
about the crisis of property rights in the P2P era and what capital can do to
solve this crisis. It's a fairly complext text, but the use of some examples
such as iTunes and Amazon helps to make their point. The ppt presentations are
also very worthwhile.
"The
Net slashes transaction costs, enabling buyers and sellers to contract with one
another, in effect forming parallel or `gray' markets for unbundled goods
without property rights. In these markets, the value of property rights is
arbitraged away. The existence of such gray markets implies that consumers will
only consume bundles of goods and rights from which they derive at least the
same value as equivalent goods without bundled rights. In other words, bundled
property rights must provide consumers some value. Such value might be provided
by side payments or other mechanisms.
Furthermore, The Net changes the dynamics of digital goods markets, by
slashing the transaction costs of massively multilateral contracts. In essence,
it offers producers a strategic opportunity to define new kinds of property
rights based on providing consumers additional value when bundled with digital
goods.
Gray markets happen when unauthorized sellers sell goods to buyers. The classic
example is what's often called parallel importation: cheap Canadian
pharmaceuticals, for instance. Usually, gray markets are obstructed by
transaction costs. Firms impose transaction costs on gray market participants
via a variety of strategies, like supply-chain interference, acquisitions, and
legal tactics designed to increase transaction complexity.
The Net enables gray markets for all kinds of goods, because it reduces exactly
the kinds of transaction costs firms hope to impose between gray market buyers
and sellers. Now, buyers and sellers can easily find each other. For example,
the costs of finding a seller of various kinds of pornography, before the Net,
used to be fairly high; now, such sellers are not only easy to reach, but
contact most of us every day, via spam - transaction costs are zero."
From the conclusion: "The above discussion
is fairly opaque. Here's the point. The future of licenses lies not with
technological solutions which impose totalitarian rights regimes on consumers,
or with legislated rights systems which only encapsulate the same old
incentives for consumers. Both of these are irrelevant in the face of
mechanisms to unbundle embedded property rights from goods and gray
markets. Instead, the future of
licenses lies in innovation about property rights themselves. Revolutionaries
understand that the only way to ensure the consumption of property rights is to
make them add value for consumers. Otherwise, consumers simply won't consume
them - and, unlike in the past, they now have ways to dispose of them, via gray
markets and hacks. Right now,
innovators are doing this by redistributing revenues. In the future, more
sophisticated schemes might expand the pie and add value to property rights in
a multitude of different ways. For example, innovative licenses might pay
dividends, might be options with expiration dates and strike prices, might
offer structured, locked-in benefits via frequent-flyer program like subsidies,
or might even offer terms like in the Japanese Ring trilogy - replicate this
good virally...or else."
Part 1: Property Rights as
Strategic Errors, http://www.bubblegeneration.com/index.cfm?a=a&resource=proprights2
Part 2: Solutions to the Paradox
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/index.cfm?a=a&resource=proprights3
http://www.altlawforum.org/PUBLICATIONS/document.2004-12-18.1352831511
1. TRIPS, indigenous
knowledge and the bio-rush By Vishwas H Devaiah
"Everything under the sun, made by man, is patentable
provided it meets the basic requirements of novelty, inventiveness and
utility." - US
Supreme Court "The new genetic commerce raises more troubling issues than
any other economic revolution in history." - Jeremy Rifkin The wheel is
one of the great inventions of humankind; both the original invention and its
spin-offs have greatly benefited human beings for generations. It is difficult
to imagine the consequences if human society had conceived of the patent system
at the time the wheel was invented. Imagine the situation if the inventor of
the wheel insisted on sole monopoly over the invention, claiming royalty for it
and controlling all future developments involving the innovation. Such an idea
would surely be unacceptable to the present generation. From time immemorial
the wheels of innovation have been set in motion by necessity, creativity
and/or the natural human desire for achievement. Recognition by peers and
society served as both motivation and reward. Yet today, the patent system,
ostensibly set up to protect the rights of the inventor over the invention, is
sought to be justified on the grounds that this is the way to reward the
originator of the innovation. It appears that neither the joy of discovery nor
service to society nor, indeed, public recognition are considered sufficient
rewards in the modern age. The rich biological resources of the global South
have created a rush amongst the different research houses of the North,[1]
which are in a hurry to be the first to obtain patents over them. The fact that
the patent systems of industrially developed countries generally do not take
community knowledge into account is the basic cause of much of the conflict
between the North and the South [2] over patents. This so-called divide between
North and South has been exacerbated by the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In an effort to bring the patent laws
of different countries under the umbrella of the World Trade Organisation (WTO),
TRIPS has completely ignored the diversity characterising various patent
systems that existed prior to its arrival on the scene. TRIPS, GATT and all
that TRIPS is one of the agreements to which countries belonging to the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) are signatories. Prior to the formation of the WTO,
the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, 1947 (GATT) served as the basis for
rules relating to free trade (in goods only)."
