Wed Apr 2, Intellectual property

This coming Wednesday, we will discuss intellectual property.

The concept of intellectual property, whether it is copyright to artwork and music, invention patents, or movies and software, have been instrumental in encouraging and supporting original thinking in the last century or so.

While copying was rampant before and still is in some parts of the world, the protection of intellectual property rights allow major investments in research and the making of movies before any possibility of income is ever realized.

The potential reward of a big payoff brought investors into supporting these efforts.

However, recent cultural values seem to have shifted.

The internet model of free software encourages group development efforts rather than the proprietary development by a single developer.  It can be argued that people get inspired by ideas from others and the open offering of development from a free initial platform results in a much faster development and a more varied one.

The ease of downloading and copying music and videos on line also caused traditional distribution channels to lose revenue and artists to not get royalties from their work.

The younger generation complain of Hollywood and large drug companies making megabucks through intellectual properties,  that the movie is already made, the drug is already developed and the cost of making additional copies are way less than what is being charged.

Some say that intellectual property promotes monopoly and that it is not theft in that there is not tangible loss to the owner in copying an idea.

Even intellectuals complain of ideas being throttled by intellectual property owners and there is no longer free exchange of ideas any more.

The patenting of genetics raise complains of commercialization and ownership of living organisms.  How can anyone own a living thing whether it is a genetically modified seed or bacteria?

On the other hand, if we do trim back on the range on the ownership of intellectual property, how do we continue to encourage entrepreneurship without the promise of financial payoff for a success?

Why should someone finance the millions to make a movie if no one will pay after the first copy?

Should the length of patent periods be reduced or extended?

What is the definition of intellectual property that will encourage new thinking without limiting others to build on the idea?

Mar 23 Current events - Legitimate elections

Current events lead one to wonder about the legitimacy of elections.




Russia claimed that the Crimea democratically determined through election to become part of Russia again.

What made this seem hard to believe?

Is it the short time allowed before voting day?

Is it because the Russian army was already in the country before the election happened?  (How do we know they are Russian soldiers when they have no identification?  If they are Russian soldiers, how did they get uniforms and equipment with no Russian identification?  Have Russia been preparing for this for years? Can we trust our own military if they can change their national identity at a moment's notice?)


I understand that there is a majority of Russian speakers in Crimea and therefore it is credible that an election there will produce a result favoring joining Russia, but 90+%?  Does a high turnout and near perfect election result automatically makes it suspicious?  (Think of the 100% vote in North Korea).

Maybe it is how election boundaries are set, or how issues are framed, or how elections are funded.

When should we not trust an election, and start a revolution?

Here in Canada, we have the party in power in Quebec preparing for an election and talking about the possibility of an independent Quebec.

The premier there complained about possible vote manipulation of non French speaking students, casting doubt about the election itself.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/pq-accuses-students-from-outside-province-of-trying-to-steal-election/article17627605/


We take it for granted that the election process is the expression of the people but the results are open to all kinds of variations.

What makes an election legitimate?

How can we trust that the election result truly reflect the will of the people?

Meeting on "spying on our allies"

We had our discussion about the appropriateness of states spying on their allies as the US was caught not too long ago listening on the German chancellor's mobile phone.

Just about all the people at the meeting thought spying is something we have to do and that it is not enough to trust someone's word just because they are our "allies".

The famous saying that "countries have interests, not allies", that sovereign states can change their interests and find themselves at odds with their previous positions and therefore it is to every states individual interests to monitor others.

Here, I have to clarify that by spying, I do not include legal legitimate actions of research and monitoring. 

It is not spying to keep tabs on the website of another sovereign state to see what they are telling the world about their latest position on a particular issue.

Spying is the act of getting information by clandestine means, through lying about one's identity, tapping into communications without the other sovereign state's permission, and in general, getting information that the other states do not want to be publicized.

Spies and undercover police officers by necessity lie about their identity in order to get information.

We justify their existence because we cannot control the other sovereign state with our laws and criminal elements do not respect our laws.

However, everyone agrees that we should not have private investigators checking on our spouses even though the relationship is of great importance to us and our spouses have independence to act as they wish.

The act of monitoring without the other party's knowledge destroys trust which is central to an intimate relationship.

We can draw a scale of relationships where rogue states like North Korea on one end and our spouses and love ones are on the other end with everything in between. 

