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I've just been reading the news (click here or on the picture below) that Greg Ham of Men at Work has died; possibly by suicide.



 

Suicide or not, Ham was apparently depressed and emotionally and financially ruined by a copyright dispute over the 'flute riff' in their 80s hit Down Under that was a phrase from 'Kookaburra sits in an old gum tree' written more than 75 years ago for a Girl Guides competition by Marion Sinclair; who died in 1988.

Everyone with kids is familiar with this musical phrase.  It is as Australian as the first phrase in Waltzing Matilda (that he should have used instead).

This cause for depression is close to home as my father's death was certainly accelerated by a patent dispute.

From a pure market perspective intellectual property protection is often justified as a way of making trade secrets public but what is the market benefit in copyright; will artists and authors keep their work secret without it? Why should the public continue to pay for a lifetime, particularly after an artist/author is long dead?

Obviously I generally support the protection of intellectual property as an incentive for R&D and creativity but with some caveats. In particular I think that patents, like copyright, should be unexamined and consequently free; but once published on line; in a journal; or other public place; defensible in court. 

Because of the sheer volume of patents registered, acceptance by an examiner is no longer prima face evidence of patent validity; as my father discovered to his very high cost.  If there is a dispute it needs to go to court in any case.

On the other hand I think copyright is overprotected and should be pulled back to the same rules as patents - 20 years from first publishing. 

At one time both patents and copyright protection were limited to 16 years.  Of course I accept that there are too many vested interests, and too much money involved trading in copyright created by artists who seldom benefit, to go back to 16 years; particularly as it requires international agreement.

At least the Internet is dealing with excessive copyright protection in a different way.  A subject for future discussion...

 


 

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Travel

Bolivia

 

 

In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Bolivia. We left Puno in Peru by bus to Cococabana in Bolivia. After the usual border form-filling and stamps, and a guided visit to the church in which the ‘Black Madonna’ resides, we boarded a cruise boat, a large catamaran, to Sun Island on the Bolivian side of the lake.

Read more: Bolivia

Fiction, Recollections & News

ChatGPT and The Craft

As another test of ChatGPT I asked it: "in 2 thousand words, to write a fiction about a modern-day witch who uses chemistry and female charms to enslave her familiars". This is one of the motifs in my novella: The Craft (along with: the great famine; world government; cyber security and overarching artificial intelligence).

Rather alarmingly, two of five ChatGPT offerings, each taking around 22 seconds to generate, came quite close to the sub-plot, although I'm not keen on the style or moralistic endings.  Here they are:

Read more: ChatGPT and The Craft

Opinions and Philosophy

Climate Emergency

 

 

 

emergency
/uh'merrjuhnsee, ee-/.
noun, plural emergencies.
1. an unforeseen occurrence; a sudden and urgent occasion for action.

 

 

Recent calls for action on climate change have taken to declaring that we are facing a 'Climate Emergency'.

This concerns me on a couple of levels.

The first seems obvious. There's nothing unforseen or sudden about our present predicament. 

My second concern is that 'emergency' implies something short lived.  It gives the impression that by 'fire fighting against carbon dioxide' or revolutionary action against governments, or commuters, activists can resolve the climate crisis and go back to 'normal' - whatever that is. Would it not be better to press for considered, incremental changes that might avoid the catastrophic collapse of civilisation and our collective 'human project' or at least give it a few more years sometime in the future?

Back in 1990, concluding my paper: Issues Arising from the Greenhouse Hypothesis I wrote:

We need to focus on the possible.

An appropriate response is to ensure that resource and transport efficiency is optimised and energy waste is reduced. Another is to explore less polluting energy sources. This needs to be explored more critically. Each so-called green power option should be carefully analysed for whole of life energy and greenhouse gas production, against the benchmark of present technology, before going beyond the demonstration or experimental stage.

Much more important are the cultural and technological changes needed to minimise World overpopulation. We desperately need to remove the socio-economic drivers to larger families, young motherhood and excessive personal consumption (from resource inefficiencies to long journeys to work).

Climate change may be inevitable. We should be working to climate “harden” the production of food, ensure that public infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, hospitals, utilities and so) on are designed to accommodate change and that the places people live are not excessively vulnerable to drought, flood or storm. [I didn't mention fire]

Only by solving these problems will we have any hope of finding solutions to the other pressures human expansion is imposing on the planet. It is time to start looking for creative answers for NSW and Australia  now.

 

Read more: Climate Emergency

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