For starts, the case itself was resolved in a somewhat shady manner. The judge required that the jury merely conclude whether or not the music files were made available for sharing. There was no requirement to prove that the files were actually copied illegally. This is like having to pay a hefty sum for leaving your CD out in public for anyone to copy. How can I be held responsible for what someone else does with my CD? I have no control over that! I am not saying Jaimme Thomas is innocent, but I am arguing that she has not been proven guilty. That in my opinion makes all the difference.

Secondly, there is no way for the recording industry to put any figure on how much money they are losing due to illegal file sharing. So I cannot understand what the basis of the figure $220K which was arrived at. Typically such fines serve two purposes: (a) they serve as a deterrent for against the crime, and (b) compensate the aggrieved party adequately. This fine does neither.

Jaimme Thomas makes $36,000 a year. It will take her over 8 years to pay that sum if she subsists on food stamps, sells her kidney, puts her kids up for adoption and lives under the bridge. Practically speaking, if she is forced to pay the fine, she will have to declare bankruptcy. Hardly fitting punishment for the crime! If over-reaction works, then why not send everyone to the gallows?

Secondly, when the RIAA has no idea how much money it loses to illegal file sharing, and does not know if the the files in question in this case were shared or not, then on what basis can anyone state that the RIAA has been adequately compensated? Especially if the files were never illegally downloaded at all!

If RIAA continues this war path, it will only serve to make people more militant, and serve to detract artists from the recording labels. The internet is serving to be a great equalizer. Artists can now sell their music independently on the internet through sites like Myspace.

So where is RIAA going with this? I suspect to their own demise, or at the least to a self inflicted embarrassment.

Typically, the female archetypes reflect role and perception of women in the culture and age that the myth belong to (or originated from). Among the various female archetypes from different cultures, myths and ages, nothing is more contrasting than the one in the western mythology and Indian (I make no mention of other eastern mythology ‘cuz I dont know enough about them).

All of the female archetypes in western fairy tales, and Judeo-Christian mythology are a combination of weak, motherly, manipulative, gossipy, insubordinate, ‘evil’, and virginal (in a side-kick sort of way). To illustrate better:

• ‘Damsel in distress’ is a combination of weak and virginal
• ‘Fairy godmother’ is motherly
• ‘Evil step-mother’ or ‘evil step-sister’ is a combination of ‘evil’ and manipulative
• Lot’s wife in the Bible is a combination of weak, gossipy, and insubordinate
• Eve in the Bible is a combination of weak and insubordinate, and so on.

Although there are a few positive archetypes, none of them come close to the male archetype ‘Hero’ that is the most popular one in all myths and folktale.

Contrastingly, however, in Indian/Hindu mythology, there are many positive female characters that translate to some positive male archetypes that approaches the ‘Hero’ archetype. Take for instance, the story of the Hindu goddess ‘Durga’ she was bestowed with the best traits/weapons of all the gods to create the most powerful being the slay the demon that none of the god could kill individually.

Similarly, the character of ‘Kali’ is another example of the female ‘Hero’ archetype in Hindu mythology. In fact, although the character of ‘Radha’, Krishana’s lover may not seem like the classic ‘hero’ archetype, the life of ‘Radha’ follows Joseph Campbell’s classic ‘Hero’s journey’. She is a simple (virtually unknown) human lover and subsequently ascends to be the divine better half of Krishna.

It is interesting to note that the all the female archetypes in western folklore and mythology are present in the Hindu mythology as well. But Hindu mythology provides a a wider range of female archetypes that includes the ‘Hero’ archetype. In other words, all archetypes were applied equally to both men and women. It goes to demonstrate that in the Vedic age, women were considered on par with men. Something that India has lost today, and worse, something the west hasn’t had for over two thousand years, and women continue to struggle for equality.

Given that they are so old, our beloved George W. Bush seems to have decided that the First Amendment is too antiquated to be relevant anymore, and so has gone about with alacrity to dismantle it. The most infamous effort being what is called as the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act, essentially suspended individual’s Habeas Corpus, and allowed the government unrestricted access to any and all records (including private ones) without a warrant. The government could now arrest people without charges and detain them indefinitely. This effectively dismantled the freedom guaranteed by the constitution to the individual.

We have all seen the pictures from Gitmo and other secret prison that caused outrage among the people who still cared about freedom and liberty. But it never quite touched home, in the sense that it was something that happened to suspected terrorists, the Arabs, the Muslims, the people who were not like the average white, Christian male.

That barrier has now been broken. Best seen in what happened on Sept 16th at the University of Florida.

Looks like the law enforcement is now cracking down on anyone who dares to speak their mind. Think twice the next time you ask an unusual question; you might just get tased.

The indian industry is largely a service industry and less a manufacturing or products based industry. Considering the maturity the industry has reached, it is time to move towards a products’ business model. This is not a statement arising out of a prejudice against, or contempt for, the service industry. The basic argument against services industry is that, by predominating our economy on the services industry, the factors influencing our economy tend to be less under our control and more under the control of the economies that we service. This lopsided dependence puts our economy more at risk of turning turtle like that of Brazil in the nineties.

This not a propaganda of the “swadeshi” movement that RSS has been attempting to promulgate. This is reality.

India’s economy has what it takes to look inward to fuel itself. There is sufficient captive market to keep the money circulating, and with the partially open economy India Inc. cannot afford to slack on quality either.

The unfortunate fact is that, the indian companies seem to wake up to gobal competetion only if that the last resort. There is very little proactive investment for striving towards redefining global standards.

Take the motorbike industry for instance. Till 1995 Hero Honda was the only 4 stroke bike around and there was very little choice for anyone who wanted to buy one. Then came the roumour that china was planning to dump really cheap bikes into the indian markets for a price upto Rs. 20k less than average indian bike. This jump started the innovation in the indian bike industry, and now we are at the forefront with immumerable patents to the credit of TVS, Bajaj, and Hero.

