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Election 2006 (and beyond): Digital Copyright Canada
From: russell_-at-_flora.ottawa.on.ca (Russell McOrmond)
Date: 22 Nov 1999 08:36:40 -0500
---
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://russell.flora.org/work/>
http://www.wtocaravan.org/ The Canadian WTO Caravan
http://www.flora.org/flora.action-forum/765
Images of Ottawa showdown over affordable housing
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 15:47:45 +1100
From: Danny Yee <danny@thrud.anatomy.usyd.edu.au>
To: at-it@thrud.anatomy.usyd.edu.au
Subject: [AT-IT] a paper on information and communications for developing
countries
| From: Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>
| Date: 22 Nov 99 11:59:16
| Subject: Cf Oxfam paper on free software
| To: danny@anatomy.usyd.edu.au
|
|
| Low-Cost Strategies for ICT Deployment
| in Developing Countries
|
| by Roberto Verzola
|
|
| Introduction
|
| The distinguishing feature of the information sector of the
| economy lies in the nature of information. The unique features of this
| sector therefore are better appreciated by first studying the nature
| of information.
|
| Information refers to a new awareness which resolves existing
| uncertainty. It is non-material. An expectant mother, for instance,
| may be uncertain about the sex of her child. When the doctor tells
| her, "it's a girl," the uncertainty has been resolved. The mother has
| received the smallest amount of information possible: the resolution
| of uncertainty between two equally possible outcomes. This smallest
| measure of information is called the bit. There are millions of ways a
| blank page may be filled with letters. A poem by Shakespeare resolves
| this uncertainty by providing one of all possible ways and therefore
| provides the reader a much bigger amount of information (among other
| things of course). There are billions of ways bits may be strung up
| serially on the tracks of a diskette. A particular program represents
| one instance of these billions of possibilities, another example of
| information.
|
| The non-material nature of information distinguishes the
| information sector from two other major sectors of the economy. The
| industrial sector is the sector of material goods which are
| non-living. And the agricultural and fishery sector is the sector of
| living goods.
|
| While information itself is non-material, it may need a material
| medium for storage and persistence. The baby's sex is information
| stored in the doctor's mind, later copied to the mother's.
| Shakespeare's poems are stored in books, on paper and ink. Computer
| programs are stored on magnetic or optical media. [1]
|
| The development of new information and communications
| technologies (ICTs) has propelled the full emergence of the
| information economy by making it easier and easier to transfer
| information from one medium to another and from one form to another.
| Digital technologies have further revolutionized ICTs, by allowing
| these transfers and transformations to occur with no information loss.
| With today's technologies, the cost of replicating information without
| loss is approaching zero. I explained further the implications of such
| low replication cost in the article "Towards a Political Economy of
| Information" (URL: http://glocal.peacenet.or.kr/training/ ).
|
|
| High start-up costs, near-zero marginal costs
|
| From this, we note another distinguishing feature of information
| goods: while the cost of moving or copying them is approaching zero,
| the initial costs involved in creating new information or in building
| the infrastructure for moving and manipulating them remain relatively
| high.
|
| It takes a lot of effort to invent a new design, write a book, or
| develop software. But the cost of replicating them, once they are
| developed, is nearly zero. It also takes much resources to set up
| information infrastructures like transmitting stations, telephone
| exchanges, microwave repeaters, satellite facilities, copper and fiber
| optic lines, oceanic cables, etc. But once they are in place, the
| marginal cost of information transfer through these facilities is
| nearly zero.
|
| Because of this, ICTs are very often much more accessible to
| those who can afford the high start up costs, than to those who
| cannot, to the rich than to the poor. Yet, those who are privileged to
| have access will then enjoy much lower marginal costs than those who
| don't and will therefore be in a much better position to compete
| vis-a-vis the latter. In short, the rich will tend to become richer,
| and the poor poorer. While there will obviously be exceptions, the
| logic of the information sector -- with its very high entry costs and
| very low marginal costs for those who are in -- will generally work in
| favor of those who have the resources, capital and existing
| infrastructure to take full advantage of the benefits of ICTs.
