Wednesday, March 16, 2005

The "Free" Trade Agreement

I think the Free Trade Agreement recently entering into force between the US and Australia is having some very, very worrysome effects.

First off this week, I got an email from the democrats, asking about open source copyright licences. I (and probably everyone else on their open source advocacy list) pointed them to Creative Common's Australia specific No Derivatives, Attribution licences.

This was explained as something that had to be cleared up so that no official party statement could be modified, must be attributed, and is free to use for educational and general purpose use.

Secondly, I saw an article via Slashdot. It's about a bid by Sony to monopolize the industry with circumvention device laws - outlawing mod chips. It's argued that Sony is interfering with fair use and locking out competitors to their gaming platform, the Playstation.

What's next?

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