Why Is UNESCO Supporting Locking Up Information?
from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept
Today may be World Intellectual Property Day, but this past Friday was also apparently World Book and Copyright Day (quite a bookended weekend for government monopolies on knowledge!). Bas Grasmayer points out that UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which is supposed to be focused on "promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture" oddly chose Friday's "World Book and Copyright Day" to launch an "anti-piracy observatory."This is bizarre for all sorts of reasons. An organization focused on encouraging education and international collaboration seems like the last place that would be supporting locking up information through government-granted monopolies. This "observatory" appears to have little interest in determining whether or not stronger copyright actually promotes international collaboration through education, science and culture -- and simply assumes it must. Given that the actual evidence on this particular topic -- especially in developing nations where you would think UNESCO would be most concerned -- suggests exactly the opposite, it's quite troubling that UNESCO would take this particular position. It's a position that harms developing nations solely to benefit a few corporations. That doesn't seem like a position UNESCO would support.
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Filed Under: intellectual property, unesco
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i read it just fine.
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So why are those few people, compared to all those people in a developing nation, more important than, oh, I forgot. Because intellectual property is a right handed down from God.
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With an incredible amount of people in the world carrying supercopying machines in their pockets?
And the publishing industry is shrinking because 20th century distribution schemes are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the 21st century.
Shipping? Really? You're worried about all those people who might lose their shipping jobs?
Artists will continue to create art with or without copyright.
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Exhibit A: the past, present and the future.
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Well, I've got news for you. the VAST majority of content I consume (ie music) was created LONG before copywrong existed. I am a musician and composer and I have a VERY large library of sheet music from the public domain that, believe it or not, was never copyrighted and was composed in the last 10 years. Just because the content isn't copyrighted, doesn't mean it doesn't have value. I publish all of my music to the public domain and people who value it, use it.
It's very elitist to assume that only content which has to be paid for has value. Most people value FACTS, for example. And much to the chagrin of you and your other IP maximalist supporters, they are available FREE. $$$!=VALUE
Logic fail
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@Richard: True that
@the other Anonymous Coward: Reread the first two sentences of the second paragraph.
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Well, they may have succeeded there even if the reality is that far less than 0.0001% of those doing the sorts of things you (and they) talk about will ever be paid for any of it much less see it published/recorded,seen,blogged about or whatever.
Even should that happen the entertainment industry will use, as it always has, accounting practises which would be criminally fraudulent in any other busiess to avoid paying the "artists" they work with. Well, not paying them much or anywhere near the amount of product their name on the product moved.
None of that makes much difference in the fact that UNESCO should be a couple of universes away from "piracy" observatories or whatver.
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Whether you are in favour of enforcing copyright to the nth degree or not, the question is what the heck has it to do with UNESCO.
On the face of it, a body, the point of which is to encourage international collaboration on reasearch amongst other things has no obvious hook to any anti-piracy activism.
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UNESCO
http://conspiracyrealitytv.com/brief-history-of-the-uns-unesco-conspiracy-nwo-propaganda- conditioning-the-masses-in-preparation-for-one-world-government/
That was one result of a search on parameters 'UNESCO and the NWO' Give it Hell !
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What's the surprise?
If the copyright industry can rush through a satanic copyright bill in the British parliament, and get the governments of the world to consider a law (ACTA) that they actually wrote by themselves and solely for themselves, against the interests of citizens and consumers worldwide, then it should come as no surprise that the RIAA and MPAA can and would subvert the UN.
A UN official probably doesn't cost that much anyway.
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Nineteen Eighty-Four
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wh00t
Go Pirate parties ! Keep up the good work !
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