2. The Traditional
Knowledge Digital Library project
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4506382.stm
'The ambitious $2m project, christened Traditional Knowledge
Digital Library, will roll out an encyclopedia of the country's traditional
medicine in five languages - English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish - in
an effort to stop people from claiming them as their own and patenting
them.'" The electronic encyclopaedia, which will be made available next
year, will contain information on the traditional medicines, including
exhaustive references, photographs of the plants and scans from the original
texts. Indian scientists say the
country has been a victim of what they describe as "bio-piracy" for a
long time. "When we put out
this encyclopaedia in the public domain, no one will be able to claim that
these medicines or therapies are their inventions. Till now, we have not done
the needful to protect our traditional wealth," says Ajay Dua, a senior
bureaucrat in the federal commerce ministry."
3. More info:
-
A basix Intellectual Property Rights lexicon, at
http://www.altlawforum.org/PUBLICATIONS/document.2004-12-18.0322600899
-
A history of patent law, at http://www.altlawforum.org/PUBLICATIONS/document.2004-12-18.0853561257
-
The myths of copyright, at http://www.altlawforum.org/PUBLICATIONS/document.2004-12-18.5142324852
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2005/tc20051220_827695.htm?
A summary of the
problems associated with patents, by a venture capitalist.
"Now, as a venture
capitalist, I have come to the conclusion that protecting intellectual property
(IP) with today's patents is virtually worthless -- despite the large court
awards you may read about in the morning paper. The first problem with
patents is that the entire process takes too long: three years on average,
often as long as five, and getting longer all the time. So when a venture capitalist
invests in a company, its IP "dowry" remains, at best, provisional.
How much would you pay for a company when its assets are hidden from view? Second,
a company's most valuable IP almost always results from later insights, gleaned
by developing its early products and interacting with customers, not from the
IP it originally filed. Competitors are busy inventing as well, and since the
U.S. Patent & Trademark Office often grants trivial and overlapping
patents, IP minefields may be waiting to explode. Or perhaps the IP is all
duds. Who knows? Third, the $50,000 to $100,000 lifetime cost of patent
application, protection, and maintenance effectively limits the number of
patents a young, financially constrained company can file. Much patentable IP
is left on the cutting-room floor, at the risk of allowing trivial variations
filed by competitors to block the originator's path to market. Fourth,
and probably most important, few venture-capital-backed companies will ever
dare to defend their IP in court. If they do, they'll risk losing customers and
squandering anywhere from $1 million to $5 million of their precious venture
funding.
So what good is owning something you can't quantify or won't defend? Very
little. It's a bluff, mere saber rattling.
2. Proposals for reform
"The solution is for the Patent Office to set the bar much
higher for new patents. It should reject applications for ideas anyone well
versed in the art would automatically develop, once faced with that problem.
That includes minor changes in size, shape, or properties whose impact is
definitely predicted by science, as well as eliminating entire classes of ideas
that are "in the air." The Patent Office should invite third-party
comments and expert testimony as soon as the patent filing is made public.
These communities have much greater knowledge than the Patent Office about
what's truly new, and will help raise the bar for everyone.
Such radical simplification would have a huge positive impact on both
innovation and economic growth:
- It would encourage people to work on hard problems -- without the fear that
someone else could capture the lion's share of the benefit with a trivial
variation on their pioneering idea.
- It would speed the patent-granting process, aligning business timescales with
IP timescales.
- It would give companies and their investors IP certainty they could bank on.
- It would reduce the number of patent cases that go to court -- a huge waste
of time and money for society.
A patent is a license to exclude others from practicing your invention, but
businesses need freedom to operate. A broad patent would repel competitors from
blocking its value with trivial variations. Instead of applying for 10 minor
patents, inventors would apply for just one of true economic value. The flow of
information surrounding invention would accelerate -- and so would innovation. In
such a scenario, America
would become the gold standard for patents. Other countries might continue the
practice of patenting the hair-splitting and trivial. But as it became clear
that a U.S.
patent was the strongest in the world -- the one that attracts capital -- the
discipline would win worldwide recognition. Moreover, countries like China and India, which are just agreeing to
respect intellectual property, would be much easier to engage in dialogue if
infringement were clear and the number of issues reduced.
