feb 9th
good one! it's about time. as i have said time and again, i am a little queasy about the current intellectual property regime in place.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: k
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: k
Finally! Some good news. This is fantastic!
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p07s02-wosc.html
Headline: India: Breathe in, and hands off our yoga
Byline: Anupreeta Das Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 02/09/2006
(DELHI)India's centuries-old traditional knowledge, preserved and orally
passed down through generations of households, is now going digital.
Over the coming months, India will unveil a first-of-its-kind
encyclopedia of 30 million pages, containing thousands of herbal
remedies and eventually everything from indigenous construction
techniques to yoga exercises.
The project represents a 21st-century approach to safeguarding
intellectual property of the ancient variety. The Traditional Knowledge
Digital Library (TKDL) aims to prevent foreign entrepreneurs from
claiming Indian lore as novel, and thus patenting it.
"We do not want anyone selling our own knowledge to us," says Ajay Dua,
a top bureaucrat in the Department of Industrial Policy and Planning,
which oversees intellectual-property rights. "Also, we would like
anyone using our traditional knowledge to acknowledge that it is from
India."
These concerns are not unfounded. In the past decade, India has fought
several costly legal battles to get patents revoked. The impetus for
TKDL came in 1997, after India successfully managed to get a US patent
on the wound-healing properties of turmeric revoked.
"This patent claimed the wound-healing properties as a novel finding,
whereas practically every Indian housewife knows and uses it to heal
wounds," says R. A. Mashelkar, chief of the Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR).
...
5 comments:
This is not necessarily a good idea. As Rajeev has said earlier, Indian state is a predatory state. It can also be easily hijacked by Islamic and Christian wackos. Case in point, recent revelation that the previous congress govt of Karnataka diverting 90 crores of temple revenues for hajj, while Hindu priests were starving.
Right way to protect these ancient Hindu techniques is: Hindu gurus should form a consortium, independent of government control, and patent these ancient techniques and generate revenue from it, which can be used for upliftment of down trodden Hindus or for other Hindu causes and Hindus use only.
The current plan has disaster for Hindus written all over it. It will be only a matter of time before the Islamic and christist savages lay their hands on the revenue generated from these ancient Hindu techniques.
Will Hindus ever learn from their past mistakes?
Let me add that when I say Hindu, it includes all the Indic religions.
Vitat0,
You have no idea what kind of revenue these ancient Hindu techniques are capable of generating. It is a gold mine, if properly organized and handled, free of crushing bureaucratic Indian government control, an entire generation of Hindus, even if we are one billion strong, can be lifted up. All the 200 million Hindus living below poverty line can be saved from their crushing poverty. Yoga industry is already a 40 billion dollar industry in the US alone. Just do a simple Google search; you will understand what I am talking about. If Hindus can get just this one right, almost all of Hindus economic problem all over the world can be solved.
I see your point and absolutely agree with you. If you are contend with saying Ram Nam, that is a very beautiful and peaceful thing. But still we are living in a world full of vultures always plotting to exploit, precisely the kind of people like you. We need some kind of protection to defend ourselves from these vultures.
Remember no great dharma, be it Sanatana Dharam, Buddha Dharma or Jaina Dharam can survive without a strong defense.
First thing we need to protect and defend ourselves and our interests, we need money.
This is what I suggested in my last post.
All the dialog about Nuclear deal is a bit naive. The way Indian democracy is going, very soon, Muslims will control everything, including DAE. (So much of Hindu temple money is being diverted today - The Siddhi Vinayak temple in Mumbai has given away 16 crores+ to Congress politicians. It is not only Karnataka.)
When DAE is in control of Muslims, would you like American to have some kind of control on it? Think about it..
Post a Comment