dikini.net - wrongs

Ethical Patents

vlado — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:33:32 -0400

Another month, another petition. So what do you think about this

I, the undersigned, support this statement

The European patent system discriminates against:

The Public, by letting those who benefit from the patent system set the rules for everyone.

Real innovators, by granting patents too easily and in areas where patents are not needed.

Fast-moving industries, by pretending that one size fits all.

The free market, by granting overbroad monopolies that lock out innovation and competition.

Smaller businesses, by creating risks and costs that small firms cannot afford.

Open research, in software, medicine, and more, by blocking the free flow of ideas and knowledge.

This discrimination is unfair, and it is costly. We all pay for it, with higher prices, fewer jobs, and less freedom.
I call on the EU to build a new patent system on these principles:

Fair to the public. It must be made by elected lawmakers of democratic European Union.

Fair to innovators. It must allow patents only where needed to spur innovation.

Fair to all industries. It must adapt to the fast-growing diversity of technology and business.

Fair to a free market. It must ensure that patent monopolies are narrowly focused.

Fair to small businesses. It must provide affordable, fast, narrow and predictable rights.

Fair to open research. It must protect the independent creation of original works.

from ethipat.org

Well, I wholeheartedly agree that the current worldwide, not just EU, patent practices and laws are flawed. They are discriminatory, unfair, largely un-implementable in a sensible way but enforcible and prohibitive. There is no protection against misjudgement either.

Ok, I'll shut up for now. I don't have time, at the moment to substantiate my claims, so just take them at with a pinch of salt.

Happy Birthday Guantanamo!

vlado — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 06:35:03 -0500

On 11 January 11 2002, the first detainees from Afghanistan arrived at the US Naval Base of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Five years on, the baby is live and kicking and enjoys good health. It has been kept on a nutritious diet of injustice and abuse.

Celebrate it's five year on anniversary with all of it's well wishers at the Guantanamo Anniversary Special

Libya sentence nurses and doctor to death by firing squad, again

vlado — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:10:05 -0500

Two days ago a Lybian court sentenced five nurses and a doctor to death, for the horrendous crime that they have apparently intentionally infected some 400+ children with HIV. The really outrageous and and sad side of this story is that the sentenced medics are innocent, at least according to the opinion of independent world renown experts. Their opinions have not been allowed in the court proceedings and discounted as biased, erroneous and alleged that they form a part of a conspiracy against Lybia. That is simply ridiculous. Especially since the medical opinion is that the main cause is probably bad hygiene practices in the hospital in Bengazi. :(

From a conspiracy theorist's point of view it is an inspiration that the blood money demanded by Lybia match the money Lybia was sentenced to pay the families of the Lockerbie bombing's victims.

There's nothing more to comment - there is loads of information on the internet. The article in wikipedia - HIV trial in Lybia provides a fairly brief but thorough account on the matter.

Achub Spillers Records..... Save Spillers Records

vlado — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 07:32:35 -0500

I'm gutted to hear that Spiller's Records is under threat to get shut down. It will be a shame if it happens. It will be a loss. Instead of being shut it should be listed. It's the oldest surviving record shop in the world! It's been continuosly open since 1894, yes, that's right it has been alive in three different centuries. Sign the petition. Now! If you don't want such gems to disappear. I quote the petition below.

Over £30 million of UK aid money spent on funding body for privatisation consultants

vlado — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:24:08 -0500

Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) has channelled over £30 million of its aid through an institution designed to pay consultants to push privatisation in poor countries according to a report released today (Sunday 26 November 2006) by the World Development Movement. This compares, for example, to the £3.5 million DFID has pledged to spend over four years to help establish a new programme of support for higher education in Africa.

from www.wdm.org.uk

Censorship and freedom of exression in Egypt

vlado — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 11:32:03 -0500

Making noise.

I'm receiving emails from people I know and people who know me (for some strange reason this is true), who are aware of my posts about Alaa and his imprisonment in Egypt earlier this year.

Well, it seems the authorities there have consistent policies against dissent.

Recently Abdel Karim Sulaiman Amer was arrested and detained [apparently] because of his critical writings on his blog.

Similarly Rami Siyam aka Ayyoub got arrested and detained on November 20.

