[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“But as technology in general, and the Internet in particular,
drives deeper into the fabric of daily life, battles also rage
behind the scenes. They are struggles for control over how the
Internet should work, over who sets the rules for its pipes and
gateways and who owns the material that moves through them. These
are the wars fought with armies of corporate lobbyists,
technologists and citizen activists but largely ignored by the
general public. And none is larger, or carries higher financial
stakes, than the issue with the eye-glazing name of intellectual
property.“Consumers are getting a taste of this right now, as the major
record companies sue hundreds of people for stealing their works by
using file-sharing programs. On another front, ‘open-source’
software, which relies on collaboration and sharing of computer
code rather than traditional for-profit development and
distribution of programs, is capturing the attention of
cash-strapped governments and businesses as a less-expensive
alternative to commercial products.“Open-source software has been embraced by some companies that
are building businesses around it. But it is the bane of others,
including the industry’s most powerful player, Microsoft Corp. The
world’s largest software maker is lobbying furiously in state,
national and international capitals against laws that would promote
the consideration or use of open-source software…”