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  • From: Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Information monopoly
  • Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:13:11 -0800

just got back from the IPC9 in Malawi, high speed internet does not exist, the internet goes off and on any given day, electric power too, the big need for many organizations that are working with farmers and schools is to have a laptop to do reports and communications. A group of us brought 3 laptops, one went to Zimbabwe, one to Liberia and one to South Africa. This was in response to the Africans request IPC8 in Brasil in 2007;

as far as pc books, the school teachers who where at the IPC9 had their way paid to the Conference by the Malawi government. and once they knew we have brought some pc books everyone asked us for copies for their schools. so there is a great need for PC books, we have seen partial photo copied copies of Brad Lancaster books on water harvesting. there is a big need.

Most of the books we brought went to the MOOF permaculture center in Kenya , we promised them a year ago, they have no PC books and are a training center for farmers

there is a story of a friend travelling in a desert in Mexico, who came across a property that was a lush food forest, he stopped by and asked about , the owner pulled out a partial photo copy of the Designer manual that was worn with use, she said a friend in the US sent this copy years ago and she asked if when he came by could he bring her the pages that where missing, next time by he brought her a copy of the Manual.

For my part i like to support the authors of PC books, they are so generous sharing copies of their books, we have organized book tours for them for 9 years in California, to make sure their books get out there to a wider audience. Rosemary Morrow buys her book at wholesale cost from her publisher, and will be sending over to africa, so groups can get the book out at a lower cost. many solutions.

I will buy books over this next year and send them to the teachers i met in Malawi, one by one. this way copies of the book will slowly be shared out to so many

many folks will figure out ways to share these books , the need is so great and the hunger for knowledge is so great.

I talk to the School Teachers at the IPC9, they told me that they are paid poverty wages, and that as a teacher they will be in poverty the rest of their life being teachers. yet they have put together PC gardens at their schools , because hungry minds cannot learn. and they do not have extra money to by PC books. Sharing is such a powerful way humans connect and those that have so little share so much for a better future

let's creatively figure out to look after all the needs in PC

my thoughts stepping back from the 2/3 world to the 1/3 world, it is such a hard adjustment

wes
ps the IPC9 was totally financed by fees there where few donations and no grants , it was an amazing volunteer organized event, blessings to the Africans that put this together, 160,people from 50 countries. mostly from Africa www.ipc9.org

"Do you mean to say that the vast majority of the World?s population that lives on less than 2 USD a day owns computers and high-speed Internet connections to download PDF files?"
"my experience from eastern India is that people who are fluent enough to read english and have access to land are rare and people generally have no access to internet, especially if living
outside of monetary economy."
Well we don't have ANY "high speed" connections here in Ethiopia, especially not farmers, but have you never heard of a thing called EXTENSION. What if I download the manual (even on my dial-up at $0.007/minute) and print of 1 copy then photo copy it 100 times. I can then distribute this to 100 different organisations that work with farmers around the country. None of them may have been interested to buy the DM for $100, but one or two may actually leaf through and get interested, then we may stand a chance of getting some PC implemented on the ground, with illiterate peasant gladly taking on the (new) Gospel of PC and cooperative design. Do you think the missionaries that turned up in Konso 50 years ago could have been successful if they had to pay Jesus $100 for every copy of the Bible they used!? (Could any of those peasants who now spend their Sunday mornings screaming Allelujah at their empty fields actually read the bible? Maybe they
will spend Monday doing cooperative design sessions so their fields can be full, with a free DM) According to your philosophy, in order to do this I should have to pay $10,000 to Tigari (assuming $100 per copy would cover it) instead of $25 for photocopying. Not only that I have to wait a month for the books to turn up from Tazmania. Now Bill may live a good old frugal lifestyle, that's not the point, the point is that it's Permaculture, not himself, which really matters. I don't care about tigari, if I can get a village to feed itself. For the same $10,000 we can give a full PDC to to 10 school teachers and implement a follow up program in 5 schools with 64 days of consultancy monitoring and feed-back in each school. In other-words we can take a big step towards generating food security for 5 communities. I don't see why Tigari should take that money. Yes Bill wrote the book, but what is the USE of the book if it's only there for the white
upper-middles of the anglo-saxon empire.
"Copyright infringement in the third World is not an issue.? As long as people don?t try to amass a fortune that way it is by and large tolerated."
That's great then put the link back up. Who's trying to amass a fortune here? The guy just stuck up a link to a FREE online version and was formally warned to take it down, or else...
"How and when Tagari decides to distribute their property is their business.
Ethics is the cornerstone of Permaculture and I support intellectual property rights."
SO DOES MONSANTO, that is their BUSINESS too. What about the patents on Malaria and HIV drugs that mean Africans are the ones unable to buy them, despite being the ones that need them the MOST? BIZNISS is what it's all about. If the DM belongs to 1 person or 1 company then its USE to the WORLD is severely LIMITED, I would say that is the most important ETHICAL issue here. Sure it may not be good news for Tigari if the DM is available free to all people that have access to an internet connection, but you can bet you boots that the DM is gonna reach A LOT more people in A LOT more places than it was under the former, NOW_OUT_DATED_MODE_OF_DISTRIBUTION. Bill should be HAPPY about the net gain for the Human race and this big step forwards in the RE-greening of the DUNYA.
Salam
www.permalodge.org


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