|
|
| Form of income: Information rents
|
| Because of the high costs of entry, it is often those who have
| access to huge resources who are in a position to set up the
| facilities for full utilization of the technology. In terms of content
| and software tools, private investors who do so clinch their control
| through statutory monopolies like patents and copyrights, which grant
| them the exclusive right to use the resources they have developed. In
| terms of the communications infrastructure, the huge investments
| involved exclude all but a few huge firms, who then lease out the
| resource under their control to other users. Either way, private
| control over the software and hardware infrastructure enables the
| owners to extract rents over the information resource.
|
| This rent-seeking system eventually extracts from the public
| wealth that is way beyond the cost of setting up and maintaining the
| system. The rent-seekers of the cyber-economy, or the cyberlords,
| therefore become the superfluous and unwelcome propertied classes of
| the information economy. In the article "Cyberlords: the rentier class
| of the information sector", I discussed in detail the nature of this
| rent-seeking system and how it manages to concentrate wealth in the
| propertied class of the information economy.
|
|
| ICTs and the Internet: a critique
|
| In the articles "The Internet: A Second Opinion" (URL:
| http://glocal.peacenet.or.kr/training/ ) and "Globalization: The Third
| Wave" (URL: http://global.peacenet.or.kr/training/ ), I explained in
| more detail how the Internet has in fact become the leading edge of
| the global information economy, the new infrastructure for marketing
| the information products of the more technologically advanced
| countries. As such, it will will facilitate the intrusion of global
| capital into developing countries, the extraction of more wealth from
| these countries, and an even faster concentration of wealth among rich
| countries and global corporations. My critique of the new ICTs, best
| represented by the Internet, may be summarized as follows:
|
| - The entry costs are very expensive, and these entry costs recur
| every three to five years, as rapid obsolescence forces the frequent
| replacement of hardware and software. In effect, those who join the
| Internet are caught in a expensive technology trap. While many of the
| supposed benefits of these new ICTs may eventually prove to be
| illusory, the high costs of entry are very real.
|
| - In reality, the Internet is emerging as the infrastructure for
| the marketing and distribution of the information products of rich
| countries. The more it penetrates into developing countries, the
| greater the market of information economies expands.
|
| - The Internet will also facilitate rapid financial transactions
| which will benefit most the huge finance firms who have the
| facilities, clout and connection to take the best advantage of the new
| ICTs. These will all hasten the ongoing concentration of wealth.
|
| - ICTs will further weaken labor and strengthen capital, as
| machines are more and more in a position to replace labor and as the
| technology enables tighter management control. Many people will lose
| their jobs to machines, and new jobs created by new technologies will
| not be secure either, as they will also be under threat from a new
| round of replacement. On the other hand, ICTs will facilitate
| managing-at-a-distance even better than working-at-a-distance,
| empowering capital even more than labor.
|
| - The benefits of the Internet will be best enjoyed by those who
| live in countries where the ICT infrastructures are most developed.
| Most resources and effort spent on serving information on the Internet
| will not help the poorest and the least advantaged, who cannot afford
| commercial Internet services and whose lives revolve around basic
| needs and survival concerns.
|
| - Many of the promised benefits of the Internet will be as
| illusory as the broken promises of television, which has become the
| idiot box of the 20th century. The ongoing commercialization of the
| Internet will tend to turn it into the TV -- and idiot box -- of the
| 21st century.
|
| - In fact, very few seem to be looking at the negative effects of
| ICTs. The issue of radiation and its impact on human health persists
| -- from the near-microwave frequencies of the cell phone, to the
| video monitor radiation that direct shines on the user's eyes, to the
| very low frequency of power lines -- and remains a matter of dispute.
| The increasing dependence on computers for mental work, thinking, and
| even entertainment reminds us of the deleterious effects on the human
| body of machine-dependence and its resulting lack of exercise.
|
|
| To be connected or not?
|
| To some, these misgivings are enough reason to stay away from
| these technologies. Yet, the option to completely reject the new ICTs
| may have its own pitfalls. While one can argue that to use them is to
| immediately get trapped in a losing battle; one can also argue that
| not to use them is to lose the battle by default. But is the battle in
| the information arena in fact worth fighting, or are we simply being
| drawn away from what are real wealth -- our ecological wealth, our
| natural resources, our cultural heritage -- to be exchanged with
| virtual and perhaps illusory wealth?
