Monday 30 April 2012

"THOSE WHO HATE YOU DON'T WIN, UNLESS YOU HATE THEM, AND THEN YOU DESTROY YOURSELF"


Two performances one year apart. Make of them what you will.
The first 30th April 1973



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This is the third performance - excerpts only - a difficult speech, but what a finale.

Saturday 28 April 2012

REMEMBER ODETTE


Continuing the treaties relating to Intellectual Property, the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure, or Budapest Treaty, is an international treaty signed in Budapest, Hungary, on 28th April 1977. It entered into force on 9th August  1980, and was later amended on 26th September 1980. The treaty is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

On another note: 
Odette Sansom Hallowes GC, MBE, Chevalier de la légion d’honneur, was born 100 years ago today in Amiens, France on the 28th April 1912. She was an Allied heroine of the Second World War. She was the daughter of the First World War hero, Gaston Brailly, who was killed at Verdun in 1918. She was enrolled in Special Forces of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and trained by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster’s Special Operatios Executive to be sent into Nazi-occupied France to work with the French Underground. She left her three daughters in a convent school.
She made a landing near Cannes in 1942, where she made contact with her supervisor, Peter Churchill. Using the code name Lise, she brought him funds and acted as his courier. Churchill's operation in France was betrayed by a double agent, and Odette and Churchill were arrested on 16th April 1943 and imprisoned. Under torture by the Gestapo at Fresnes prison in Paris, she stuck to her cover story that Churchill was the nephew of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and that she was Peter's wife. The hope was that in this way their treatment would be mitigated
She was condemned to death in June 1943, although a time for execution was not specified, and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She survived the war and testified against the prison guards at a 1946 war crimes trial. Camp commandant Fritz Suhren had brought her with him when he surrendered to the Americans in the hope that her supposed connections to Churchill might allow him to negotiate his way out of execution. He was hanged in 1950.

Friday 27 April 2012

PARADISE LOST


John Milton

In keeping with yesterday’s interest in intellectual property, on the 27th April 1667, a blind and impoverished John Milton sold the copyright on his work Paradise Lost for £10. The relative value of £10 at that time would be in the region of £1300. This would certainly have kept him going for a short while, but not a lot of money for Paradise Lost.





Ehrlichman
On the 27th April 1914, Honduras became a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

On another note, on the 27th April 1978, John D. Ehrlichman, former aide to United States President Nixon, was released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months for Watergate related crimes. His own paradise lost.



Thursday 26 April 2012

PEACE IS NOT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY


On the 26th April 1970, the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organisation entered into force. The Convention was signed in Stockholm on the 14th July 1967 and amended on the 28th September 1979. It contains 21 Articles
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is supposed to have remarked, “Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.” Ideas are then as much matter as any organ of the body. They are the fruits of the brain. It is not too difficult a concept to suppose that this fruit belongs to the ‘tree’ from whence they grew. Over time, it has come to be accepted that such original ‘ideas’ as can be exploited, belong to the person who ‘thought’ them. That person should be allowed to protect them, hence the establishment or patents, trademarks, copyright etc.  The business of dealing with these ideas across the world had become such a quagmire of duplicity and deceit that in 1883 a number of people refused to attend the International Exhibition of Inventions in Vienna for fear that their ideas would be stolen and exploited commercially in other countries. This marked the birth of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. This lead to the Berne Convention for the protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886 and, eventually, the general concept of ‘Intellectual Property’ lead to the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Why has the ‘idea’ of protecting and preserving ‘ideas’ been more effectively accomplished world wide, with so many countries agreeing to and accepting the Convention and the concept of Intellectual Property, than preserving and protecting the peace. Is the idea of peace un-intellectual, is it so un-commercial, does it have no-matter? It is clearly not an easy sell. Perhaps it does not fall within the Conventions definition and objectives. Would that it did. Think about it.

 “Intellectual property” shall include the rights relating to:
      literary, artistic and scientific works,
      performances of performing artists, phonograms, and broadcasts,
      inventions in all fields of human endeavour,
      scientific discoveries,
      industrial designs,
      trademarks, service marks, and commercial names and designations,
      protection against unfair competition,
      and all other rights resulting from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic fields.

The objectives of the Organization are:
(i)             to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world through cooperation among States and, where appropriate, in collaboration with any other international organization
(ii)           to ensure administrative cooperation among the Unions.
In order to attain the objectives described, the Organization, through its appropriate organs, and subject to the competence of each of the Unions:
(i)             shall promote the development of measures designed to facilitate the efficient protection of intellectual property throughout the world and to harmonize national legislation in this field;
(ii)           shall perform the administrative tasks of the Paris Union, the Special Unions established in relation with that Union, and the Berne Union;
(iii)          may agree to assume, or participate in, the administration of any other international agreement designed to promote the protection of intellectual property;
(iv)          shall encourage the conclusion of international agreements designed to promote the protection of intellectual property;
(v)            shall offer its cooperation to States requesting legal–technical assistance in the field of intellectual property;
(vi)          shall assemble and disseminate information concerning the protection of intellectual property, carry out and promote studies in this field, and publish the results of such studies;
(vii)         shall maintain services facilitating the international protection of intellectual property and, where appropriate, provide for registration in this field and the publication of the data concerning the registrations;
(viii)       shall take all other appropriate action.
The following is the list of contracting parties. So whose missing?
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Costa Rica
Côte d'Ivoire
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Holy See
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Lao People's Democratic Republic
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Republic of Korea
Republic of Moldova
Romania
Russian Federation
Rwanda
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Somalia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syrian Arab Republic
Tajikistan
Thailand
the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United Republic of Tanzania
United States of America
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)
Viet Nam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

One additional note for the 26th April: 
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a decommissioned nuclear power station near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, 18 km (11 mi) northwest of the city of Chernobyl, 16 km (9.9 mi) from the Ukraine–Belarus border, and about 110 km (68 mi) north of Kiev.
On Saturday, 26th April 1986, a disaster occurred at reactor No. 4, which has been widely regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. As a result, reactor No. 4 was completely destroyed and has since been enclosed in a concrete and lead sarcophagus to prevent further escape of radiation. Large areas of Europe were affected by the accident. The radiation cloud spread as far away as Norway, in Scandinavia.