Bonum Certa Men Certa

Free Software Enables Developing and Developed Countries to Unshackle Themselves From Intellectual Monopolies

Flag of Ecuador



Summary: The heartwarming story of Ecuador, the political opposition to software patents in New Zealand, and areas where patents stomp on people's lives

Free software and intellectual monopolies are closely related subjects. We typically write about the latter only in our daily links though, because it is not the main focus of this Web site.



IP Watch has a decent new article about how "Free Software [Is] Used To Fight Piracy, Broaden Knowledge Access In Ecuador"

A joint project being launched by a regional non-profit group along with the Ecuador’s intellectual property office (IEPI) aims to reduce software piracy by offering a free software alternative through public libraries. The initiative is meant to encourage the use of legal software and thereby lower the piracy rate.

For the “Free Library” project, the Latin American Center for Intellectual Property Research for Development – known as Corporación Innovarte – has signed an agreement with the national IP office (IEPI), the Free Software Foundation of Ecuador and the associations of libraries. Corporación Innovarte aims to promote access to knowledge, innovation, and culture as tools for development.

The project is meant to use libraries as a vector to build a distribution channel for free software available to users. Free software will be offered as part of the usual library collections. The initiative will disseminate free software among the population, serving two goals: offering people different options while supporting the “spread of educational and research possibilities,” and contributing to the limitation of illegal software use.


Ecuador has already embraced ODF and it's a solid breeding ground for software freedom, i.e. independence. Glyn Moody, who linked to the above article, has said that Microsoft won't be happy. We have already shown how Microsoft responds to or retaliates against countries in south America if they 'dare' to deviate from Microsoft. A recent example, Argentina, may already be suing Microsoft for damages.

“We have already shown how Microsoft responds to or retaliates against countries in south America if they 'dare' to deviate from Microsoft.”Latin America is a victim not just of Microsoft; it has suffered a lot in recent decades, mostly because of imperialists, but we won't go further into the subject because it's politically charged.

Speaking of politics, it sure is nice when political parties take a stance specifically on software patents. There is a hot debate about it down under and the Labour party in New Zealand openly opposes software patents, based on NZOSS.

"The issue of who controls software that New Zealanders have developed is an important one. Copyright allows the developer to control the terms under which software is released. Patents remove that right and hand it over to a third party. Basically, software patents create a lottery around control of your own efforts.

"We are pleased that Commerce Minister Simon Power has said that the Government would support a select committee recommendation that the Intellectual Property Office develop guidelines for inventions that involve ‘embedded software’ - software that is built into a physical device.

“Software will still be protected by copyright, which prevents outright copying. We believe this to be sensible and the right decision," Clare Curran said.


The ‘embedded software’ trick deserves great scrutiny.

Beyond Software



We recently discussed gene patents (ownership of life's secrets), which are probably declared void by precedence [1, 2]. Here is a timely new item from The Atlantic:

When Patents Kill Innovation



[...]

Michelle Geis points to a new report in Genetics in Medicine suggesting that "exclusive licensing of gene patents does more to block competition and decrease patients’ access to testing than it does to spur innovation."


Over in India, the issue becomes more political as Indians rejected DNA/drug patents in order to maximise life and welfare. American Indians too (natives/First People) are disturbed by what they consider to be misuse of their DNA.

The Havasupai settlement appears to be the first payment to individuals who said their DNA was misused, several legal experts said, and came after the university spent $1.7 million fighting lawsuits by tribe members.


This story has more to do with invasion, not monopolisation. But either way, DNA patents belong to an area where patents mean death, in the form of TRIPS [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. This relates to ACTA provisions [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], whose impact on software freedom we wrote about earlier in the week and so did swpat.org. ACTA is disgracing developing countries, probably increasing deaths for the sake of profit, and it is all about intellectual monopoly. Do individual nations have the power to reject ACTA without being cornered and sanctioned against? It's a rhetorical question.

Recent Techrights' Posts

GNOME Console Won’t Support Color Palettes or Profiles; Will Support Esperanto
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Let's Hope GNU Makes it to 100
Can GNU still be in active use in 2083? Maybe.
GNU is 40, Linux is Just 32
Today it's exactly 40 years since Richard Stallman sent a message regarding GNU
GNU/Linux and Free Software News Mostly in Tux Machines Now
We've split the coverage
Links 27/09/2023: GNOME Raves and Firefox 118
Links for the day
Links 27/09/2023: 3G Phase-Out, Monopolies, and Exit of Rupert Murdoch
Links for the day
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards
This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family
Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware
They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world