- From: Alan Truesdale <alan@mlug.ca>
- Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 11:08:37 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Dear Sirs/Madames, Current patent policy in the US is anti-capitalist, undemocratic, and un-American. The founding fathers including Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin would be ashamed of it. Please do not blindly follow it. "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas Jefferson Jefferson hated the idea of monopolies to paraphrase his words "the needs of the people will be subject to the corruptions of the few" While most people of intelligence understand that the notion of intellectual property must be examined, most of good heart want to redress how the system got so skewed that million (yes one every five seconds) of children die each year because their parents can not afford medication (the intellectual property of western pharmaceutical companies). It sickened me to hear a spokesperson for Merck Frost saying on the Radio that they would "fight to the end to protect their god given American right to their intellectual property" referring to a legal proceeding against South Africa for making anti AIDS drugs. Yes the pharmaceutical companies backed off, they have taken their fight to the WTO and the WIPO. Is the W3C interested in becoming an organization as politically charged as the WTO? Your actions in producing the RAND document are legitimizing current IP practices. They can not be taken without context. While intellectual property privileges should be extended to some people or organizations in some cases, they should not be treated as a right. No matter what your intentions are or how reasonable you believe you are being you are adding weight to a significant problem. This is not your mandate. You should not be taking political positions. IP is political it is part of a battle of intellectual colonialism some (not all) western corporations are waging against the peoples of the world. If you want to stay relevant you might want to give this battle a miss. Till yesterday the LUG site I administer had about 100 links to W3C they have been removed pending the outcome of this issue. If it is necessary for our movement to create a parallel standards board for the internet, it is almost certain your position will make many agencies governmental and non governmental throughout the world (those interested in maintaining open and free standards on the net) party to this project. If the signatories of the RAND proposal ignore it, well no big deal, they have consistently ignored the W3C, unless you prove to be a useful tool in promoting their agenda. It is the open source and free software groups that take you seriously. Of these signatories to the RAND proposal not one has even a valid (well formed) home page as examined by the W3C validation service. http://ww.ibm.com, http://www.microsoft.com, http://www.msn.com, http://www.hotmail.com, OK MS three strikes your out. http://www.sun.com, http:www.apple.com http://www.hp.com, http://www.nortel.com Of course http://www.redhat.com has no errors. The W3C is an supposed to be organization that promotes transparency and open standards. To let organizations that don't even care enough to apply those standards set them is ludicrous. Yours truly, Alan Truesdale -- Alan Truesdale Web Manager http://www.mlug.ca alan@mlug.ca
Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 11:09:00 UTC