In a recent speech (at the Swiss Freedom Party) I explained why it was important for me to join international organisations like the FSF and the FSFE – two organisations that are not located in Switzerland.
The point is that globalisation means that our national governments have handed a lot of legislative power to international bodies. If you care about copyright, patents, and free software, you’ll notice how most of the important decisions are no longer made in your home country. When I tried to influence the Swiss delegation to the WorldSummitOnTheInformationSociety, I was told that anything having to do with “Intellectual Property” should be discussed elsewhere, eg. WIPO, because Switzerland was bound by TRIPS. And indeed, the DigitalMilleniumCopyrightAct in the US and the copyright reforms in the EU are all driven by TRIPS. This means that the decisions can no longer be influenced by ordinary channels (party politics etc.) – all you can do is find the national negotiator and try to influence him. On the other hand, globalisation also offers an opportunity: If we coordinate, then international NonGovernmentalOrganisations can replace the now useless national channels.
WorldSummitOnTheInformationSociety
The FSF will fight for our rights in the US, and this in turn will help us fight for our rights in the international organisations where the US is excerting pressure. The FSF will fight for our rights in Brussels, and we need them there because so many countries will have to accept what Brussels decides.
I think that FreeSoftware has turned out to be a model for building the nebulous InformationSociety that is being hyped all over international politics. Free software has shown that it is possible to use the existing legal frame-work, work outside the usual bounds of secrecy and egotism, and still offer interesting opportunities for learning and progress (as programmers, as project managers, as people), and still offer a sound basis for a strong software economy (selling services instead of creating an artificial scarcity and selling licenses).
What I noticed when Napster was big, a lot more people started to get interested in copyrights, licensing, and how intellectual property works. It is not a God-given thing, people realised. It is something men have decided to create, implemented in laws, and it is contested territory with people lobbying for more property and stricter implementations. I believe free software is what inspired FreeCulture, and free culture is what most people care about.
It’s not just about software. It’s about books, music, science, theatre, movies, sculpture, painting, photography, digitial art – and software. It’s about free culture.
The image I used was of two siblings fighting over something. When one kid says “If I cannot have it, neither shall you!” and destroys the coveted object, then the adults will agree that something is seriously wrong. When the same happens in the current software industry, however, nobody complains. If the holders of copyrights or patents decide to discontinue proprietary products, that’s the end of it. Free software allows us to pick up where others let go.
If this is an obvious lesson for kids, it should be obvious for the software industry, too.
Weird, I know. 😄
#Software