We’ve talked about ACTA before. ACTA is an anti-capitalistic treaty which implements several measures that will seriously hurt people’s freedoms, rights, and privacy, all to, among other things, support a failing business model from an industry which has failed time and time again to adapt to a changing market. In any working free market, business models are allowed to fail, but the US/EU governments clearly don’t see it that way. India has now announced that it is going to forge its own anti-ACTA coalition in an effort to undermine the new treaty.
ACTA poses a major threat to India and other developing nations, but because these nations are not included in the ACTA talks, they can’t influence its direction. This is a very clever move by the US, the EU, Canada, Japan, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, and Switzerland, since it means they can create an agreement which only benefits them – only to later pressure developing nations into signing it (e.g., by threatening to impose import bans or whatever).
Yes, that’s pretty much how the Mafia works.
The World Trade Organisation has been bypassed by the ACTA countries. The World Intellectual Property Organization has also been tossed aside. As Ars’ Nate Anderson notes, “existing international institutions, where countries like Brazil, China, and India have recently acquired some real power, will be bypassed to create the tough new restrictions in ACTA”.
While many of us focus on the internet and technology aspect of ACTA, it also contains a lot of stuff related to the production of pharmaceuticals. If ACTA comes into effect, “there would be an infringement if a medicine or product is made for which a company holds a patent in any country, no matter how unclear in scope and validity of the patent is. Similarly, production of spare parts may violate an unexamined design right with unclear scope and validity may also be considered an infringement.”
ACTA would give member states the ability to seize goods in transit between any other two countries. For instance, a shipment of pharmaceuticals under way from India to South America or Africa could be seized and destroyed in Europe, even if no patents apply in either India or the destination country.
“We will hold talks with like-minded countries (read Brazil, China, Egypt etc) and may oppose the ACTA proposal jointly as well as individually by holding talks with countries involved,” an Indian government official said.
Well, it seems that after the EU parliament, those of us opposing ACTA have found another ally in a rather unlikely corner.
It’s great to see India taking action on this.
If they can get China and a few other countries on board as well, that’ll be a good bit of pressure against ACTA.
Hopefully Brazil will join them too … maybe even making every other country in the Mercosur follow them.
Edited 2010-06-02 22:08 UTC
> ACTA is an anti-capitalistic treaty
What? Anti-capitalist? For me, it’s very pro-capitalist – it’s created for the benefit of the big corporations, and against the common people. So sorry, I think You are wrong.
Eh, no. Capitalism means that the best business model prevails, the wrong business models die off. Having the government support your failing business model by changing the law and violating rights and freedoms is, therefore, anti-capitalistic.
and can safely be called a fascist practice.
Edited 2010-06-02 22:34 UTC
Disagreed. The nazis worked together with big corporations, but made sure that national and corporate interests were aligned, so that the common people would benefit. (A car for each German.) I know, the line dividing these concepts is thin, but in the case of ACTA, government is not so much defending the common good but more defending good old corporate friends.
Disregarding the fact that fascism and nazism are two different things, you fail to realize that the only thing that “national and corporate interests were aligned” to was the best of the Führer’s interest … who was the incarnation of the National Socialist fatherland and _only_then_ it became the best interest of the common people. Letting alone the fact that that was the same common people (civilians) he send to death when Berlin fell.
In the National Socialist ideal, there was _nothing_ above the Führer’s best interest and everything else could be sacrified … like Berlin’s civil population was … the Third Reich could lack everything, except: the Führer.
Edited 2010-06-03 14:07 UTC
Exactly…
Pawel, your thinking pro-Mercantilist.
Capitalism is not “greed is good”. It is simply “sustainable development” in financial terms. A lot of the problems our world is facing is because business “leaders” have acted like drug addicts, NOT behaved as good capitalists; getting their short term fix at the expense of the longer term health of their stewardship.
ACTA will be an abomination. I hope it can be stopped.
Not really.
Capitalism is simply the system designed to replace the old feudal pyramidal system, with another pyramid of their (the capitalists) own. It is no coincidence that a modern corporation resembles in structure an old feudal castle, and that both systems used invisible beings to justify their power entitlements: and invisible being up in the skies choosing kings, and an invisible hand of the market deciding who the business leader should be.
You can try to embellish that all you want, but I would appreciate if capitalist cheerleaders were at least intellectually honest to recognize the actual context under which their preferred socio economic system came to be.
Ironically the one thing that has been constant with regards to capitalism: it’s ever shifting definition in order to comply with the PR narrative needed to hide/disown itself from its significant hubris whenever it becomes too obvious to ignore. Capitalism was something until the European Colonialism and the American Gilded Age ended in disaster, at which point it became something else. The it became something else until Mussolini was put to hang upside down, etc, etc, etc.
