RE: [OS:N:] Who should control which IP, was: Questionaire about ...

"Paul" <[email protected]> wrote:

>>
The main question for me is - is the enforcement of the Intellectual
Property law in question unfairly limiting an essential field of human
endeavour OR does it discriminate against those already disadvantaged in
some way.
<<

Bingo. Did you see the Four Corners (ABC [Australia]) doco on Monday night
about the Australian company that apparently holds a patent on the way junk
DNA codes in the human genome? They're going around extracting licence
payments from other high-tech companies - but their proposed licences for
hospitals and govt health departments that perform genetic testing &
screening will basically wipe those services out. I sat and talked about
the issues involved with my wife afterwards, and I have to say, I didn't
like any of the possible scenarios I came up with. It would be a kindness
to wipe out some of those medical / genetic patents; it would be better for
people to just die of an "untreatable" disease than die knowing that their
disease is curable at an unaffordable price.

Just don't ask me to frame the legislation. King Solomon couldn't do it.

>>
Perhaps as some have suggested (Stallman I think?), a global fee to
access the Internet and an IP 'free for all' once you have logged on?
EG. Everyone pays $20 a month, goes into a global fund which is diveed
up according to how many downloads of an authors product occur.

Information abundance and authors get paid.  Cuts out IP hogging
multi-nationals at least :)
<<

Errmmm, perhaps. I confidently predict that the big winners of such a
scheme would be those spammers who claim they can raise your site up the
search engine ratings.

Seriously, the current book-publishing system has an important benefit: a
publisher won't print a book unless it's of reasonable quality; it passes
through technical reviews, copy-editing, proof-reading, and so on. By
contrast, there are no such controls on web publishing, and all kinds of
dud information makes it onto the web. Even primary schools now teach kids
to review what they read on the web with a jaundiced eye, but it would be
better if this wasn't necessary.

In a sense, free-to-air TV already works like this: the advertisers pay the
bills, and you get what you pay for, without regard to inherent quality:
Big Brother and The Block. I rest my case . . .<g>

Best,

--- Les Bell, RHCE, CISSP
[http://www.lesbell.com.au]



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