Enrico Marvasi: Intellectual Property

Showing posts with label Intellectual Property. Show all posts

Volkswagen, Free Software and Economic Incentives

The automotive industry has been in the spotlight after a massive scandal at Volkswagen, using code hidden in the engine management software to cheat emissions tests.

Volkswagen programmed its car engine computers to detect the EPA's emission tests, and run dirty the rest of the time.

In real driving, the cars exceeded emissions standards by a factor of up to 35.

It has long been known that such software is spying on the habits of the driver and this data is extracted from the car when it is serviced and uploaded to the car company.

VW being caught is the exception and this is hardly surprising; proprietary software is often malware.

In fact, experts generally agree that there is no means other than software freedom to counter the might of corporations like Volkswagen and their potential to misuse that power, as demonstrated in the emissions testing scandal.

Using free software would not have stopped Volkswagen from programming it this way, but would have made it harder to conceal.

Il libro digitale, il mercato e la paura

Repubblica ha pubblicato un articolo molto interessante e un po' miope di Scott Turow (ripreso dal NYT - qui). Ho subito sentito il desiderio di scrivere le mie riflessioni su questo argomento, del quale mi sono già accupato, che lega cultura, diritto, economia e tecnologia. L'articolo di Turow è interessante, perché l'autore solleva una questione rilevante ed esprime un sentimento popolare, che comprendo bene, ma che a mio parere è abbastanza fuori luogo. È anche un po' miope, perché il filo logico del discorso è piuttosto debole e le soluzioni che implicitamente vengono suggerite al problema sollevato peggiorano la situazione e non appaiono percorribili nel lungo periodo se non imponendo un costo insostenibile alle persone, in termini economici, di libertà e di privacy. Non sto qui a discutere punto per punto l'articolo, che serve solo come spunto per la reflessione. Mi concentro quindi su alcuni punti sollevati in esso e comuni a molti discorsi sui libri digitali (ebook).

Stop ACTA & TPP

Stop ACTA & TPP: Tell your country's officials: NEVER use secretive trade agreements to meddle with the Internet. Our freedoms depend on it!

I urge you to vote no on ACTA and to communicate its severe problems to your colleagues. ACTA's vague language locks us into obsolete copyright and patent laws, preventing democracies from updating their laws to unlock new economic and social opportunities.It criminalizes harmless remixes by ordinary users if they achieve 'a commercial scale' (art 2.14.1) which many amateur videos do on sites like Youtube. And it criminalizes legitimate websites by making them responsible for user behavior ('aiding and abetting' art 2.14.4).Worse, it permanently bypasses the democratic process by empowering the 'ACTA Committee' to 'propose amendments to [ACTA]' without your approval. (art 6.4) In other words, it's impossible to know what you're voting for.The global movement against the US law SOPA showed that internet freedom is a crucial issue which belongs in the legislative process of each country. You should view ACTA as an attempt by a handful of companies to circumvent the democratic process, and you should vote against it.Thank you. Please reply if you have any questions.

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Cosa sono ACTA e TPP?
Per cominciare inquadriamo la cosa: stiamo parlando di internet, copyright e proprietà intellettuale.
Siamo nello stesso campo del SOPA, di cui al post precedente.

Le mie idee al riguardo le ho già espresse, perciò rimando ai vecchi post, ricordando che il mi pensiero deriva solo in parte da convinzioni personali, ma soprattutto da ragionamenti coerenti dal punto di vista economico, dall'analisi dei fatti e da alcune argomentazioni di tipo etico.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

More info at: http://sopastrike.com/

UPDATE

So it seems the protest is being succesful...
I hope freedom will be preserved and that the fact that intellectual property means monopoly will be recognized as inefficient as it is.
Authorship and identity are crearly a fair right, but why should someone have a monopoly over the copies of a work? Why should I pay someone for using their work when my use does not impose any additional cost for the production of the orginal work?
It's a matter of freedom, first. But that might be a particular vision of the world. However, it's a matter of efficiency and that's objective: Intellectual property imposes a cost on society without any proof that is boosts innovative works. Stop.
If producing a copy costs near to 0 (marginal cost is zero), then the best thing we can to it to set its price near to zero. If there are fixed costs that need to be repaid, their remuneration must not come from pricing, for the simple reason that it is inefficient.
Some other way to repay the fixed cost must be found, and the evidence I know shows that it normally happens by some first-move advantage of the author even in the absence of intellectual property (or invasive intellectual property). So actually nothing needs to be done in most situations.
What's the best way to be effcient and get marginal cost pricing? Competition. Granting, by law, an intellectual monopoly is inefficient and enforcing it is very costly both in monetary and freedom terms.
Moreover as long as any original work and innovation is based on previous works, having to pay for using those works just adds to costs of innovating: Another source of inefficiency.

