A string of conferences on the politics of IP law, knowledge access and authorhip/invention are right around the corner:

March 11-12 at Stanford U is the Cultural Environmentalism at 10 conference. It is nice to see so many female participants as males tend to dominate the public speaking circuit. As excellent as this conference looks, my only beef is that is seems a little lawyer heavy with Siva the only non-lawyer participant.

In late April, the Yale Information Society Project is hosting an ambitious and broad conference, A2K . Similar in theme to Stanford’s focus on environmentalism, it is going to tackle a wider range of questions and issues that include everything from medicine to agriculture. If you are within 2-4 hours of New Haven, this is not to be missed.

Well, unless you are already committed to another conference, like I am. During the same weekend, there is a working conference Con/texts of invention where participants will pre-circulate papers and hash out questions and comments related to modes of authorship and invention across a range of scientific and literary fields.

Ho

The Boston Globe published a scathing op-ed, How drug lobbyists influence doctors.

But I write not about politicians (plenty of people are doing that already), but about similar corruptive influences in medicine. While lobbying groups spend about $2 billion to convince politicians to do their bidding, pharmaceutical companies spend nearly 10 times that much to influence the nation’s 600,000 to 700,000 physicians to prescribe the newest and most expensive drugs. I imagine that many people who regularly watch television assume that the companies are spending most of their advertising budget to influence consumers, but no. Nearly 85-90 percent is spent on doctors, for free drug samples, speaker’s fees, consultation fees, and ”educational” grants.

Here are two good pieces that address the broader ethical implications and political consequences of nanotech and open source:

Revolution in a Box: the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology also has a good discussion on whether open source is feasible for nanotech production, and how it may provide for a more or less ethical brakes in nanotech.

Convergence brings together various luminaries, academics, and acitivists who participate in various social movements, that while distinct, all concern the law of intellectual propert. Here these folks provide us with some thoughts on some of the broader implications of open source in shifitng the global politics of IP. (more…)

A couple of weeks ago, at the CCA we had the pleasure of having a guest speaker: David Post. A law professor (and so much more if you read his bio) from Temple University, he writes on issues related to freedom and cyberspace. He is now working on a book, tentatively titled Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (check out some sections here. )

As he explained, the book uses a Jeffersonian framework (apparently Jefferson was quite interested in how to make the republican nation “scale” and he used the natural world as his guide), to think about the nature of the Internet and questions of scaling. At some point during our discussion, he referred to Jefferson as “the patron saint of hackers.” I, of course, got incredibly exicted when he said that (mostly because it was so right on and so darn eloquent too), but also because it captures how liberal ideals, live on, in radically different contexts. Of course most hackers and geeks have not read Notes on the state of Viriginia (Jefferson’s only book) nor do most house a small corner candlelight shrine of Jefferson atop of their Linux box (though perhaps they should).

But some of his most well known ideas, continue to have salience (you know, the famous, That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. “)

The fact that Jefferson acts a potent present-day icon demonstrates one example of how long-standing liberal values become practically articulated and revisioned. Of course they change, and the reasons for which TJ may act as a signpost often has more to do with present day conditions, than those of the past, but his example, and his ghost existence all over the web, is one way to think of both the cultural life of liberalism as well as the continuities, as well as transformations, with liberalism of times past.

Greg Lastowka , another fellow at the CCA, is also interested in cyberlaw, freedom, and all that good jazz and he recently passed along an article, Would Jefferson have googled? reporting on a speech by U of Michigan president Sue C. where she argues for the importance of Google Print.

All of this talk of liberalism and culture, reminds me that I should post a class syllabus I have recently developed “The Cultural Life of Liberalism” that is a first attempt to broaden the ways in which anthropologists approach liberalism as a cultural formation (outside of questions of multiculturalism, which has been covered quite exquisitely). Hopefully it will be up in the next few days and I can receive some feeback.

The Wall Street Journal has published an informative article A Doctor’s Fight, More Forced Mental Health Care, on new legal and health care delivery trends targeted at those diagnosed with severe mental illness. The man behind the changes is Dr. Torrey, and his main line of argument is that forced treatment keeps those with mental illness from acting out violentally and thus makes for a safer society. The artlice could have given more ample voice to those who oppose these laws. But it does give a sense of the stakes and the ethical problems behind forced drugging.

Since WSJ requires subscription, you can find portions of the article here

Mako Hill has written a short but important piece providing some clarity over the stakes and limits of revising the GPL.

