What Are Intellectual Monopolies For?

If you still doubted that intellectual monopolies are in part a neo-colonialist plot to ensure the continuing dominance of Western nations, you could read this utterly extraordinary post, which begins:

The fourteenth session of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC), convened in Geneva from June 29, 2009 to July 3, 2009, collapsed at the 11th hour on Friday evening as the culmination of nine years of work over fourteen sessions resulted in the following language; “[t]he Committee did not reach a decision on this agenda item” on future work. The WIPO General Assembly (September 2009) will have to untangle the intractable Gordian knot regarding the future direction of the Committee.

At the heart of the discussion lay a proposal by the African Group which called for the IGC to submit a text to the 2011 General Assembly containing “a/(n) international legally binding instrument/instruments” to protect traditional cultural expressions (folklore), traditional knowledge and genetic resources. Inextricably linked to the legally binding instruments were the African Group’s demands for “text-based negotiations” with clear “timeframes” for the proposed program of work. This proposal garnered broad support among a group of developing countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Fiji, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Yemen India, Peru, Guatemala, China, Nepal and Azerbaijan. Indonesia, Iran and Pakistan co-sponsored the African Group proposal.

The European Union, South Korea and the United States could not accept the two principles of “text-based negotiations” and “internationally legally binding instruments”.

Australia, Canada and New Zealand accepted the idea of “text-based negotiations” but had reservations about “legally binding instruments” granting sui generis protection for genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore.

We can't possibly have dveloping countries protecting their traditional medicine and national lore - "genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore" - from being taken and patented by the Western world. After all, companies in the latter have an inalienable right to turn a profit by licensing that same traditional knowledge it back to the countries it was stolen from (this has already happened). That's what intellectual monopolies are for.

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The World Wins South Korea for Firefox

I've written before about the curious case of South Korea, where the use of Internet Explorer and ActiveX is almost mandatory. I rather despaired of anything changing this situation, since there didn't seem to be any way to get around it from outside. And yet, remarkably, change is coming:

Korea's multifaceted e-government services will be made available for those logging on from FireFox or Safari, web browsers that are gaining more popularity worldwide as an alternative to Internet Explorer.

According to the government Sunday, users of these "non-traditional" browsers will be able to file for year-end tax returns, sign up for a new passport or look for job openings and do much more at various service Web sites operated by the state.

The Ministry of Public Administration and Security, which is in charge of directing e-government initiatives, said that it will invest 11.5 billion won this year for technical projects to increase the browser compatibility of 49 e-government service Web sites.

Starting 2011, all of the 150 e-government Web sites are expected to be accessible from any browser.

That's remarkable, as is the reason for the change:

The development is expected to be useful for overseas Koreans or foreigners logging on to Web sites such as www.hikorea.go.kr from aboard through alternate browsers. Operated by the Ministry of Justice, the Web site is a comprehensive online repository of information for oversea Koreans, immigrants and foreign nationals.

Some civic groups have consistently raised the need to consider expanding e-government services to users of non-traditional browsers.

While the percentage of Koreans users of alternative browsers is still minimal, more netizens worldwide are increasingly surfing the net on browsers other than the Internet Explorer.

A ministry report showed that 21.7 percent of Web users worldwide are browsing on FireFox, and 8 percent on Safari, a browser developed by Apple. IE users make up 67.4 percent of the total Web population.

"We believe that enabling minor browsers to host our e-government services will help overseas Koreans to access the assistance they need and increase Korea's status as a leader in e-government initiatives," a ministry official said.

This shows that what's happening outside a country can still have considerable influence on the internal market - provided there is a big enough expatriate community that still "calls home". Given the increasingly globalised nature of computing, that offers hope for other parts of the world that may be lagging in their uptake of open source.

And if you're wondering why it matters anyway that the South Koreans should be able to use Firefox and other "non-standard" browsers - don't you just love that description? - it's because the country's users have some of the fastest broadband connections in the world; that means that new applications based on such connectivity may well emerge there first, so it's important that open source be available and viable for all kinds of uses. (Via Asa Dotzler.)

