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IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS
The International Intellectual Property Alliance has issued a
special report
which puts Indonesia on a priority watch list for, among other things,
mandating the use of open-source software in its government.
Page 3 of
this document [PDF] explains:
"While IIPA has no issue with one of the stated goals of the circular, namely, reducing software copyright
violation, the Indonesian governments policy as indicated in the circular letter instead simply weakens the software
industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness by creating an artificial preference for companies offering
open source software and related services, even as it denies many legitimate companies access to the government
market. Rather than fostering a system that will allow users to benefit from the best solution available in the market,
irrespective of the development model, it encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to
intellectual creations..."
(Thanks to Priyadi Iman Nurcahyo).
(Log in to post comments)
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 16:22 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Rent-A-Center is concerned about governments that use a "competitive bidding" process to buy public-sector A/V equipment, as this excludes the profitable rent to own industry.
Pyramid of Shills Posted Feb 25, 2010 16:25 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Looking at who IIPA is supposed to be...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Intellectual_P...
...it would appear that the reputations of various lobbying organisations are now so dirty that they need another "industry association" to promote their agenda. More information here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/23/ope...
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 17:12 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]
That is some seriously twisted logic!
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 17:49 UTC (Thu) by eparis123 (guest, #59739) [Link] US mega-corporations, please, stop doing this stinking bad cop role and focus on your own goddamn business instead.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 19:27 UTC (Thu) by ahoogerhuis (subscriber, #4041) [Link]
Where's the fun in actual competition? Seeing that SCOTUS just rules coreporations are free to buy polit^W^Wdonate unlimited amounts to campagins its at least in the open who runs the show. :)
-A
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 20:20 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] The fact that the government places such high control mechanisms on corporations requires that corporations go and do lobyists.It's a system designed very carefully by elected governmental officials over the past 150 years to allow them to force corporations to finance their re-ellection bids, while at the same time mantain the illusion that the government is capable of 'controlling' corporations to keep them from hurting individuals; again enhancing their chances at reellection. Also the recent SCOTUS "Citizens United vs. FEC" decision as reported by recent reddit posts and websites like http://www.freespeechforpeople.org completely and utterly mischaracterize the decision. ------------------------------------------------ This is why: All a 'corporation' is is a group of individuals that get together and form a orginization that reduces personal liability. It does not even have to be a business. Corporations is just a category of legally recognized groups of individuals. And 'corporation' includes a broad catagory of different types of groups... non-profit corprations, llcs, catagory D corporations, etc etc... each state has their own rules and variations on the subject. Corporations are designed so that when people get together and form a orginization they can go about doing whatever they want to do without risking losing everything their own personal assists. Soo... Lets say you decide to form a small business. Most small businesses start out as 'individual proprietorships' which tend to be very informal and exists pretty much exclusively to meet the requirements of local taxation and business licensing laws. If somebody comes to your business and trips over a hose and breaks a hip then they can sue you. You, personally, are liable for damages. Also you are personally liable for any loans or debts that may occure or any sort of contractual disputes. Meaning.. that if somebody sues your business for any reason then they can seize your house, your car, your children's college fund, your personal savings, your retirement funds. Any and all personal assits you may have in your business or in your personal can be taken away from you. Soooo... This is a huge f-ing problem if you ever decide to grow your business and get other people involved. Any sort of snafu and you can loose _EVERYTHING_. Hence: Corporations. Corporations are designed so that when you get together with a group of people and decide to do something... anything... you are only personally liable for what you put into the corporation. Your investments, corporate assits, and your profits can be taken away from you in a dispute, but not your house, your personal car, your children's college funds, etc etc. It can be for a business, but there are lots of non-profit orgs that carry out many important functions in our societies. There are political groups, charity orginizations, environmental groups, churches, and all sorts of things like that. Also it creates legal frameworks for starting orginizations, agreements with other corporations, contracts, dealing with taxes, investment opportunities, getting loans, etc etc. Anything people want to accomplish collectively outside of government can, pretty much, benefit hugely by becoming a corporation. All the SCOTUS decision really amounts to is that if you belong to a corporation you still have a political voice. That you have the right to can go out and put out ads, petition the government, and do all the same sort of things that any other group of people or individuals can do. Which, due to a little thing called 'The first Amendment of the Constitution of the United States' seems like a *duh* to me. How this came to be seen as 'TEH SURPEME COURT SAYS CORPS ARE A PERSON!!! OMG WTF?!' is beyond me. Just because you belong to a larger group of people does not mean that you lose your freedom of speech, nor does it make sense to limit freedom of speech just because you decide to do it collectively with other people.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 20:21 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Oh. ya.
