12.09.07
“Intellectual Property” Wars Taken to the World Wide Web
WIPO is still seen as a foe of Free software [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Itmixes copyrights with “intellectual property”, which is a term companies strive to use in order to associate things like software patents with 'harder' things like trademarks and copyrights. The following video shows that sharing of information is actually encouraged in an age where it is very much possible.
This presentation and characterisation from WIPO may seem optimistic, but meanwhile, in the news you find that Freedoms on the Net are gradually taken away. People are assumed to be criminals until proven otherwise. This is akin to lobbying for DMCA and software patents. Very troubling.
The music and film industry continues to pursue its idea of a politically “corrected” Internet – one that they imagine could protect their old business models without requiring any extra costs on their part.
This time, the fix is Internet-wide filtering. In a memo to European policy-makers, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries has called upon ISPs in Europe to filter the content sent across their networks, block protocols used by their customers, and cut off access to persistently infringing sites from the Net (you can read their full memo here). Left unsaid in it was the obvious implication: if ISPs aren’t willing to comply, EU regulators should force the ISP’s hand.
This could easily affect distribution channels (availability) of Free software and GNU/Linux distributions in particular. Additionally, this demonstrates the almost infinite power corporations have, which enables them to toy with lawmakers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. █
