We were told that some big media companies (e.g AFP, Getty Images) are now copyrighting records of recent movement in Burma, which include photos and video footages taken by our citizen journalists. We also heard that when the people from inside Burma requested one of the Burmese exile media groups for the purpose of inspiration in upcoming activities, the Burmese exile media group could not air the documentaries of 1988 movement as they have to pay copyright fees in order to air these documentaries.

From now on, do the people in Burma/ Burmese exile media have to pay the copyright owners, i.e. big media companies, for the photos taken by our citizen journalists or the video footages uploaded to internet by our bloggers if they want to republish them? The people in Burma, who are under the Junta's tight control of the information in Burma, had risked their lives to share information while these media companies copyrighted it for profits. Is it fair?

Such big media companies usually offer the public to submit the most current news and photo/video records. They usually have set certain terms and conditions for IP rights which are written in tiny fonts on their websites. Once submitted, it is considered that the submitter has agreed those terms and conditions.

In fact Burma is at its infancy stage in Intellectual Property (IP) Rights. The existing IP laws are not realistic enough to come into force. Amendments of laws are still on-going and will not be coming soon as the extension of time given by World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) to finalise the IP legal reform is only by 2015 . Since people in Burma do not have enough knowledge in IP rights, there should be a specific consideration in solving international IP issues for a country like Burma.

During the recent protests in Burma, we can obviously see that the aim of a citizen journalist for risking his own life and posting news materials on the internet is to distribute the information as widely as possible so as to receive the world's attention to save Burma. It is not for sale. Copyrighting such materials will serve as a kind of barrier and it will defeat the purpose of the free flow of information.

The original idea of having copyright is to award incentives to the owner so as to encourage further creations. Now, ironically, the big media's copyrighting the materials of a citizen journalist will make him less motivated to risk and get the news in future events. Again, in such crisis situation, Burmese citizen journalists have to be kept anonymous for security reason and hence, the big media can take advantage of the situation to put their brand on the bare materials.

On the other hand, copyrighting should not necessarily mean commercialising. Even though the media will collect the materials and copyright them, they can equally distribute the work (for free) as intended by the original author, something similar to Creative Common License non-commercial share-alike.

Hence, we see this as a need to introduce new policies and regulations under such a special condition/ crisis situation if there is none yet.

Shall we call a campaign to return the copyright to the real owners? Shall we sue these media companies? We seek your suggestions.

Clinton's insistence that Obama doesn't have the experience necessary to be President is finally starting to backfire on the campaign trail causing people to ask just exactly what experience she has. When it comes to foreign policy experience, there's been plenty of it in the Bush Administration between Rumsfeld and Cheney yet look where that has gotten us.

It appears Hillary's charges that Obama lacks 'experience' is nothing more than a projection of her own campaign insecurities; that if people really take a closer look at her they'll see she is the one who lacks the necessary experience to be President.

What Hillary doesn't lack in experience is cut-throat politicking doused with secrecy. Perhaps what she means is that Obama lacks the cold calculating political experience necessary to manipulate the media and parley that control into an election victory. If that's the kind of experience Hillary is talking about, she can keep it.

Maureen Down says it better than I ever could.

She’s No Morgenthau

New York Times

By MAUREEN DOWD

Most of the time, Barack Obama seems like he’s boxing in the wrong weight class. But Monday in Fort Dodge, Iowa, he delivered an unscripted jab that was a beaut.

At a news conference, the Illinois senator was asked about Hillary Clinton’s attack on his qualifications. Making an economic speech in Knoxville, Iowa, earlier that day, the New York senator had touted her own know-how, saying that “there is one job we can’t afford on-the-job training for — that’s the job of our next president.” Her aides confirmed that she was referring to Obama.

Pressed to respond, Obama offered a zinger feathered with amused disdain: “My understanding was that she wasn’t Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, so I don’t know exactly what experiences she’s claiming.”

Everybody laughed, including Obama.

It took him nine months, but he finally found the perfect pitch to make a trenchant point.

Her Democratic rivals had meekly gone along, accepting her self-portrait as a former co-president who gets to take credit for everything important Bill Clinton did in the ’90s. But she was not elected or appointed to a position that needed Senate confirmation. And the part of the Clinton administration that worked best — the economy, stupid — was run by Robert Rubin. Hillary did not show good judgment in her areas of influence — the legal fiefdom, health care and running oppo-campaigns against Bill’s galpals.

She went on some first lady jaunts and made a good speech at a U.N. women’s conference in Beijing. But she was certainly not, as her top Iowa supporter, former governor Tom Vilsack claimed yesterday on MSNBC, “the face of the administration in foreign affairs.”

She was a top adviser who had a Nixonian bent for secrecy and a knack for hard-core politicking. But if running a great war room qualified you for president, Carville and Stephanopoulos would be leading the pack.

Obama’s one-liner evoked something that rubs some people the wrong way about Hillary. Getting ahead through connections is common in life. But Hillary cloaks her nepotism in feminism.

“She hasn’t accomplished anything on her own since getting admitted to Yale Law,” wrote Joan Di Cola, a Boston lawyer, in a letter to The Wall Street Journal this week, adding: “She isn’t Dianne Feinstein, who spent years as mayor of San Francisco before becoming a senator, or Nancy Pelosi, who became Madam Speaker on the strength of her political abilities. All Hillary is, is Mrs. Clinton. She became a partner at the Rose Law Firm because of that, senator of New York because of that, and (heaven help us) she could become president because of that.”

The Clinton campaign in Iowa is in a panic. Obama has been closing the gap with women and her ginning up of gender has lost her male votes. Speaking around Iowa this week, Obama made the point that his exotic upbringing, family in Kenya and years as an outsider allow him to see the world with more understanding, and helped form his judgment about resisting the Iraq war.

“I spent four years living overseas when I was a child living in Southeast Asia,” he said. “If you don’t understand these cultures then it’s very hard for you to make good foreign policy decisions. Foreign policy is all about judgment.”

President Bush is not so enamored of Obama’s foreign policy judgment. He gave a plug to Hillary on ABC News last night, calling her a “formidable candidate,” even under pressure, who “understands the klieg lights.”

Asked by Charles Gibson about Obama’s offer to meet without preconditions with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea, W. declared it “odd foreign policy.”

Laura Bush also gave Hillary a sisterly — and dynastic — plug when she told the anchor that living in the White House and meeting people everywhere would be “very helpful” to a first lady trading up.

Though he did not mention the quick “color me experienced” trip Hillary took with some Senate colleagues to Iraq and Afghanistan just before she started running, Obama might have been thinking of it when he mocked Kabuki Congressional junkets:

“You get picked up at the airport by a state convoy and a security detail. They drive you over to the ambassador’s house and you get lunch. Then you go take a tour of some factory or some school. Children do a native dance.”

Hillary pounced, knowing that her chief rival’s foreign policy résumé is as slender as his physique, once more conjuring a childish Obama. She brazenly borrowed Republican talking points, even though she accused John Edwards of “throwing mud” that was “right out of the Republican playbook.”

“With all due respect,” she told a crowd in Iowa. “I don’t think living in a foreign country between the ages of 6 and 10 is foreign policy experience.”

But is living in the White House between the ages of 45 and 53 foreign policy experience?