Message-ID: <m11wPQ6-0003TdC@fwd08.btx.dtag.de> Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 13:44:32 +0100 From: Christian Labadie <mailto:CLabadie@T-ONLINE.DE> Subject: What is property? To: mailto:DEVEL-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Hello,Imagine!
Imagine that!
Imagine that you have a beautiful, wonderful flower!
Imagine that this flower is an idea and...
and that tomorrow you will die...
Imagine that...
Will you call your lawyer? Will you set up a complicate protection system of intellectual property?
Want to know the answer?
Then check out that true story... it happened 170 years ago:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Galois.html
An array of progress in chemistry and science are based on the group theory that Evarist Gallois wrote in one night: "Galois fought a duel with Perscheux d'Herbinville on 30 May [the morning after], the reason for the duel not being clear but certainly linked with Stephanie, the daugher of physician with whom he had fallen in love... You can see a note in the margin of the manuscript that Galois wrote the night before the duel. It reads: There is something to complete in this demonstration. I do not have the time. (Author's note)."
But here is how our DEVEL-tenors are presenting science to us: mailto:StrutInst@AOL.COM wrote: > Scientists are creators of intellectual properties who have, as a group,
> given away rights to the fruits of their own intellect and labor in
> return for the opportunity and the resources to do the jobs for which
> they have been trained.
John Daly <mailto:dalyj@EROLS.COM> wrote: > It IS possible to seek a trade policy which protects intellectual
> property rights (and thus supports beneficial high rates of
> innovation), and at the same time provide medication to
> AIDS victims in Africa.
Peter Ferguson <mailto:P.Ferguson@IDS.AC.UK> wrote: > OUR EDITOR'S SELECTION FROM ITEMS ADDED THIS MONTH
>
> 1. After Seattle: trade and development policy background briefings
> 2. AIDS epidemic update
> 3. Microfinance in conflict and disaster situations
> 4. An asset-based approach to the analysis of poverty in Latin
> America [plus case studies]
> 5. Intellectual property rights and globalization: implications for
> developing countries
> 6. Monitoring and evaluation capacity development in Sub-Saharan
> Africa: lessons from governance programming
> 7. Assessing environmental effects of the North American Free
> Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
> 8. Communications and development: a practical guide
> 9. More, but not yet better: an evaluation of USAID's programs and
> policies to improve girls education
> 10. Anti-corruption strategies
> 11. Women 2000: the Beijing +5 review process
Do you agree with the definition of scientific work branded above? Do you agree that research is a pre-defined set of recipies?
There is a growing lobbying on DEVEL-L from (1) world bank, (2) consultants, (3) editors, to defend intellectual property. I can see that they are concerned with the increasing role of grass-roots movements on the Internet and that their voice is just that simple "e-mail" counting no more than that other "e-mail"... and perhaps that it isn't them making the program, but indeed the reader.
So the road is going to be bumpy for all of us. To conciliate management and scientific approaches here at DEVEL-L, we are going to have to discuss at great extents what we really (i) mean, (ii) envision, (iii) want.
Many scientists LOVE science and would LOVE to teach it, to MAKE it, for- with- or even without- money. They first LOVE science.
Do those who protect intellectual property, do LOVE something? The spirit of the new capitalism is driven perhaps by profit, but first of all by excitement. Be part of it: we are making great things!
How come consultants are "caring" about development? (i) because they see opportunities and (ii) threats in developing countries, and (iii) someone is asking them to deal with those issues. Overnite CNN started to gear its programs to African issues -- why?
Someone out there doesn't want to loose control and is sending us their preachers in cohorts. The paradigm is bargain: "Oil for this...", "Medicine in exchange to that...". You need AIDS-vaccine? then please do pass a law to accept more chemical waste dumping, we've got plenty of both.
Is this love? Is this love of science? Is love of humanity?
And at the heart of this process of bargaining, you need property. Today it is intellectual property.
To agree with it, you *have to* first agree that there is such a thing as an intellectual property. And the underlying principles happens to be international treaties not moral concepts.
I wrote to John the following: "Would you be kind enough to give a few words for a novice like me, to explain why the "intellectual property" is important? Assume I don't know: as a scientist, we were encouraged to give our findings to "science". I think it would be nice to have some convincing arguments, especially when it comes down to explaining them to patients who are about to die and to leave behind them orphans; perhaps if that "intellectual property" is going to give a bright and sunny future to those orphans, their parents will be willing to make the sacrifice of their life. So please, enlighten us."
There is a Western obsession with property. As the GNU licence introduction puts it: most licence's aim is to restrict the rights of the recipient.
Take perfumes. Do you think perfumers invent them? They don't any longer because there are so few perfurmers left. They just make bad copies of the same. They don't create any longer. That is the consequence of the marketing approach to perfume.
Take songs. Do people sing on the streets any longer? No they don't. Because singers cannot start to sing someone else tune. So you've got to be a creator to sing anything. And the general public has stopped to be a creator.
Take algorithms. If you threaten every programmers who write free codes with possible law suit 'cause the patents on software code, they'll stop publishing them.
Take plants. Take away the seeds, put a patent on the new one. And then people will loose the contact with their gardens and earth altogether. Is that property?
With concerns, Christian