The EFF is leading a class action suit against AT&T for helping the NSA spy on us (take note of clever AT&T logo redesign)

The Economist has a decent article, Desperate Measures that examines not only why the American system of health care is broken but is headed for even more perilous times (take note the usually pro-privitization, pro-consumer stance of the Economist at the end, actually and surprisingly gives way to a sensible claim:

The logic of consumer-driven health care assumes that unnecessary doctor visits and procedures lie at the heart of America’s health-care inflation. And it assumes that individual patients can become discerning consumers of health care. Both are questionable. Most American health-care spending is on people with chronic diseases, such as diabetics, whose health care costs many thousands of dollars a year, easily exceeding even high deductibles.)

My friend over at Spam has been tracking and commenting on the “are google two-timing jerks, now doing ‘some evil’ debacle concerning China and censorship. I have a keen interest in the topic, less because of the human rights issues (which I find fascinating) but because this is the most visible test case that challenges, one may say painfully grinds against, Google’s “Do No Evil” Policy and reveals the depth and stakes of their little social experiment.

I was far from surprised that Google, when it went public, attempted to infuse the hacker ethical spirit into the corporation, which was built, garage on up, on the spirit and literally foundation of open source software. The fact that they were throwing around such talk, reminded me that one of the questions about hacker ethical discourse I have my students probe is: why are hackers and geek-types so quick to pronounce hacker ethical talk (and in such a clear and well-formulated way)?

There is no one answer to this (and I wrote a dissertation that addresses this question and perhaps only gets at small percentage of the answer because the answer is lies in multiple threads of analysis) but, I think, there is something about where they work, i.e., the corporation, that lends itself toward a heightened discussion of ethics. Hackers are bodies who labor, day in, and day out, in a context that is often, at some level (though not total) a threat to the hacker ethical imperative for technical sovereignty. These threats come in various forms, but the two most persistent and locally visible are the figure of the manager (conduits, though, for much larger corporate decisions) and the various bundles of rights (or restrictions, depending on your perspective) collected under the banner of intellectual property law. Within the a context of low -grade constant threat, hacker ethical discourse is pronounced, and omni-present, a sort of weak form of innoculation, that serves to remind them what is “right” and it is the not necessarily the road less traveled, but the road that leads to the best technical solution. And this ethical presence is marked in everything from modes of comportment, styles of dress, and of course joking.. (usually derisive jokes about managers, common in Dilbert).

But as Thorstein Veblen wrote so long ago, the corporate imperative for maximal profits can conflict with churning out the “best quality” technology or product and in fact can managers to “sabotage” the corporation’s material capacities, if this will in some fashion, render the corporation, ruled by absentee owners, more profitable. Veblen writes:

“But it is equally evident that the owner or manager of any given concern or section of this industrial system may be in a position to gain something for himself at the cost of the rest by obstructing, retarding or dislocating this working system at some critical point in such a way as will enable him to get the best of the bargain in his dealings with the rest (vested interest, p. 93). In the Vested Interests, and other books, Veblem champions an engineering ethic that holds many affinities with the hacker” (Oh how he would have simply loved free and open source production).

Decades letter Tracey Kidder, in his masterful account Soul of a New Machine tells the story of a team of computer engineers at Data General Corporation driven to make the best evah’ computer, but alas, there are problems littered due to management. He captures the tension between the mandates of sound engineering and the mandates of sound business practice. The book ends with a somewhat dramatic commentary on the tension:

“The day after the formal announcement, Data General’s famous sales force had been intrudiced to the computer in New York and elsewhere. At the end of the presentation for the samles personell in New York, the regional sales manager got up and give his troops a pep talk.
“What motivates people?” he asked.
He answered his own question, saying, “Ego and the money to buy things that they and
their families want.”
It was a different game now. Clearly, the machine no longer belonged to its makers.”

Thanks to things like open source, the Internet, and most importantly, legal insturments, the machine, in the form of code, does or can belong to its makers…

That aside, what is so interesting about Google’s “Do No Evil” Mantra, is that it is a reflexive regognition that things can go amiss in a corporation, that there is a tension, especially in a public company, between management and the technical comrades, between the stockholders and the employees. And with some understanding of tension, they crafted an ethical shield written that is well-known and even incorporated into their corporate charter.

But whether such a shield is made from paper puff pastries or something more hefty, like steel is now under test. But I really don’t think this is a question about Google’s fortitude. It may be that the structure, the force-field of a publicly trade company, leaves little wiggle room (or perhaps only wiggle room) to apply, abide, much less expand on ethical committments.

That said, I think that this case is more intersting than a situation of “can Google live up to its word.” Instead I laud Google for even trying to infuse an ethical sentiment into the corporate way of life. It is an interesting experiment that is worth bearing out, that if nothing else, will help clarify once again, the limits and possiblities for corporate accountability.

Ok, does the ending of this article on the dangers of teflon just strike a little (no, a lot) odd?

