Fighting Software Piracy by Providing Alternate Forms of IPR & Software?
Is Community Linux a possible solution to fighting Software Piracy in the developing world? Get a load of this article titled “China, Russia Worst Pirates of U.S. Goods — Lawmakers” here. What you see here is a typical problem of over expectations. You expect every person in the other side of the world to be born from their mother’s womb an expert on IPR or simply copyrights.
The only place where you learn about copyrights and IPR related issues in Central Asia are at University or maybe in federal or bureaucratic assignments. Really, I have been all over the place and read through so much for the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS 2005 Tunisia and the Internet Governance Forum IGF Athens-Greece 2006. It is a totally different world and atmosphere out there.
In a world where people struggle to at least come out of poverty and a standard Proprietary Software license and sometimes medicine costs more than their average yearly incomes, would you expect them to be fully qualified on IPR? Should they be punished for not having knowledge regarding IPR protection and respect?
I don’t know what the world is trying to prove here, you don’t want to spend a single penny on advertising in localized regional languages detailing what IPR is and why it is dangerous for a country to not comply to it. Another small example, if an Asian country has a population of say 160 Million, out of which 47% are said to be literate and more than half constitute only the current generation in their early teens and nearly 7% understanding or communicating in English, will you expect the rest of the region to understand everything in English, I hope if we are sane, we would all have the same notion on this.
My suggestion to the whole developing world out there, first create awareness and capacity at grassroots level moving upwards and then talk about kicking the poor people’s butts. As for you, all the poor people, for God sake and for the sake of your own countries and people, use Free and Open Source Software because you don’t have to get your food snatched, your butts whipped and go to jail for using FOSS without Linus Torvald’s permission (Linux Operating System’s creator)!
FOSS Movement hero, Linus may also believe in the philosophy of Richard Stallman that you should have the freedom to copy, use, modify and redistribute their Free and Open Source Software and don’t forget to share it with your neighbors and if you still don’t understand, you probably don’t know English and therefore I would like to invite all the FOSS developers and alternate IPR activists to join us in a global revolution to prepare localized Internet/Web content about FOSS & LINUX Against Software Piracy, Step up to realize your ICT Software Freedoms, Say no to Pirated Software, Use Free & Open Source Software Free extending it to all corners of the world, or do you think I am just getting carried away?
December 13th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Maybe not carried away…But i understand your frustration. Yes we need to move to FOSS and surprisingly the movement (at least in India) has been painful…painfully slow.
I say this sitting on a laptop that’s OS is yes unfortunately MICROSOFT.
I’ve been exploring the net and trying to find FOSS advocates like you. THe NGO i used to work with wants to make the jump but the fear and the internal resistance has squashed previous attempts. let’s see whether it works this time.
I did enjoy reading your entry. If you could list out some URLs where I could find more advocates who could help FOSS illiterates ?