The IIPA and BSA people smoke crack. F those guys.
Lies and corporate lies Posted Feb 25, 2010 21:30 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
Wrong. Anything that starts out with "all a corporation is is" identifies it, from the outset, as completely wrong.
Corporations are defined by huge a body of legislation, both state and federal, and an even bigger body of case law, including many Supreme Court cases. A reprehensible series of such cases have established that, under the law, they qualify as "natural persons", yet are not subject to penalties that apply to actual persons. The penalties that corporations may suffer do not affect them as they would real people.
The emergent definition is not a product of "careful design". It's a product of conflict and relentless lobbying. Congress distinguished between "persons" and other entities until courts declared, unilaterally, that corporations were persons too. Then they distinguished "natural persons" until packed courts declared that corporations qualified as natural persons, too. At that point, it appears, Congress gave up, or was itself entirely captured by corporate lobbyists. Few significant limitations on corporate bullying have been enacted since anti-trust legislation, which is anyway usually interpreted to affect relations among corporations.
Lies and corporate lies Posted Feb 25, 2010 23:21 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Corporations are defined by huge a body of legislation, both state and federal, and an even bigger body of case law, including many Supreme Court cases. A reprehensible series of such cases have established that, under the law, they qualify as "natural persons", yet are not subject to penalties that apply to actual persons. The penalties that corporations may suffer do not affect them as they would real people.That is true that in some cases corporations are treated as 'natural persons' (which is bad), but with the court case have people fired up lately it has NOTHING AT ALL to do with that. Completely seperate. People are mixing all the issues up here. And corporations primary purpose is to allow people orginize while limiting personal liability. It also sets up a lot of legal stuff to do with the government in terms of taxes, qualifications for investments, and a whole bunch of other stuff. That's _why_ you want to form corporations. It's the reason they exist in the first place. And I did state that there all different types of corporations and different states have different rules and different types of corporations established. Some states have different requirements and recognize different things. Software Freedom Law Center, Gnome Foundation, Free Software Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, etc etc. Those are ALL Corporations. Probably LWN also. They are just as much as corporations as Microsoft or Redhat. What is being argued by SCOTUS is that those people still have the right to be politically active and the members of those corporations don't get their freedom of speech taken away from them just because of the status of their orginization. --------------------------- BTW... And if you think that somehow there is a adversarial relationship between the Federal Government vs Major USA-based publicly owned Corporations your f-ing delusional. They are becomingly one in the same; as the above article illustrates. A major function of the Federal Government, _RIGHT_NOW_, is to do nothing but make sure that major corporations are isolated from competition, kept wealthy, and kept in business. I can give you a half a dozen examples of both the Democrates and Republican's rigging laws and playing games with the economy to make their friends in their particular corporations wealthy. The people that run the government, and the people that run the major commercial corporations... are the same people. They hang out together, play golf, party. Sometimes they are the same individuals, sometimes in-laws or cousins, or whatever. Sometimes they are just best friends that grew up together. But they are all pretty much the same big group of people. A easy example of this is with Al Gore's sail of USA naval oil reserves to Occidental Petrolium in 1995. Clinton/Gore recently worked to enact legislation that raised the costs of energy quite a bit and then Gore turned around and sold of massive amounts of oil to Occidental for pennies on the dollar. There were even higher bidders for the oil (something over like over 20 companies competited for it), but Occidential's and Al Gore's Dad (Al Gore Sr.; famous in the 1960's for his anti-civil-rights campaigning) were really good friends. Occidential hired Al Gore Sr. shortly after his exit from the senate in 1971. A $500,000 job was pretty good money back in the early seventies. :) It was probably a nice gesture on Al Gore Jr.'s part to hand over billions of dollars of oil to them like that. Ever hear of the Teapot Dome scandal? Back in 1922 the secretary of interior gave his friend, owner of Sinclair oil, rights to the Teapot Dome oil reserves. He got nailed for corruption and went to prison for a few years. Of course the oil at Elks Hill was the reserve that did not get sold off... back then. It lasted until 1995 until Gore sold it off to a company his family has 3/4 of a million dollars of stock in. Of course now instead