taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Science: in passing — this came up elsewhere, and it’s worth copying here, too (for reference).

The question was: how much should publicly-funded researchers be required to disclose - should they be allowed to generate ‘closed-source’ solutions at the taxpayers’ expense?

In the US and world-wide, there used to be a tradition that government-funded research should be made open to all, since if it was funded from public taxation, the fruits of that taxation should go back to the public. However, 25 years ago, the US enacted the Bayh-Dole Act, in which:

• Universities were encouraged to collaborate commercial concerns to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federal funding.
• It was clearly stated that universities may elect to retain title to inventions developed through government funding.
• Universities must file patents on inventions they elect to own.

So in other words, the government has dictated since 1980 that government-funded research should not produce open-source or public-domain solutions, necessarily, as the results of research are to be considered private-sector profit-generating centers for the host universities. Naturally, cash-strapped universities have imposed internal regulations to maximise revenue from their research staff.

The implications for whatever ‘the next BSD TCP/IP stack’ may be are obvious.

Tags: copying, expense, funding, government, public, question, reference, research, science, taxation, tradition

Ireland: Bad news from home.

A truly ground-breaking concept, the ‘Group Broadband Scheme’, has been watered down into a shadow of what it could be with a requirement that all community internet access schemes be operated in association with ‘an Internet Service Provider or Authorised Operator’.

In other words, rather than a radical new way to provide affordable non-profit, community-owned high-speed internet access in rural areas, it’s just business as usual:

‘With the launch of the 1st Call for Group Broadband Scheme proposals, it is clear the Minister intends to require that any application for funding under the group broadband scheme initiative be made in association with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Authorised Operator (AO)’, said (Ireland Offline) chairman Christian Cooke, ‘a so-called Broadband Internet Service Provider (BISP)’. …..

Experience in the UK has shown that the commercial provision of broadband in rural areas is not financially viable. Low population and wide dispersal lead to lower margins than can be supported by a profit-oriented enterprise. ….

Ireland Offline warned that the prerequisite of partnering with a BISP as a condition of GBS funding, there is a very real danger of companies cherry-picking more lucrative areas, leaving communities for which the funding should have been made available … without any services.

‘In short, in its current form, the group broadband scheme initiative bears no resemblance to the group water schemes, to rural broadband provision’, said Cooke, ‘and every resemblance to the packaging of subsidized local monopolistic franchises, monopolistic because no competitor could go head-to-head with a subsidized service. It is therefore better to think of them as not so much like group water schemes as ‘group coca-cola schemes’.’

IrelandOffline press release here.

In other EU news — the EU Parliament has approved the IP Enforcement Directive. The Greens report:

• Patents are included within the scope of the directive.
• only 3 parts of the directive are limited to ‘commercial scale’. This means that the provisions of Articles 7(1), 8 and 9 can potentially be used against consumers. In the US this kind of legislation has been used to target, amongst others, children and their parents for downloading music.
• there are concerns amongst ISPs that they can be attacked for ‘providing’ the means to download content which is protected by copyright.

James Heald: ‘Exactly what will now happen, and exactly what surprises it may lead to, will now depend on the different details of how the directive is now implemented from member country to member country across Europe.’

Tags: access, association, authorised, broadband, funding, group, internet, ireland, provider, scheme, service

Gary Robinson points to an announcement of a new music service, BuyMusic.com — the announcement notes ‘users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of … iTunes … to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs.’

How do companies like this get funding? Surely it’s obvious that people are not going to sign up for services where they are stuck with crippled DRMware, and don’t actually get to own what they buy. ‘Here’s a car. Oh BTW — you’re only permitted to drive this within 5 miles of your home, it’ll conk out if you go any further.’

I suppose it’s hardly surprising, but BuyMusic.com informs me that my browser and OS are not welcome, in a surreal throwback to 1999. Ho hum, I’ll stick with EMusic, thanks…

In other news, I’ve just signed up for a mailing list called geowanking. Official: best name ever!

Tags: announcement, btw, buymusic, car, com, drmware, freedom, funding, music, service

This is quite simply insane:

The sugar industry in the US is threatening to bring the World Health Organisation to its knees by demanding that Congress end its funding unless the WHO scraps guidelines on healthy eating, due to be published on Wednesday.

The threat is being described by WHO insiders as tantamount to blackmail and worse than any pressure exerted by the tobacco lobby.

In a letter to Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO’s director general, the Sugar Association says it will ‘exercise every avenue available to expose the dubious nature’ of the WHO’s report on diet and nutrition, including challenging its $406m (£260m) funding from the US.

The industry is furious at the guidelines, which say that sugar should account for no more than 10% of a healthy diet. It claims that the review by international experts which decided on the 10% limit is scientifically flawed, insisting that other evidence indicates that a quarter of our food and drink intake can safely consist of sugar.

Does anyone in their right mind think that a food intake consisting of 25% sugar makes any sense whatsoever?

Food over here, BTW, has been really good compared to Ireland. We have a branch of Trader Joe’s just down the road, which has supplied us with stacks of fantastic organic and/or healthy eats, for far cheaper than what the local supermarket charges for the usual pasteurised, added-sugar, added-salt crap.

This is just as well, because that supermarket has some really nasty stuff; even the bread is sweet due to added sugar! yuck. (In passing, pet food peeve: pasteurised orange juice. Pasteurisation of fruit juice kills the flavour and texture, and is thoroughly pointless; with that much acid and sugar, there’s no way any nasty bacteria can survive, assuming the juice is citrus and is fresh enough. But maybe that’s the point; saleable while less fresh == longer shelflife == profit.)

Tags: diet, food, funding, health, industry, intake, juice, sugar, supermarket, world