|
| The answers do not come so easily. Perhaps, we need to know more
| about the technology itself and to dip one foot to check the waters
| while reserving the option to get out if sharks and crocodiles lie in
| wait.
|
| If a developing country -- fully aware of the pitfalls and traps
| that lie in wait -- nonetheless wants to tap ICTs and continue
| exploring the possibility of bringing their benefits to its people,
| what then are the options available to such a country? This is the
| question we will try to answer for the rest of this paper.
|
|
| Cost of entry is a barrier
|
| A real obstacle to the introduction of ICTs in a developing
| country is the high entry cost of the technologies.
|
| In the Philippines, for instance, the following summarizes the
| costs of providing 51% of Filipino families access to different
| technologies:
|
| Technology Current Cost per Total Cost for 51%
| Reach (%) family ($) reach (million $)
|
| B&W TV only 43% $ 100 $ 102 M
| Color TV only 14 300 1,413
| VCR 12 250 1,241
| Cable TV 2 1000 6,236
| Telephone 6 1000 5,727
| Fax 1 200 1,273
| Internet 0.1 1000 6,478
| CDROM/DVD 0.1 300 1,943
| Virtual Reality 0 2000 (?) 12,982
|
| Radio 84 10 20 (100% reach)
|
| Total 37,314
|
| Considering the rapid developments in the field, some of these
| technologies become obsolete rather quickly, forcing those who have
| made commitments to deploy them into another round of huge investments
| every few years or so.
|
|
| Responding to high costs
|
| The introduction of ICTs is clearly an expensive proposition for
| most developing countries. They compete for our peoples' time, skills
| and attention, taking resources away from essential activities like
| food production, health services, basic education and so on. Yet, the
| possibilities of the new technologies are also tantalizing, and many
| people sincerely feel that these technologies also have some benefits
| to offer and, properly deployed, can facilitate solutions in providing
| for basic needs.
|
| How does a poor country solve the problem of providing for its
| people facilities which are terribly expensive and which are hardly
| affordable? I propose a five-point strategy for doing so:
|
| - stick to the idea of appropriate technology, make do without
| the online frills, and concentrate on low-cost offline technologies,
| which can bring in the most essential services;
|
| - use free/open software where they are available, because they
| take full advantage of the benefits of pooling together the
| intellectual resources not only of a country but of the whole Internet
| community;
|
| - apply genuine compulsory licensing where commercial software is
| the only option; GCL is an internationally-recognized mechanism that
| allows poor countries access to technologies on their own terms;
|
| - set up public access stations that do not require the ordinary
| citizen to pay a fixed monthly charge; and
|
| - work out a system of public ownership over the hardware
| infrastructure to minimize rent-seeking by private interests, which
| can lead to further concentration of wealth.
|
|
| Appropriate technologies
|
| Countries must practise extreme care in selecting the
| technologies to tap, identifying those which are lower-cost, simpler,
| and capable enough to provide the most essential services. Often, as
| Schumacher pointed out, these are intermediate technologies, which
| greatly improve on the old ways of doing things but are very
| accessible to poor communities because the technologies are simpler
| and more affordable. Schumacher's ideas remains as relevant as ever in
| the information sector.
|
| An example of appropriate technology is low-power,
| community-based radio broadcasting. As the table of technology costs
| above shows in the case of the Philippines, this technology can
| provide 100% access and approximate interactivity with very affordable
| investments, while the more advanced technologies would require
| billions of dollars of investments every several years or so and yet
| leave half of the population unserved.
|
| In computer communications, appropriate technology would be
| offline technologies, i.e., technologies based on store-and-forward
| email and email-based services such as mailing lists, email-enabled
| access to ftp sites, Web sites, etc. Such technologies would be
| text-mostly, offline, low-bandwidth, and low-cost. They would run over
| the basic POTS ("plain old telephone system") network, instead of
| requiring a huge and expensive network of dedicated data lines.
|
|
| Free/open software
|
| The basic principle in overcoming high resource requirements is
| to pool meager resources and the share the benefits with as many
| people as possible. This is exactly what free/open software does: it
| pools the intellectual resources available over the Internet, and
| shares the results freely with the rest of the world.
|
| The result is something dramatic, effective and reliable.
