Copyright laws - another program that will fail to change the vision

Canadian border guards to check iPods for infringment.

The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices. The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that "infringes" on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.

The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.

Canadians, time to write your MP! This was on the front page of the daily tabloid in Vancouver, so hopefully Jim Prentice will be forced to actually consult the public before he sells us all up the river.

Programs X Vision

Never read (to my shame) those Daniel Quinn books, but one thing that Henrique Vedana told me about it will be forever in my mind: the difference between program and vision.

Basically, the idea is that if you can put in a river branches, trash, grass, etc there and it will indeed create problems for the river to flow. But the river will keep flowing somehow, the water is strong. All the things you have put on the river, are “programs”, they create problems, but they don’t bring up a definitive solution. We are surrounded by programs (doomed to fail) against drugs, crime, global warming, you name it.

But the river is still flowing.The other type of solution, the one that really works, is vision. In the river analogy, the vision is the river flowing. Just by changing the river’s flow, the vision, you can really solve problems.

That doesn’t mean that programs are not necessary, for example for short-term counter measures, but they will eventually let the river flow if the vision is not changed.

Why do we focus on process that don’t achieve the end goal?

Why do we keep creating programs?

For me, changing the flow of this river is why the world needs leaders.