View Sunil Abraham
Legal and Technical Control and Resistance on the Internet
Freedom Continuum
Proprietary—0
Creative Commons—2
GNU GPL copyleft—4
BSD copy centre—5
Lawrence Liang—piracy
Kiran Subbbaiah—beyond piracy
My shirt analogy: I can wear it whenever. I can modify it however. I can share it with whomever. one other?
•BSD adds the freedom to make commercial derivatives
“BTW, I don’t have much academic training and I don’t read many books.”
-Mahiti and International Open Source Network (FS banner pushing in 42 countries)
-4 Freedoms of FLOSS
-Not part of Free Software Al-Qaeda: FLOSS, OS, OC, OA, OER.
-BSD license—Google and Apple. Right to be a slave.
-Balance between public, private, and common property
-Public funded intangible property should be owned by the public.
The problem with the regime is that it forces us to accept legitimacy without questioning the problems. WIPO talks about exceptions and limitations—for libraries, public sector, etc. (shows museum placard: age specification, purpose, etc)
This is where it’s going: more and more complicated to suit needs of different people in society.
Legal:
Different regimes of rent and ownership over tangible+intangible property and capital (ex. IFAD works with rural comm. to introduce new species that are patent incumbered. Why don’t you get implicated in two regimes of rent—intangible property and capital? So they set up test beds that require to be watered twice a day. The next day they called the village community to come and see. They said, no. We’d rather play volleyball.
•IP=regime of rent and ownership, similar to what we see in physical property, and over capital. It is important for any system of ownership and rent to adapt to local realities, as with rent. Cannot impose global regime.
•Rate varies across time (boom/recession), age (students, pensioners), geography (india/japan;dehli/bangalore)
Another reason not to take IP regime seriously: not affected by the crisis. Regimes of rent and ownership were substantially affected, including tangible property. Why? Artificially configured!
•Based on demand and supply for intangible labor.
•Government interference—squatters in Netherlands have a claim over time, agricultural loans in India forgiven
•Taxation—IP tax haven. No capital tax or property tax equivalent for intangible property.
•Minimum exceptions and limitations: treaty for the visually impaired—aged, illiterate, and mobile users.
Illegal:
•I am a child of piracy. I would not be here if i was not a pirate throughout my life. “i could only get through school to pirate the books. to me, criticizing the piracy is like spiting on my mother’s face.”
•Ji Hong’s story. They were selling pirated DVDs on the street. They threw all the stuff into the bags and ran away into the night. Dad, how come these sellers are running away? Well son, they’re selling illegal DVDs. But pa, even we buy DVDs from these pirates. Why? It’s because we cannot afford to buy legal DVDs. “Dad, we should stop supporting these criminals. We should just go home and download them from the internet.” Most people don’t think they’re doing anything wrong—it’s the law that criticizes.
•DVD player in Bangkok Airport. Like any good mother, mine only buys illegal. Is this region-free DVD player? On the box, no. But I can make it. He gets a list of codes and switches it off. Suddenly it goes from respect to disrespect of IP. Tangible economy wants less, more loose, Inangible wants more. SO automatically favors the west.
•You are also children of piracy.
•In most Indian elite engineering schools, they have dedicated rooms to copy textbooks. Think Microsoft: 10-15% Indian engineers. Guarantee they’re pirates. So Microsoft is subject of piracy.
•Vidya: archive of Amrita engineering school. They collected all stuff they could find, real and unreal, and linked it to their curriculum.
•Paulo Coelho—Minor in Russia. After piratecoelho.org, the legal market increased from 3,000 to 1million. Then publishers caught him but struck a deal. Iceberg theory of attraction markets. Now sells 10m copies of his book.
•Civil disobedience and the Swedish pirate party. Protect civil liberties in repressive regimes. Say you took Vogue or Cosmo to SA. Take it to ministry of culture, thousands of bangladeshis. A mullah will read out offensive page numbers and they will be cleansed of explicit images. Then they will be available in SA. But in SA DVD shops, you can get a mod chip for your satellite. This chip will make it possible for you to get 24 hours a day of Scandinavian porn.
•Tajikistan list of movies is so short. Piracy is not a universal virtue in all contexts.
“Original photocopy” forgery and pirating welcome. We can’t give up moral rights, but we can openly license to cede economic rights. This is the next step beyond it.
Beyond Illegal
•KS license—right to forge, counterfeit, and impersonate
•Ashwini Bhatt and pseudo-translations of John Gardner. Was rendering unto JG what was not him. This is what’s playing out in Asian/Indian context.
•Prejudicing intangible labor over tangible labor. We put this prejudice into everyone we educate. If I write a poem, I should get credit for 75—100 years. If they build a beautiful hall, they don’t need attribution. This is the fundamental prejudice of attribution. But not always true. Imagine 10 ppl are on an island; life after 4-5 months gets boring. Human beings, we need sophistication. One person will be responsible for singing songs and telling stories. Balance, negotiation, social contract. You get fish, I sing. This isn’t automatic, or that intangible should be more valuable.
•Attribution is an economic right in the attention economy (Twitter and SMS)
•Attribution in stand up comedy, music based on sampling and documentaries.
(notes by Ben Moskowitz. attribution FTW!)