| Free/open software have proven themselves equal to if not better than
| commercial software in terms of quality and reliability.
|
| The most popular example of this approach is the Linux/GNU
| operating system.
|
|
| A philosophy of freedom
|
| Linux represents a philosophy of freedom. It is freedom that
| makes free software like Linux/GNU "free": the freedom to use it; the
| freedom to copy and share it; and the freedom to modify it, because
| the source code is available.
|
| These freedoms are the mark of free software. A legal document
| called the General Public License (GPL) was carefully formulated by
| the Free Software Foundation, also headed by Richard Stallman, to
| protect these freedoms while the protected software goes through the
| process of use, sharing and modification. Thus, free software can also
| be defined as software that is protected under the GPL.
|
| The access to source code that Linux/GNU makes possible
| represents at the R&D level the same kind of pooling of resources, an
| approach perfectly suited to a poor country like the Philippines.
|
| The source code of a computer program is the equivalent of the
| schematic diagram of a piece of electronic equipment, the
| architectural plans of a building, or the mechanical drawings of a
| machine. Once a piece of equipment, a building, or a machine becomes
| complicated enough -- as most pieces of software are -- modification
| becomes extremely difficult without the corresponding schematic
| diagram, architectural plan, mechanical drawing, or source code.
|
| Microsoft doesn't make its source code available; Linux/GNU does.
| Since the Linux source code is available, Linux can be customized much
| more easily and flexibly than software without source code. Windows
| users have to wait a long time for an improved version of the software
| to be released by Microsoft. Linux is being improved all the time by
| the Internet community, which includes thousands of independent
| developers and programmers who volunteer their time and effort making
| the software faster, more robust, and generally better.
|
|
| Working in harmony with the nature of information
|
| One of the key concepts in ecology, is the idea of harmony. We
| must learn to search for harmony and to work for it, because the
| dynamic balance that it represents gives peace to our lives. Thus,
| today, it is now commonly accepted that we must work in harmony with
| nature instead of in opposition to it. For to conquer nature and to
| defeat it is, in truth, a self-defeating goal, because we are part of
| nature.
|
| Information has its own nature. It is non-material; basically a
| numeric measure of resolving uncertainty. By its nature, information
| is easy to duplicate at little cost, unlike material goods which
| require significant amounts of matter and energy to go into every
| unit. As the economist would say, the marginal cost of reproducing
| information approaches zero. It is this nature of information which
| determines its social character, why people tend to copy it, to share
| it, to exchange it. As the mathematician would say, the acquisition of
| information is not a zero-sum game, it is a positive sum-game. To use
| a popular term today, sharing information goods like software is a
| "win-win" situation, because you do not lose what you give away.
|
| Free software like Linux/GNU works in harmony with the nature of
| information, because it recognizes and takes advantage of its social
| nature. Intellectual property rights (IPR) like software copyrights,
| on the other hand, work against the nature of information because they
| create statutory monopolies that artifically create information
| scarcity, so that the privileged monopolists can dictate their price
| of a good that, by nature, is easily available to all once created.
|
| That is why, despite that power of Bill Gates and his fellow
| cyberlords, they will never be able to completely implement their
| so-called property rights over information, because they work against
| the very nature of information. The social nature of information will
| continually assert itself and people will continue to copy and to
| share whatever information they find useful and worth sharing. On the
| other hand, free software and its copying license, the GPL, work in
| perfect harmony with the nature of information. In the future, IPR
| will become obsolete and GPL and similar practices consistent with
| information's social nature will become the general rule.
|
| When we work in harmony with the nature of information, it
| becomes easier to improve, and its quality, reliability and usefulness
| rised rapidly This is probably why Linux is superior to Microsoft
| Windows in many respects. It can do many tasks (multitasking) and
| service many users (multiuser) at the same time. It has all the
| facilities for communicating with other computers (networking): it can
| be used as a workstation, as a server, or both; e-mail is built-in;
| and it is Internet-ready. Linux can also be configured with a
| graphical user interface. Unlike Windows which inexplicably stops
| every now and then (sometimes taking your work file with it), Linux
| machines run twenty-four hours a day for months with no problem. Ask
| any local Internet service provider (ISP): many use Linux, hardly any
| uses Windows NT.