Let's not forget the imprisonment of Tal’at Sadat, a member of parliament, for “spreading false rumours and insulting the armed forces".

Worst Lobby

vlado — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 04:28:43 -0500

Who will win this acclaimed prize for being the master of spin and manipulation, the fastest painter of greenwash, the influencer of influencers, the black hole of transparency? It’s up to you!

In the lobbying game, it takes two to tango, the lobbyist and the public official being lobbied

from worst lobby

'nuff said

Protect Freedom #1: Eliminate DRM

vlado — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:17:53 -0500

Protect Freedom #1: Eliminate DRM

Stikr aktion at factoryjoe's flickr garage.

patents? here is an example, again

vlado — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 04:56:47 -0400

IBM Sues Amazon For Patent Infringement
IBM Files Patent Infringement Lawsuits Against Amazon.com

Well, the story with patents is on the roll, again. BBC had patents on links, IBM has patents on e-commerce, what next?

software patents, or my personal insights

vlado — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:10:58 -0400

Up until now I was avoiding putting my thoughts on 'paper', but here we are. My instincts simply say Restricting knowledge distribution and use is wrong. Some might say this makes me a communist devil, anarchist or whatever other epithet is currently cool in their circles. Let's avoid that for the time being. These scribbles are probably not 100% correct. But the ideas are what matters anyway. And will you find a difference from a bird's eye view?

Obviously this is a strong social issue, as in it reflects a growing concern of the society as a whole. The society as the human beings represented by a state, like UK, USA, France, Bulgaria, or groups of states like EU, UN, ... Some long time ago patents were introduced by the British Crown in order to give a temporary monopoly to inventors, so that they can protect and exploit their knowhow, while making the knowledge (their knowhow) public. This was a significant social issue. This way knowledge was immediately becoming exploitable by the society. People could benefit from the abstract knowledge or the principles behind the patentable invention. These principles were not patentable at the time, only some of their defined applications - the invention, machines, products etc... The monopoly lasted for a relatively short period of time. Longer than it would take at the time to reverse engineer an invetion and set up production of a competitive product, but not by too much. This is important, since timescales, im my opinion, are important when trying to rationalise the costs of patents to a society.

European Software Patents - endless loop

vlado — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:15:41 -0400

More than a year has passed since the European Parliament’s historic rejection of the Commission’s and Council’s software patent bill. Now this zombie legislation is shambling through parliament again: on October 11 or 12, the EP is set to vote in Brussels on two competing motions for a resolution on future European patent policy.

Software Patents - back like a bad smell (Open Rights Group)

It's never too late to have an opinion, I suppose. It's the same arguments, different door. It seems the agenda of patent law harmonisation will never go away. As I was writing more that a year ago, this, strangely enough, always goes towards harmonise up - that is make the broadest possible treatment, as opposed to the minimum common denominator.

It is true, that there are powerful stakeholders - mainly patent law firms, patent/IP farms, to a lesser extent technology companies.

Nowadyas the majority of the software industry uses the patent laws for as a defense weapon anyway. There are parasitic companies and the odd litigious ones, but they are exceptions and usually end up in PR disastres.

Why feed the IP parasites?

Write your MEP/MP what do you think about it

Brussels, 21 September 2006 -- Commissioner McCreevy proclaims blissful ignorance about the consequences of the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA). In a series of six non-answers to Members of the European parliament, the Commission reveals that until now it is unable to comment on cost, judicial independence, jurisprudence and treaty-related concerns. Meanwhile McCreevy keeps praising the virtues of said draft agreement.

Commission unable to answer MEPs on Patent Litigation Agreement (FFII)

You might want to read what the FFII say/do about it

Intelligent self-replicating robots assemble iPods

vlado — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 06:44:49 -0400

Well cheap(ish) iPods do come at a price, but they could been even cheaper! They don't grow on trees or in the rice fields - they are assemebled by cheap very intellegent self-replicating robots. The robots are provided with good maintenance, fuel and regeneration time. They are operational only 35.7% of the time. Approximately 8.33% of the time they refuel, 33.33% of the time they spend in their regeneration cycle. Approximately 4.17% of their time is spent in a work preparation cycle. That is fine, but what are the robots doing the remaining 18.47% - not producing iPods for sure. That is gross negligence from the contractors! Of course, due to the cheap robot design, the fuelling and regeneration are nessesary, but the unused 18%-22% inefficiency comes from the pockets of the iPod shuffling public. So our beloved iPods can cost even less or have more features at the same price if the robot time was not wasted.