Here another video explainging SOPA and PIPA:

The coming war on general computation (?)

Extensive IP

Stallman in Black and White

06 October 2011 (Steve Jobs)

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor 
Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."  Nobody 
deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty
 of bigger evils than theirs.  But we all deserve the end of Jobs' 
malign influence on people's computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence.  We can 
only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will 
be less effective.

I do not think I can agree with this words.

3 attacchi alla concorrenza e alla libertà

Io avrei altro da fare e vorrei anche scrivere di tematiche più strettamente economiche, ma è più forte di me...

Attacco 1 - Windows 8
Da un lato si discute del "secure boot" del prossimo Windows 8, basato su UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface).
La Microsoft benevola sempre più attenta alla nostra sicurezza inserirà nei nostri PC un sistema di chiavi che autorizzeranno l'installazione solo di programmi (driver delle parti hardware, altri sistemi operativi e applicazioni varie) certificati (mi scuso per le imprecisioni, non sono un tecnico; rimando qui, qui, qui e qui per dettagli).

UPDATE: ecco la registrazione dell'evento

Sotto l'email inviata dai promotori dell'iniziativa.

Censura Agcom?

Sembra che l'argomento della proprietà intellettuale sia molto caldo al momento, o forse sono io che mi sto interessando alla questione. In ogni caso visti gli ultimi miei post, mi sembra doveroso segnalare questa campagna su Sito non raggiungibile, promossa da Adiconsum, Agorà Digitale, Altroconsumo, Assonet-Confesercenti, Assoprovider-Confcommercio e Studio Legale Sarzana.

(l'audio è un po' fastidioso, consiglio di abbasare il volume)

Buone Notizie, Cattivi Pirati, Fini e Mezzi

Buone notizie che però vengono spacciate per atti criminosi e nocivi per il "sistema" in base a ragionamenti deboli (o almeno non provati in alcun modo) e leggi sbagliate che hanno perso di vista il loro fine sociale.
Per me sono buone notizie e cercherò di spegare brevemente le mie ragioni.

La notizia, che ho letto qui, è che in Italia la "pirateria" è relativamente alta.

Il quasi monopolista Microsoft presenta un rapporto sulla "pirateria" in cui l'Italia viene inserita nel libro nero delle nazioni con tasso di contraffazione più elevato.

A Tale of Freedom and the Right to Read

I already posted something about copyright and intellectual monopoly here.
I think the tale titled "The Right to Read" by Richard Stallman is quite nice and relevant.
It is not just about software, but about intellectual monopoly in general.
Here however I want to talk about books...
(UPDATE: and of course ebooks and DRM - Digital Rights Management - ita)

From  “The Road To Tycho,” a collection of articles about the antecedents of  the Lunarian Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096

For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa Lenz  asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could  borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one  she dared ask, except Dan.

This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his  computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could  go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books,  the very idea shocked him at first.

My GNU/Linux experience

A couple of years ago, maybe more, I started getting curious about GNU/Linux. Now I mostly use Ubuntu as my only operative system. That's my story...

Freedom and Innovation: Against Copyright

Finally this morning I got this book by prof.s Boldrin and Levine!
A book against intellectual monopoly, i.e. copyright.

I bought the printed version, but you can find the entire book in pdf here, while here you have each chapter into a single pdf. There is also a website: you find it in my links.
Why a copyright could be good for innovation is quite clear and you hear arguments for that everywhere, but sound economic reasoning about why it is not is harder to find.
Moreover if you like free software, you probably can find in the book an economic justification for that.
What a good incentive to think about the subject.

Here some related videos...

Enrico Marvasi

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