The same arguments hold true for indian software industry as well. Consider the software services companies, the kind of talent pool that is at their disposal, they are still happy with software consulting. Which means they are in business only as long as the industry in the US, the europe are willing to spend money for services from them. There is nothing that they can offer off the shelf for firms looking for a solution. There is nothing that these cos lack to do the latter. But they choose not to. Now with huge anti-outsourcing sentiments making waves, may be its time these companies wake up and smell the coffee.

Also, we have seen a huge influx of MNCs into India providing much needed employment. But it would be stupid to expect MNcs to work anywhere towards the health of indian economy. They are here to make money, their survival depends not on the health of our economy, but on the health of the economy of the country they are based on. So if anyone needs to look out for our economy, it’s gotta be India Inc. and there is nothing altruist about it. If India Inc. has to survive, indian economy needs to be in good shape.

They are the ones who gotta build india, coz no one else is gonna bother to.Not sure if this makes much sense, let alone if the flow of ideas is coherent. But then, when has it ever been that way? It’s my blog… what more proof do need?

Patents are typically awarded to inventions and new ideas. The idea is to give an incentive to the inventors for sharing their inventions with the public. In exchange for sharing the invention, the inventor is given monopoly over its use for 17 years.The patent holder can license its use, or may even choose to refuse to do so, or even sell his patent rights to others. Also independent reinvention of the same technique by someone else does not give them the right to use it.

This workes fine for inventions is all branches of science and arts, but fails miserably in case of computer algorithms. In case of hardware design, or automobile design or any physical system, design of one component is likely to affect others. Hence interoperability is not always guaranteed. Due to various factors like temperature, pressure, presence of other chemicals etc. one particular technique used in one physical system may fail in another. However, this is not the case with computer algorithms. For instance, behaviour of a pointer is the same, regardless of whether it is referred to inside a while loop, or outside it, from a function or otherwise. The behaviour of a pointer is not distorted because to where or how it is called. But similar analogy may not apply in case of physical systems, the mechanism used by a CD player mounted on a stable platform will not work in case of a discman. The CD will end up skipping forever due to the vibrations and shocks, hance requirement of a new mechanism to play CDs in a discman.

More often than not, it is virtually impossible to write a complex piece of software without making use to already established techniques. Also, there may not be any other way doing things. There may not be any workarounds. Consider, for example, the proof given for finding prime numbers in polynomial time. Assuming an algorithm is developed to generate prime numbers or validate primality of a number in polynomial time and it is patented. Then this effectively thwarts all new developments in the area of number theory and encryption across multitude of avenues. Ironically, the purpose of patents is to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts.”

A patent is an absolute monopoloy. This policy implicitly assumes that inventions are rare and precious, since only in those circumstances is it beneficial. However,software is a field of constant reinvention, and recombination of known techniques to provide a solution. With patents this is disallowed. A classic example is that of quicksort and linked lists. Both quicksort algorithm and concept of linked lists is all too well known. However, there is patent for using linked lists as the data structure for quicksort! Things couldnt get more absurd than this. Here is a list of some more absurd software patents that have been granted over the past years.

Donald Knuth makes a impressive arguments against software patents in his letter to the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, USA. A more detailed description on the dangerous trends in software patents is available here.

In case you believe (like I do) that software patents are causing more harm than good, then sign the Petition Against Software Patents (open only to citizens of USA)

Recommended reading:

FFII: Software Patents in Europe

Software Patents

Microsoft and FSF represent the ends of the spectrum. Each of them have their problems. If the whole world were to be dominated by Microsoft, they wouldnt hesitate in forcing us to eat the products they endorse, and trying to take control of what we watch on TV, or listen on our radio. Of course, not to mention the number of times we will have to restart all of the machines and systems that ran on Mircosoft software.

Having said that, FSF isnt exactly our saviour either. If the world were to go FSF way, then programmars wont be able to make living, atleast not the way we do now. It is a really good idea to disseminate the source code along with the software for reasons obvious. But then, how does the person who is developing software make a living. You cannot afford to be a part time developer, it simply wont scale in the economics of today and the sheer demand for such services will render this model of software development ill-equipped to service the needs. The arguement often quoted if favour of FSF is that research is often shared with the world, the it is the this shared knowledge that other build upon for advancement of science and mankind. But in case of research, it is often funded by the government or corporates that cannot afford their engineers/scientists’ time on a project whose result may or may not be ecnomically viable. For obvious reasons, it is not easy for software development to work on this model. So FSF at its radical extreme may be the solution after all.

The main argument in favour of FSF is the monopolistic practices of corporates like Mircosoft. It is not a very good idea to let corporates decide our life style, what we read or what we listen to. But that’s exactly what they are trying to do. RIAA has been trying hard to control piracy by inserting protection mechanisms on the CD and mp3 players to ensure that “illegal” copies of the song cannot be played by them. This is just one of the ways in which the industry is trying to control our experience. They attempting to deny us our freedom. Our freedom to choose what we want, and how we like it. Just like we can buy the ingredients and cook what we want, we should be able to do the same with software, take the software that we need, and be able to customize it to suit our requirements and add features to it if we need to. This is what Free Software Foundation stands for.

So what we really need are ethical practises from the corportates, and laws to ensure that these ethics are respected and adhered to by the industry. What we need are softwares that are more reasonably priced, and not audio CDs that cost Rs.10 to make but are sold at Rs.200. What we need is a flexibility by the industry to allow expansion of any software’s feature set and customizability for one’s need. If this is done, then we might see an end to the war we witness over the net almost everyday

P.S: Click Here for Windows source-code ;)