Chyden Finance: profit from hypocrisy

Yesterday, I indicated that the desire on the parts of the managers of multinational corporations to establish a one-world intellectual property regime could work against them.

This goes beyond Linux, Apache, Python, PHP, MySQL, OpenOffice, R, and other open-source usual suspects.

There is a very active open-source hardware movement that aims to keep technological innovation free.

Here are some examples:

Zeer Pots: Very low-tech food storage that uses evaporation to keep food cool.

Low-Cost ‘Air Conditioning’: Connect a coil of copper tubing to an electric fan, run cool water through it, et voilà, cool air. Use a DC fan, batteries, and a solar charger, and your costs are all upfront.

Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867. “[W]e’ll share how to make one of these storage pods, and you’re welcome to use this design. Our hope is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us.”

Icarus Project: A group of students “launched a digital camera into near-space to take photographs of the earth… on a budget of $150 total… [using] off-the-shelf items exclusively (i.e., no electronic chips or soldering).”

Cantenna: Build a microwave antenna from a Pringles⃨ can.

Make Magazine: O’Reilly publication dedicated to open-source hardware projects, many of which are just way too cool.

Open-Source Robotics: Wikipedia article with links to several open-source robotics projects.

One could waste a few days compiling a list of this sort of thing.

The point is that, if the managers of multinational corporations try to institute rules that prevent individuals in middle-income countries from enjoying the benefits of projects like these, the international bureaucrats responsible for overseeing the system might sympathize with the more than 6 billion individuals who are not multinational corporation shareholders, and weaken patent and copyright rules, relative to so-called ‘intellectual property’ statutes currently in effect in North America and Western Europe.

Just a thought.

Be very careful what you wish for, and invest accordingly.

CWE