of going to prison Gore is charished as some sort of environmental hero. Goes to show how far we've fallen, I guess. Like this so-called finance reform act. They keep talking about much money the insurance companies make in profits like that is justification for the reform. And what is a major aspect of the reform? Make it illegal to NOT to pay money to insurance companies. It would be hilarious if it was not so sad. Also is it not ironic now that the USA government is major stock holders in GM and Chrystler that now Toyota is under all these accuasations and investigations for safety problems? One of thoe unique things about the USA car buying public is that they are VERY paranoid about car safety. People shopping for cars to carry around their children are very conscious of safty. Even if it's a single car collision your much better off in a SUV then a coupe. Quite a coincidence there. This sort of crap has been going on since the late 1800's. Which is were I get the '150' year thing from. It's existed long for a long time and it's been out of control long long before current events. It's just gotten a lot worse because the government is so much more powerful now then it ever was in the past. -------------------------------- This recent SCOTUS court case would of done NOTHING to change this or limit this regression in any way shape or form if it went the other way.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 22:16 UTC (Thu) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link] Just because you belong to a larger group of people does not mean that you lose your freedom of speech, nor does it make sense to limit freedom of speech just because you decide to do it collectively with other people.This is disingenuous. No one wants to take away the free speech rights of the human beings that make up corporations, and denying a corporation the "right" to spend unlimited sums of money influencing elections is not denying any human being (you know, the actual entity that is endowed with rights) his or her rights. Every single person who makes up a corporation can still speak his or her mind freely on any issue he or she likes. Also, you are also making the assumption that the board of directors of a corporation are really speaking for every shareholder and employee of that corporation when they take out those multi million dollar ads. When you have a company such as Microsoft or IBM, for example, that would simply be impossible. So now you have a situation where a small number of people are using the resources of a vastly larger number of people to influence politics in ways potentially contrary to what many of them would want. That is not free speech, that is favored speech for the wealthy elite. What are employees who disagree supposed to do? Quit? This is a fundamentally statist idea and it amazes me to see so many libertarians buy into it.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 23:35 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] This is disingenuous. No one wants to take away the free speech rights of the human beings that make up corporations, and denying a corporation the "right" to spend unlimited sums of money influencing elections is not denying any human being (you know, the actual entity that is endowed with rights) his or her rights. Every single person who makes up a corporation can still speak his or her mind freely on any issue he or she likes.What is disingenuous is how people are characterizing the recent SCOTUS decision. It has nothing to do with 'corporations as human beings' or 'natural entity' or anything remotely like that. People should be allowed to orginize and be allowed to protect their interests and petition the government. The fact that they belong to a larger group of people that share common interests should not impact their right to speech. Let me ask you something: Are you telling me that you think that the Software Freedom Law Center should never use it's position to make political statements? Or that Freedom Software Foundation or Mozilla should not be allowed to take adds out promoting laws and policies that reduce software patents and fight laws and policies in our government that are designed to harm open source software? Should it be illegal for Redhat to go and take out money they earn from selling linux to tell people publically that they think that software patents are harmful? Because, you know, all those groups of people are corporations. And if you make it illegal for corporations to have a political voice then how is that different from individuals from SFCL or FSF going together and saying 'Hey there is a law that will make Linux illegal' and then trying to organize opposition? The fact that they call themselves SFCL or FSF or trying to should somehow be a determining factor in whether they are allowed to speak or not? If it's illegal for corporations to have speech then would not a bunch of individuals from that corporation trying to fight for their jobs or for their ideals be commiting fraud if they tried to hide the fact that they are all belong to the same orginization and all money they are spending on speech from that corporation in the form of wages and other compensation?
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 23:40 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
er...
