[Patents] UKPTO to extend IP cult to schools

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

Under

        http://www.patent.gov.uk/about/press/releases/2001/copyrightcrime.htm

you find an UKPTO press release that reads as follows:

              The law alone is not enough to stop copyright crime
                                       
   In the digital age, legislation on its own is not enough to stop
   copyright infringement, warns Anthony Murphy, Director of Copyright at
   the UK Patent Office.
   
   Mr Murphy said: "We need to change people's attitudes, the importance
   of respecting and valuing copyright needs to be realised
   internationally, wherever books are read or music is listened to."
   
   "The idea that counterfeiting and piracy are victimless crimes is an
   all too common perception. Intellectual property crime has a huge
   impact on local communities and local jobs and can be linked to the
   deadliest forms of organised crime."
   
   Copyright law may have emerged victorious from its tussle with music
   swapping site Napster, but Mr Murphy feels that this is just the first
   round in the 21st century copyright fight and wants more than
   legislation in his armoury. "Napster was easy to sue because it had a
   base in California, but more sophisticated rivals don't have a central
   file server, so are very difficult to pin down. Where do you sue
   them?"
   
   Copyright crime
   
   In Autumn 2002, a new subject, Citizenship, is being introduced into
   the National Curriculum in UK secondary schools. Its aim is to teach
   children how to be good, moral citizens and Anthony Murphy believes
   the subject would be an ideal vehicle for teaching children about
   intellectual property.
   
   "By bringing awareness of the importance of copyright into our
   schools, tomorrow's consumers can take their place in a community
   which understands, values and respects intellectual property."
   
   The creative industries in the UK are worth £60 billion (pounds
   sterling) annually - about 4% of the GDP - and last year accounted for
   £7 billion (pounds sterling) in exports. They employ 1.4 million
   people and collectively grow twice as fast as the UK economy as a
   whole.
   
   Further information on patents, trademarks, registered designs and
   copyright can be found on this web site or by visiting the government
   Intellectual Property Portal at: [13]www.intellectual-property.gov.uk

The problem here is that the UKPTO is mixing up problems and presenting a
one-sided view.

Remuneration of copyright is often based on a situation similar to the
prisoner's dilemma of game theory: if a fair copyright regime is found and a
minimum number of people are willing to support it for ethical reasons, then
this will be in the interest of everybody.  Those who undercut such regimes
for their own benefit, don't deserve our moral support.  There is nothing
morally glorious about pirating commercial software, and "sharing to help
one's neighbour" is usually not a good excuse.  Good Citizienship always
entails a certain willingness to choose the public interest over one's own,
when faced with the prisoner's dilemma.  And copyright of proprietary
information is such a situation.

However in many cases the proprietors of copyright do not treat us as good
citiziens in the first place.  The relationship between both sides is poisoned
from the start.  By complying with the terms of the proprietor, I pull
everybody into a lock-in situation, and I don't necessarily reward anything
that is really worth rewarding.  Moreover the software is priced at a level
where it is very unlikely in the first place that anybody will behave like a
good citizien.  The proprietor himself does everything to not allow good
citizienship to happen, perhaps because he has no confidence in it in the
first place.  In that case, the only morally acceptable option is to opt out
of the game altogether and instead support free software.

So far, digital copyright is largely in such a state, where it is not designed
toward the "good citizien", and thus putting it into curricula for good
citizienship is somewhat cynical, especially when the addressees of the
"ethics" teaching are children in an uncritical age.  This again makes one
think of 

      Richard Stallman's grim vision of a civil war about the "Right to Read"
      http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

who envisages a systematic indoctrination of school children with an unnatural
system of copyright ethics. 

What makes this look even more cynical is that the proposal comes from the
patent office.  The patent system has increasingly maneuvered itself into a
situation of moral bankruptcy, where it can no longer rely on anything but
brute force for the acceptance of its rulings.  The UKPTO is among those
patent offices who have been granting patents on non-technical rules of
calculation and organisation, contrary to the letter and spirit of the written
law and of the customary consensus on the scope of the patent system as a
system for rewarding technical inventions (and not just any kinds of good
ideas) by a time-limited monopoly.  One of the reasons why this has happened
lies precisely in the fact that the people at the patent offices have become
imbued with an ideology of "intellectual property" which is no longer rooted
in any balanced consideration of economic tradeoffs.  One could suspect that
they now want to extend the increasingly sectarian nature of their patent
movement to the defenseless children in British schools.
 
When law and ethics drift apart, as Mr. Murphy seems to be complaining, then
it is first of all the responsibility of political decisionmakers like Murphy
to do something to bring them back together.

See also 

    http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=01/06/05/2338246

for some discussions and links concerning this issue.

--
Hartmut Pilch                                           http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation        http://swpat.ffii.org/
79100 signatures against software patents     http://petition.eurolinux.org/