Since 1988, the Office of the United States Trade Representative has released an annual Special 301 Report which “examines in detail the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights” for every country in the world. The intention is to classify countries that either encourage or turn a blind eye to intellectual property piracy and countries can be put on a “Watch List” or “Priority Watch List”. This designation can then be used to pressure countries during trade negotiations.

Andres Guadamuz, a lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh, recently noticed that the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has been lobbying US Trade Representative Ron Kirk to designate countries that have mandated the use of free software (specifically, Brazil, Indonesia and India) to be placed on the Special 301 Watch List. The IIPA is a private sector coalition of trade associations, including the Business Software Alliance, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA); these names are familiar to digital freedom supporters as cartels hell-bent on using their power to suffocate internet freedoms and to change the course of humanity’s path towards information-based societies in the interest of their enormous profiteering.

The assertion that a country’s choice to use free software is equivalent to illegal piracy is an absurdity and a desperate response to the the free software revolution happening throughout the world. In the 498-page Special 301 report released by the IIPA, they attack Brazil’s policy of mandating the use of free software on page 183 as a reason to keep it on the watchlist:

“Government software procurement: The Brazilian Government should be encouraged to continue its efforts to implement effective software asset management practices in its public ministries and agencies, while avoiding mandates for procurement of software based on the model of development or the business model of the developer.”

On page 170, the IIPA clarifies its demands of the Brazilian government:

“Avoid legislation on the mandatory use of open source software by government agencies and government controlled companies.”

Then, the IIPA takes us to Indonesia. Starting on page 79, they attempt to form a coherent argument about how mandating a switch to open source software is somehow an act against US trade interests:

“[I]n March 2009, the Ministry of Administrative Reform (MenPAN) issued Circular Letter No. 1 of 2009 to all central and provincial government offices including State-owned enterprises, endorsing the use and adoption of open source software within government organizations. While the government issued this circular in part with the stated goal to ‘reduc[e] software copyright violation[s],’ in fact, by denying technology choice, the measure will create additional trade barriers and deny fair and equitable market access to software companies.”

Huh? It’s as if the IIPA forgot that plenty of US companies sell open source software — a fact that they probably “forgot” because no open source software company is paying them off. Why is this form of institutionalized bribery accepted? The IIPA goes on to demand that Indonesia rescind this order on page 80:

“IIPA requests that the government of Indonesia take the following actions, which would result in the most significant near term commercial benefits to the copyright industries: […] Rescind March 2009 MenPAN circular letter endorsing the use and adoption of open source software […]”

The IIPA’s war against the free software revolution then takes us to the Philippines on page 148:

“IIPA was concerned regarding reports of consideration of a Free Open Source Software bill which would require government offices to use open source software. Passage of that bill would deny technology choice regarding software usage and ultimately would stunt the growth of the IT industry in the Philippines.”

Thailand’s commitment to open source is attacked on page 353:

“Among other market access restrictions to be addressed, reverse proposed policy mandating use of open source software, and, e.g., requiring bundling of government funded computers and computers for schools with open source software; maintain neutral policies with respect to technology choice.”

Vietnam is instructed to avoid open source on page 396: “Cease government-endorsed open source preference policy which is limiting technology choice in Vietnam.”

And, Ecuador is also cited for dangerously choosing open source software on page 453: “Most of USTR’s concerns were directed at patent issues, but one major copyright problem highlighted involved a poorly drafted provision in the Education Law which appears to allow free software to educational institutions. Due to their concerns, USTR moved Ecuador back to the Watch List […]”

The IIPA Report makes a few things very clear. First, although this is already well-known, the software industry is scared to death of open source software and must resort to strong-arming as it’s only means of competing with it. Second, free software is spreading like wildfire all over the world as the smart defense against the proprietary software industry. And, finally, we can see why free software for taxpayers is not gaining traction in the United States, where industry lobby groups have a much easier time bribing decision-makers.

