How do I manufacture missiles using iTunes?

After reading about Google Chrome's EULA which had a clause which required users to "give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and nonexclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services", I decided to pay closer attention to License Agreements.

I was updating my iTunes software today and found this in the License Agreement:

10. Export Control. You may not use or otherwise export or reexport the Apple Software except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Apple Software was obtained. In particular, but without limitation, the Apple Software may not be exported or re-exported (a) into any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person’s List or Entity List. By using the Apple Software, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

The Magic of the Internet

As a test, I saw the finals of American Idol today and kept the wikipedia pages of both the finalists, David Cook and David Archuleta open. I wanted to see how long it would take between the results being announced by my clock at 10.10 p.m and the wiki entries on these topics changing. By 10.11 p.m., the wiki article on David Cook had been updated to reflect this. In fact, according to the history, this change was made at the same time (10.10 p.m.). In contrast to this, the earliest mainstream News Agency to report this was the L.A. Times at 10.13 p.m., after it came on Wikipedia.

The American Idol article has been edited 6 times between the results being declared and this article being posted. David Cook's article has been edited 6 times since the results and 25 times on the day of the finals. This is the magic of the internet, collaborative content and Web 2.0.

Equal Globalisation

Back in the pre-liberalisation days, India was shunned for not opening its doors to the World Economy. When its own economy collapsed, it was forced to change the way it did business before it received any help. India opened up its markets slowly. We're still a long way away from having free, competitive markets in every field, but we are more connected to the World Economy. What does this mean for everyone involved? At one level, for us, it means that we are more affected (for better or worse) by what the World does. For the rest of the World, it means that they will be affected by what India does, if it makes a big enough impact. almost 2 decades later, when we look back, we can see that the World has worked well for us. Being connected to the World Economy has led us to better and more robust financial sector, more employment and more movement of both goods and people. India and China have (and continue to) reap the benefits of the World Economy.

India was forced to compete with the best across the World and her people did well. Now the World, has to compete with what India produces. The most apparent manifestation of the World Economy, is the USA. Today however, the people of the USA, who not too long ago cried out for liberalisation and integration of India and China into the World Economy, now cry that India and China are the reason for its poor performance. Because of better quality and cheaper manpower, India and China are more favored than the US for many jobs.

It hurts me when I read Americans talk about how India and China are taking their jobs away from them. All I can say to these people is `Welcome to the competitive World Economy'.

The reason for this post can be found in two op-eds by Larry Summers in FT on April 28 and May 5. In response to these articles is an op-ed by Arvind Subramanian, Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

Apart from this, I was upset by a blogpost on PrawfsBlog a while ago along similar lines.

A good, neutral counter to this sort of skewed logic is by Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution (link found in comment by James Grimmelman to the Prawfblog post).

Reforming the Indian Banking System

Raghuram Rajan delivered the The Nand and Jeet Khemka Distiguished Lecture Series "Reforming the Indian Banking System - Why It Is Important and What Can Be Done" [video]. He headed the Committee on Financial Sector Reforms. It's draft report is out. Ajay Shah has more useful links on it.

Save the Turtles

Greenpeace has taken up the cause of the Olive Ridley Turtles who are threatened by Tata's new port at Dhamra. Watch the Greenpeace video here. It's nice to see how the Internet is used in India to shape popular opinion and voice protest and dissent.

The Internet Changes the Music Business (Again)

As I'm sure most people know, Radiohead released its newest album, In Rainbows on the Internet. You could pay how much ever you want or even download it for free. Tim Hartford thinks that this is just a stunt for `a band widely thought to be past its prime'. I wrote about it with Ajay Shah earlier. This is nothing new, but I bring it up for 2 reasons.

Imitation

It's spurred other bands that have enough money to do the same thing. Nine Inch Nails is now offering its music for free. Coldplay is now offering a single titled, Violet Hill from its new album, Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends. It is rumored that Metallica is planning to do the same thing.

You may not like these bands, but don't be fooled. They represent the biggest names in music today. Metallica is the 7th biggest selling act in America today, Radiohead has sold more than 23 million records, Coldplay has won many Grammies and was rated Best Artist in 2003 by Rolling Stone and NIN featured on Rolling Stone's, 100 greatest rock artists of all time[link].

Remix

Second, Radiohead launched a massive contest where entrants can buy parts of the song, Nude, and remix it. The contest began a month ago and closes today (May 1 2008). It has received 2246 remixes as of now (May 1 2008, 4.24 PM EDT). While the remixes' use by entrants is limited, Radiohead promises not to sell any of them without permission. This contest has propelled Radiohead into the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in 12 years and is giving it some revenue through iTunes. Why is this important? As Wired puts it, `If there's another way to get people to create 2,239 remixes of your song in a month, we have yet to hear about it'.

Follow-Up

Nine Inch Nails just released its latest album Slip for free as well. - May 5 2008

Is there a connection between Public Interest Litigation and Fundamental Rights?

My daily ranting on PIL continues with an interesting question. Is Public Interest Litigation related to Fundamental Rights? My gut feeling was `No'. One should be able to file a PIL whenever there is a public interest that needs to be addressed. There doesn't have to be a violation of a specific fundamental right. Isn't that the whole point of PIL?

Today, I came across a few interesting cases. The first one is Janata Dal v. H.S. Chowdhary ((1992) 4 SCC 305). The operative part of the judgment is:

It is thus clear that only a person acting bona fide and having sufficient interest in the proceeding of PIL will alone have a locus standi and can approach the Court to wipe out the tears of the poor and needy, suffering from violation of their fundamental rights, but not a person for personal gain or private profit or political motive or any oblique consideration. Similarly, a vexatious petition under the colour of PIL brought before the Court for vindicating any personal grievance, deserves rejection at the threshold.

What I understand from this is that there needs to be a violation of a fundamental right, for a person to approach the Court in public interest. This seems to be the dominant theory in the Court for a few years.

Then I saw BALCO Employees Union v. Union of India where the Court says 'Such a litigation [PIL] cannot per se be on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden, unless the Court is satisfied that there has been violation of Article 21 and the persons adversely affected are unable to approach the Court'.

The strange thing is that the Supreme Court seems to have just quietly gone from allowing PILs only when there is an accompanying Fundamental Right infraction to allowing PILs even without Fundamenal Right infractions. The only case I can find that shows that the Court has moved away from its earlier position is Ashok Kumar Pandey v. State of West Bengal where the Court says:

A person acting bona fide and having sufficient interest in the proceeding of public interest litigation will alone have a locus standi and can approach the Court to wipe out violation of fundamental rights and genuine infraction of statutory provisions

To prove this point, I did a search for the term `public interest litigation' on Manupatra and then a search for the same term applying the field as 'Constitution'. If all PILs were relating to Fundamental Rights, then all PILs should fall within the Constitution field. But the number of search hits for the two are different with the first being greater, showing that PILs are not necessarily for the enforcement of Fundamental Rights.

This raises some important questions? Is there a connection between Fundamental Rights and PIL at all? The answer to this seems to be that there was a connection that somehow eroded with time. It would be interesting to see when the Court changed its perspective and how this has influenced the volume of PIL the Court handles.