Another Expert Group Gets It

One of the heartening signs of things changing in the world of intellectual monopolies is that more and more groups and studies are coming out that highlight the manifest problems with the current system. Here's another one, this time from the Internation Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property.

Here's the nub:

The core finding is that policy-makers and business leaders must give shape to a new era of intellectual property to stimulate innovation and broaden access to discoveries. The current system, ‘Old IP,’ rests on the belief that if some intellectual property (IP) is good, more must be better. But such thinking has proved counterproductive to industry, which in health fields has seen declining levels of innovation despite increasing stakes in intellectual property. The era of Old IP has also proved counterproductive to the world’s poor who await advances in health and agriculture long available to the global elite.

The International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property concluded that a ‘New IP’ era that focuses on cooperation and collaboration is slowly emerging. Intellectual property is meant to assist in this process by encouraging cooperation among various brokers and stakeholders. The best innovative activity occurs when everyone – researchers, companies, government and NGOs – works together to ensure that new ideas reach the public, but are appropriately regulated and efficiently delivered to those who need them.

Although I don't agree we need a new era of intellectual monopolies so much as one *without* intellectual monopolies, it's still an important statement, given the stature of those making it. The full report is here.

The Right Way to Write Online

A great piece by Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen called "Write articles, not blog postings." It's extremely long and detailed - including Monte Carlo simulations - which in a sense is a proof of its own thesis: that experts are better off writing long, detailed features than joining in the mosh pit of the blogosphere.

I don't disagree with analysis, although personally I use blogging in quite a different way - part notebook, part marketing.

Also, am I the only person who finds it slightly ironic that Nielsen's own Web site looks, well, you know, ever-so slightly clunky?

Shut Out from Citizendium

I've written a number of times about Citizendium, Larry Sanger's fascinating project to create a new kind of user-generated online repository of knowledge. Well, it's now officially open to the public - sort of. As the press release puts it:

For the first time, anyone can visit the website (www.citizendium.org), create a user account and get to work within minutes. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding "gentle expert oversight" and requiring contributors to use their real names.

The catch is that you not only need to create a user account to "get to work", but even to view what's already there, as far as I can see. I can't help feeling that the best way to get people to join this worthy venture is to let them see what's going on. To lock out casual visitors from anything but the home page seems counterproductive.