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The Latest Act in the ACTA Farce

I think the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement(ACTA) will prove something of a watershed in the negotiations of treaties. We have already gone from a situation where governments around the world have all-but denied the thing existed, to the point where the same people are now scrambling to create some semblance of openness without actually revealing too much.

Here's the latest attempt, which comes from the US team:

A variety of groups have shown their interest in getting more information on the substance of the negotiations and have requested that the draft text be disclosed. However, it is accepted practice during trade negotiations among sovereign states to not share negotiating texts with the public at large, particularly at earlier stages of the negotiation. This allows delegations to exchange views in confidence facilitating the negotiation and compromise that are necessary in order to reach agreement on complex issues. At this point in time, ACTA delegations are still discussing various proposals for the different elements that may ultimately be included in the agreement. A comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist.

This is rather amusing. On the one hand, the negotiators have to pretend that "a comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist", so that we can't find out the details; on the other, they want to finish off negotiations as quickly as possible, so as to prevent too many leaks. Of course, they can't really have it both ways, which is leading to this rather grotesque dance of the seven veils, whereby bits and pieces are revealed in an attempt to keep us quiet in the meantime.

The latest summary does contain some interesting background details that I'd not come across before:

In 2006, Japan and the United States launched the idea of a new plurilateral treaty to help in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy, the so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The aim of the initiative was to bring together those countries, both developed and developing, that are interested in fighting counterfeiting and piracy, and to negotiate an agreement that enhances international co-operation and contains effective international standards for enforcing intellectual property rights.

Preliminary talks about such an anti-counterfeiting trade agreement took place throughout 2006 and 2007 among an initial group of interested parties (Canada, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland and the United States). Negotiations started in June 2008 with the participation of a broader group of participants (Australia, Canada, the European Union and its 27 member states, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States).

The rest, unfortunately, is the usual mixture of half-truths and outright fibs. But this constant trickle of such documents shows that they are taking notice of us, and that we must up the pressure for full disclosure of what exactly is being negotiated in our name.

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South Korea Joins the "Three Strikes" Club

For years, the content industries having been trying to get laws passed that would stop people sharing files. For years they failed. And then they came up with the "three strikes and you're out" idea - and it is starting to be adopted around the world. First we had France, then countries like Italy, Ireland - and now South Korea:

On March 3, 2009, the National Assembly's Committee on Culture, Sports, Tourism, Broadcasting & Communications (CCSTB&C) passed a bill to revise the Copyright Law. The bill includes the so called, "three strikes out" or "graduated response" provision.

...

The provision gives authority to order ISP to send warning letters to the users, delete or stop transmission of illegal reproductions, suspend or terminate the accounts of the users, or close the bulletine boards to the Ministry. It also gives power to order information and telecommunication service providers to block connections to their information and telecommunication network of such ISPs.

...

The modified bill will be up for vote in April, and it is most likely that the bill pass in the National Assembly and come into force in April.

What's the secret? why has the "three strikes" idea caught on where others have failed? And what is the best way to stop it spreading further?

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody

Leak of Classified ACTA Dox Reveals Dissent

There's a battle going on for the soul of ACTA, and Knowledge Ecology International has a leaked document that spells it out:

Classified negotiating proposals for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) obtained by Knowledge Ecology International and examined by Inside U.S. Trade reveal wrangling between Japan, the United States, European Union, Australia and Canada over issues of civil and criminal enforcement and how to apply border measures against infringing products.

The post contains the full details of what is known, but the following sections are of particular interest for EU citizens:

The section on empowering authorities to order infringers to provide information on other persons involved in their activities also appears in the Korea FTA and ACTA draft. In the document, the EU seeks to add language that would limit this provision so that it conforms with national laws such as those on personal data privacy.

...

In this section, the EU has sought a provision specifically designed to exclude non-commercial items in personal baggage, from the scope of the ACTA border measures. U.S. officials have said that the agreement would not lead to wholesale raids on laptops and iPods at airports, but the EU appears to be trying to make sure this is the case in this section.