Oh, well. BTW, this ever shifting definition is not exclusive to capitalism. Basically every other “ism” has a significant track record. That is why I don’t believe in them.
What all these things have to do with the technical details of operating system, it is beyond me though… WTF is the point of this article?
The point of this article being on OSNews is so that readers intelligent enough to understand the most complicated systems on Earth–operating systems, jumbo jets, lunar modules, deepwater drilling rigs–might bring to bear an influence on the distracting battle of money. The sign of our times is that the monetary operating system needs patches, stimulants, and intelligence like Richard Stallman.
Otherwise we might be contented to enlighten each other on the subtle metaphysical analogies of operating systems. Everything is a computer.
See http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/holytech.html
Edited 2010-06-03 05:30 UTC
Well played:
Stroke their egos so they pay less attention to your extremely stretched spin.
Those same smart people are probably smart enough to see through your remedial spin doctoring.
If there was satire, I missed it.
Edited 2010-06-03 05:34 UTC
1) IRT the “everyshifting nature of capitalism,” I think you missed the whole first chapter of The Manifesto. Capitalism’s nature is unending revolution (change/ transformation).
2) Capitalism was a HUGE step from feudalism which even Marx lauded. Heirarchical organization of internal units is irrelevant since even Marxism results in regimented societies and Bakhunin’s syndicalism had a heirarchical organization of labor committees owning and controlling resources.
3) To say that capitalism was “designed” implies a conscious designer behind it. Who designed it? You can’t design an economy or economic system. An ecosystem, economy and society are simply the results of all the individual and environmental interactions. People obviously try, but once loosed into the real world few things turn out as planned.
Actually you’re wrong, Thom. And you’re right as well. It all depends on the definition of “Capitalism”. Using the marxist definition (to which anarchists and social libertarians generally agree) the ACTA treaty is most clearly a capitalist treaty. With other definitions (usually used by the right (european right wing, not necessarily U.S. right wing)) it is less clearly capitalist. However it does under all circumstances qualify as corporate capitalism as well as state capitalism.
It appears to me you are confusing “capitalism” with “free market”. The former is not necessarily supportive of the latter, and vice versa. But of course, it all depends on definition.
I consider the treaty to be very much a result of anti-free market corporate capitalism.
Replace “anarchists” with “social anarchists” and I agree with your statement. I guess you are no fan of Murray Rothbard.
Ah, labels!
Nope. Look up the definition of capitalism. It’s an economic system where the capital is held in private hands. You are confusing free market with capitalism, those are two very distinct.
Have to agree here.
ACTA is an excellent example of capitalist business practice.
Capitalism = the rich hoarding money, and exploiting everyone, whilst churning out crap and producing artificial demand for said crap.
Sounds like ACTA to me.
Only in the warped sense of that being what capitalism has sort of become.
ACTA is anti-capitalistic in that it doesn’t let a company or product rise and fall purely on its merits in the market. Of course in the real world this rarely happens anyway, but ACTA exacerbates the problem enormously.
Capitalism has nothing to do with definition of the free market, that you are giving.
There’s a huge misconception as to what is capitalism. The western world is not capitalist. We are corporatist. ACTA is anti-capitalist. ACTA is corporatist. Another term for corporatism is ‘crony capitalism’. See this series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y9-Y4lSU64
This has nothing to do with operating systems or even digital computing!
It is insulting that you use your position to disseminate your personal beliefs so.
What are you? Christian? It is not acceptable to crowbar your opinions and beliefs into an inappropriate situation, just because you are able to.
Please do not come knocking on my door in the morning.
/osnews
The Capitalist / Non Capitalist argument is a pointless red herring of an argument and semantic at best. What is capitalism, how long is a piece of string same kind of argument.
However, I have to disagree, with DGNeedham IP is immense importance to Operating systems, software and IT in general as it determines the trading environment IT exists in.
In my opinion some western countries are under the illusion that they can impose an information TAX on the rest of the world and protect their companies indefinitely using there legal systems this is a delusion.
heya,
You know, I have to agree with DGNeedham – this is only very tangentially related to computing (it’s mostly about pharmaceutical goods, to be honest), and not even related to OSes. Thom, it is a bit sneaky you’re using OSNews – a *news* site – as your personal soapbox. Please use your personal blog in future.
However, I have to refute what DGNeedham said about Christians – sorry, but that one little comment of yours just seems snide and childish. It’s like you’re implying that only Christians “crowbar your (their) opinions and beliefs” into every Christian”. It’s a personal thing – for some people, their faith is a big deal and they love to share it around. But faith can be anything here – your iPhone/Android phone, your OS of choice, your country your religion (Muslim, Judaism, Christianity) whatever.