Have you joined the pirate party

vlado — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 14:22:18 -0400

Join the pirate party. Now. If there is none in your area, immigration to Sweden might help.

The Pirate Party wants to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected. With this agenda, and only this, we are making a bid for representation in the Swedish parliament in the upcoming national elections in September.

Apparently, the pirate party stands a chance in the next elections.

Hamlet, Home Edition

vlado — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 07:06:52 -0400

This is a lame adapted translation of the Russian story I posted a couple of days ago. The author unfortunately is anonymous. If you could polish it, so it sounds better in English, please do. It's in the public domain, as far as I know.

A house somewhere in Britain, some time in the future
- Dad, can I get 99 quid off your card? Need to pay for a book
- What book?
- Shakespeare, Hamlet
- Why, we have it
- Really? Which file?
- What have files have to do with it! It's on the shelf. It's your nana's.
- Nah, that's a deadwood book
- So what? I read it when I was your age.

a warm welcome to the ministry of information

vlado — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 11:25:13 -0500

Today is a good day for the democracy. The foundations of what is known in some circles as the ministry of information has been laid.

Victory! Hail the righteous forces of control of chaos.

From now on, if required, our information, whom with and when we had a chat, will be available for scrutiny, as it should be, by the competent protectors of law and order.

Victory! Let the forces of darkness tremble in fear.

On this historical day, when the bloomers went hunting, the data retention directive was adopted by the Eur

The Ministry of Information, not science-fiction but a nearly true story

vlado — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 05:02:02 -0500

Reading this proposed french law gives me shivers. Well, if you thought that the proposed EU data-retention directive is bad, it's extensions devilish how would you classify this? The proud republic is just about to churn this dictatorial law, infringing just about most of my intellectual human rights I can think of. Ok, my interests lie in computers more than most, but still, that is an ugly piece of legislation. Any free/open source software becoming illegal? Well, recently NYC2123 were mentioning that, in relation to Windows Moto Edition, but that's cyberpunk, this is reality. Whose sick mind can cojure such an appaling piece of legislation? Does that anonymous bunch of bureaucrats have a concept of what knowledge is? Does that bunch of people have any idea how much they are going to damage the French software industry itself, some of the best wares in the OSS world come from France, by the way.

Another twist in the Sony rootkit saga - copyright infringement in the rootkit?

vlado — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 07:06:22 -0500

Well, things start to get a comic appeal. Sony infringes the copyright of a LGPL software to create their rootkit, which allegedly is used to protect its property, read music they distribute, but in reality stops you using your iPod, which in turn Apple has made to work only with their own service - iTunes.

Noodles. I won't even go further. It is just ugly. Just rephrase it and you'll get the outline of a Z-rated gangster movie. You've got the hustlers, you've got the hard men, you've got the "my patch".

Tho read the whole shebang just go to dewinter or slashdot. Sit back and enjoy.

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

vlado — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:15:30 -0500

Last week when I was testing the latest version of RootkitRevealer (RKR) I ran a scan on one of my systems and was shocked to see evidence of a rootkit.
from Mark's Sysinternals Blog

A very radical example of what I was moaning about for quite some time. Somebody, semi-illegally, but for the bigger good, roots your computer, potentially damages your hardware and all that for what? To stop you playing your music, or use your backup. Thanks god that I'm not using windows. Linux is still not mainstream enough for Sony to cosider rooting that. Or most of the others for that matter. Unix rootkits are still a domain of the clearcut baddies.

Call to give homeless broadband

vlado — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:58:35 -0500

The homeless should be given broadband internet access, John Prescott's office has said in a new report.
from: Call to give homeless broadband

The story highlights the support for the ideas in the report from Crisis - a charity dedicated to helping homeless people.

What this brings to mind is the fact that the digiatl boom of the nineties, which is going even faster now, creates a new, wider gap between different social groups, regardless if it is in one country or worldwide. One one side we have people exploiting the new frontier, trying to parcel out knowledge, so they have a big stake in the 'IP real estate' goldrush.