Online petitions – A force for good?

38 Degrees members appear (Photo credit: 38 Degrees)

I’ve been signing a lot of online petitions recently. It started what seems like a long time ago with a 38 degrees petition to save the forests in England; a petition that actually seemed to have an effect. Since then there have been loads of them to sign, from saving bees to asking Starbucks to pay tax.
On the surface I doubt most people can really see anything wrong these petitions. They raise awareness of an issue and allow people to take some kind of action and express their feelings easily – almost too easily. And therein lies the rub. It’s really easy to sign a petition and think that your part has been done.
“No need to worry about the arms trade or the environment anymore, I’ve signed an online petition!”
I’m
Not sure what to think with online petitions anymore. It’s becoming clear that they are having less impact than they did at first and it seems that like protesting and letters to leaders, the people in charge will just nod, smile and do the opposite. Have online petitions started to have the opposite effect from what was intended? Do they just numb people to issues that they previously would have done something more about? I’m not sure.

Our own worlds

Recently an acquaintance of mine who lives in Israel has been posting some rather unsavory things on facebook. I don’t take sides on the issue. It just seems such a mess of violence that I can’t see either as being “right” or “wrong”, but I don’t like the violent rhetoric coming from either side of the divide. There’s been more than once the my mouse has hovered over the remove from my timeline section before relenting.
It did make me realise how easy it has become today to remove things that we are uncomfortable with from our world and how it’s even easier to surround ourselves with ideas that we agree with. If you don’t like what someone is saying then just unfriend them. You think the television is too liberal then turn on Fox news, not Liberal enough then Jon Stewart is there. Even here on blog sites we can follow people who we on some level agree with and not follow those we don’t. It’s a dangerous situation, because it means there is no more dialogue. People can sit behind their respective walls and only allow in information that agrees with their current paradigm. They can paint the other side as a demonic or idiot enemy, that just doesn’t understand the true way. In the end, it will only lead to violence and division in society.
I’m a big fan of the “I love @#$%ing science”, posts that appear on facebook. But now and again there is a post that gives insight into the fundamentalist nature of some of the posters. It seems some would like to instate some type of Scientoracy on the world – and idea that admit I feel draw towards in some ways, but know to be absurd. But once you surround yourself with only people like yourself, these ideas start to seem normal. Likewise I’m sure there is a creationist site where they sit around tutting at people who believe only in science and want to bring in a theocracy and can’t understand for a second why anyone would think otherwise. After all everyone else that they know thinks it’s a fantastic idea. It’s the same for Labour and conservatives, democrats and republicans, Israel and Palestine. Both sides can only see insane charactures of the others. I’ve met some creationist, while I find there view on that one subject to be… well... rather strange. In other ways they seemed to normal intelligent people. And that’s the danger: if we don’t have dialogue, then we start to dehumanise people and that’s lead to all kinds of trouble in the past.
While I might be wrong, it seems that there is risk of the problem being ten fold for younger generations who have never lived without the ability to wall of others beliefs.
While I don’t agree with what she’s saying, I’m going to keep my pro-Israel acquaintance on facebook and try to understand her point of view. Likewise I hope I can expand my interaction with other people outside of my normal way of thinking. It seems one of the best ways to grow.

Chinese Copyright – An Oxymoron?

Let me start by saying that I’m not into China bashing. I think that in many cases China has become a scapegoat for western governments for problems that we have created ourselves through greed, jingoism and whole bunch of other things that are not really the point in this post. 

However, one thing that has annoyed me a bit about China is the lack of copyright enforcement. For me it’s one of the biggest examples of China’s supposed “cheating” when it comes to international trade.  

Now I’m not talking about home software or downloading films here. I personally don’t mind if a person who doesn’t have the money downloads an illegal copy of my book. Besides, most Chinese would not be able to afford a real copy of windows and would not buy a full price DVD (or my book) if it was available to them; the relative costs are just too much. And on that side of the argument publishers and producers only have themselves to blame. 

For me the unfair part comes once we starting getting into companies, schools and other institutions. I’ve worked in four or five different schools, both public and private and not once have I seen a legal copy of software. In fact, once, when I was at the computer science department, I found an illegal copy of “XMLspy”. This is a product I was involved in developing when I lived in Austria. From what I’ve read and seen such piracy is common place throughout China. The book we had in the computer science department quoted the illegal software figure at over 90% of all software used.

Now I think China could have been forgiven for this ten years ago. But in the current state of things where China is rich and there are massive trade imbalances, it seems pretty unfair. 

If you think about Altova, the middle/small company that I worked for in Austria. They’re spending a lot of money to develop that product, but getting nothing back from it. Yet some people in China are using it to make money from Austrian companies – possibly even Altova - through the products they manufacture. It’s a one way flow of cash for a two way flow of goods and services.  

Moreover China has started moving in on creative industries as well, not just manufacturing. So who can create a cheaper application? The Austrian company that has to pay thousands for software licenses or the company that’s getting them for free? In this case the Austrian company is effectively subsidising the Chinese company by paying towards the development costs of the software. Without the one company paying, there would be no software for either.   

 And it’s the same for all industries. The light bulb factory in Scotland has to pay its share of fees for software licensing, while the Chinese light bulb factory can use the products for free. It’s small part of the reason China can make cheaper bulbs. It’s especially hard for start up businesses where technology costs are can be a large part of the start up fees. It’s not a fair contest.

So what can we do about it? Well for a start governments have to start raising this issue with China more. In my admittedly limited experience with Chinese people is that if you stand up to them in a firm but polite way then you will get results. Not taking action seems to be seen as a green light to do something even when saying not to.  Although I do wonder how much control over ground level issues like this the government of China really has.

What’s really needed is a change in the mindset of the Chinese people – no easy task. And the only way of doing this is education, which is something that the Chinese government has to be on board for. But why wouldn’t they be?

The thing is, it’s not just in the West’s interests to improve the copyright law. It’s in China’s interests as well. If the reports I’ve read are true, China is trying to move away from its manufacturing focus and trying to develop its creative and service industries instead (or possibly as well as). But is anyone going to open a software company in place where they know that they will make no money for their products? Is anyone going to spend millions of investment in new technology only to have it stolen and sold for a fraction of the price? 

Moreover, I think of my students in the computer science department. What jobs are there going to be for them in the future? Sure there will be some large scale developments and governments or military jobs, but that’s a small number of positions  compared to the number of graduates. Most, with their high education, will probably end up doing menial jobs in factories far away from their homes to pay the rent.

Frankly I don’t think there is a simple solution to this problem. But inaction is certainly not the way to go. Raising the issue with China is a start, but it means little without reciprocal financial punishments. On the other side, software companies have to start charging reasonable prices, based on an international mean for their products, so as not to keep pricing companies in low wage countries out of buying. Maybe with these and some other changes we can come to an agreement on a fair way to deal with copyright.