|
| Linux, furthermore, is Unix-compatible, a Unix look-alike. Who
| hasn't heard of Unix? It is THE operating system, the one which runs
| on almost every computer from lowly 386s to supercomputing Crays.
| Nearly all computer science departments in every self-respecting
| university in the world use Unix as their platform for teaching and
| research. The latest developments in computer science often make their
| appearance on Unix first, before trickling down later to other
| operating systems like Microsoft Windows or the Mac OS.
|
| Social movements and non-government organizations (NGOs) should
| look beyond the cost effectiveness of Linux, into its philosophy of
| freedom in software. It is a philosophy consistent with the advocacies
| of cause-oriented groups, voluntary associations and alternative
| movements -- a philosophy of pooling resources, sharing, and working
| in harmony with nature and with information.
|
|
| Genuine compulsory licensing (GCL)
|
| If the General Public License (GPL) ensures public access to
| free/open software, genuine compulsory licensing (GCL) provides an
| internationally-recognized mechanism for public access to commercial
| software and other copyrighted or patented goods.
|
| GCL works as follows: Somebody who wants to use/commercialize
| patented or copyrighted material approaches NOT the patent or
| copyright holder, but the government for a license to do so. The
| government grants the license, whether the original patent or
| copyright holder agrees or not, but compels the local licensee to pay
| the patent/copyright holder a royalty rate that is fixed by law. Many
| countries in the world have used and continue to use compulsory
| licensing for important products like pharmaceuticals and books, in
| order to bring down their prices and make them more affordable to
| ordinary citizens.
|
| GCL would legalize the operations of computer shops which offer
| copying of commercial software as a service to the public, but would
| require these shops to pay a reasonable royalty -- usually between 5
| and 10 percent of the local price of copied item -- to the original
| copyright owners. It would allow the government television channel,
| for instance, to show on television the Discovery Series, while paying
| a reasonable royalty set by law.
|
| Genuine compulsory licensing (also called mandatory licensing in
| some countries) is a demand of many countries who want to access
| technologies but cannot afford the price set by patent/copyright
| holders. While this internationally-recognized mechanism was meant for
| the benefit of poorer countries, even the U.S. and many European
| countries use it.
|
| In the article "Cyberlords: the rentier class of the information
| sector", I explained why GCL is an important demand which not only
| helps poor countries to acquire access to expensive technologies on
| their own terms, but which also splits the cyberlord class because
| small cyberlords welcome GCL while big cyberlords oppose it.
|
| When referring to compulsory licensing, it is important to
| emphasize that it must be genuine, because the GATT/WTO agreement pays
| lip service to compulsory licensing but defines it in a way that
| negates its essential purpose by giving back to cyberlords the power
| to set the terms of the license.
|
|
| What about hardware?
|
| Even free software like Linux/GNU are expensive in terms of the
| hardware necessary to run them and the time needed to learn them, to
| master them, and to modify them for our particular requirements. These
| additional investments have to be justified vis-a-vis the competing
| requirements of our impoverished people, only a small minority of
| which have access to potable water, to medical care or to a telephone.
|
| Unlike information goods, hardware is material. Therefore, the
| cost of replicating hardware and building infrastructure cannot take
| advantage of the near-zero marginal cost that information goods enjoy.
| Harware is therefore expensive.
|
| To look at the options open to a developing country which wants
| to provide access to ICTs to its citizens despite the huge capital
| requirements for doing so, it is useful to go back to the information
| superhighway analogy. A government which wants to provide universal
| access to transportation services will have the following approaches
| available:
|
| * one family / one car
| * walkways, bicycles
| * efficient public transport
|
| Most U.S. cities have taken the first approach. This is
| unfortunately the default approach taken by many developing countries,
| which mistake a car-oriented society as a mark of progress. This
| misguided policy is further encouraged by industrial economies which
| export cars and other transport equipment to developing countries. A
| common way of doing so is by granting loans to cash-strapped
| governments to enable them to engage in road-building sprees so that
| people will buy more cars. We know today that this approach is
| unsustainable even for rich countries which may be able to afford
| them. There will certainly be not enough resources available to
| provide the metal as well as the fuel necessary to provide one car for
| every Indian or Chinese family. Even if there were, our atmosphere
| will never be able to accomodate the highly pollutive as well as
| greenhouse gases that will be emitted as a result of such an approach.
