Protecting, or not protecting, Intellectual Property

Julia Kirby has written an interesting article, published on the Harvard Business Review, called Why China Might Never Protect IP - that's Intellectual Property, to you and me.

China plainly has a different view of what belongs to whom. Or perhaps they have a different view of theft. But what Kirby points out is that even in the Western world now people are focusing increasingly on openness, a way in which when I create something that you can use or develop, I just let it go for free. Linux is an early example; Wikipedia is a later one, and one that has those people who think you have to make money out of everything still scratching their heads over.


Newspapers are learning the hard way that people aren't interested in being 'special people' who can read the 'special' news by paying a subscription for an online newspaper. Some will - that's fine. Most people who use the Internet have an innate sense that if newspaper A online isn't free newspaper B will be. Guess who gets read?

One of the comments on Kirby's article calls the article drivel. I just read through Seth Godin's alphabetical list of ;post-industrial' words. He introduces it by saying:

New times demand new words, because the old words don't help us see the world differently. Along the way, I've invented a few, and it occurs to me that sometimes I use them as if you know what I'm talking about.

Yes, he has invented a few, but not so many that we don't understand what he says. And his list isn't that unfamiliar. Anyway, one of his favourite words/phrases is the 'lizard brain'. My suspicion is that the person who called Kirby's article 'drivel' was being driven by his lizard brain when he wrote his comment. Kirby and Godin would mostly agree with each other's 'worldview' (another of the words on Godin's list, and definitely one he hasn't invented!)

We're in an extraordinary transition time in terms of property of all sorts; greed and endless profit is no longer the motivating factor for many people. It'll be interesting to see how it all pans out, and at the speed with which things are moving, I may still be around to see what happens!

I still hate vacuum cleaners

Sometime ago I wrote an article entitled I Hate Vacuum Cleaners. I haven’t changed my mind.
The vacuum cleaner we bought some time before we went to England last year has now pretty much conked out on us, and we’re having to borrow our daughter’s cleaner. (Fortunately she lives upstairs.) I notice that even on her relatively new cleaner bits are falling off left, right and centre.
Yes, I understand that vacuum cleaners lead a hard life and are very much under-appreciated (it’s certainly more difficult to lift all your carpets, haul them outside, throw them over a handy line and then beat them for a morning). But they deserve what they get. I won’t go into all the reasons now, because I talk about them in my article, but suffice to say that the people from the I Love Vacuum Cleaners Association (ILVaCA) get very little change from me.
I’ve just been reading a piece on Kirby vacuum cleaners, and their claim to be very reliable and light to move about. They should be reliable; here in New Zealand they cost a fortune. I didn’t realise they’d been around so long (1907); I thought they were relative newcomers to the vacuum cleaning field. Reliable or light, personally I don’t think it matters whether you use Sebo vacuums, or Kirbys, or Dysons, Hoovers, or Electrolux or any of the other dozens of brands. They’re all tarred with the same brush.
You see, vacuum cleaners have an association themselves: the I Hate Humans Association (IHHA – yes, I know it’ not easy to pronounce, but vacuums have more ability with the letter H than humans have – it’s something to do with having so much air sucked through them). From the IHHA Manifesto (which I've managed, by devious means, to acquire) we learn that their underhand methods are simply part of a plan to be released from all work that involves suction, being pulled around, and having your innards emptied regularly.
Next time your vacuum gets stuck on the corner of a door, don’t just assume it’s accidental. It’s not; no machine could get caught up in the ways vacuums do.
It’s a conspiracy.

Photo courtesy of www.butkaj.com on Flickr.com