IS THEIR A PLACE FOR ALTRUISM IN AN ELECTRONIC SOCIETY?
Intellectual property
Overview
Intellectual property (IP) is a legal term that refers to the protection of patents, trademarks, copyright and other related rights. Where such protection exists, it guarantees against unfair competition including protection of undisclosed information/trade secrets1. Altruism, on the other hand, is the principle or practice of unselfish concern for, and sometimes devotion to the welfare of others, it focuses on a motivation to help others or a want to do good without reward, while duty focuses on a moral obligation towards a specific individual, organization or an abstract concept2.
The concepts I intend to discuss in this write up relates to act of altruism vis-à-vis the internet from the perspective of intellectual property and in the process provide answer(s) to the question “Is there a place for altruism in an electronic society?”
IP is a type of property or assets, that is just as valuable (if not more) than physical or real property, albeit intangible like knowlegde. The value of IP relative to physical properties has increased because of the importance of technology and creative works inspired by e-commerce. Because IP consists of new ideas or original expressions that make products unique and valuable, it is often traded (or licensed) in its own right without necessarily trading in the value of an underlying asset3.
This reason amongst several others shows why IP is important to e-commerce and e-commerce is in turn important to IP. E-commerce, more than other business systems, often involves selling products and services that are based on IP and its licensing. Music, movies, pictures, software and designs etc. can all be traded through e-commerce in which case IP is the main component of value in the transaction and as such it must be protected by patents and trademarks otherwise, if stolen or pirated, whole business can be destroyed3.
Software
Open Source developers have demonstrated a remarkable cohesion to produce high quality software, which is fundamentally free, not just in terms of cost of the programs, but also in the sense that there is more choice4.This has manifested itself especially on the Internet. The fact that E-commerce businesses hold a great deal of their value in IP can never be over-emphasised, with such value in mind one will expect an exorbitant price of software both on the shelf and online. On the shelf maybe, but not online.
A wide array of core software is available free of charge online with respect to several million-dollar investment of other companies. Linux is Microsoft’s biggest competitor, yet it’s software is free and readily available for download. More and more people and importantly businesses are migrating to Linux5, the chief reason that it’s free and it has been proven to be more secure than its competitors. Many will agree with the notion that without Linux, Microsoft will be the operating system of choice; it will probably be too expensive and definitely inefficient. Not for lack of technical know-how but for lack of competition.
Apache, far and away the world's leading Web server program, is free software, as is Perl, Web sites programmers’ lingua franca. Netscape Communications distributes its Netscape Communicator 7.2 browser as free software6, ditto for Mozilla Firefox 2.0. Sun, the architect of object-oriented programming recently announced that it will release Java’s code under an open license, which means the world can use, develop and share Java for free7. It is worth mentioning that even this writer is a beneficiary of free software, some of the learning tools I downloaded includes Java, BlueJ (a Java compiler) and MySQL which comes with a server and a command line client.
IBM recently gave away its Rational software. It distributed the programs - including the source code - to its customers at no additional charge, and encouraged them to make and share improvements or adaptations of the programs thus distributed8. Other software available free on the internet includes OpenOffice, a multiplatform and multi lingual office suit9; and Skype, the internet telephony software, which recorded a whooping 8 million concurrent online users in November 200610.
Peer-to-peer networking enabled users’ to share whatever property they had, whether they own it or not, with someone else. With this technology, users could share anything without crediting the original creator of the property monetarily11. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file distribution protocol which reduces demand on networking hardware and bandwidth12. A growing number of individuals and organizations are now using BitTorrent to distribute materials. Various BitTorrent sites has been closed down due to infringement on copyrights e.g. Finreactor (shut in 2004), Suprnova(2004), Elitetorrent (2005) and Newnova(2006), while a few others like mininova.org still exist today. The BitTorrent file can be downloaded free, once downloaded, it gives each client the capability of preparing, requesting and transmitting any type of computer file over a network13.
