Forrest Gummp

Just to put my level of tech knowledge in perspective, I am a Committee Member on the Linux Australia committee, I run my own hosting service as part of my business, this hosting service is based on linux and other Free and Open Source Software.

At home I run a multimedia centre built upon Gentoo linux and MythTv as well as an asterisk install for VOIP and email and web for my personal blog.

I also run FreeBSD and Solaris under VMWare-Server just for mucking around with.

Wow!

The real downside of this stealing of intellectual property is the dunbing down of the entire planet when we need infinitely more inventions to cope with the the problems we have created for ourselves.

Who is going to bother inventing anything if it takes enormous amounts of capital to do so?It just makes the original thinkers slaves to big business.

Neither of the major parties give a toss.Even if you do invent something we have no manufacturing industry or or intellectual infrastructure to refine the process.The Scandinavian countries can do it with their small populations and limited resources,we cannot have everything and achieve nothing.

YES! Australia is an innovative Nation... if she could just get over herself and engage with ALL.

Productivity? We need to get back to the Aussie focus.

"Ladies and Gentleman, what is it to be an Australian?"

I was at least partly pleased as I toured the villages of Vietnam. I was proud to see (at least a few) Australians share, exchange and transfer their intellectual knowledge with the Vietnamse people, through education, micro-small enterprise and training aid development networks at village levels.

WHY? - 30 years (since the war). I wanted to see how much the world had actually contributed to helping the Vietnamese progress in re-building a completely war torn country of Vietnam.

The Vietnamese People are among the most innovative peoples on this globe, but what can a country do without infrastructure.

Village Community Health, Crime Prevention and Anti-poverty strategies are key innovative componants for people living in that country. As villagers, these strategies are primary elements in re-building the social infrastructure especially.

In this context I see our knowledge and innovative spirit as something special and to be shared with neighbors and trading partners everywhere.

Just as interesting. Did you know?,

Vietnam is a country that had been INVADED more than 1000 times by China, historically. This was before the multi-nationals, and countries like Japan, France and others entered as nations, participating in the "Vietnam War".

I mention this only because of the war in Iraq and to draw notice on the impact the war is having on the future generations of families and children.

In terms of 'trading our intellectual property' and its associated “harmonisation” requirements... I think we need to do more than weighing up how many "pork chops" we sell on the US barbie, when it comes to having the opportunitiy to debate innovatively about the value of our role in the world and what this means to the communities we influence, at all ground levels.

Who are we as Australians and how are we choosing to be innovative.

http://www.miacat.com/
.

I think the article misses the real point. IP laws are not the problem. Commercialisation is the problem. Australian industry is incredibly conservative and short-sighted. Australian inventors with good inventions invariably find that they have to go overseas to get funding.

As with everything in this world, the law is not the main stumbling block. Culture is the real problem.

A number of links or threads which may be of interest in regards to cacofonix's earlier posts which question altogether the concept of intellectual property laws are:

1. "Copyright Jails - The criminalisation of copyright infringement" at
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5068
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5068#59399

2. "Cultivating the Creative Commons" at
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3008
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3008

3. "Music pirates can be deluded no longer" at:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=141#16420
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=141

4. Question Copyright
http://questioncopyright.org

5. The Australian Pirate Party
http://www.ppaustralia.org

6. Pirate Party International
http://www.pp-international.net

---

Another discussion forum which may be of interest is "Can Australia ever be self-reliant for national defence?"

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=860

This discusses the thesis of Dr Andrew Ross in his groundbreaking "Armed and Ready" of 1995 which shows, contrary to popular myth, that Australia was an advanced technological and industrial nation by 1942. It was so advanced that in March 1942, even before the Battle of the Coral Sea, which, according the mythology, saved a defenceless Australia from invasion, the Japanese Army, who well understood Australia's capabilities vetoed a plan by the Japanese Navy to invade Australia.

Much of the 'IP' which made this possible was created by government bodies including th Munitions Supply Board. It was because of their research and guidance that Australian secondary industry was able to grow in the inter-war years to meet the threat. Why this successful model of creating IP in favour of leaving nearly all of it to the private sector has since largely been abandoned is a very pertinent question.

---

Forest Gump,

Most interesting about OpenBox. What are the hardware specs of your machine? I would be amazed if I were able to run it wit an acceptable level of performance on my rather dated 2.4 GHz Intel Debian Linux box.