DTS Current situation
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According to its own terms, the IDABC, body of the European Community, started to move its objectives from the networks towards the services. This happens whereas the quality networks remain largely concentrated in the large cities and in the richest countries, with a strong disparity of appropriation as well between generations as between social classes. Generally, except the networks reserved in the military or scientific research centres, the development of the infrastructures is let at the goodwill of the private sector, with the usual effects of concentration on the profitable situations (services, consumers).
Electronic democracy
A true contradiction lies in the European Commission, which by its institutions and programs promotes a modern on-line administration, interoperability, intergovernmental actions and opened software and standards, and then, as a legislative body, largely lets itself be influenced by the multinational and American lobbies to promote the unreasoned extension of royalty, control systems, software patents etc. On this last point, one should not neglect the influence a social mobilization making pressure on the European deputies could have, because those are relatively sensitive to it, and can reject texts that the Commission or the Council try to insert in the European standards in an undemocratic way. The European Patent Office, in contradiction with the European right and its mandate, regularly grants patents on software. A great disparity exists between the European countries as for the use of the TIC in the polls.
Royalties and knowledge
“The book, as a book, belongs to the author, but as a thought, it belongs – the word is not too vast – to mankind. All the intelligences have right to it. If one of the two rights, the right of the writer and the right of the human spirit, should be sacrificed, it would be, certainly, the right of the writer, because the public interest is our single concern, and all, I declare, must pass before us.” (“ Le livre, comme livre, appartient à l’auteur, mais comme pensée, il appartient – le mot n’est pas trop vaste – au genre humain. Toutes les intelligences y ont droit. Si l’un des deux droits, le droit de l’écrivain et le droit de l’esprit humain, devrait être sacrifié, ce serait, certes, le droit de l’écrivain, car l’intérêt public est notre préoccupation unique, et tous, je le déclare, doivent passer avant nous. ”) Victor Hugo
When the royalty was initially created, it was in the idea to restrict, for a limited duration, the basic right of humanity to reach knowledge, in order to ensure the author some incomes. When recently the industry of “culture” discovered the facility with which the works could be duplicated by electronic way, it started to claim that the rights of the authors were illegally ignored. However, Internet network and the countless exchanges of files which it allows neither killed the book, nor journalism, nor the cinema, nor music nor the other forms of creation and diffusion which we know. On the contrary, they even have made it possible to make a great number of products and works better known, which would never have reached their new purchasers without a first virtual contact. The spirit of sharing inspired many initiatives in almost all the fields of knowledge and science, tending to provide sources of free information from simple dictionary to complete encyclopaedia, or from university courses and papers to geographical and scientific data.
Free software
The world of the Free software appears very similar to the general humanist spirit: it is based on values of sharing and freedom. This ideological position gives it a clear direction while placing freedom into the center. In short, the objective is to provide the software users with all freedom in terms of use, copy, sharing and the modification of any program, without being restricted by the supplier. It is a true conflict, because when you believe you do buy a program, you usually only buy the right to use it and not to study it – as you would do with your bicycle –, neither to lend it, nor to personalize it. Moreover, any document that you realized with it, will suffer the same restrictions. You do not have all the rights on your own document. What would it be if the same rule applied to your paint and brush? Still worse, various attacks were carried out by software publishers (Sony and Microsoft among others), to lead the users to grant them access to their computers, sometimes without their knowledge. In this way, the efforts of the GNU project and the Free movement made it possible not only to make a computer work without using a proprietary software, but did well beyond, providing free software for almost all kinds of use. It is known in particular that the Internet could not have experienced its dramatic development without them, and that a great part of its services are carried out using Free software. Moreover, the works of the free software movement are generally reliable and more rapidly secured, they facilitate accessibility, interoperability and the respect of the standards; thanks to which a still greater freedom is offered.
Software patents
The patents were initially created to make an invention known, with the objective that it is used (materially implemented and industrialized) for the benefit of all. This intention has long since been given up by the big companies for a strategy of blocking the inventions of their competitors and obtaining a revenue on various implementations. This speculation purely and simply slows down the progress for the benefit of a few. More precisely in the case of the software patents there is no need, no “legal hole”, forasmuch as the royalties perfectly protect the software works. Conversely, it appears clearly that the insistence to legalize software patents is aimed at the possibility that will result from it, which is to gradually patent ideas, and then potentially all the culture and medicine, in this same absurd objective of appropriation.
