Use Open Source? Then You're a Pirate! 650
superapecommando writes "There's a fantastic little story in the Guardian today that says a US lobby group is trying to get the US government to consider open source as the equivalent to piracy. The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), an umbrella group for American publishing, software, film, television and music associations, has asked the US Trade Representative (USTR) to consider countries like Indonesia, Brazil, and India for its 'Special 301 watchlist' because they encourage the use of open source software. A Special 301, according to Guardian's Bobbie Johnson is: 'a report that examines the "adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights" around the planet — effectively the list of countries that the US government considers enemies of capitalism. It often gets wheeled out as a form of trading pressure — often around pharmaceuticals and counterfeited goods — to try and force governments to change their behaviors.'"
Seriously flawed logic (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is is seriously flawed logic. It appears to falsely equate "value" and "intellectual creation" with a proprietary, commercial development model. Proprietary IP rights are a way to exploit the value of intellectual creations. But proprietary rights are not the source of their value. We can give "due consideration to the value of intellectual creations" without discriminating against open source. Maybe buy the developer a beer or send them a thank you note, or better yet, a bug report or patch?
We used to laud those benevolent spirits who contributed to the public good with no thought of remuneration. Now it seems we try to outlaw them. There might be a movie idea here.... The Police unions get together and sue Batman for doing pro bono work...
what a bunch of idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
The GPL is, arguably, the most popular and most well-known open source license. Without strong copyright law protecting the rights of creators, the GPL could not exist, depending as it does on copyright enforcement to effect its clauses. So I'm not sure what world this lobbying group lives in where FOSS is incompatible with copyright.
I thought open source was communism? (Score:3, Insightful)
So now it's pretty obvious what the 301 is. Not a tool to protect IP, but a tool to excuse protectionism.
Add the USA to the list too (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA's SELinux, anybody? Obama administration Drupal sites? Forge.mil?
These morons can ask all they like but I don't think they're going to get anywhere.
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only ignore the quacks if they lack influence. Otherwise, it's important to fight them.
Re:Seriously flawed logic (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only okay to give things away if you assign them to the public domain so that companies can take them and re-sell them with slight modifications for right and just capitalist profit.
So, does this mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
"IP" != capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you use open source, you're a pirate... (Score:5, Insightful)
what happens if you write/contribute to open source?
As everyone else is pointing out, that makes you a Communist.
Having said that, I would love to see a world where all the OSS contributors gets added to the "watchlists" of the world and all hell break lose every time there's a geeky conference in California or Florida. A "geeks of the world" vs. homeland security grudge match would be a thing of beauty.
Re:Always in america ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, to their checkbooks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seriously flawed logic (Score:5, Insightful)
I wondered when they'd get around to doing this. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't try it sooner.
You can safely assume that if used clothing became fashionable amongst the moneyed classes, clothing manufacturers would try to force Goodwill and the Salvation Army out of business. Value is tied to scarcity, so trying to generate artificial scarcity is a pretty standard tactic. In a field like "intellectual property", where all scarcity is artificial, sharing is viewed as a sin.
Of course, the real irony here is that artificial scarcity itself is an attack on the capitalist free market. But the free market only appeals to the little guy. To established interests, the free market is a threat. Ergo, companies like Microsoft spend most of their time trying to suppress competition, which is almost guaranteed to work, as opposed to actually competing, which carries a much larger risk of failure.
Oh yeah? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well piracy wouldn't exist without copyright law either!
whatever (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only did the British government changed the wording around its controversial 'three strikes' proposals,...
That's around the part of the article where I stopped reading it. If one can't bother to at least proofread their own drivel, then I'm certainly not going to bother reading it myself.
Re:Always in america ... (Score:5, Insightful)
this is an appalling indicator of how bad an environment corporatism and unregulated capitalism can create.
If you think that the US has unregulated capitalism, or even just plain capitalism, then you need to come visit the US sometime so you can see how wrong you are.
Age old strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you use open source, you're a pirate... (Score:3, Insightful)
And here's an interesting point: DHS already uses Apache for dhs.gov, and I'm sure plenty of other government programs use and work on open source platforms, even if their main desktop deployments are Windows.