So ironically, DGNeedham, it seems as if you’re letting your own little pet peeves about Christianity, of all things, filter through to your own post…lol. You’re committing the exact thing you’re accusing Thom of. Can you say recursive irony? *grins*.
Nonetheless, back to the original point – it’s fairly obvious from the original (biased) post, as well as a few of the other comments after that Thom and a few other readers are pretty extreme-Left.
Down with the corporations, up with the people, and all that. I find that all vaguely amusing. Communism has been shown to be a failed experiment, sorry guys.
Also, a lot of your ideas seem quite misguided or in some cases patently wrong. The whole silly “big corporations” versus “the people”, that just seems a bit crazy, if you ask me. A bit like the Socialist Alternative nutjobs that used to stalk around my uni. Just like there’s extreme right-wingers, there’s definitely extreme left-wingers. There’s no evil corporate conspiracy, ok, please. There’s *people*, as in individuals, being greedy. A corporation isn’t a real thing, it’s just a made-up entity, but behind them are people making decisions.
And in communism/socialism, or whatever other failed system you want to use, those same people would be just as greedy as well. Look at old Soviet Russia, or heck, look at China, in Mao Ze Dong’s days – endemic corruption. Those things haven’t changed now with China’s move to capitalism, it’s ultimately down not to capitalism/communism, but down to the people themselves. You might as well say “Americans” are greedy, or “Europeans” are greedy, or something equally childish.
The idiot troll who mentioned fascist – please look up what that word actually means.
Daddio – thank you, you’ve probably said the first knowledgeable thing on the comments so far.
tylerdurden – Capitalism and feudalism have very little in common. Firstly, the former is a economic system, the latter is largely a socio-politico construct, with economic ramifications. Please learn the difference.
Capitalism is ultimately about supply/demand – nothing more, nothing less. It’s about trying to use “natural” forces to ensure efficient allocation of resources. As daddio said, occasionally you need government intervention to ensure that short-term gain isn’t pursued at the expense of long-term losses.
Pure capitalism is very rare these days. Environmental laws, minimum wages, intellectual property, these are all things that we use to mellow out “pure capitalism”
Ironically, patents, copyrights etc. are actually all “anti-capitalism”, if there is such a thing. In a truly laissez-faire society, you’d have a situation like China, where people shamelessly copy and leech each other’s ideas to get ahead.
I mean, think about your uni days – plagiarism would be allowed because hey, you gain, right? But we introduce academic honestly guidelines and codes of conduct, so that corporations (or people) behave ethically.
Cheers,
Victor
Edited 2010-06-03 04:40 UTC
You are right. Directly labeling Christians so, was wrong.
Before Thom argues with that leaked document:
Yes, the ACTA has written their intent to alter internet laws but that is what the ACTA is all about making money off of fears.
They are a sink. You must remember that both sides of the idiocracy are being played (ie
Madoff). ‘companies’ like this have always popped up in times that openness threatens the American way:
When cassettes threatened to destroy the music industry,
When floppy disks threatened to destroy the software industry,
When VHS threatened to destroy the movie industry,
When writable CDs threatened to destroy everything…
This time it is global freedom and internet. They will feed off the fears of the rich – The core party making as much money from funds and stocks as they can, before they bail and leave the ‘comapany’ in its death throws, to sue everyone left right and center.
They have as much interest in destroying your freedoms as they do in having an interesting title.
Edited 2010-06-03 05:17 UTC
Greed is, however, largely a symptom of a culture (ignoring the reification that there is such a unit that could be called culture) and not a symptom of a person. I will not argue that there aren’t people who are more likely to become greedy, but it is the sequence of events of their life that triggers such a characteristic. So it is entirely possible that there could be a culture that prohibits all cases of greed. In fact, I can name a broad class of cultures that do a very good job of this: Egalitarianism (or as Marx puts it, primitive communism.)
It is also important to point out the history of the nations that attempted to convert to communism. This history is by and large what prohibited the conversion of any nation to communism (as there has been no modern nation to become communist, merely several totalitarian governments that had policies of extreme wealth reallocation.)
But all this talk misses the point, neither capitalism or communism are “right” nor are they “ethical.” They merely have different goals.
As for corporations vs. people, there are many industries that do seem to support such an idea (crazy or not.) Media publishers in particular seem to have a grudge against people actually using content. The software industry has a rather bizarre grudge against developers, due to the “assume guilty” nature of copyright and patents.
tl;dr
But, Re: Christians. You get all sorts, but the loud and vocal ones tend to be the sort who want to beat their ideas in to you at any cost. Those who speak the loudest and most often are the de-facto leaders and so it is not surprising if one generalizes from their actions.
