i. Loving one's Job more than ones Friends

I've just finished reading "Oppenheimer The Story of a Friendship" by Haakon Chevalier -written in 1965/1966.

The book is an account (using official transcripts) of what happened between two friends as a result of the conflict between Oppenheimer's earlier Communist sympathies and his need for security clearance after he became scientific leader of the US team that developed the Atomic
Bomb in WWII.

A philosophy professor in Argentina, Horacio Potel, is facing criminal charges for maintaining a website devoted to translations of works by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. His alleged crime: copyright infringement. Here is Professor Potel's sad story.

Dear friends,

The Intellectual Property Office-Philippines has been very active in their push towards a culture of "intellectual property" (IP), spreading their advocacy of IP and of culture and the arts as important IP assets of the nation. The IPO-Philippines' National IP Policy Strategy on "Copyright and Other Creative Industries" also highlighted Intellectual Property Rights violations as high on the list of concerns of IP stakeholders.

I would like to invite everyone in the creative sectors to reflect on the advocacy of the IPO-Philippines and such groups as the Intellectual Property Coalition, and examine carefully what they put forth as largely unexamined assumptions about "intellectual property." These assumptions are: (1) the system of IP is "good" in the social, economic and juridical sense; (2) the system of IP is the only and best way forward in stimulating creativity and providing economic incentives to artists; and (3) the system has worked well and continues to work well through history and all over the world, and must therefore be enforced in places where the system is not in full implementation.

ISOC.PH - An introduction and our contribution to the Internet Governance Forums: Participation and Cultural Plurality

The Purpose of the Philippines Chapter of the Internet Society as stated in its By-Laws make up four streams of advocacy:

• First is debate, discussion, dialogue.
• Second is intelligent, creative, informed use of Internet technology.
• Third is representation, meaningful participation.
• And fourth is innovation.

Some Personal Observations Regarding the CopySouth Workshop: Trivandrum, Kerala, December 2008
(first draft)

An Important Note for the Reader:

Please note: This is not an objective report of the presentations within the workshop. It is a highly subjective collection of notes and thoughts based on the issues raised by various speakers. My personal notes have been edited and restructured (even extended with my own viewpoints) afterwards. This text is therefore purely a reflection of my own interests and obsessions as manifest through, and by, the CopySouth workshop. However, hopefully, it may also be of interest and use to others.

This presentation is a critique of the concept of "free society" and its technology of propaganda. This presentation is therefore also a critique of ICT, information and communications technology, the technology underlying the free and open-source movement.

This text is an edited and more organized version of the brief 5-minute "kick-off" presentation that I made for the session on "Cultural Industries" at the CopySouth Workshop in Kerala, India. As a kick-off presentation, this text was intended to launch debates and discussion around the topic of copyright and creativity. Two other presenters were Shishir J. Kha (India) and Tatiana Carsen (Argentina).

Thanks to all the CopySouth members for the dialogues and the opportunity to sharpen the arguments set forth in this text, especially to Rustom Bharucha, Lawrence Liang, Carolina Botero, and CopySouth observers Trevor Batten and Gargi Sen. I look forward to continuing the dialogues.

On R. Hauben's article* "ARPA's 50th Anniversary and the Internet, A Model for Basic Research"

(*Hauben's article was written for Futurezone and appears in German at its website. Futurezone is the Technology web site for Orf, Austria's national public broadcast media. The url is http://futurezone.orf.at/hardcore/stories/253842/ Below is Trevor Batten's critical analysis of the article's celebratory message.)

This article really does need close scrutiny -because (in my view) it sketches the rise of a pernicious Military-Industrial complex (as warned against by President Eisenhower) -but which has now become even more dangerous by linking up with educational and entertainment systems (the edutainment business) to become the Military-Industrial-Edutainment complex.....

Celebrating FREE SOFTWARE FOR A SLAVE SOCIETY?

Our contribution to Software Freedom Day, September 20, 2008.
Process/yon Artists' Book and Dialogue Series II:
Free Software for Slave Society?

"PROCESS/YON" is a multi-location, interactive, experimental and collaborative, Social-software Performance Art project by Fatima Lasay and Trevor Batten. It is concerned with creating, exploring and developing new attitudes and creative strategies regarding the technology of the artist's medium.

SURFERS OR SERFS: DIGITAL FREEDOM OR DIGITAL FEUDALISM?

Within the context of issues addressed within the free, open-source, and open-standards community, "Surfers or Serfs" seeks to investigate realities of Freedom within the Culture of Ignorance: Are humans being turned into machines so others can exploit them without them questioning their own slavery? Why do we consider somebody "computer literate" when they can only operate the controls of a commercial computer system?