Re:If you use open source, you're a pirate... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I thought open source was communism? (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think the concept of IP is, except protectionism?
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Germany, too... in fact much of the EU.
The IP Police have gained control of the US Congress, so more of this stuff is likely.
Now please return to coding your brains out and publishing it. Patriots sometimes have to make the aristocracy look as stupid as they are.
Re:"IP" != capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
That wasn't its purpose. It could be (kinda) a side effect, but the purpose was to make R&D into profitable business.
Imagine a company investing 400 million dollars into some research. Finally completing it just so that some1 else could take it, reverse-engineer for a few bucks and create "competition", but without the cost of R&D, so he could have lower prices. Yeah, thats competition in your face right there!
After Reading The IIPA Documents (Score:4, Insightful)
What I believe the IIPA is saying that mandates to use open source without considering other alternatives is something they see as a barrier to market access and what they consider to be a non-illegal but misguided solution to the problem of piracy. They're not saying that using OSS users are pirates.
Re:"IP" != capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'important' people in the US stopped caring about capitalism a long time ago. See, in capitalism, they would lose money if they fucked up. Fox et.al is too happy to go on with this new "corporatism", in which somebody gets a big powerful corporation and are tithed to, and people get awful militant (literally) if you suggest that maybe that's not the best thing in the world.
Re:If you use open source, you're a pirate... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, there aren't many free marketers.
On one side of the aisle you have the scummy rent-seeking corporatists. And on the other side you have the anti-corporate socialist 'progressives.' Neither side of the political debate want a free market. Both sides want the government to set rules to benefit special interests. The only difference is which. And so the free market is strangled to death. Crushed under the weight of regulations, subsidies, fat government contracts and handouts.
The only times the free market has ever truly reigned is when it explodes and outpaces, for a short time, the long arm of political meddling.
Re:If you use open source, you're a pirate... (Score:4, Insightful)
The intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking.
Intellectual dishonesty is one of their primary forms of intellectual property!
What is this list? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:3, Insightful)
... yea, because racial overtones are so much better than ideological ones. Joy. Why do these asshats find Open Source so undesirable? Are they still stuck on the hippie-factor?
Hide your source code ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Flawless logic. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not flawed logic.
It's flawed English, both semantically and syntactically ("does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations.")
The logic is faultless. What these vendors of proprietary software are saying is that open source competition will reduce the value the market assigns to their products.
The question is whether you share the unspoken assumptions: that this is a bad thing, and that the government should do something about it.
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they're stuck on the "Microsoft and other companies pay us a ton of money" factor.
I like MS as much as the next person (har) and I think that pay-for-play software has it's place. I like Photoshop, Final Cut, Oracle, etc. However it is really pretty stupid that people want to make consumption mandatory.
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:1, Insightful)
They Just Want to Ban Competitors (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, in March 2009, the Ministry of Administrative Reform (MenPAN) issued Circular Letter No. 1 of 2009 to all central and provincial government offices including State-owned enterprises, endorsing the use and adoption of open source software within government organizations. While the government issued this circular in part with the stated goal to "reduc[e] software copyright violation[s]," in fact, by denying technology choice, the measure will create additional trade barriers and deny fair and equitable market access to software companies.
There they go using backwards English again. They admit that Indonesia was trying to reduce copyright violations with this advice. Then they turn around and claim that adopting OSS solutions creates trade barriers that deny them fair and equitable market access. Whiskey Tango, Foxtrot? Did these guys go to a special school to learn how to talk like that?
If OSS is so hard to compete against maybe you should give some thought to your business model and realize that it needs some serious fixing. No, easier to get the government to take out the competition for you. Lazy Bastards.
Re:"IP" != capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Right, so copyright was specifically designed to prevent competition. It did so for darned good reason, by recognizing that people who put lots of work into specific works deserved a reasonable time to profit off that work exclusively. This encourages people to create works, because they know that once they've put the work into it they will be free of competition and be able to recoup their costs.
And it was (and continues to be) a good idea, as long as that exclusive period requires that the rights-holder continues to demonstrate an interest in the work, and the time limit is measured in years and not decades or centuries.