Patent simplification, as I have outlined it, presents some problems. For
example, the greater barriers to patents would probably require higher upfront
costs -- perhaps too much for lone inventors to pay.
But these are details that stand a good chance of resolving themselves. For
instance, a group of patent lawyers might emerge who would represent such
money-strapped individuals on a contingency basis. After all, the resulting
patent would cut a clearing in the forest, where new economic growth could
thrive.Higher standards and greater simplicity are the path to a better patent
system -- for our nation and for its inventors. In my case, probably no more
than a dozen of my 70 patents would reach this bar. Yet they would be more
valuable in the end. Sometimes more isn't better."
3. The Patent Commons
URL = http://www.patentcommons.org/
"The Patent Commons Project is dedicated to documenting the
boundaries of The Commons -- a preserve where developers and users of software
can innovate, collaborate, and access patent resources in an environment of
enhanced safety, protected by pledges of support made by holders of software
patents. Our Library is a central, neutral forum where patent pledges and other
commitments can be readily accessed and easily understood."
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5695
; http://science.creativecommons.org
John Wilbanks: "
Science Commons (SC) was launched in early 2005. SC is a part of Creative Commons - think of us as a wholly owned subsidiary - drawing on the amazing success of CC licenses, especially the CC community and iCommons. But we're also a little different. Whereas CC focuses on the individual creators and their copyrights, SC by necessity has a broader focus. That necessity is caused by, for example, the fact that most scientists sign employee agreements that assign intellectual property rights to a host institution. Another example is that scientific journals regularly request that scientific authors sign over their copyrights, and scientists eagerly do so in return for citations in what are called "high impact" journals. There's a very real collective action problem here: no one individual or institution has strong incentives to change the system.But the system is causing problems in the scientific and academic communities. Scientific articles are locked behind firewalls, long after their publishers have realized economic returns. This means that the hot new article about AIDS research can't be redistributed much less translated into other languages (where it might inspire a local researcher to solve a local problem). The difficulties faced in relation to the "open access" of publications are easy compared to those presented when we consider access to tools and data. Published research indicates that nearly half of all geneticists have been unable to validate research from colleagues due to problems with secrecy and legal friction.
So Science Commons works on these
problems: inaccessible journal articles, tools locked up behind complex
contracts, socially irresponsible
patent licensing, and data obscured by technology or
end-user licensing agreements. We translate this into projects,
with work in three distinctly
different project spaces:
publishing (covered by
copyright), licensing (covered by patent and contract) and data (in the US, covered only by contract). We
work on agreements between funders
and grant recipients, between universities and researchers and between funders and
universities
all in the service
of opening up scientific knowledge, tools and data for reuse. We
also promote the use of CC licensing in scientific publishing, on
the belief that scientific papers
need to be available to everyone in the
world, not simply available to those with enough resources to
afford subscription fees."
An update by Jason Bechtel in Oekonux: "A
movement in this direction has already been underway for severalyears. For example, on January 1, 2000, Dr.
Steven E. Brenneraccepted a research post developing bioinformatics software at
UC Berkeley on the condition that he have the freedom to freely distribute
his work. Since its inception, the
European Bioinformatics Institute has been responsible for promoting
open source bioinformatics.
The NIH's public Human Genome Project and the SNPConsortium's
public-private Hap Map project are examples of collaborations that
extend around the globe. Perhaps
most demonstrative of all, open source languages, libraries and tools,
such as BioPerl, hidden Markov model libraries, the NCBI toolkit and EMBOSS,
are now at the heart of mainstream bioinformatics. And there are now serious efforts
underway to find treatments for tropical diseases like dengue and malaria
using open source bioinformatics in an international collaborative
environment.... Science abhors secrecy. We see what happens when pharmaceutical
companies get to pick and choose the
studies they want to pay attention to and which to ignore... When the science is embodied to a great
extent in software, at it often is with drug discovery and
modeling, and where much of that research
is paid for by the NIH and NSF (thus, public tax dollars) there is an excellent
case to be made for all of that code being at least open, if not Free.
