In Europe, film makers are reluctant to wean themselves from levies on equipment sales. From the consumer standpoint, the levies (i.e. taxes) are likely to grow, whereas the technology is likely to become cheaper. And then we would see some interesting developments in European cinema--perhaps a trend towards less obscure products for which more people would be willing to pay.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:22 PM | DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Tax-Funded IP

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With America as the number one innovating country in the world, its good to see other nations following our lead in "policy innovations." The latest example is India, in which a law similar to Bayh-Dole will be introduced to allow researchers working under public R&D money to obtain the IP to their work, thereby adding incentive for breakthrough and important discoveries.

(The) Indian Government plans to introduce a new US-type legislation to promote innovation and flexibility in the country's universities where scientists would be given ownership of IP for the first time for their creations, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said...

"In the winter session of Parliament, I will introduce the new legislation which is something like the Bayh-dole Act of the US, by which people in the university gets ownership to the IP they create."

"This is the model the US has adopted and this is the reason why the us is far ahead of anybody else"

posted by Noel Le @ 2:02 PM | Tax-Funded IP

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I found several reviews of the DoD's Open Technology Development report on Business Review Online and Info World. Neither even addresses finer points of the report. The Info World article goes as far as to refer to the US Defense Department’s plan as being about “how to make the DoD a participant in the wider software community…” Thats not the role of the DoD. This is the US Defense Department, not fun and games!!!

At least both DoD study reviews cite (but do not address) notable criticisms of extensive Defense open source deployment, which readers should consider.

Darl McBride, SCO Group CEO

"I assert that open source software - available widely through the Internet - has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities..."

Dan O’Dowd, CEO of embedded systems vendor Green Hills Software

"Now that foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists know that Linux is going to control our most advanced defense systems, they can use fake identities to contribute subversive software that will soon be incorporated into our most advanced defense systems."

posted by Noel Le @ 12:40 PM | Free Culture Movement , Tax-Funded IP

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Although open source proponents tout their development model and various success stories of open source technologies, little is said about whether open source facillitates frontier, pioneering innovation.

One of the differences between the open source and proprietary development models relates to the distinction of basic versus applied research. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab defines basic research as that which “lays down the foundation for the applied science that follows. If basic work is done first, then applied spin-offs often eventually result from this research.” Applied research is defined as “designed to solve practical problems of the modern world, rather than to acquire knowledge for knowledge's sake.” In the technology industries, basic research generally maps to R&D, and applied research to product development. Arguably, open source partakes very little in the former.

Continue reading Commercial Software and Open Source: Where is the Real Innovation? . . .

posted by Noel Le @ 4:07 PM | Free Culture Movement , Tax-Funded IP

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IDC predicts that open source software will meet "significant growth, fuelled in particular by the public sector." Thats great news for open source, and good for the government if indeed open source makes better products and provides more value than proprietary alternatives. When thinking of increased government use of open source, several questions deserve consideration however.

As I pointed out in my recent post on the Defense Department's "Roadmap" for Open Technology Development (OTD), government adoption of open source still faces many questions relating to IP and market issues. These include:

Does Internal Government Open Source Use Entail "Parallel" Shifts that Act as "Open Source Preferences" for External Contracts and Procurement?

OTD’s support of OSS aims not only to change software code practices inside the DoD, but also in supporting OSS more generally, stating that various DoD programs can “promote the use of OTD by forcing contractors to use OSS and promulgate those changes…back into the private sector or DoD enterprise.” 31.

Continue reading OSS Growth Fueled by Government, But Questions Remain . . .

posted by Noel Le @ 11:23 AM | Free Culture Movement , Tax-Funded IP

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The Open Technology Development (OTD) report by the Defense Department’s (DoD) Office of Advanced Systems and Concepts (ASC) makes recommendations on internal DoD software code practices, with consequent “parallel shift(s)” requiring adjacent changes in the DoD’s external technology acquisitions, contracts and procurement. 6. The stated goal of the OTD report is to make OSS the "default in the development of technology within the DoD.” 30. The underlying justification for OSS purports to help the DoD remedy the current situation where “software code is reused on a limited basis” and “sharing of code across the DoD enterprise does not occur.” 21. Consequently: “As a result the possibility that development funding is wasted by multiple efforts is high.” 21.

