Re: [Australia-public-discuss] Lobbying greens support.

[anthony]

I recently made a submission to the ACIP review

http://www.acip.gov.au/reviewpatentable/Berglas,%20Anthony.pdf

Feel free to use the material.

Anthony

At 01:22 PM 12/02/2010, Shayne O'Neill wrote:

>Hi guys, new to this list, cant find archives so I apologise if I'm 
>reitterating over any previous ground.
>
>I'm old friends with Scott Ludlum of the Greens, whos been doing , in my 
>slightly biased opinion, a somewhat heroic job leading the charge against the 
>net filter in the senate estimates committee. He's reasonably competent on 
>tech issues for a non techy type, and might well be interested in taking up 
>the charge against the software patents proposals.
>
>What would be really good to see is some sort of dossier on the issue, 
>particularly on how it affects small australian business and innovation, but 
>also how it affects the free & open source community and perhaps for that 
>greens touch, green computing.
>
>I'm not really up to date enough on this to fully prepare it myself, so is 
>there anyone who would be interested in putting their hands up for this.
>
>Things to keep in mind about the greens:
>1) The greens are not really socialists, but they certainly are not freemarket 
>libertarians. Free market arguments will not necessarily win the argument with 
>them, but arguments about *small* business, and workers in bigger businesses, 
>will. 
>2) The greens are naturally attracted to the open and free source software 
>movements. Free software embodies a lot of the arguments about community/DIY 
>organising that the greens feel should be central to their vision of a 
>'better' future. 
>3) The greens are *very* attracted to arguments about sustainability and 
>diversity. A possible example of this sort of argument might be around 
>compression algorithms. Compression saves energy by minimizing entropy and 
>less abstractly communication infrastructure energy use and expenditure. 
>Algorithms such as  g729 are excluded from free software and small business 
>written software because of the outrageous costs to licence. The end result is 
>most free software voip uses either G711, a bandwidth hungry broadband codec, 
>or iLBC a processor hungry codec. Neither of which really qualify as suitable 
>'green' algorithms.
>4) Exposure to predatory american patent trolls. This can be a small business 
>killer, especially in low-return and garage industries like iPhone development 
>where a single lawsuit could effectively kill the operation before it even hit 
>court.
>
>It might also be worth noting the european situation, and moves to rethink the 
>patent laws in the US.
>
>If anyone wants to help put this together, I can get it to scott and maybe 
>discuss it with him over beers. 
>
> From there he might be able to talk to other greens senators to get it made 
> into a platform for the party.
>
>These are largely different arguments to win the libs over. For them the 
>important factor will be protest from software design houses (I intend to talk 
>to my local guy at some point about how the g729 codec affects my business) , 
>and although I'm by default a labor voter, I'm far too angry with conroys 
>utter technological illiteracy, and arrogance, to be unable to think up a 
>rational approach to him.
>
>Regards,
>
>Shayne.
>
>===================================
>Shayne O'Neill Development
>Mobile, Web and Business process integration.
>address@hidden
>
>
>
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Dr Anthony Berglas, address@hidden       Mobile: +61 4 4838 8874
Just because it is possible to push twigs along the ground with ones nose
does not necessarily mean that is the best way to collect firewood.