IPR
Social Networks (including Facebook) and Technology Transfer
Wed, 07/29/2009 - 13:10 — Jon
In Social Networks (not Facebook) and Development I covered the relevance of local social networks and social capital / trust for successful, long-term community and economic development.
Finding, engaging an empowering local social networks is the first step. I believe connecting these networks to the global communities of interest and practice on the Internet can provide a multiplier effect.
In the recent Technology Salon on Malawian health ICT systems, it was discussed how hiring recent Malawian college grads and connecting them to the global community of open source coders gave them an immense resource to draw on as they began their work; and they were soon contributing as peers and mentors to other programmers around the world.
That's power, and that's the 21st century version of technology transfer.
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ICT4Dev Reading List
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 10:54 — Jon
Here's a hastily-constructed Amazon store of some of the books and essays I've read which provide great insight and contrarian positions to modern development approaches, backed up with hard data, well-written, and sometimes painful reminders of the darker stories of US's history with international development:
Cory Doctorow, or how I learned to start worrying and hate IP regulation
Sun, 03/15/2009 - 12:01 — Jon
Sometimes, I lie awake at night and worry about copyright. I then start worrying if this makes me irreconcilably weird.
I worry both for our American culture, as items have stopped falling into the public domain and becoming available to re-use and re-mix, or simply to re-present for free. If this doesn't seem like a problem, this video on a 6-second drumbeat will blow your mind - especially if you then read this story about an artist being sued for a 1 minute clip of silence making fun of John Cage's 4'33" of silence. The artist ended up settling out of court.
I worry more generally about international trade and development, as we inflict ever-tighter IP regulations on countries we give aid to or trade with - regulations which we scoffed and flouted during our own development.
We're no longer protecting innovation with these laws - we're protecting the first movers (often big, established businesses), and encouraging gaming the patent system to try and get the most generic and sweeping patent accepted.
Turnabout is fair(-use) play
Fri, 06/20/2008 - 17:02 — Jon
The Associated Press has been rattling sabers of bloggers quoting (even with credit and links) from AP articles, claiming that any quote longer than 5 words costs money:
- 5-25 words: $ 12.50
- 26-50 words: $ 17.50
- 51-100 words: $ 25.00
- 101-250 words: $ 50.00
- 251 words and up: $ 100.00
Good will sharing
Sun, 05/11/2008 - 09:30 — Jon
I read BoingBoing - it provides a steady stream of new and interesting things around the net, and the occasional IT policy tidbit. Lots of people read boingboing as well, giving it a power not unlike the slashdot effect - the ability to direct massive amounts of traffic at a site, taking it down in many cases with the onslaught.
Copyright
Wed, 10/11/2006 - 10:44 — Jon
I used to use recipes as a good, non-new/Internet-y example of how you can still make profits (recipe books) with no attempt at copyright enforcement (who cares if you share the recipes, as long as you're not duplicating the whole book and re-selling it competitively, each individual recipe is like an advertisement for the publisher's entire series of cookbooks.
IPR and ... plants?
Sat, 08/05/2006 - 15:19 — Jon
Brazil is registering list of plant names to fight pharma companies from trademarking the names when using compounds extracted from these plants.
India also has been fighting "biopiracy".
This is a reminder that intellectual property restrictions extend beyond IT and media issues, into important topics such as affordable medicines when it intersects with pharmaceuticals.