OTD entails “open standards, services based architectures, open source collaboration, and reference open source implementations.” 8. Thus, the OTD program would include “OSS initiatives (e.g., Linux and Apache)” but is not “limited to OSS development and licensing regimes (e.g., GPL), which enforce unlimited redistribution of code.” 8.

The main takeaways of the report:

An OSS “Roadmap”: The sweeping advocacy of OSS, lack of any real analysis, and presentation of an extensive plan for DoD OSS software policy implementation, suggest that the report compliments other substantive government OSS research. This is a “procedural,” not a “substantive” report.
Industrial Policy: Proposed partnering with open source companies through procurement and contracting suggests the report aims beyond the mere goals of costs savings and efficiency in DoD technological development.
OSS, Inside and Outside the DoD: Although purportedly geared at creating an “internal DoD OSS program,” the paper quickly points out that a “parallel shift” in the DoD’s external acquisitions and procurement must similarly adopt OSS centric strategies.
OSS and IP: IP legal issues receive mixed review, with some certainty over the status of non-distributed code within the DoD, but obvious confusion over code that would cross the DoD’s boundaries. The report is unquestionably unfriendly towards IP by highlighting the strengths of OSS without qualification and making statements such that IP can “bog down” good ideas as justification for an extensive internal DoD OSS policy.

Continue reading Is the DoD Proposing an Open Source Industrial Policy? . . .

posted by Noel Le @ 11:23 AM | Free Culture Movement , Tax-Funded IP

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Tom Bell had an interesting post on valuing copyrights. His hero, IP man, goes around buying copyrights and setting them free, paying market price and establishing their value.

Maybe because it is a holiday weekend and my tummy is fully of gourmet goods supplied by the in-laws, but I'm puzzled by this post. It seems to me that there is already an open market in copyrights--not the consumer end, where one is buying the license not the rights, but the market between publishers, authors, producers, creators, and so on. Mind you, they aren't buying rights to set them free, but I am not sure why the purpose for which they are being bought matters. Tom?

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 4:01 PM | Tax-Funded IP

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The European Union has released its Innovation Scorecard for 2005. The EU is behind:

The US and Japan are still far ahead of the EU25 as shown in Figure II. The innovation gap between the EU25 and Japan is increasing and the one between EU and US is close to stable.

I took a look at their methodology to see what, exactly, is being measured... that is, is this conclusion that the EU is behind a statistical phenomena? Or what?

Continue reading The EU Measures Innovation . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:41 PM | Big Tent , General , International , Patents , Tax-Funded IP , Universities

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The IHT printed a long letter from Alec van Gelder of International Policy Network responding to the dreadful copyright piece about which I blogged earlier.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 11:17 AM | Free Culture Movement , International , Tax-Funded IP

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Various media report that Japan's music publisher's association has requested that a fee be levied on iPods, now dubbed the "iPod" tax. This is interesting for a couple of reasons.

-It underscores the point I have made before, that those worried about the power of special interests in the copyright realm should be the last to support tax-based payment systems for IP.

-These fees to compensate media companies for piracy tend to be imposed on special purpose media (recordable tapes or disks, for example) or players like the iPod. Often, though, general purpose media such as the computers themselves are exempt. This means that the tax system penalizes the development of special purpose media. On the other hand, if the tax is extended to general purpose media, then it penalizes consumers who do not use their media for piracy.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:07 PM | Tax-Funded IP

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posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:43 AM | International , Tax-Funded IP

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posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:59 AM | Comments from Readers , Tax-Funded IP

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posted by Solveig Singleton @ 11:34 AM | Comments from Readers , Tax-Funded IP

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posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:59 PM | Comments from Readers , Tax-Funded IP

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posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:27 AM | Tax-Funded IP

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posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:39 AM | International , Tax-Funded IP

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