Re: [ossig] can the ossig community help to do something +ve ?

[Yusseri Yusoff <yusseri@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Not really apropos to the subject, but below are excerpts from a presentation 
I'm proposing to give to a particular government agency this Saturday:

SLIDE

On the US' attitude towards copyright pre-1891:
“Our outrage at China notwithstanding, we should remember that before 1891, 
the copyrights of foreigners were not protected in the United States. We were 
born a pirate nation.”
Source: “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World”, 
Lawrence Lessig, pg. 106.

SLIDE

More tellingly:
“The United States was notorious for its singular and, in many regards, 
cavalier attitude toward the intellectual property of foreigners”
Source: “Making the World Safe for What? Intellectual Property Rights, Human 
Rights and Foreign Economic Policy in the Post-European Cold War World”, 
William P. Alford, New York University Journal of International Law & 
Politics 29 (1997): 125, 146.

SLIDE

And in Malaysia:
“Foreign copyright owners are beginning to show signs of frustration. On 
Monday, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shafie Apdal 
warned that Malaysia risked being blacklisted by the World Trade Organisation 
if piracy was left unchecked.”
“Pirated users have until June 1 to legalise software”, Raslan Sharif, Star 
In.Tech, Vol. 13, No. 43, Thursday 27 May 2004.

-----------------------

Looking at reports like the one in In.Tech today (and the link in the original 
post) more often than not leaves me somewhat despondent. We're trying to 
eradicate piracy and Imran has said in an earlier mail that we need to make 
people aware that OSS is an alternative, 

On Thursday 27 May 2004 11:20, Dinesh Nair wrote:
> On Thu, 27 May 2004, Imran William Smith wrote:
> > 2) put pressure on  MDTCA to raise awareness that open source is an
> > alternative
>

then Dinesh riposted as so:

> this is harder done than said. MDTCA (and by extension the government)
> keeps saying that by pushing open source, we also hurt businesses who're
> dependent on closed source. the main problem here is the lack of a
> commercial entity for open source which can present it's business case. as
> such, they'll be unlikely to push open source publicly, though they will
> try to go after the pirates and pirated users.
>

But I suppose we'll just have to keep trying to ram the message into people's 
heads (and work towards creating that particular OSS commercial entity).

Yusseri


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