|
| Despite this, many developing countries continue to consider
| increasing car ownership as an indicator of national progress.
|
| The second approach would emphasize non-motorized transport
| systems like covered walkways and bike paths. To a poor country,
| bicycle manufacturing is much more technologically accessible than car
| manufacturing. It will also require much less in terms of a road
| network and fuel. This is, recalling Schumacher, appropriate
| technology.
|
| The third approach is one that emphasizes public access to a
| commonly-owned resource that is too expensive to be acquired on an
| individual basis. It nicely complements the second approach.
|
| While the three approaches are not necessarily mutually
| exclusive, it often happens that one option precludes the other. In
| Metro Manila, for instance, government transport policies were heavily
| biased in favor of private cars, resulting in a rapid increase in
| private car ownership in the region. As the traffic situation
| deteriorated and road congestion worsened, it became very difficult to
| expand public transport services as the politically powerful car lobby
| insisted on retaining the private car biases in the government's
| transport policies. Therefore, instead of improving the bus and
| jeepney system, the government took the much more expensive option of
| building overhead rail systems, which will displace buses and jeepneys
| and free more roads for even more private cars.
|
| Had the government paid early attention to the development of
| alternative transport systems like walkways, bike paths and an
| efficient public bus system, middle class families would not have
| found the private car a necessity for urban living, and neither would
| it have been necessary to build very expensive overhead rail-based
| systems. The experience of Curitiba in Brazil is a good example of
| this enlightened approach.
|
| Unfortunately, government are often drawn away from this
| enlightened approach by the attractive loans dangled before them by
| countries who want them to build more roads instead so that they can
| buy more cars.
|
| The clear lesson from this experience is that an early
| enlightened approach can make it much easier for a government to
| provide universal public access at a much lower cost, than if market
| forces were allowed to rule and set the direction of development of
| services. Letting the "free market" direct the deployment of
| infrastructure would lock a country into very expensive options which
| are most beneficial only for the suppliers of the technology.
|
| Let us now pose the question: what would be the analogue in the
| information sector of walkways, bike paths, and an efficient public
| transport system, the approach that makes much more sense,
| particularly to developing countries, that the one-family, one-car
| approach?
|
|
| The hardware solution: public facilities / universal access
|
| Publicly-owned, publicly-accessible facilities represent this
| strategy of resource-pooling and resource-sharing, a proven strategy
| among poor countries. This approach contrasts sharply with what seems
| today to be the dominant idea for introducing ICTs: "a computer on
| every desktop," recalling the "one family, one car" approach in the
| transportation sector.
|
| These two contrasting approaches are as follows:
|
| - public libraries vs. a library in every home
| - public viewing centers vs. a television in every home
| - public calling stations vs. a telephone in every home
| - the public access terminals vs. a computer on every desktop
|
| The first represents a community-oriented approach that
| emphasizes sharing and minimizes cost; the second represents an
| individualistic approach that creates a huge demand for suppliers.
|
| It is clear what strategy the ICT industry wants governments to
| take. It is also clear what strategy will be able to deliver universal
| access at a cost which cash-strapped governments can afford.
|
| Unfortunately, many governments do not give this issue much
| thought, and accept without question the approach which the ICT
| industry is taking. The Philippine government, for instance, had in
| 1998 a project to install a public calling station in every one of the
| 1,500 municipalities of the country. The budget for the project was
| drastically reduced; instead the government is relying on private
| telcos to install telephones, which they are doing, but mostly in
| urban centers, and the target is to install one in every home.
|
|
| Public ownership of the infrastructure
|
| Because the ICT infrastructure is very expensive, the effort to
| set it up presents an opportunity for collective pooling of resources
| by an entire community. Once the infrastructure is set up, it can then
| offer universal access, charging only enough to maintain good quality
| service and provide for future requirements. This is the rationale for
| public ownership of natural monopolies and large infrastructures.