If true, these are to the credit of the EU delegation, which is clearly trying to limit at least some of the most damaging aspects of ACTA. But other areas remain a concern:

The documents do not detail the subsection on Internet measures and these are known to be among the most controversial provisions.

Moreover:

Criminal trafficking in labels is defined as occurring even in the absence of willful piracy.

Which would seem to capture P2P sharing.

Although much remains shrouded in secrecy, it's good news that at least a little light is being shed on what is clearly a hugely important treaty. The fact that participants are still trying to negotiate it in secrecy so as to present a fait accompli is nothing short of scandalous.

The Torygraph's Tall Story

The Sunday Telegraph has shocking news:

Russia and China have been identified as having the most active spy networks operating in the UK but it is understood that some European countries are also involved in espionage attacks against Britain.

Details of the spy plots were revealed in a government security document obtained by The Sunday Telegraph which states that Britain is "high priority espionage target" for 20 foreign intelligence agencies.

Security sources have revealed that the list of foreign agencies operating within the UK includes Iran, Syria, North Korea and Serbia, as well as some members of the European Union, such as France and Germany, who have traditionally been regarded as allies.

The document, marked "restricted", warns that foreign spies are trying to steal secrets related to the military, optics, communications, genetics and aviation industries.

And what, pray, may these top-secret secrets be?

A Whitehall source told The Sunday Telegraph that Russia uses its massive spy network as an "extension of state power" in an attempt to "further its own military and economic base".

The source said: "If a country, such as Russia or Iran, can steal a piece of software which will save it seven years in research and development then it will do so without any hesitation.

Seven years? Seven??? The only thing that takes seven years' development comes from Redmond, US, not Reading, UK, and you can't give that away, judging by the sales figures of Vista.

This ludicrous idea rather undercuts the story's central assumption that there's *anything* high-tech worth nicking left in this country, let alone worth being pursued by half the secret services of the world. Risible.

Google Chrome to Support ActiveX

I've written before about the parlous state of online computing in South Korea, where practically everyone uses Microsoft's ActiveX technology. As this post explains:

Despite security short-comings, ActiveX had been welcomed into the community and flourished. Surprisingly, more so in banks where security is a top priority. Believe it or not, ActiveX is so widely used that the South Korean government decides to make it compulsory for all banks to have it.

That's bad enough, but the post goes on:

Other major browsers have resisted supporting ActiveX. Until now. Google Chrome has now decided to support ActiveX, but only in South Korea.

OK, so Google wants to increase its market share, but it might do that more usefully by sponsoring a few studies into the poor security that using ActiveX implies. Following sheep-like is not the solution.

Why IPv4 Addresses Are Like Oil

IPv4 addresses are an increasingly rare resource. But I'd not spotted the parallel with oil until this:

the US was still the largest user of new IPv4 addresses in 2008 with 50.08 million addresses used. China was a close second with 46.5 million new addresses last year, an increase of 34 percent.

Although China and Brazil saw huge increases in their address use, suggesting that the developing world is demanding a bigger part of the pie while IPv4 addresses last, what's really going on is more complex. India is still stuck in 18th place between the Netherlands and Sweden at 18.06 million addresses—only a tenth of what China has. And Canada, the UK, and France saw little or no increase in their numbers of addresses, while similar countries like Germany, Korea, and Italy saw double-digit percentage increases.

A possible explanation could be that the big player(s) in some countries are executing a "run on the bank" and trying to get IPv4 addresses while the getting is good, while those in other countries are working on more NAT (Network Address Translation) and other address conservation techniques in anticipation of the depletion of the IPv4 address reserves a few years from now.

In other words, the greediest countries - the US and China - are rushing to burn up all the oil while there's some left, and to hell with what happens afterwards....

The Rise and Rise of Asianux

The free software organisation Asianux continues to grow in importance:

Viet Nam has officially become a member of Asianux, an organisation dedicated to the development of free software, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Tran Quoc Thang has announced.

