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Edward R. Murrow: Who owns the patent on this vaccine?
Jonas Salk: Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?
See It Now, April 12, 1955
And from a 2005 New York Times thinkpiece about intellectual property:
When Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine in 1955, he waived the patent process because he wanted to protect the public as quickly as possible and thought it far more important than making money. When the vaccine was first introduced, the United States had an average of 45,000 cases of polio annually. By 1962 there were 910.
Those crazy old timers had some quaint notions back in the 20th century.
Oh. I get it now.
Via Boing Boing, a napkin drawing that explains copyright law.
Apparently, this guy had to explain copyright law to a child, and ended up helping lots and lots grown-up bloggers who try to make sense of what often seems absurd..
He also gives weight to those rights that the copyright holder doesn’t control, which often gets overlooked when your scratching your head so hard.
Nice and simple. Bravo.
Despite stumbling on the way to winning approval for ISO standardization of its closed-standard ooxml document format, Micro$oft isn’t deviating from trying to position itself as a peacemaker, appearing to offer an olive branch in the ongoing document format wars by offering to support (or at least stop blocking) adoption of the Open Document Format so long as it “doesn’t restrict choice in formats.”
Restricting choice, as it is used here, can be roughly translated to mean something like, “eroding our stanglehold.” The way they spin it, adoption of the Open Document Format, based on open standards and completely free to use by anyone, will somehow limit users’ choice. So Microsoft is totally cool with ODF, so along as their closed-standard OOXML format somehow wins equivalent standing as an International standard, even though it is not an open standard.
Confused? Mission accomplished.
A similar, but better played anvil disguised as an olive branch maneuver was shown to internet radio operators last week as SoundExchange granted a “reprieve” from enforcement of the onerous royalty ruling handed down by the Copyright Royalty Board. It seems that even the music industry didn’t want internet radio to die.
In a dramatic, last-minute reversal Sound Exchange offered to negotiate more favorable royalty rates for webcasters if they agreed to implement Digital Rights Management technology to prevent “streamripping.”
That’s probably not a deal-breaker for most internet radio operators, but it further restricts a presently-held right of fair use (taping off the radio) for most listeners, and consolidates the music industry’s power online.
Bargaining from a position of strength is good PR, it seems, whether that strength is real or artifice.
SoundExchange offers temporary reprieve on ‘Net radio royalty increase
In the wake of an appeals court’s decision not to delay the imposition of a new, expensive royalty scheme, Internet radio broadcasters got an unexpected bit of good news from an unlikely source. During a Congressional roundtable initiated by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), SoundExchange executive director Jon Simson said that the licensing group will not enforce the new royalty scheme. Instead, the rate hikes will be postponed indefinitely while SoundExchange and the webcasters attempt to hammer out a more equitable rate schedule.
Man, there’s a lot going on today…
Intel Joins One Laptop per Child: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Intel and One Laptop per Child (OLPC) today announced they have agreed to work together to bring the benefits of technology to the developing world through synergy of their respective programs. Under the agreement, Intel and OLPC will explore collaborations involving technology and educational content. Intel will also join the board of OLPC.
More on this soon.
UPDATE
BBC: Intel and $100 laptop join forces
Chip-maker Intel has joined forces with the makers of the $100 laptop project.
The agreement marks a huge turnaround for both the not-for profit One laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation and Intel.
Intel, `$100 laptop’ project make peace
BOSTON - The nonprofit that aims to seed the developing world with inexpensive laptop computers for schoolchildren has made peace with Intel Corp., the project’s biggest and most powerful rival, The Associated Press has learned.
The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
-William James
Pragmatism: Lecture 6: Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth
Although several zero-hours have come and gone before, according to Savenetradio.org, the real deadline for saving internet radio is looming.
An appeals court has blocked an emergency stay, and that means that soon, (Saturday, according to the ticking clock on the website…) most internet radio streams will go off the air.
Call or contact your senators and representatives and let them know this is not a good thing.
For readers interested in human rights and freedom of expression in the digital age, it’s hard to do better than Global Voices Online, a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Using an international corps of bloggers and citizen journalists, GVO aggregates, curates, and amplifies “the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore.”
it’s all great, but if you care about these issues, bookmark the freedom of speech page.
Here’s a link to their manifesto.
And here’s a sample of what they have posted today:
Kurdistance: The State of Kurdish Activism
France suffers African dictators: Denis Sassou-Nguesso warmly welcomed by Sarkozy
Egypt: Bedouins of Sinai Crisis, 11-year-old Mother, Blogger Awarded and More
Russia: 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi
Expat Ethiopians reflect on the sounds and smells of home
Japan: Internet regulation up for debate, but nobody is debating
Kenya: Debating the double-edged nature of citizen media
A truly impressive resource.
Linux Creator Calls GPLv3 Authors ‘Hypocrites’ As Open Source Debate Turns Nasty
Is it just me, or does it seem like IW is reporting this a tad breathlessly?
[UPDATE]
Promoted from the comments:
J French says:
July 12th, 2007 at 5:16 am eWhy is this even here? All it does is raise awareness to pure FUD. The “article” takes things Torvalds said completely out of context and paints a completely different picture of why he chose to keep the kernel under GPLv2.
Nowhere in the mentioned email did Torvalds “slam the FSF” nor liken their “mind-set to that of ‘religious fanatics and totalitarian states.’”. Rather, he was the differences between morality and legality.
I’d strongly suggest people read Linus’ email BEFORE reading this article and make up your own mind about what’s being said here. http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/20/223
J French is right, of course. I should have posted the link to the original email and done a better job of explaining why I thought this was worth posting.
As much as it pains me to say it, the headline, maybe, wasn’t quite funny enough.
Internet Censorship News, good and bad, Via Amnesty International’s Irrepressible.info.
Good News
Thai cabinet revokes army order to censor Internet
“Thailand’s military-appointed cabinet lifted on Tuesday an order by the coup council to shut down Web sites deemed threatening to the constitutional monarchy, Communication Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom said.”
Amnesty International podcast covers internet censorship
“Amnesty International’s June Podcast features highlights from the irrepressible.info event held earlier this month in London, including clips of Ron Deibert from the Open Net Initiative, Iranian blogger, Sina Motalebi, and Martha Lane Fox, one of the founders of lastminute.com.”
Censorship threatens Google profits
“Where ongoing worldwide public concern and diplomatic pressure have singularly failed to convince Google it should be helping the people who use its services, the almighty dollar might succeed.”
Citizen journalism’ beating a path through Chinese censorship
“In the strictly controlled media world of communist China, “citizen journalism” is beating a way through censorship, breaking taboos and offering a pressure valve for social tensions.”
Google Fights Global Internet Censorship
“WASHINGTON — Once relatively indifferent to government affairs, Google Inc. is seeking help inside the Beltway to fight the rise of Web censorship worldwide.
“The online search giant is taking a novel approach to the problem by asking U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers, similar to other hurdles to global commerce, such as tariffs.”
Bad News
Syria steps up censorship of critical websites
“Syria has stepped up its widespread censorship of the Internet, blocking access to a string of websites critical of the regime, including some run by leading dailies, a human rights group said.”
“This is a list of notable websites blocked in the People’s Republic of China. This list includes websites that are specifically blocked in one or more regions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the country’s policy of Internet censorship. Websites that are only blocked in particular institutions (e.g. universities) or are inaccessible because of packet filtering (and hence may be only partially or sporadically blocked) are not included in this list.”
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CUNY, Red Hat, and Intel team up
Content Owners Must Consider Fair Use
Open Source Software Licensing Train Wreck Averted
The Liability of License Enforcement
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