"...all money they are spending on speech from that corporation in the form of wages and other compensation?"
I meant:
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 23:46 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
To put in a better way:
All SCOTUS said is:
The U.S. Constitution makes no distinction between groups of individual's political speech
All a corporation is is a group of individuals. However you want to paint it, that is all a
_THAT'S_IT_.
No 'corporations are individuals' or 'natural beings' any such nonsenese. None of that had
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 26, 2010 1:39 UTC (Fri) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link] If I wanted to find out the "opinion" of a corporation, how do I go about it? How does that corporation decide what its "opinion" is? If a group of people is also a person that deserves all the rights of a person, then can a group of people also be elected? Can a group of people be put in jail? Can a group of people be executed? Supporters of the idea of free speech for "groups of people" always seem reluctant to answer these questions.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 26, 2010 6:30 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
Most of the time this is easy, the opinion of the company is decided by the owners of the company, in many cases through the board of directors that they elect, in other cases by through the executives that they hire. This is the same way that all other policies of the company are decided.
As long as membership in the corporation is voluntary this works well.
Where this breaks down is when membership is not voluntary. Major unions are a great example of this. In many places you must be a member of the union to hold a job at a particular company (sometimes is so bad that you must be a union member to hold a job in a particular field), so people are members of the union even if they disagree with the policies of that union. In these cases there needs to be a way for the dissenting union member to not be forced to pay for political speech that they disagree with.
When corporations go bad Posted Feb 26, 2010 16:03 UTC (Fri) by freemars (subscriber, #4235) [Link] Can a group of people be put in jail? Can a group of people be executed? A corporation can be put in jail -- lock the doors, hold the mail, freeze all bank accounts, turn off all utilities (including any corporate Websites). I imagine even 30 days "in jail" would get the attention of the most eager lawbreaking corporation. The death penalty for a corporation would be Chapter 7. Perhaps any left-over cash should go to charity.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 26, 2010 12:00 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] The fact that they belong to a larger group of people that share common interests should not impact their right to speech. But they still have that right, as individual citizens. Why should they have their right amplified because they also are in a corporation, over that of other citizens? No one is asking for individuals to be disenfranchised, but merely that certain individuals (usually more privileged) not be advantaged over others (wrt political speech). What you're describing is not a representative democracy, but corporatocracy (though, it is clear most states in the west are that).
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 26, 2010 18:37 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
so you believe that the FSF should not be able to make any 'political' speech as well. only individual members with their own paycheck and their own name.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 26, 2010 18:45 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
by the way, even if there were limits like you want in place, they may not have the results that you want.
nothing would stop the corporation from increasing the pay of some executive by $1m/year so that that executive could fund his (now personal) 'political speech'.
also, if you are opposed to corporations using their money this way, are you also opposed to corporations being able to donate money to charities? after all, there are charities that do things that employees or stockholders of the corporation may not like.
Why not Posted Feb 27, 2010 14:58 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Yes, what is wrong with that? Most interesting pieces and speeches from the FSF are signed anyway.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 26, 2010 22:09 UTC (Fri) by wingo (subscriber, #26929) [Link]
Concision, drag. There's no need to prevail via verbosity.
Life is too short Posted Feb 27, 2010 14:54 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Yes, you lost us about the fifth paragraph. Pity is, most of us didn't even read the fourth preceding paragraphs. You have done an exemplary work on your orthography and grammar, now you just need to condense the message a bit. It is hard to say how much, especially from someone who often errs on the terse side, but you have written about 2000 words in a few comments; this is clearly too much. The average for this week's front page article is 1200 words.
Life is too short Posted Mar 12, 2010 8:50 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
He might be verbose but I do enjoy reading it, because it represents a
view I hadn't seen before - at least parts of it.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 27, 2010 2:05 UTC (Sat) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"Or that Freedom Software Foundation or Mozilla should not be allowed to take adds out promoting laws and policies"
Before the SCOTUS decision, they were already able to do that. The SCOTUS decision is in regard of electioneering. the prohibition that was made to corporation to spend money on specific individual running for office, or run add to directly call the the election of such individual. Especial during a limited period just prior to the election. It is that small limitation to the corporation power of corporations that SCOTUS lifted with this recent decision.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 27, 2010 1:54 UTC (Sat) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"All the SCOTUS decision really amounts to is that if you belong to a corporation you still have a political voice."
