Three meanings of “free”: after “free beer” and “free speech”, “free the Internet”

I have come across free software advocates who want to expand the range of their social causes and get involved in reforming society itself.
I hope they are already aware of at least three meanings of “free”. This is a friendly reminder if they’re not. Free software advocates are generally familiar with the first two: “free” [...]

A meeting of copyright researchers and activists

I just attended the December 6-10 meeting in Kerala, India of the CopySouth Research Group (CSRG), an international network of copyright researchers and activists. The discussions were intense but cordial. We were all critical of the current state of copyright laws and regulations, which had become so restrictive that the copyright regime was becoming a [...]

The golden touch and the miracle of the loaves

[This piece will appear as a chapter in the book From Intellectual Property Rights to Access to Knowledge by Gaelle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski (eds.) to be published by Zone Books in 2009.]
Dionysus … decided to reward Midas for his hospitality and granted him one wish. Midas wished that everything he touched be turned to [...]

Greening the information sector

Social movements are beginning to respond to the specific issues involving the information economy. An illustrative set of responses can be seen in the programme of the Philippine Greens for a non-monopolistic information sector (Society, Ecology and Transformation by the Philippine Greens, 1997).
The Greens see the information sector as very important because of its special [...]

Linux/OpenOffice will never be fully compatible with Windows/Office

In my experience, the biggest obstacle to user conversion from Windows to Linux are the little incompatibilities that trip up users. Some of the incompatibilities may be minor. However, users can get frustrated even with minor issues when they occur often enough or during situations when they are important.
In order not to create unrealistic expectations, [...]

Why buy what you can copy for free?

Computers today have become standard equipment in government, businesses, schools and even non-government organizations.
In the past, when one bought a computer, it came with the operating system and applications software at no extra cost. Today, commercial software — Windows and MS-Office of Microsoft, for instance — cost several thousand pesos for a single copy. If [...]