|
| To open such public works to private ownership open the door to
| rent-seeking with no time bound, extracts additional cost from users
| to support the profit-driven rent-seekers who will charge as much as
| the market will bear, and contributes to the further concentration of
| wealth in the hands of the rich. Because of the low marginal costs of
| moving and reproducing information goods, the information sector
| attracts more than its usual share of rent-seekers. A conscious effort
| by the government to encourage public or community ownership of ICT
| infrastructures can avoid this problem.
|
|
| Conclusion: The Philippine Greens' Programme for the Information
| Sector
|
| Within the Philippine Greens, we have developed a critical
| analysis of the emerging global information economy and have
| formulated what we believe is an appropriate set of responses to the
| entry into our country of the Internet and various other information
| and communications technologies (ICTs). This set of responses contains
| many of the elements discussed above, as well as other policies which,
| we hope, represent a well-rounded policy framework for the information
| sector.
|
| These information policies include:
|
| 1. The right to know. It is the government's duty to inform its
| citizens about matters that directly affect them, their families or
| their communities. Citizens have the right to access these
| information. Neither the State nor private corporations may use
| "national security", "confidentiality of commercial transactions", or
| "trade secret" as reasons to curtail this right.
|
| 2. The right to privacy. The government must not probe the private
| life of its citizens. Citizens have the right to access information
| about themselves which have been collected by government agencies. The
| government must not centralize these separate databases by building a
| central database or by adopting a unified access key to the separate
| databases. Nobody should be forced against their will to reveal any
| information they do not want to make public.
|
| 3. No patenting of life. The following, whether or not modified by
| human intervention, may not be patented: life forms, biological and
| microbiological materials, biological and microbiological processes,
| genetic information.
|
| 4. The moral rights of intellectuals. Those who actually create an
| intellectual work or originate an idea have the right to be recognized
| that they did so. Nobody may claim authorship of works or ideas they
| did not originate. No one can be forced to release or modify a work or
| idea if he or she is not willing to do so. These and other moral
| rights of intellectuals will be respected and protected.
|
| 5. The freedom to share. The freedom to share and exchange
| information and knowledge must be recognized and protected. This
| freedom must take precedence over information monopolies such as
| intellectual property rights (IPR) that the State grants to
| intellectuals.
|
| 6. Universal access. The government will facilitate universal
| access by its citizens to the world's storehouse of knowledge. Every
| community needs access to books, cassettes, videos, tapes, radio and
| TV programs, software, etc. The government will set up a wide range of
| training and educational facilities to enable community members to
| continually expand their know-how and knowledge.
|
| 7. Compulsory licensing. Universal access to information content
| is best achieved through compulsory licensing. Under this
| internationally-practiced mechanism, the government itself licenses
| others to copy patented or copyrighted material for sale to the
| public, but compels the licensees to pay the patent or copyright
| holder a government- set royalty fee. This mechanism is a transition
| step towards non-monopolistic payments for intellectual activity.
|
| 8. Public stations. Universal access to information infrastructure
| is best achieved through public access stations, charging subsidized
| rates. These can include well-stocked public libraries; public
| telephone booths; community facilities for listening to or viewing
| training videos, documentaries, and the classics; public facilities
| for telegraph and electronic mail; educational radio and TV programs;
| and public stations for accessing computer networks.
|
| 9. The best lessons of our era. While all knowledge and culture
| should be preserved and stored for posterity, we also need to distil
| the best lessons of our era, to be taught -- not sold -- to the next
| generations. There should be a socially- guided, diversity-conscious
| selection, undertaken with the greatest sensitivity and wisdom. It is
| not something that can be left to a profit-oriented education system,
| to circulation- or ratings-driven media, or to consumption-pushing
| advertising.
|
| The information economy is growing at a phenomenal rate, often
| independently of the capacity of communities to absorb it, or of
| governments to control it. This growth is driven mostly by global
| forces external to our own society but very much present within it.
|
| Left by themselves, these global forces will simply treat our
| country and our communities as fodder for their relentless drive in
| search of profit and growth. On the other hand, we want the balanced
| development and interaction of our agricultural, industrial and
| information sectors in a way that enhances the overall quality of life
| in our communities. These are often orthogonal, if not opposite
| directions.
|
| To be able to attain that dynamic balance between these sectors
| so that they enhance each other and contribute to the overall health
| and sustainability of our communities -- this is the challenge of the
| information sector.
|
|
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