.. Anyone want to debate monolithic and micro kernels? ..
Sure…
Micro kernels are totally the future!
Yea hybrid kernels make this historic debate redundant but I am still glad that someone got my subtle reference.
Can an on-going flame war/debate be a reference?
You saw it here first folks, on OSnews!
If you have a hybrid kernel you have a monolithic kernel. Sorry.
No. A monolithic kernel is a kernel without modules. Any modular kernel is non-monolithic. A microkernel is a kernel where modules (servers/kits) are running in userland. A hybrid kernel is a kernel with a design similar to a microkernel but with servers/kits/modules running in the same memory space as the kernel itself.
There are very few true microkernels and very few true monolithic kernels. True to the nature of human beings we blend the technologies, creating hybrids.
The distinction between an hybrid kernel and a microkernel is not very clear.
As an example, take a kernel where the scheduler runs in kernel space, due to the coder thinking “It has no use to put the scheduler in the user space, it hurts performance and provides a user process with the right to prevent all other user processes from running. If a process gets kernel rights, it should run in kernel space for increased performance”.
Is this a microkernel or a hybrid kernel ?
(PS : Globally, all your posts are neat, even though I can’t mod you up multiple times
)
Edited 2010-06-04 08:17 UTC
It all depends on which characteristic is most defining of a microkernel whether or not you accept the hybrid definition. What is more important: the isolation, or the fact that everything runs in userspace?
To me, it’s the isolation, because it is the isolation which allows things to run in userspace in the first place. If you don’t isolate components, you can’t run them in userspace at all.
But, opinions on this one differs. Linus believes otherwise, but hey, I think he’s wrong on this one. Not that anyone should listen to me, obviously.
Can’t we technically do so, using heavy message passing and policy/mechanism separation (user-mode process decides which process is been scheduled, communicates the decision to a kernel-mode process which does the task-switching job) ?
A hybrid kernel is a microkernel where some things that ought to be separate servers are put in the core kernel, usually ‘for performance.’ In this case what you have is a monolithic kernel that acts a bit like a microkernel.
By your definition the Linux kernel is non-monolithic because it has modules, which is ridiculous.
A kernel that is a microkernel is a “true microkernel” (using your words) and anything that isn’t a “true microkernel” is a monolithic kernel. You can mince words however you like, but what you call “hybrid” is actually non-microkernel, and as such is monolithic. The fact that a kernel may not be designed to be a vertically integrated single-piece does not mean that it isn’t monolithic.
“Monolithic” is just a word we use to mean “not a microkernel” and “hybrid” is just another word we use to mean “not a microkernel” and for people not involved in designing an OS no subdivision of the two “not a microkernel”s is useful.
Monolithic is one big non-modular blob. This is an eternal, non-controversial definition. Only among some data-geeks are the term occasionally used with a different meaning. Monolithic is derived from monolith – and a monolith is one big non-modular blob. This proves that monolithic is anything which takes on the shape of a big non-modular blob, incl. a non-modular kernel. It also means that a modular kernel can never be monolithic, just like a house isn’t monolithic despite being a big blob. It’s because the house is built from modules with some separation allowing for removal and insertion of modules (bricks, windows, doors etc.).
Microkernel is a special form of modular kernel where servers are running in user space.
Hybrid kernels tend to be used about microkernel-like designs with servers running in kernel space instead of user space. However the term is vague and any form of modular kernel can be considered a hybrid. Some are closer to monolithic designs, and other solutions are closer to microkernels. All of them however are hybrids.
You can twist words as much as you want to. It doesn’t make you right.
Am I the only one that is wondering if Thom did this, just to stir up a stupid and predictable ‘my politics is bigger than your’s’ debate, to simulate activity and traffic?
You know, like Turkey and that boat of Aide?
Yes, I did this only to talk about politics (?).
Nevermind the fact that intellectual property, patents, and copyright have been incredibly important topics in technology for a long time now. If you don’t like a frakking topic, don’t comment on it.
This isn’t rocket science. Stop spamming, please.
Thom, you made this mistake before and you are doing it again. Never, ever use the words “Capitalism” or “Free market”. Those words are offensive in many places in the world. I already warned you but you did it again. If you want to talk about freedom, use the word “Freedom”. Capitalism and Free market do not mean what you think it means. Capitalism is about the Capital, who owns it and who profits from it and free market is about trading the capital. It has nothing to do with freedom or trade as you understand it (trade of goods and services). ACTA is actually very pro-capital. Its point is that intellectual property is a capital and they want it to profit the capitalists. It’s pro-free market too: they want the patents to be traded freely and be convertible into currency. Its anti-freedom and anti-trade. I think that is what you meant to say.