PEER PROPERTY
DEVELOPMENTS
-
Richard Stallman explains why he opposes
Creative Commons licenses, at http://www.linuxp2p.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=10771
-
What kind of personal information are the
search engines storing about you, an excellent overview of Google and others,
at http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6034666.html
-
A Manifesto on the future of intellectual
property, at http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2004dltr0009.html
-
Linux-compatible P2P filesharing programs
are listed here at http://www.linuxp2p.com/wiki/index.php?title=List
-
Collaborative documentary making, and an
example in the Echo Chamber project, at http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/02/03/collaborative_video_documentary_investigating_us.htm;
http://www.echochamberproject.com/collaborativefilmmaking
-
Sceptical review of the book by Joel de
Rosnay and Carlo Revelli, Les Pronetaires, at http://www.internetactu.net/?p=6339
OTHER TOPICS
-
Quantum aspects of DNA mutations, an
article recommended by James Burke, at http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2006/01/quantum_evoluti.html
-
French commentary on the "Social Porn"
site, at http://www.elanceur.org/Articles/PornoSocial-CeladevaitArr.html
; the site where the commentary is from, is a really excellent French-language
blog on Web 2.0 developments, where such trends are really well explained, see
at http://www.elanceur.org/
-
What are Personal Media Aggregators, at http://www.masternewmedia.org/2005/02/24/the_personal_media_aggregator_what.htm
-
Gridblogging, at http://www.masternewmedia.org/2003/11/14/intellectual_flash_mobbing_through_blogs.htm
-
The new book by Mark Pesce, about how the
information explosion is evolving us into `hyperpeople', at http://www.webearth.org/hyperpeople/
-
Nova Spivack wants to build a self-aware
Web, the "Collective Intelligence 2.0" project, at http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2006/01/lets_build_the_.html
-
The Center for Digital Democracy has
published a new report `Beyond Broadcast', documenting the new media revolution
from a democratic point of view. The 57-page report is available both as a
downloadable PDF document, at http://www.democraticmedia.org/BB/BB.pdf and as a series of
pages online at http://www.democraticmedia.org/BB/BBfront.php
-
How Bittorrent works, step by step
instructions, at http://www.commonwebsense.com/2006/01/27/the-bittorrent-post/
-
Excellent overview of video podcasting,
aimed at documentary filmmakers, at http://nefilm.com/news/archives/2006/02/podcasting.htm
-
This company makes vodcasts for companies,
at http://www.obttv.com/
-
Two new legal and commercial P2P services,
based on advertising, see at http://television.aol.com/in2tv
and http://www.qtrax.com// Article by
Ratatium, at
`In2TV, une plateforme P2P de séries télé entièrement financée
par la diffusion de spots publicitaires. L'Ascap, l'équivalent américain de la
Sacem qui gère les droits de quelques 230 000 auteurs, a annoncé avoir donné
son accord à un nouveau service de musique P2P financé par la publicité : Qtrax".(from
InternetActu)
-
SWAMI
URL = http://swami.jrc.es/pages/Conference2006.htm
"While AmI enthusiasts foresee a future information society
where the emphasis is on greater user-friendliness, more efficient services,
user empowerment and support for human interactions, we know well that the adoption
rate of ambient intelligence environments will depend on how secure it can be
made, how privacy and other rights of individuals can be protected and how
individuals can come to trust the intelligent world that surrounds them and
through which they move. So policy options need be defined and put in place to
facilitate the creation of AmI environments. The SWAMI project aims to identify
and analyse the social, economic, legal, technological and ethical issues
related to identity, privacy and security in the forecasted but not yet
deployed Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environment. The intention is thus to
identify and propose adequate policy measures so as to help enhance the
adoption of the technologies by the citizens."
(Thanks to Nicholas Bentley for the suggestion)
-
Consultants Commons
URL = http://www.consultantcommons.org
"ConsultantCommons.org
is an excellent resource providing valuable information about new technology
matched with quality research by professional technical consultants.
ConsultantCommons.org is an excellent example of a peer production community
where useful resources are pooled for the bigger purpose of helping non-profits
succeed, a task that simply can't be accomplished by any one individual. For
example, one producer/member of the user community posted an
opportunity to receive a free report from idealware about which donation tools
non-profits can use and which ones are the best in different categories."
From ConsultantCommons.org: "ConsultantCommons.org
provides an online collaboration space and community for non-profit technical
assistance providers to collaboratively build and share knowledge. The goal of
ConsultantCommons.org is to provide a resource for nonprofit technology
assistance providers to share and develop consulting tools and resources. The
system is designed so that consultants can find, contribute and collaborate on
tools and information they use to maintain a consultancy and provide services
to nonprofits."