...

Over the past four years, Viet Nam has adopted policies designed to encourage the development and application of the OSS, resulting in a total of between 14,000 and 20,000 personal computers using OpenOffice, Firefox, Unikey and other free software.

...


Prior to Viet Nam joining Asianux, its membership consisted of Japan, China and South Korea.

(Via LXer.)

Now, That's What I Call a Monoculture

Apparently, Internet Explorer has a market share of around 98.7% in South Korea. As I understand it, this is largely because the South Korean government is even more benighted than the UK one, and insists on using ActiveX controls for its dealings with the public. More figures and explanation here.

ActiveX: the Law in Korea?

I've long known that the Korean governmnet is pretty benighted when it comes to *insisting* that people use ActiveX in order to interact with it, but now it seems that opponents of this monoculture have just been seriously slapped down:

Open Web, a Korean web forum led by professor Kichang Kim of Korea University is best known for its fight against rampant use of Active X in Korea, lost a lawsuit against the KFTC (Korea Financial Telecommunication and Clearings Comittee). Professor Kim accused that the Korean government's mandate on the use of Active X programs for the internet banking and other public web services should be lifted, as it is against fair trade and "overly favors technology from a single company (that is, Microsoft)".

Professor Kim has also asserted that as many Korean netizens somehow grew to think that Active X is something they have to download anyway, many of them are exposed to security vulnerabilities. Also, as so many entities including virtually all financial institutes in the nation depend on Microsoft technology in Korea, whenever Microsoft announces an update, the whole nation has to upgrade its internet infrastructure, and this leads to various losses on a national scale - Kim asserted.

But Professor Kim's year-long accusation fell short of convincing the court that the government mandate on the Active X is against fair trade and therefore is illegal.

How can a government lock its people into one technology - one, moreover, whose flaws are now well documented? Even the UK government has never been *this* daft.

GNU/Linux and the Digital Textbook

Even though the Altaic family is one of my faves, Korean is still a long way down the list, so I can't do any proper research into what exactly is going on here:

The government-led Korean digital textbook project will adopt Linux. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Korea announced their decision to choose the open software for digital textbook, the key project for the government's digital education policy.

The digital textbook provides the contents of conventional textbooks, reference books, workbooks and terminologies in the form of video files, animations and virtual reality. It is the main learning material for students with various interactive features that cater for the needs of learners with different levels of capability.

This is certainly tantalising:

The Ministry of Knowledge Economy says, "If the National Education Information System established in 2006 contributed to the expansion of Linux in the server area, the digital textbook project will bring PC-based open software into wider use."

GNU/Linux: The Great Unifier

Well, maybe:

South Korea is one of Linux's biggest converts. Since discovering the free operating system in 2003, officials have unveiled plans to switch all government-run offices to Linux. Now under the terms of the agreement signed between the two states, South Korea will set up Linux training centres in North Korea.

Because:

Under the banner of "Hana Linux" - literally "One" Linux - the two countries have agreed to work on a groundbreaking IT development project that might shatter the final Cold War boundary.

Update: But Gen Kanai points out that there are problems with this rosy picture.

Remembering XBRL

Remember Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)? I'm one of those sad people that does, from during the dotcom 1.0 heyday of XML, when everything was being serialised and tagged. But I've not heard anything about it for ages - even the all-knowing Cover Pages on the subject seem stuck in a time-warp.

And yet things still seem to be bubbling away according to this post by Don Taspscott:

XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data and a critical element of the Web 2.0. It stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language and is one of a family of XML languages which are standardizing information handling, applications and communications on the web. Basically every entry in a report becomes an XML tag. XBRL is taking off for financial reporting — for example in Japan XBRL documents will be required for all reporting in April of next year and this is already the case in Korea. Among other benefits, anyone can examine Korean financial reports in the language of their choosing. Next week in the United States the XBRL consortium will release a taxonomy enabling any US company to transform its reporting to an XBRL format. XBRL is going mainstream.