We definitely need to monitor states and people we do not trust and especially if they operate outside of our legal structure.  There is little to loose in trust when the monitoring or spying is revealed as it is expected.

With intimate relationships, clandestine monitoring is so damaging to the trust and the relationship that it causes more damage than it is worth.

Then there are the middle situations with so call friendly states where spying on each other is something we say we don't do but we cannot afford not to do,........ just in case.

Should we check on our business partner to see if they are about to break our business agreement to join with our competitor?

It all depends on the closeness of relationship and the sensitivity of the trust involved.

What surprised me most is that most people at the meeting thought it was appropriate for the Canadian federal government and the provincial governments to be spying on each other. 

There are heated debates from time to time about federal provincial matters and then there is the possible matter of Quebec separation.

Perhaps the group was confused about my definition of spying being limited to illegal means of collecting information and not about legal monitoring their counter parties.

It is unimaginable to me to find our different levels of governments "spying" on each other when negotiating transfer payments and other matters of a sensitive nature.  The electorate will simply think we have a bunch of criminals running our countries.  What else are they doing that is illegal?

So spying is really all justified on a utilitarian basis of necessity with parties that have no obligations to us like other foreign sovereign countries or criminals that live outside the law.   The lost of trust among civilized citizens within a good judicial system is too high a price to pay for the possible information to come out of spying.

Or am I just too naive?

Mar 12 Ideas Cafe meeting "spying on your allies"

Last week in our discussion of the oldest profession,  we never got through prostitution to talk about spying.

This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we will discuss spying and whether states should be spying on their allies.

We discuss spying before at a previous cafe.  For sovereign states dealing with each other with no binding world court and rule of law to force judgment on rogue states, it is the rule of the jungle in play.

We may depend on moral persuasion, trade sanctions, and exclusion from the rest of the world community, but ultimately, we cannot cross sovereignty borders to punish other states while expecting others to respect our sovereignty.

Outright war or invasion becomes the only option left.

It is Thomas Hobbs' argument for a monarch with absolute power to maintain order or else citizens in a state will go down into chaos with "might is right" becoming the rule.

But there is no monarch for the whole world that individual states have to listen to.

Whether it is watching North Korea's nuclear weapon ambitions, Iran's death threats to Israel, Russia's and China's level of military prowess. Monitoring other states becomes a necessity. 

But what about allies?

Do treaties pledging allegiance mean anything?

Can we trust common interests to ensure predictable response from our allies?

Do allies stay allies forever through changes in government and democratic changes?

We have the famous image of Chamberlain waving his agreement with Hitler for "peace in our time" to show that agreement between sovereign state may not be as dependable as we would like.

"Trust but monitor" -  is that really trust?

Perhaps trust is more than a black and white issue. 

Apart from those we trust and those we don't, there is a wide spectrum in between with varying shades of grey.

There is also the consequential consideration of what misjudging our trust can cost us. National security, trade secrets, politically sensitive information are very high stakes compared to whether someone is going to pay their rent this month.  

Monitoring and spying cost resources as well as implications to the very element of trust itself.

The recent news of the US listening to the German Canceller's mobile phone calls was big news.  But are we sure that the Germans are not doing the same but not caught?

One can't help but draw the parallel in the domestic situation.  Can a person have a private investigator check on the behavior of their spouse without hurting their relationship and claim that it was because the relationship is "just too important"?

Meeting on "The oldest profession"

We had our Ideas Cafe discussion a couple of days ago.  We never got to spying as prostitution was such a hot topic for everyone.

Nobody at the meeting was against legalizing prostitution.

John said that even in high school, he and his friends realized that any girl, no matter how unattractive, can have sex anytime they want because there is such an overwhelming difference in sex drive between the two genders. It is just a matter of biology that males want sex more than females and that sets up a supply demand unbalance that naturally opens up for trading sex for money or other favors.

During the discussion, it occurred to me that the word prostitution no longer just mean trading sex for money but have become a stigmatized word.  It represents an unwilling participation of an activity in order to earn money.

We use the term "prostituting ourselves" to describe such an unwilling activity even if it has nothing to do with sex.