The key features of this systems: 1) The system is highly
collaborative (a near wiki environment where consultants can directly edit
content and content structure on the site toward building and refining tools);
2) Open source, open content: Built with open source software, and applying a
creative commons license to govern the content. 3) Community owned: While
Compumentor is powering the site and providing community management support, it
is hosted at a non-profit and environmentally friendly ISP; and we intend to
work toward establishing some sort of community governance structure in the
near future."
-
Lego Factory, "where consumers can upload their designs, and have
them produced"
URL = http://www.lego.com/eng/factory/news.asp?bhcp=1
"LEGO Factory starts with a downloadable 3-D modeling program
that lets you design your virtual toy using as many bricks as you want. Upload
your masterpiece to LEGO's Web site and you - and any other LEGO fan - can
order the kit for your creation, complete with assembly instruction booklet.
There are some rough edges: Instructions can be confusing, and blocks come in
preset packages, meaning you often have to buy a whole bag to get a single
piece. Still, it's a brilliant move. Customers get to make whatever they want,
and LEGO gets to transform its army of users into a massive product design team
- 30,000 kits have been uploaded so far."
-
Spotrunner
URL = http://www.spotrunner.com/
Comment: SpotRunner is a
huge, huge, HUGE idea. The service allows you to create and air a TV ad for a
fraction of what it would cost to hire an advertising agency; you simply choose
one of their generic ads and customize it with your company logo, a new
voiceover or some different images. Suddenly, creating a TV advertisement is as
easy as writing an Adwords ad - and we all know what happened there. Umair
Haque explains why Spotrunner is so powerful:
On Spotrunner, you choose a generic ad, and rebundle it with
minor personalized info - your company's name, contact address, etc. The
indivisibility of ads has suddenly been vaporized. It's not just that anyone
can buy them - when you buy an ad on Spotrunner, you're really buying several
rebundled, microchunked goods - so it's that the ad itself has been redefined.
(from: http://mashable.com/2006/01/24/why-spotrunner-rocks/)
-
Access to Knowledge
URL = http://www.access2knowledge.org/cs/
The goal of the A2K initiative is Access to Knowledge for all
people. This site currently provides information and tools for action on the
proposed A2K Treaty, the Development Agenda reforms to the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO), and other aspects of A2K.
More on their conferences at http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/a2kwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
-
Stop Badware
URL = http://www.stopbadware.org/
"A group including Google Inc. and institutes at Harvard and
Oxford universities plans to unveil a campaign today against spyware and other
malicious computer programs that can steal personal information, snoop on your
Web surfing and bombard you with pop-up ads. The coalition, which is receiving
unpaid advice from Consumer Reports WebWatch, is launching a Web site -- -- to
catalogue programs that infect unsuspecting users and to let them check whether
something is dangerous before downloading it. The group will also spotlight
software in an effort to shame them and will gather data that could lay the
groundwork for class-action lawsuits against them."
-
VC2 Guide, Viewer Created Content
URL = http://current.tv/studio/survivalguide/
"Current TV just posted an awesome guide to shooting your own
internet videos: VC2 Survival
Guide (VC2 = Viewer Created Content). Very helpful tips on video equipment,
tricks of the trade on editing, compression for the web using different editing
software... and some one-on-one video interviews with storytellers like Dave
Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Ira Glass, Xeni Jardin... read more about it on the Current Blog."
-
Chilling Effects
URL = http://www.chillingeffects.org
"In practice, this means that online publications are likely to
be removed from the public eye before legal proceedings are even initiated.
Usually it is up to the person who posted the materials to protest the takedown
notice, but unless they are willing to risk expensive legal action, they are
likely to do exactly what Hallis did:
cave in rather than fight. All this has become clear thanks to two recent
studies that looked at hundreds of takedown notices archived at
ChillingEffects.org, a website that compiles and analyses legal notices sent to
websites, ISPs and Google. Both concluded that a large number of takedown notices
would not have stood up had they gone to court. One study, by law researchers
at New York University's
Brennan Center for Justice,
found that 47 per cent of takedown notices sent to ISPs concerned material that
had "a strong or reasonable fair use or First Amendment defense",
that is, the material was likely exempt from copyright laws. And yet they found
that half of this content had been removed from the internet. The DMCA, the
researchers say, "is a powerful tool for anyone seeking to suppress
criticism"." (from World Changing)
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