[wos] Porto Alegre Social Forum targets software intellectual property [signed]

Wed Feb 16 12:50:41 CET 2005

Porto Alegre Social Forum targets software intellectual property

eGovernment News – 07 February 2005 – Global – Open Source Software
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/3853/194

During a debate on the ‘digital revolution’ held at the World Social 
Forum on 29 January 2005, a number of prominent personalities 
questioned the way intellectual property is applied to software.  

The aim of the debate was to discuss issues related to open source 
software, freedom of knowledge and freedom of expression within the 
Information Society. Participants included Gilberto Gil, singer, 
composer and current Brazilian Minister of Culture, Manuel Castells, 
Spanish sociologist and Information Society specialist, Prof. 
Lawrence Lessing, co-founder of Creative Commons, John Perry Barlow, 
co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Christian 
Ahlert from the Oxford Internet Institute.  

“The main obstacle to Internet development is the use of intellectual 
property as a form of profit”, stated Mr Castells. The logic of the 
Internet is based on collaboration between developers, and the 
introduction of a different form of organisation would lead to the 
end of this means of communication, Mr Castells warned. Minister 
Gilberto Gil agreed and said that the movement for Internet freedom 
“is not anti-, but pro-global citizenship, information, and the 
exercise of sensitivity and humanity”. “Hackers spread knowledge and 
believe in sharing information,” Mr Gil said. “I am a minister and I 
am a musician, but above all I am a hacker at heart”, he added.  

Debate participants agreed that there is a need to give “flexibility” 
to intellectual property. Current intellectual property regimes, they 
said, do not protect authors and inventors anymore but serve the 
interests of large corporations while impeding the sharing of 
knowledge. In addition, intellectual property expert John Perry 
Barlow said the poor nations would not be able to solve their 
development problems unless they stop paying expensive software 
licensing fees.   

“Intellectual property cannot be a new form of colonialism,” said Mr 
Lessing. “We need a new ideology, the opposite of ownership”, he 
added. According to Mr Lessing, part of the solution can be provided 
by the Creative Commons licence, which allows authors of an 
intellectual work to waive their rights to whatever extent they want. 
The rise of the Internet represents a “radical change in the way of 
making culture”, Mr Lessing said, and is an incentive to community 
development. For him, communications companies who seek to protect 
their intellectual property to the greatest extent and software 
companies who do not make their programme codes publicly available, 
have an unacceptable position.  

Issues surrounding open source software and software patents are a 
hot topic in the agenda of many governments, corporations and 
advocacy groups in Europe and around the world. Opinions on these 
issues are often polarised – “open” against “proprietary” models – as 
illustrated by the current stalemate of the EU Directive on the 
patentability of ‘computer-implemented inventions’ and the resulting 
uncertainty over the future of software patenting in Europe.  

Recent developments indicate that software development and the use of 
software patents could however be evolving towards different business 
models. Indeed, on 25 January 2005, Sun Microsystems announced that 
it would be handing over more than 1,600 patents to software 
developers as part of its decision to make the source code of its 
Solaris 10 operating system publicly available. This announcement 
came two weeks after IBM said it would provide open source software 
developers with open access to “key innovations” covered by 500 of 
its software patent, in a move intended to form the basis of an 
industry-wide "patent commons".  

© European Communities 2005
Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.
The views expressed are not an official position of the European Commission.
Disclaimer

Further information:

     * Press release by the World Social Forum
     * Article on open source software, by Manuel Castells
     * Articles by APC.org, Inter Press Servive News Agency, USA Today, 
Libération, OpenDemocracy and Planeta Porto Alegre (article 1, article 2),

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