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually you'll find that what you're talking about isn't capitalism, but protectionism. Protecting revenue by banning cheaper products is inherently anti-capitalist.
FOSS is 100% compatible with capitalism, as it is simply implements a different business model, and chooses to compete on acquisition price and openness factors of the TCO, i.e. making those its competitive advantages.
Re:So, does this mean... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because if you drink from the public fountain, you do not buy bottled water and the bottled water companies lose money.
Re:"IP" != capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you use open source, you're a pirate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Crushed under the weight of regulations,
The problem is that companies do unscrupulous things in the absence of regulation. Monsanto and PCPs for instance. Do we really want companies pumping toxic crap into our ground water? What about pumping black soot into the sky? How about using melamine in milk to maximize profits? What about all the snake oil stuff that got sold to the public in the 1920s? with the lack of regulation. back then people had all kinds of radioactive products [environmen...affiti.com] back then. No regulation. Look at china today. Look at Bejing. Where they had to take drastic measures to cut smog for the Olympics. The don't use catalytic converters over there. Look at all the companies that know they are selling unsafe products due to internal research yet still chose to sell the product because profits come first. I think its the sleazy players in the marketplace that forces regulators to step in. If the market players had any ethics there would be no need to regulate.
Re:Seriously flawed logic (Score:3, Insightful)
More to the point, open-source licenses give higher value to intellectual creations, for two reasons:
Re:now they fight FOSS (Score:3, Insightful)
A very romantic notion sure, but although it worked for Gandhi, 99 times out of 100 you will NOT win. It's not a rule that works in general, and it's extremely dangerous to become cocky that things will work out for you in the end.
Re:Flawed Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right--no on can point that out to you...because it's not true. No claim has been made that open source users are pirates. The organization's complaint is exactly as you summarized--that policies requiring or expressly favoring open source solutions are trade barriers that IIPA members would like to see go away. They've asked the USTR to look at some trading partners with a frowny-face for a while in the hopes of shaming them to change their policy.
It's obviously advocacy, but it's not even particularly zealous advocacy. The same kinds of complaints are made by open source advocacy groups regarding corporate and government policies that prohibit open source consideration in bidding and/or deployment. I doubt IIPA is going to get much traction on their argument, and they shouldn't, because their members have benefited from agreements and policies going the other way for years. OSS trade groups complain, usually rightly so, about the "no open source" policies all the time.
It's certainly a far cry from the IIPA calling anyone pirates, and the telephone game of sensationalism starts in the article. The IIPA says that product evaluation should be based on the best solution, not the development model. That's a correct statement, and one used by both sides. Each issues that statement when they're on the losing end, and say nothing when they're benefiting. That's just politics.
It says that failure to do so "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations." This doesn't mean piracy--it means that it removes from consideration a value argument. They're saying that commercial licensing can't compete with free unless they can make a better overall value proposition, something that they can't do if they're not allowed to bid on an equal basis.
They're certainly not saying that OSS products aren't intellectual creations or that the developers or users are pirates. The letter isn't even about the competitors. It's about bidding and implementation policies at the user/customer level, including local and national governments.
The Slashdot summary just amps up the Guardian's usual sensationalism by a factor of ten, trolling for incensed Slashdotters, page views, and pirate jokes.
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:2, Insightful)
And your statement also applies to anybody else that produces a product for consumers in the market. Look at video game consols that are sold as a loss-leader. They hope to modify the consumer's behavior for the company's future benefit.
I don't see how this is not capitalism. It is only a question of degrees of behavior modification. It is still capitalism because the consumer *chooses* what he wants based on the merits of the product (hopefully) and whatever works best for them.
If open source is a bad gift for you, then feel free to drop it. I choose to accept it.
Re:Age old strategy (Score:2, Insightful)
Auto insurance is mandatory.
Only if you drive. Some people don't.
With our system of publicly funded hospitals, you'd have to have "Do Not Revive" tattooed on yur forehead to opt out.
Which brings up an interesting question about national health insurance: Can they require members of the Church of Christ Scientist to participate in such a plan?