Whether or not you are in a corporation you do have a political voice. But if you are an individual you can only contribute $2400 to a candidate... but now, thanks to the SCOTUS ruling, if you are an influent member of a corporation (even if you have no share in it) you can still donate $2400 as yourself, but also an unlimited amount 'in the name of the corporation'.
Furthermore for C-Corp that spending can be done without a approval by the share-holders. (that is the angle Congress is likely to take to reign-in that SCOTUS ruling).
"How this came to be seen as 'TEH SURPEME COURT SAYS CORPS ARE A PERSON!!! OMG WTF?!' is beyond me"
Corporations want their cake and eat it too. they want the nice 'I'm not liable', but I also want all the right and guarantee of a full citizen.
One consequence, overlooked by Scalia et al. is that based on this ruling, non-citizen, that are bared to contribute to a candidate to federal office, can now form dummy corporation to do just that.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Mar 5, 2010 23:44 UTC (Fri) by ccurtis (guest, #49713) [Link]
Not to mention that if I wanted to bankroll someone against the intent of the campaign finance limits laws all I have to do is file paperwork to create 10,000 corporations, all owned by me. What "rights" will corporations get next, one vote as well?
Corporations are "mere aggregations" as it were and do not have inalienable rights, nor should they be treated as though they do under the law.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 25, 2010 19:31 UTC (Thu) by Simon80 (guest, #50887) [Link]
From the report:
"As such, it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights..."
Ironically, free software depends on respect of these rights as well to compel certain downstream recipients to release their modifications freely in exchange for their use of the upstream software.
That's OK; they'd be in good company Posted Feb 25, 2010 20:33 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] We (Canada) are on IIPA's watchlist also. I consider it to be an honour.
Information Feudalism, by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite. Posted Feb 26, 2010 7:26 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
A great book that explains how the govt of the USA uses their watch lists:
Information Feudalism, by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite.
Free Software as a reason for trade war? Posted Feb 26, 2010 14:25 UTC (Fri) by karstengerloff (subscriber, #62060) [Link]
The IIPA and its member groups (BSA, MPAA, RIAA) have long been known for their extremist views on copyright, and for their active use of the USTR Special 301 process as a stick to beat other governments (hey there, Canada).
If they were to succeed in convincing the USTR that recommending or adopting Free Software is a reason for the US to retaliate through trade, that would be bad for Free Software.
I've written up a bit of analysis here: http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=307
Free Software actually promotes competition and innovation. The IIPA's comments are so asinine that they're easy to refute. But someone needs to tell the USTR, preferably a US company with an economic interest in exporting Free Software.
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Feb 27, 2010 9:30 UTC (Sat) by forlwn (guest, #63934) [Link]
The "watch list" is part of an annual report from the USTR that monitor the laws from other governments that, IMO, protect the interests of:
- Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
In this report, the "bad" countries are flagged red and yellow.
Looking at the world map under those colors, it looks like all the world is "bad".
There is only one Continent where almost all countries comply to those interests. What continent is that?
Look at this map, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2009_Special_301_Report...
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Mar 1, 2010 22:38 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]
> There is only one Continent where almost all countries comply to those interests. What continent is that?
Australia!
IIPA aims to put Indonesia on watch list over FOSS Posted Mar 2, 2010 2:08 UTC (Tue) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]
I was going to say Antarctica, but if you look very closely there is an elf holding a red sign right over the North pole. it looks like Santa got hit hard on some toys he created without patents ;)
Arctic? Antarctic!! Posted Mar 2, 2010 9:06 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] But Santa is just the small fry! As far as the Antarctic is concerned, everybody knows it is infested with droves of penguins, a nasty, obnoxious class of animal intimately connected with highly suspicious, un-American, FOSS-oriented activities and other menaces to the orderly execution of profitable business. These beasts are truly a cancer, one of the chief open sores of modern society! If any place on the map needs to be red at all it ought to be the Antarctic.
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