A CableLabs research reported that BitTorrent represents 55% of the upstream traffic on the American Cable networks, while CacheLogic research reported that it has 35% off all traffic on the internet12.
The list of free software is by no means exclusive, the fact that the list is growing is a confirmation of the growing popularity of Free Software Foundation (FSF) and has thus chart a new course for development in the software industry. Whether this is in line with the goals and aspiration of the FSF is not the prerogative of this write-up, it certainly, is in tandem with the tenets of altruism.
Music/ Video
The case of “contributory infringement” against Napster instituted in the United States of America puts an international spotlight on unauthorised downloading of music files. When Napster lost the case in 1999, the recording companies were exhilarated thinking that it is the end of free online music.
The all powerful recording company, having realised that they are about to be intermediated are fighting back with all their might, their response to the various threat of free music on the internet resulted in such legislation as Digital Millennium Copyrights Act. As mentioned earlier several websites has been closed down for contravening the act. Nonetheless, Jamendo about the only promising free music site has a unique business model that singles them out from the pack. All music on Jamendo is licensed through one of several creative Common Licenses, making it free and legal to download14. It allows free streaming of all of its thousands of albums through peer to peer protocols like bittorent, eDonkey which speeds up such transmission.
The same can not be said of free video on the internet, there are various sites offering free video sharing on the internet; YouTube, by far the most popular of such sites lets users upload, view and share video clips. Their contents include movies, TV clips and music videos. Other related websites are GoFish, Metacafe and Youare.tv allows users limited services unlike YouTube15.
Games
There is a plethora of free gaming sites on the internet, some of them are released as freeware, i.e. can be downloaded and used free of charge for an unlimited time, while others are open source games (source code and their media content is available for modification).
Internet games can be classified as single player games (e.g. solitaire), multiple player and Massively Multiplayer Games (MMG). The later category is further subdivided into 3 main groups namely Role playing game (MMORPG), Real-time Strategy (RTS) and First Person Shooter (FPS) 18. The online gaming industry is a multi-billion dollar industry; overall revenue for MMORPGs exceeded $1.1 billion in 2005 and is expected to reach $3.5billion by 200917.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is an online free FPS computer game. Players interact with each other over a network in two teams (axis or allies) to defend or destroy mission targets. Tremulous, SubSpace, Space Cowboy Online, Nexuiz are examples of MMORPG games16.
The following games, even though, multiplayer does not involve any role playing; however this seems not to affect their popularity in any way. America’s Army bowling evolution (between 1-4 players), CodeRED: Alien Arena (multiplayer FSP) and General. It should also be said that some of these games are popular in various regions of the world, for example, General is very popular in Russia and almost unknown in other parts of the world16.
The dynamisim in the gaming industry doesn’t end with online single player and multiplayer games (either MMG or otherwise). It includes the standalone downloadable games. 123 Free Solitaire, a prominent example, has 8.8 million downloads from two websites alone, each game has more than 9 trillion possible shuffles, reducing the chance of repetition19. This feature probably differentiates it from others.
e-Books
The name electronic book says it all. Here you read the pages off the screen of a computer rather than on paper. The term has occasionally been used ambiguously to refer to either an individual work in a digital format, or a hardware device used to read books in digital format, more specifically called an e-book device or e-book reader. These are mere computer programs which can read and display special type of files20.
Project Gutenberg, one of the numerous e book repositories on the internet, is the first and largest single collection of free ebooks, it boasts of 19,000 free ebooks and a strong 2 million downloads per month, not counting multiple downloads from a single source21. Floodle.net and PocketPCBooks.net (free e-book for pocket PC), are some of the other sites offering totally free e-book20.
Online magazine, an adaptation of ebooks (ezines), is a web site hosted online that provides similar periodic content to that of a print produced magazine. The term "online magazine" has come to represent several different Internet presentations of a publication22. There are also several sites where you can get to read free copies of magazines without the need to pay any subscription fee or buy the hard copy. One of such sites is Nigeriaworld.com, a site offering news about Nigeria, suddenly the writer doesn’t have to resort to calling friends for current country news, rather I am an active contributor to debates originating from such news report.
