Sharing Nicely

Ars Technica, usually the place of choice for in-depth technology reviews, publishes a fantastic fact-checking exercise on the estimated “damages” that the strong Intellectual Property lobby commonly promotes. The find that the two most often cited numbers, “750,000 jobs lost to IP theft” and “$200 – $250 billion cost of IP infringement to the US economy”, are almost complete bogus. While these numbers are mostly used to fuel the fight against selling copied DVDs or computer software, unfortunately, they are also often used to scare people when topics such as “open licensing” or “creative commons licenses” come up – and that is making our work on opening up education more difficult.

Follow the AT investigators into the depth of government archives on the quest for reliable sources and research, and be as shocked as they are when they find almost nothing, except another example for the incredible effectiveness of the spin-machine. Which makes me wonder, why aren’t we able to spin the truth (yes, that’s a strange way of putting it) as effectively as these people spin their messages? How come some people still think global warming has nothing to do with driving huge fast cars, that Obama might be Muslim, or that not paying outrageous fees for things that should be free would destroy almost a million jobs, rather than create many more and make us all better of?

Hey – this is starting out as quite a radical day. And later we’ll be demonstrating against the South African Government’s unwillingness to fix the most basic infrastructure in the country’s schools. Here is another question: how is it possible, that SA can purchase arms for Billions, when the schools in townships have hundreds of broken windows, lack teachers, and educational materials? Equal Education is using the grassroots to spin their message up to Government today – and when a few thousand students and teachers demand the services they deserve, chances are someone will listen.

Equal Education is a community based movement advocating for educational quality and equality in South African schools. 200 students from every high school in Khayelitsha and members of Equal Education will be presenting a memorandum to the Western Cape Education Department in Cape Town, on 10th of October to ask for funds to fix the 500 broken windows in Luhlaza High School in Khayelitsha. We believe that in a democratic South Africa it is our right to attend schools with acceptable facilities, like fixed windows.

Date: 10 October
Time: 3 pm- 4:30 pm
Venue: Kaizegracht, Cape Town