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Mar. 29  2024
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Digital Information For Whom?

Possessing what is to be shared among everyone is a monopolistic capitalism harming the intellectual mind and right of everyone.

Source  :  BASE21

On March 4, 2000, the Jinbo Network Center(Korean Progressive Network) has requested that the judgement of the patent on the 'Remote Education via Internet' of Samsung Electronics Co. Limited be invalidated. (Refer to http://networker.jinbo.net/nopatent/ for more details on the Samsung Electronics patent.) After a year of examinations, the patent judge has dismissed the request and accepted the contention from Samsung Electronics on January 13, 2001. (From the "The viewpoint of civil society groups about the dismissal of the request on invalidity of Samsung Electronics 'Remote Education via Internet' patent'".)

More and more patents on internet business models are increasingly appearing recently. The government seems to be endeavoring to strengthen the intellectual property rights on internet information. This current has started by the amendment of computer program protection laws in 1998 and property rights law in 1999. This is more distinct by the promotion of digital contents nurture measures as a main policy direction of the Ministry of Information & Communication for the year 2001. Further more obtaining a patent on a internet business model(internet business method) is becoming more simple than before that with only a creative idea almost anyone can possess a exclusive status on information. A typical example from last year is the Samsung Electronics patent on the remote education system and equipment via internet. This patent is no more different than any other educational sites(ex, Cyber Universities etc.) formed on-line. The problem is the comprehensive right established about the patent on remote education via the internet. If the patent right is approved and employed almost all on-line education institutions currently in service must give up business or pay royalty to Samsung Electronics. Resulting that any simple idea may obtain exclusive rights on any information.
In fact, cases similar to Samsung Electronics are increasing abroad like the One-click Purchasing patent of the world famous internet bookstore Amazon(www.amazon.com). Since Amazon has the patent of the One-Click Purchasing method, other internet bookstore are forbidden to use this method. The idea which Amazon has obtained a patent for, has been commonly used on other internet businesses before but even though it is not an original idea, the Office of Patent Administration of America has permitted it. For this reason, Amazon's competitive enterprise, Barnes & Noble was implicated to an infringement of patent from Amazon. (For more detail visit http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/amazon.ko.html)
The information recognized as public property and was publicly accessed by people has been placed under the category of intellectual property rights and is intercepted from the public by copyrights and patents as the digital society prospered. IPLeft(intellectual Property Left) is a common intellectual property rights group active in domestic intellectual property rights. The IPLeft has analyzed this situation from a "Capitalistic Expansion" point of view as the following:
"Capitalism has continuously grown 'capitalistic commodity' from agricultural products to industrial products and then onto service and financing. As the latter period of industry society neared, scientific technique has immediately linked to commodity production and this meant that technology itself carries a value as a product. Especially as the market moved from offline to online, commodity circulation and relating various information or ideas and also consumer information has become an important production
element and commodity as well as the technology and knowledge.In this digital society, the economical result depends on how efficiently information resources which are the core of society are protected and how active production and circulation is occurring. And to follow this, the point operation to propel information commercialization is to legislate 'intellectual property' which is the logic of capital. But this kind of legal regulation is protecting the monopolized information of specific individual or enterprise. And also, suppresses the public access of the existing information. and deepens the gap of information ownership which gives a restraint onto development of new technology. As an example, in the case of the AT&T of America in 1875, existing patents were all collected to secure monopoly of the telephone. Leading into a making the introduction of the common radio late for about 20 years. And when looking upon the whole world, 84% of registrated patents from developing countries until the 1980s were already owned by advanced countries. About only 5-10% is applied in developing countries production. This stiffens the situation of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer upon information and also provokes an ironic condition of the Third World having to receive permission from advanced countries before even using information about their own country. The insistence of commercializing information for high quality can bring risks of monopolizing this kind of information.
The founder of the American Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Perry Barlow points out about copyright and patents in "The Death of Property in Cyberspace: Practical Economic Alternatives" as the following. "In the traditional intellectual property rights, it was the bottle, not the wine which was protected."
This is, traditional ownerships like copyrights and patents are subjected to corporeal property, so the insistence in possessing intangible assets like information has many contradictions in reality. As an example, the patent dispute on knowledge like computer programs and internet business programs where there is no material but only an definite idea being The international active leader of the copyleft movement, professor at MIT in
America and also the originator of GNU/LINUX, Richard Stallman is strongly asserting the overall abolition on patents and copyright law system.
The gigantic ideology called 'digital revolution' is based on the speculation of public information. This society where the common information and knowledge for anyone is commercialized in front of the large argument of capitalism, must indeed sublate from the public domain called the internet.
In fact, in the case of Richard Stallman, he promote the GNU project and is setting about the Free Software Movement presently to block the building up flow of this intellectual property rights founded from the new liberalism of the western society. (For more information on the GNU project visit http://www.gnu.org)
Cyber space, known as a space of liberation to everyone. The contradiction point relating to the copyright of information as observed above has an absolute joker face with two faces. Information as a public property is not to be monopolized by a specific individual or enterprise in the capitalistic angle, but is to be approached freely by anyone.
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