Conclusion
The internet is boosting altruism and gradually establishing a global consciousness. It is encouraging to see how individual acts of altruism can easily have a global impact on corporate behaviour, and setting trends.
With Intellectual property in mind, is there “really” a place for altruism in an electronic society? The answer can not be resolved with a single boolean value: true or false. Rather it deserves some thought process to come to the conclusion.
It is often wondered why individuals would make the effort to participate and contribute to free software, as such contributions can be very costly in terms of effort or time. One of the reasons is that individuals can earn a living doing so. The FSF maintains a service directory of people offering their free software services for hire. It shows free software developers offer their services ranging from $35/hour to $250/hour and some companies' rates for support for standard products start at $12,5001.
Companies that contribute to free software can increase commercial innovation amidst the void of patent cross licensing lawsuits. Some companies use free software to cut costs, while only contributing when the expected cost/benefit of developing software under proprietary means would cost more than by doing it via a free software method1.
Whereas the company’s business model may dictate that services will be giving free on the internet while they run ad banners, in this case the more visitor the site can attract the more income they are likely to make on running such advertisement.
Does it mean there are no trully altruistic sites on the internet? Certainly not. Project Gutenberg and Jamendo are one of the trully altruistic sites. The latter gives users the choice of paying if only they think the artist deserves any reward23, while the former, though runs no banner ad, rely on donations21.
Hence majority of sites offering free products and services on the internet does eventually gain something at the end of the day. This runs contrary to one of the tenets of altruism i.e. the unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
References
[1] WIKIPEDIA, 2006 Intellectual Property [Online]: Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property [Accessed 8th November 2006]
[2] WIKIPEDIA, 2006 Altruism [Online]: Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism [Accessed 8th November 2006]
[3] WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANISATION. [Online] Switzerland:
Intellectual Property Issues Related To Electronic Commerce. Available from:
http://www.wipo.int/sme [Accessed 8th November 2006]
[4] TRAFFORD, P., 2000. Open Sources: A Higher Consciousness in Software
Development. [Online] Cambridge: About Open Source Software. Available from:
http://www.chezpaul.org.uk/interfth/osswisdom.html [Accessed 8th November 2006]
[5] WROLSTAD, J., June 2003. Linux: Catalyst for Server Consolidation. [Online] About
Linux As Optimal Solution For Server Consolidation. Available from:
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=12300001L8Q3&page=2 [Accessed
8th November 2006]
[6] MOGLEN, E., 1999. Anachism Triumphant: Free Software and The Death of Copyright
[Online] Columbia: Available from:
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html [Accessed 9th
November 2006]
[7] BBC 13th November 2006. News Article: Sun ‘releases’ Java to The World from
[Online] London: Available from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6144748.stm [Accessed 13th November
2006]
[8] MACLURE, S., August 2006. Worldwide Adoption of Eclipse: The Framework
Resonates with Java Developers in All Regions[Online]: Available from
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/n/sdsd6t7kyd?
[Accessed 13th November 2006]
[9] http://www.openoffice.org/
[10] WIKIPEDIA, 2006 Skype [Online]: Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype [Accessed 13th November 2006]
[11] KALESHIAN, A., Comments on Free Music Sharing [Online]
http://www.free-music.org/articles/kaleshian_comments.shtml [Accessed 13th
November 2006]
[12] WIKIPEDIA, 2006 Bittorrent [Online]: Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent [Accessed 14th November 2006]
[13] http://www.bittorrent.com/ [Accessed 14th November 2006]
[14] WIKIPEDIA, 2006 Jamendo [Online]: Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamendo [Accessed 16th November 2006]
[15] WIKIPEDIA, 2006 YouTube [Online]: Available from: