Através do Marketing Hacker, cheguei a este editorial do Linux Journal, já da semana passada, escrito pelo Doc Searls. É um artigo longo e denso, que passa por diferenciar o conceito de copyright (direitos de autor) do de propriedade intelectual, pela decisão de consolidação dos média nos EUA pela FCC (Federal Communications Commission - a Anacom do Tio Sam), pelo caso SCO contra Linux, a campanha presidencial do candidato democrata Howard Dean, o ataque da banda larga pela operadoras de telecomunicações e de cabo naquele país e a distinção entre liberais e conservadores. Pessoalmente, acho que essa distinção já não é muito válida, pois os conservadores são cada vez mais liberais e vice-versa - veja-se a administração Bush. Os liberais são cada vez mais a favor dos grandes média e dos big bucks. Cá por mim, a distinção entre esquerda e direita ainda explica grande parte da realidade social... Aqui fica um excerto:
"The Internet has been blessedly free of regulation for most of its short life. But the companies that provide most Internet service--telcos and cable companies--are highly regulated. They are creatures that live in a regulatory environment that bears little resemblance to a real marketplace. As natives of regulatory habitats, they see nothing but Good Sense in regulating the Net. After all, any regulation will help assert their ownership over the sections of the Net they control and legitimize the limitations they place on what their customers can do with, and on, the Net.
These companies have deep alliances with the big "content": industries (in the case of cable, they are one and the same) that want to see control extended beyond the Net, into the devices that connect to the Net, including PCs, which have also been blessedly free from regulation. Intellectual property protections have been built into consumer electronics devices for a long time. These guys see no reason why PCs, as a breed of consumer electronic device, shouldn't be subject to the same restrictions, in the form of digital rights management (DRM), run by content providers and burned into hardware at the factory.
Two oddly allied mentalities provide intellectual air cover for these threats to the marketplace. One is the extreme comfort certain industries feel inside their regulatory environments. The other is the high regard political conservatives hold for successful enterprises. Combine the two, and you get conservatives eagerly rewarding companies whose primary achievements consist of successful long-term adaptation to highly regulated environments. That's what's happened with broadcasting and telecom.
I think we need a galvanizing issue. I suggest Saving the Net. To do that, we need to treat the Net as two things:
1. a public domain, and therefore
2. a natural habitat for markets"
Tenho alguma urgência em saber onde se possa adquirir a LINUX JOURNAL em Portugal?
Afixado por: Ana Reis em novembro 24, 2003 03:49 PM