The Open Source Index is a collection of rankings based on research at Georgia Tech. Recently, Red Hat made the findings available via this cool online web application. It might be arguable that Spain and France rank higher than Brazil (rank: 3) in government adoption of free software but the rankings show that large governments who could be doing amazing programs like the United States (rank: 28) are being beaten out by developing nations like Venezuela, Peru, South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam — even Costa Rica (population: 4 million).

A lot of people have blogged about this web app from Red Hat. But, perhaps the OSI data could be used as a Technology Policy Corruption Index when combined with lobbying data for companies like Microsoft. After all, when was the last time an impoverished kid who would benefit from a free software telecentro wined and dined a U.S. Senator?

The real world impact of technology policy failures in the US, using an example from the public education system:
To illustrate what it means to be “left in Brazil’s dust” on technology education policy, you can go to Adams Memorial Middle School’s “Computer Lab” homepage — graciously hosted by Tripod — and you’ll get a pop-ad ad when you click to enter the site (we got a scantily-clad woman selling a weight-loss scam … what will you get?).

Venturing further inside, there were 3 amusing Google AdWords ads: “Online High School”, “Homeschooling” and “Stratford Private School” … ahem … meanwhile, their “Technology Strategy” includes “Upgrade word processing programs to Microsoft Word” some time in FY 2008 and “Standardizing on district wide word processing to two tiers of Office 2007″.

When one takes a look at their Technology Plan Financial Worksheet, one can see that an astounding $50,000 dollars is allocated to this “Standardizing on district wide word processing to two tiers of Office 2007″ task. How can upgrading a word processing program take so much away from this school’s technology budget?

Meanwhile, the Brazilian government supports the Brazilian version of OpenOffice and has already installed 40,000 copies at 2,000 schools in the state of Paraná for $0 in software fees. Nationally, Brazil is building 53,000 computer labs that will serve 52 million students, using entirely free software. According to the World Bank, the US is the 4th richest country in the world, compared to Brazil’s ranking of 66.

We don’t mean to pick on the Adams-Chesire Regional School District in Massachusetts … they honestly were just the first public school to come up in a Google Search and we don’t really know anything outside of what we’ve learned via online searches. They seem to be relatively better-off than many parts of the country. But, that’s kind of the point. One can take any public school in the US and see what the policy of “proprietary knowledge” and “closed technology” has wrought.

That said, there is a glimmer of hope in that one of the line items on their Technology Strategy document is: “Investigate new software that would actually be used to enrich / extend / supplement curriculum” … we would urge this school district and all the public school systems who are fighting the well-known battle to provide quality education to U.S. students to “investigate new software” that could provide a more coherent, cutting-edge technology education at lower costs, with the help of the free software movement. For more information on the impact of technology policy on U.S. education policy, see a previous item from this website: Public tech education in United States lags behind poorer countries.

The power of the distributed commons! Our interview with Marcos Mazoni, new head of the technical committee to implement free software in Brazil, which we published in English and Portuguese, has been independently translated by people we don’t know into Spanish and Vietnamese.

Independent of that interview, Linux Magazine Online in Brazil has written a nice piece about North-by-South: Empresa de Código Aberto investe na América Latina.

This will be the first post 2008 but might as well start things off with more news about governments around the world opting for free software over the choices they are stuck with: piracy or unreal licensing fees. Vietnam has issued another recommendation urging a migration to open source, free software:

Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communication has recommended government agencies use open source software when using state moneys to implement information technology projects, local newspaper Vietnam News reported Friday. The ministry has issued a list of open source software, including OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox and Unikey.

This post links to an article that is already from January 1, 2008! From the Economic Times of India, there are 5 megatrends of 2008 and northxsouth.com is set up to take part in all of them. The trends are: fast growth in the BRIC+9 countries — “Brazil, Russia, India, China followed by Mexico, Poland, Turkey, Argentina, Columbia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, UAE, and Vietnam”. And software services is another. Social networking websites and beyond (our experience in developing user-generated growth technology goes back to the pioneering days of early Tagged.com). Service-oriented architecture. And, of course, open source software! Also, see this recent nxs post about near-sourcing to Latin America. The time has come to quit ignoring the potential of the Latin American free software revolution / phenomenon. We are ready to make it happen in 2008.