If you go for a period of time without auto insurance, i.e. not driving, you fall into the automotive indemnity bracket (steeply inflated rates) when you acquire another vehicle and insure it. You are, in effect, punished for not consuming the mandated good.
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary. I consider the very concept of private property to be fundamentally evil.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're willing to own stuff anyway, with some convoluted explanation of how convenience trumps not being evil.
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:5, Insightful)
This subthread reminds me of Ursula K. LeGuinn in "The Dispossessed".
"The toothbrush that I use."
I'd just as soon it by MY toothbrush, thank you very much.
Capitalism is capable of great evil, and must be held in check. The same can be said of Socialism. WhyOhWhyOhWhy does it seem like everyone is on some sort of "economic system purity" rampage?!? Can't we pick what is good, and what works, erring on the side of caution?
Oh yeah, Socialism denies/curses greed. Capitalism worships it. In reality, greed is a strong motivator. So are a lot of other things. Why can't we treat it like other motivations, Good AND Evil instead of Good OR Evil?
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who mods this crap up?
This definition could apply to communism, despotism or even environmentalism because it does not define what capitalism is.
Capitalism is where assets (good and services) are traded in a marketplace (note for Capitalism, it does not need to be an open marketplace, capitalism survives and even thrives in many types of controlled markets E.G. Protectionism). No part of FOSS is incompatible with this, FOSS does not restrict other goods or services from being traded, FOSS can be traded with other goods and services (as explicitly stated in the GPL). So in actual fact it's more compatible with a free market then proprietary software or even capitalism in many cases.
Terrible strawman.
A FOSS (GPL) developer gives you their work on one condition, if you distribute this work, you must distribute it and any variations of this work under the same license, that's it. You are not obliged to distribute it even if you change it but if you do it must be under the GPL. With BSD this is completely different. I don't see how you can call this is a dictatorship.
Now with proprietary software I am not permitted to distribute nor change the software in any fashion, in many cases the way I use the software is also controlled. This is enforced with a legal and failing that literal gun to my head. This sounds a lot more like a dictatorship then FOSS.
This implies a person has no choice, this is wrong. So the child throws down the sword and picks up a lute, you have dictated nothing.
No, that is the definition of a serf, not an employee. Employment is a contract between a person (employee) and another entity (employer) in which the employer agrees to enumerate an employee in exchange for a reasonable and limited service being provided by the employee for the benefit of the employer. It is a mutual contract, not a one sided purchase as you have described. An employee is in no way comparable to a tractor.
Now your true statement comes out, FOSS is wrong because FOSS costs nothing in terms of upfront expenditure. This is the same BS as the article is using and flat out wrong.
Your definition of capitalism is more akin to that of dictatorship. You also have terrible ideas on how to treat other people, including your own children. Right now I agree with one of my bosses sayings, "this company goes down the elevator every night" which means employee's aren't just assets.
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've forgotten that government is a monopoly, and it's the worst kind of monopoly because it has the power to FORCE obedience. It is why we have a Constitution to shackle the government with only a few select powers, and for you to suggest giving this dangerous monopoly unlimited power seems rather foolish.
And "capitalism" need not be complicated. It's one neighbor helping another neighbor. I want a shed, so I ask the carpenter down the street to build one for me. In exchange I give him money. Or maybe he has a broken computer and asks me to fix it. In either case, we both win in this exchange.
The problem comes when the neighbor uses government to *force* me to buy a shed... or worse: just takes the money without giving me anything. Again, this is the purpose of a Constitution so that government does not have that power.
Re:Hide your source code ... (Score:1, Insightful)
I've always believed that the obfuscation of source code should be classified as a method of circumventing the GPL and other Copyleft licenses. We should start sending some takedown notices. Best part about the DMCA is that we don't even have to be right!
Re:if everyone ignored the quacks... (Score:3, Insightful)
However it is really pretty stupid that people want to make consumption mandatory.
No it isn't. The people who want to make consumption mandatory are the ones producing the consumables. They're no more stupid than corn farmers wanting to make ethanol fuel use mandatory, it's in their own greedy self-interest. What's stupid is anyone taking them seriously.
Never attribute to stupidity anything that can be explained by greedy self-interest.