In our reading group, we are reading Judith Butler's "Undoing Gender" and there she pointed out that we are constrained by the social norms around us, a lot of it existed before we came to this world.  The notion of the two genders with nothing in between is one of these norms, causing gays, lesbians, intersex, and transgender individuals to be automatic outcasts because of these existing norms.  We are constantly working within these norms to become socially accepted.

A similar thing seems to be happening here with prostitution.

Our existing social norm excludes exchanging sex for money as an acceptable practice.

We hold the ideal that love and mutual acceptance is a necessary part of sex and that anything else is degrading and unacceptable.

While we all like to have gourmet meals, is there no room for other ways to satisfy our hunger before the next gourmet meal?

Discussion about sex always seem to divide the group along gender lines, with females insisting that there should be no sex without love and the males agreeing, but.....

There is an acceptance within the group of "sex therapy workers" who work with sexologist to help patients with sexual issues. 

So if you have an eating disorder, you should be able to get help. But if you are just hungry.....

We all think of ourselves as sensible and reasonable individual having rational thinking and discipline over our bodies and actions.  However, I understand that those who elect to go through a gender change and subject themselves to hormone injections undergo personality changes.  Some expressed surprise at how much hormones have changed their outlook and urges.

These are perhaps the only people that have experience both the female and male perspectives before and after the gender change while the rest of us are only guessing what it is like being the other gender.

If it seems like I am blaming hormones for all of man's sexual transgressions, I am not.  Men needs to keep their sexual urges in check but women also needs to understand that this control requires fortitude and just outlawing or stigmatizing sex without love may not be the practical solution.

After all, I am sure that the catholic church does not condone transgressions of priests against their celibate vows and yet it happens with alarming frequency but one seldom hears similar issues with nuns.

Then there is the implication of paying for a service of any kind. 

In Michael Sandel's book "What money can't buy", he raised the seldom thought of idea of going to one's mother-in-law's place for Thanksgiving dinner but then pay her cash for the dinner afterwards as an appreciation of such a great meal.

The Thanksgiving dinner was an act of kindness, social acceptance, expression of love, and everything else that will be destroyed by turning it into a commercial transaction by paying for it or even by a gift of money.

By the same token,  the sexual act involves intimacy that conveys acceptance into the participants' private realms, expressions of trust, and usually, approvals from the most inner selves of those involved. 

Offering to pay for this turns it to a commercial transaction making it arguably worse than paying one's mother-in-law after Thanksgiving dinner.

So it is complicated.

Are we carrying sexual stigma baggage from past generations?

Are we idealizing the sex act to the point that we exclude all other biological considerations?  Rafi's response to Jerry's characterization of sex being a holy form of union is wondering whether other animals feel the holiness and how are we biologically different than the other animals?

Is it time to change our social attitude and norms towards sex ?

How do we experience the perspective of the other gender without getting a full dose of hormone injections?

Mar 5, The oldest profession

             
I was thinking of trading sex for money as the oldest profession but Peggy recently mentioned that spying was also referred to as the oldest profession.

Both spying and prostitution share the common attribute that we rather not have these activities but somehow we know that it will go on because of the mismatch of the idealistic versus the real nature of the society that we live in.

We do not use "the oldest profession" to refer to farming, hunting, or any of the activities that we must have engaged in to sustain ourselves.  These are a given.  Prostitution and spying are activities that we rather not have but acknowledge their existence and its long history.

We had a cafe discussion in Nov 2011 on "prostitution, an act among consenting adults?" and it highlighted the persistence of the profession because of the demand and the supply.

In that discussion, we separated sex for procreation from sex for entertainment. 
                
Sex for procreation requires that we have stable parents for child rearing and restrict sex to ensure off springs will be nurtured and provided for.  It is the source of our social norms about sex and we have not adapted to sex for entertainment.

It is now fifty years since birth control pills became available and certainly our sexual attitudes have loosen up and sex as entertainment is no longer as illicit as before.  However, attitudes have not changed as much as we predicted in the sixties and barriers still exists.

Should we legalize and accept prostitution as a convenience similar to a fast food meal or indulgence similar to a gourmet meal versus cooking at home?
 
What is the difference between food and sex?

Can we separate sex from the family kinship structure?  

Why can we discuss food in public but sex remains uncomfortable socially?

As to spying, can we eliminate it by having no secrets? 

If Wikileaks achieve their goal, will spying come to an end as a profession?

Will life be boring with no secrets to discover and no material to feed the gossip mill?