Re: Indigenous IPR (was: Re: <nettime> Dark Markets: Whose Democracy?)

[Richard Sewell <richard {AT} jarkman.co.uk>]

At 13:26 14/10/02 +0100, Sean Smith wrote:
>To: nettime <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>
>Subject: Indigenous IPR (was: Re: <nettime> Dark Markets: Whose
>   Democracy?)
>
>
>i have to say i can't understand the attitudes towards indigenous and 
>collective intellectual property rights (IPR) that are frequently 
>propagated here; they seem to be based on wilfull misunderstandings of a 
>remarkably straightforward argument, which goes like this:

[...]

Defending the weak against the strong always sounds like a good idea, but 
on the other hand building complicated rules to grant ownership of certain 
kinds of knowledge to poorly-defined groups sounds like a truly terrible idea.

IPR seems (at least to me) to have a core of good sense - it defends the 
creators of new ideas & works - and a vast cloud of terrible side-effects. 
Extending IPR - finding more ways to deem knowledge to be property - will 
add more stupid side-effects.

Or, to put it another way, are you really in favour of getting sued by the 
Italian government when you cook pasta ? And if not, why not ?

R.


-
Richard Sewell
richard {AT} jarkman.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1495 762385       Mobile: +44 (0)7973 775743

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