Edited 2010-06-03 09:32 UTC
You’re right and wrong in the same comment.
My bold.
As you can see, buying the government to change the law and take away basic freedoms and rights to protect a failing business model is indeed anti-capitalistic.
No, you understand it wrong, it’s not anti-capitalistic. It’s privatizing the government, which is the very essence of capitalism.
My Bold
To join this pointless debate (please feel free to mod down)
We can define capitalism how we wish to support our own ideological perspective. At one extreme capitalism being the embodiment of free trade and where everyone has the equal right to participate and compete in the market, which is the best guarantee of individual freedom. To a system which exploits workers turning them into a powerless proletariat in which the fusion of corporate and state power is inevitable
My own take would be that since its birth (after the English civil war??) capitalism has been and is a changing and evolving system that is flexible enough to for example, allow government to regulate banks, can tolerate nationalization, allow social democracy, monarchy, or exist under totalitarianism. In the long term probably works best (is most stable) where social mobility is enabled, information flows freely and where regulatory mechanisms are open to criticism be they state imposed or market imposed mechanisms.
It might be more correct to say that the ACTA is a manifestation of corporatism, corporate control of a government, and a quest for regulatory capture by governments and, by proxy, corporations.
Power plays like ACTA are usually considered American Imperialism, and there are no shortage of examples, like the Banana Wars being the best example.
There are several things as play here:
– Economic Planning
“Economic planning refers to any directing or planning of economic activity by an economic actor, usually the state, in an attempt to achieve specific economic or social outcomes.”
– Political Corruption, Patronage
“Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Forms of corruption vary, but include bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement.”
– Regulated Market
“A regulated market or controlled market, is the provision of goods or services that is regulated by a government appointed body. In a regulated market, the government regulatory agency may legislate regulations that privilege special interests, known as regulatory capture.”
– Collusion
“Collusion is an agreement, usually illegal and therefore secretive, which occurs between two or more persons to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage. It is an agreement among firms to divide the market, set prices, or limit production. It can involve ‘wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties.'”
In the end, ACTA is a business maneuver. It is the pig face of capitalism. IP, patents, copyrights, and regulations are all designed to be hurt competition and the free market while maintaining the position of the capitalists. (There is good reason for them, but the good intentions of those ideas have been perverted over the years.)
To relates this to technology, this is MS and Intel paying vendors to exclude competitors from their offerings. This is municipal networks being shutdown because the Telcos didn’t want to extend their networks into less profitable areas. This is corporations/established nations wanting to put developing nations back under their boot heel by cutting off the free flow of information.
Flatland Spider, outstanding post!! Well said. Aren’t municipal networks socialist? So citing telco’s resisting muni networks is a good example of corporatism/cronyism, but it’s not a good example of corporations resisting free markets.
It’s always the same.
When everything is ok, and the money is coming by itself, capitalist say: “Hey dude, the government should not do anything like taxes, try to regular things, etc … The invisible hand will do the job”.
And when they are in the shit like majors and banks few month ago, they ask the government to put money to save their asses and once the crisis is gone, they start to do as before.
I am tired of this bullshit. Let them die.
Edited 2010-06-03 10:16 UTC
So very true.
It is incredible what these governments are trying to do, how about companies protect themselves and you stick your nose somewhere else. Anyway I want to join India in their opposition; I hope they start recruiting all the Latin American countries, I can guarantee that if ACTA becomes real we are all in big trouble especially when it comes to the pharmaceuticals.
Thom please keep writing about this subject!
Correction: it benefits a small number of deep-pocketed commercial interests in their nations. It is in the interest of the populations at large to move in opposite directions of the ACTA, in just about every way.
Edited 2010-06-03 14:21 UTC
Anyone ever think that some governments may desire media to be tightly controlled such that if they choose to those governments can take control of the entire media industry? Control what we see and hear and effect more control over us….
Food for thought…
This is just scary! No surprise in they bypassing organizations that (I think) should have had they say in the talks.
Sorry but I thought “how stupid”. I had heard about ACTA, and before this article, I didn’t know it extended beyond computers and Internet. Knowing what I quoted above sheds more light on that ACTA thing, at least to me. If I were on the pros side, I would start questioning it. If I were on the cons side, that would be even more reason to fight it.
Wanting to know/hear/read about only things related to computing is purposely dismissing some information. I don’t get why one would want to do that. The more you know, the finer your judgement. Of course, until information overload.