The idea of ownership is ubiquitous. The myth is that IP rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars and corn oil. IP is supposedly intended to encourage inventors and the investment needed to bring their products to the clinic and marketplace. In reality, patents often suppress invention rather than promote it: drugs are "evergreened" when patents are on the verge of running out – companies buy up the patents of potential rivals in order to prevent them being turned into products. Moreover, the prices charged, especially for pharmaceuticals, are often grossly in excess of those required to cover costs and make reasonable profits.
Even technology pundits can sometimes be right. Jason Calacanis, an entrepreneur and noted agent provocateur, recently argued that there is a simple solution to the woes of both Microsoft and big media companies. The world’s largest software firm should pay Time Warner, News Corporation and others firms to block Google, the search giant, from indexing their content—and make it searchable exclusively through Bing, Microsoft’s new search service. Media companies would thus get badly needed cash and Bing a chance to gain market share from Google.
Here's a formula for making a killing in times of crisis. Go to the south-eastern tip of Bangladesh, on the border with Burma, and buy an old fishing boat. It'll cost 100,000 taka, or about £900. Then budget 450 pounds, for rice and drinking water, and maybe another £450 for bribes. Then head off and trawl for clients among the most destitute communities in Bangladesh – a country so densely populated country and so poor that for Britain to be on similar economic terms it would have to have a population of 200 million with an average income around four per cent of what a Briton's is today,
Google, in a significant development for deaf Internet users, announced it was adding automatic caption capability to videos on YouTube. Google said machine-generated captions would initially be available only in English and on videos from 13 YouTube "partner channels" but it hopes to extend the feature eventually to all videos uploaded to the site. "Google believes that the world's information should be accessible to everyone," said Vint Cerf, a Google vice president who has been described as the "Father of the Internet." "One of the big challenges of the video medium is whether it can be made accessible to everyone," said Cerf, who also holds the title of "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google.
You need to be a member of Journalism Network to add comments!
Join this social network