Teflon in the Womb and Whales’

“It would be hard to imagine a chemical that is more widespread in our environment,” said Kenneth Cook, the president and founder of the watchdog organization Environmental Working Group. “It is found everywhere from babies in the womb to whales in the ocean. And beyond that, it is indestructible in the environment. It lasts forever.”

Federal officials say the agreement also applies to a variety of Teflon consumer products — including carpeting and clothing, food packing, as well as Teflon pots and pans.

“This program calls on virtually eliminating those uses in those products and substituting with other materials that aren’t displaying any levels of concern,” Hazen said.

DuPont has already paid more than $100 million to settle lawsuits brought by residents who live near a Teflon plant in West Virginia.

Sue Bailey, a former DuPont plant worker, blames the chemical for birth defects suffered by her son, Bucky, 25 years ago. He was born with only one nostril and a deformed right eye.

Today they called the action long overdue.

DuPont says, as it stands now, it cannot make Teflon without this chemical, and it is looking for a substitute. As for all those pots and pans in the homes of Americans, both DuPont and the federal government say there is no need to throw them out.

The funny, ok not so funny, thing is I threw out my mom’s teflon this winter break.

I recently returned from the 1st GPLv3 conference held January 16th and 17th at MIT University. It was not so much a conference that unveiled a license, but was used to kick-start the process for the collective revisioning of the draft.

It was impressive along many fronts. This is the first major revision of the license in 15 years and the time is ripe for such changes given the many transformations in intellectual property law, the software industry, and F/OSS development in the last decade. The current GPL is slated to be clarified (especially related to linking and compatibility with other open source licenses) and new conditions, such as the appearance of DRM and the explosion of software patents, have garnered explicit response in the new draft.

It seemed like much of the new material or, at least talk about the license, dealt with patents, although patent retaliation and restrictions were not as strong or present as some had feared. Here is the basic clause: If a GPL “licensee brings a patent infringement lawsuit against anyone for activities relating to a work based on the program,” then one loses the privilege to modify the software.

Another clause, related to web-based applications, was met with great relief among the business-types many of whom were in attendance. As currently drafted, the GPL will not treat web-based applications as distributed, and thus code can remain closed. Now, however, one has the right to choose whether to keep their server application code open, one permission of a few others that will based on personal choice if retained in the final license.

There are many more techno-legal details that I won’t go into here, in part because they are nicely summarized elsewhere and I am more interested in other elements, notably the process of modification that awaits the draft in the coming year. Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen and others at the FSF are clearly well positioned to make the most significant and sound recommendations for the new license. And they have. And in the end, they, and in specific, RMS, will have ultimate authority to decide what stays in and what stays out. But they have opened up the process of revisioning to everyone who is willing and able to contribute, knowing that this is the right way to go, for pragmatic and ethical reasons.

As it currently stands, for revisioning the FSF has devised a related, two-pronged process. One entails a website where the document is currently housed. There, anyone can create an account, and add their comments, and more significant, is that one can read the commentary others have left for that section also and craft a response to others. As Eben stated during one of the speeches, they prefer comments that are hinged to one or two of small sections of the text instead of comments on large chunks or large multiple chunks.

The website is accompanied by 4 discussion committees who more or less are collectors and organizers of the data, but also offer their own input as this unfolds. They are going to wade through the many comments, track patterns, and transform comments into issues and release documents to the public (I think related to their recommendaitons).

Currently, the discussion committees exist in some state of ambiguity and are not explicitly categorized aside from carrying an alphabetical number. But they can be divided more or less into into (A) Foundation stakeholders [Richard Fontana and Eben Moglen will switch facilitating] (B): Corporate and Patent Intrests [Eben Moglen facilitating] (C): Laywers and Commercial Users [RMS facilitaing] and finally (D): Community, which includes many hackers from various development projects [Dave Turner facilitating].

So far, the organization and purpose of these groups is loose, but one gets the sense that this is exactly what the FSF intended. Since they (and much less anyone else), has ever carried out this sort of open and global legal endeavor, I suspect they are letting the role of committees congeal more organically, cementing into something more definitive as they figure out what that should be.

I attended committee D meetings as an observer because I am interested in documenting how the process plays out, and in specific understanding the role of the Debian developers (Mako Hill, Don Armstrong, and Branden Robinson are the Debian participants thus far). And hope to say more as this all unfolds in the next year.

Here are a few pictures from the conference. I did not take many because I was actually shooting video (which I have never really done) but have yet to figure out how to get it off my video camera and onto my computer! As soon as I do, I will post some clips of the talk too.

Transcripts from the Inquiry into psychiatry 2005″ Historic Public Hearingheld in Toronto, Canada.