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

[eyescratch� <eyescratch@terminal.cz>]

This is the simplified view of existence where we can shove one 
product to stand in the place of spheres of existence. The spaghetti 
tax, no really?

The knowledge of being able to exist in a place and construct a god 
world and above all be enough in tune with it to be able to live 
subsistently from that place is priceless. More like the Sistine 
Chapel. The currency they are getting from that place is 
immeasurable, it funds a world player. Now you could argue that the 
bible is the open source code and is that which is driving the 
Vatican fame and fortune, people creating hodge-podge interpretations 
of it all the time, spreading the gospel and such, creating instances 
that even show economic gain on.

But, to take the example of the pharma industry reaping millions by 
their specialized sifting through of the indigenous code - of plants 
and insects who have been, through pain-staking trial and error over 
the centuries, come to be. By living off the land in a harmonious 
way, the knowledge which has evolved is now harvested without due 
compensation to their custodians. Remember too that the Gregorian 
calender and time-keeping system was pilfered from the Mayans. The 
scientific language of this industry is far too complex a system at 
this point for people to go into business for themselves, although we 
do see the infrastructure being built in order to create aids drugs 
rip-offs.

It is about creating such infrastructure - dealing the technology 
card outside the dominant system, giving it a new face and with it 
new possibility. And it must go deeper than that as new codes are 
spun out technologically. They must trickle up, with as many 
beneficiaries as possible. A story is to be told. This knowledge 
should not be pillaged, abstracted, then thrown into an anonymous 
package, and shoved down the throat of those in need of it. This is 
wrong.

A subsistant economy is not an ill side effect, it is growth in the 
purist form. This year I completed a twenty minute video on a pueblo 
in costa rica - they had many ideas on what needs and issues they 
face, indirectly focusing on the production of new knowledge through 
political exhistance that might help them escape projects to be built 
on their soil put forth by such organs as the World Bank. The video 
is meant as a tool so that they might communicate, find a voice and 
has now found itself back in their hands and in their players.


À 6:46 PM +0100 le 10/14/02, Richard Sewell a écrit:
>At 13:26 14/10/02 +0100, Sean Smith wrote:
>>To: nettime <nettime-l@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


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