mediajunk

Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has, for several years, condemned the ever-expanding definition of intellectual property in the US. Not only does Lessig condemn those multinationals for their greed in trying to "own" ideas, he argues that the pursuit of IP laws amounts to over-regulation, and could stifle creativity, particularly in the areas of software and the internet. In the February edition of Wired magazine, Thomas Goetz argues that companies and other nations who pay little heed to these "property" laws are already benefiting: "Researchers in Australia and India are sidestepping agriculture patents held by the likes of Monsanto and DuPont to develop competitive technologies and foods (such as a high-protein potato) that are, by design, open and unrestricted. In pharmaceuticals, India is skirting patents to create generic AIDS drugs that are orders of magnitude cheaper than those made by the transnational drug companies ... Media industries, meanwhile, are besieged by millions of MP3 traders and DVD bootleggers in open revolt against copyright protections. ... Last year, China began installing the open source operating system on 500,000 computers, with perhaps 200 million more machines on the way. ... Taken together, these developments demonstrate how an alternative culture is arising in our midst - or rather, outside it. They reflect the gulf between IP owners, with their rigid sense of controls, and those who would seek to use that intellectual property with all the flexibility afforded by technology -- the Internet, in particular. And that's not just a difference of opinion, it's a technological generation gap." Empires are about to crumble, but those who get it will succeed.