Nice to know that XML schemas never die.

We Need This...

...like we need a hole in the head:

the European Commission wants the EU to bypass WIPO and the WTO and move forward on a new anticounterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) made directly with key trading partners.

The goal is to strengthen the intellectual property protections so important to the EU, the US, Korea, Japan, and others. Despite formidable protection offered by WIPO treaties and WTO rules, the Commission announced today that it needs to do more to protect European business, in part due to the "speed and ease of digital reproduction" and "the growing importance of the Internet as a means of distribution."

The Birth of Blognation

I was a big fan of the Vecosys blog - I even got used to its horrible name. And then it went away, only to emerge, phoenix-like, from the ashes, as something bigger and bolder: Blognation.

Blognation is certainly an ambitious”“Go Big or Go Home”” project, the aim being to report on the Web 2.0 startup ecosystem around the globe including, United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Denmark Portugal, Italy, Iceland, Netherlands, Japan, China / Taiwan / Hong Kong, Australia, Brazil, South America, all with the help of 16+ blognation editors who are getting ready to start writing.

Today sees the launch of blognation UK and over the coming weeks and months all of the other aforementioned blogs will be launched. And proving that I certainly don’t lack ambition, I am currently speaking with a further 10 more prospective editors to cover Canada, Russia, India, South Africa, South Korea, South-East Asia, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey and Greece.

Makes sense, but it depends critically on the quality of the blogger team that Sam Sethi has assembled. We shall see. At least the name is better than the previous one.

The Intellectual Monopoly Ratchet

One of the most frightening aspects of the intellectual monopoly game is the ratchet effect. A country typically increases intellectual monopoly protection to attain "parity" with another group, but overshoots in some areas. Other countries then ratchet up their intellectual monopolies to achieve "parity" - and overshoot.

Here's the ratchet in action:

If this Korea US FTA is passed, then the US will request other countries to include these things in the following FTA. So it needs to have international solidarity activities to stop this kind of US FTA.

Open Source Software City: Foundations Laid

I've not mentioned Korea's open source software city before because details seemed rather scarce, and there are, after all, plenty of other cities using open source. Now, thanks to ZDNet Korea, we have something more, er, concrete:

Gwangju was designated as OSS City by Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA) to bring up its economy and competitiveness through IT industry using open source to construct improved infrastructures in city's key industries like opto-electronics, automobile, mobile, and semiconductor.

The project with total cost of $45.7 million in three phases will run from 2006 to 2010. The first phase began in 2006 has completed Information Strategy Planning, surveying applicable open-source areas for the city to install open-source software as a main operating system of their infrastructures. Basing from the findings the open-source solutions were applied to Gwangju Information & Culture Industry Promotion Agency and Jeonnam girl's commercial high school giving channel to produce specialists through education sector.

(Via LXer.)

Now is Our Summer of Code Made Glorious Winter

After the Summer of Code, now the Winter of Code:

The South Korean government and local tech companies have started an open source student developer contest, similar to Google's Summer of Code.

Dubbed Winter of Code, the competition will begin during Korea's winter recess in January next year. Organized by Korean games publisher NCsoft, local IT firms and the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency, the contest aims to nurture new developers and promote open source software development in the country.

More Kudos to Auntie

Another sign that at least some people at the BBC get it.

There's a good post by Paul Mason about user-generated versions of sporting events (I gather there's something of the kind going on somewhere at the moment). He points out that all sorts of content are starting to turn up on YouTube. I was particularly struck by this paragraph:

Other spin-off coverage is the rise of the montage-to-music genre of football imagery to make a point. This excellent lament by a S Korea fan of their trouncing by Switzerland is a case in point....though because it is composed of copyright images you will have to click thru to it rather than running it on this site...

This treads a fine line: it doesn't directly take on the copyright thugs, but it certainly doesn't condemn what's going on either. Obviously, a high-profile institution like the BBC has to be careful, but this sensible, moderate approach augurs well for the future. (Via TechDirt.)