The next speaker, anthropologist Marilyn Stathern, seemed to be on the programme in order to give a view of collectivity in tribal societies. She quickly dashed the audience's expectations, however. Her analysis of Papua New Guinea's traditional culture made it clear that, far from collectivity, multiple property rights are the norm. In the case of Malangans, memorial figures of the dead, which people pay to view even as the original is destroyed, the act of purchase is not an act of acquisition, but of maintaining the flow of information between groups. The Malangan's continued existence, in the memory of the beholders, is guaranteed by the transaction.
Open code means an open society, and vice versa.
He attacked the e-book as a publishing fait accompli, designed to strip readers of traditional rights, such as copying, lending, reselling or giving a book away. His suggestion of voluntary donations for music and other artforms was appealing, but, he admitted, would need some easy, anonymous form of e-cash to be feasible. Michael Century followed Stallman with an exemplary humility of manner, as befits a man who has been an advisor to the Canadian government and Rockefeller Foundation. Clearly, a copy is a forgery in the case of autographic works, but not in the case of allographic ones. After a rather lavish lunch, the law session loomed before us like - well, like the opportunity for nodding off a bit, to be honest.