writing to ms. boland
The following call to action from Larry Lessig's Blog is WELL worth your consideration. While many may think that this is not directly within the mission of the Domain Name Rights Coalition, strongarming of user, author, and intellectual property holders' rights by monied corporate interests is precisely one of the things that the DNRC wishes to fight. In this case, open source software is software governed by copyright laws, in which the intellectual property holder has made a decision of how to use his or her rights in order to benefit the industry and users as a whole. It recalls the original constitutional reason for the grant of intellectual property rights; in order to provide incentive for creation of works that will eventually be brought into the public domain. Only in certain cases is that incentive solely monetary.
The pattern followed by corporate interests who feel threatened by non monetary incentives for creation of useful works is precisely the same as has occurred with regard to domain name holders offering information that may harm the current status quo. In many cases, it is easier to stifle the easy accessability to that information by taking access to intuitive domain names, than to do what they truly desire - silencing the speaker.
Those concerned with domain name rights must also be concerned with any other practices in which corporate power is used to strongarm individuals and organizations into limiting discourse. Please consider writing to Ms. Boland, a government employee paid with your tax dollars, and helping to educate her as to the real issues in these cases.
From Larry Lessig's Blog:
Ed Black of the Open Source and Industry Alliance has written Ms. Lois Boland a very nice and good letter about the recent statements about “open source.”
Meanwhile, there’s much reporting that Microsoft is behind the lobbying to kill the WIPO meeting. I don’t know anything about that (for some reason, I’ve been removed from Mr. Gates’ lobbying-strategy list). But it is useful to contrast the sophisticated, moderate, and well-informed work of Microsoft’s GC, Brad Smith, about “open source” software, recently published in a Joint AEI/Brookings book.
In addition to Ed Black’s letter, and perhaps letters from you, she might find Brad Smith’s essay useful.
[Lessig Blog]