Internet café owners and users unite!

For this particular column, we would like to articulate the interest of the small-time businessmen who operate Internet cafés all over the Philippines. There must be thousands out there who are struggling to survive because of new impositions being made by the computer giant Microsoft.

Intellectual property rights (IPR) has been condemned by many Third World countries as the latest trick employed by First World countries to impose their knowledge-based domination on poorer nations.

The United States, for one, has been avidly trying to impose its own rules on trading partners on IPR, in the process annoying consumers who cannot understand why they have to cough up more cash for products that they could not use in business or pleasure without paying some more.

Here in the Philippines -and presumably you there in Cebu- the issue of IPR is the bane of internet café owners, who are now being forced by Microsoft to buy only their products for computers, like the Microsoft XP Installer for games and internet. This program costs a fortune at P18,000.00 each and each installer could only be used for one computer. Mr. Roberto Verzola, a computer expert and an officer of Green Philippines elaborated on this issue recently at the Kapihan sa Sulo in Quezon City.

Under the Microsoft imposition, café owners have to purchase as many installers as they have computer processing units (CPUs), which means a huge drain on the resources of entrepreneurs who are bringing the Philippine market into cyberspace and helping huge numbers of students and professionals do their work in silence effectively.

The Progressive People's Net (PPN), a group of Filipino Internet café owners, has taken issue with this Microsoft imposition, which they regard as nothing else but an attempt to establish a monopoly in the market.

PPN members could not believe the kind of system employed by Microsoft and its local surrogate, the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which has been hunting for pirated Microsoft software not only in cafés but also in offices and even homes!

Surely, it is only profit motive that drives Bill Gates to manufacture software that are customized and could not be transferred to another. All that he wants is to sell more such software since they effectively disarm their own software. This is the same group that built software that reports on computer owners' records to their Seattle headquarters, which is nothing less than hacking or electronic surveillance. For this, Gates and his men have been rebuked.

The question of demanding pay and receiving the same for the use of purchased equipment and CDs is anathema to freer trade and borderless commerce. By Microsoft's, and US', logic, the buyer is simply a user and not the owner of the technology or the product.

Worse, Filipino lawmen are leading the drive to flush out the pirated software, unaware that it is the spiraling costs of Microsoft gear that pushes the market to buy pirated products. Simply put, Microsoft has priced itself out of the market, and the market naturally punishes them by using cheaper but equally efficient software.

The US has been helping Microsoft and other US companies to extract the last ounce of consumers' blood by including their corporate interests as bargaining chips in trade negotiations.

Now, Australia, which is dependent on electronics and IPR-based US products, surrendered part of its sovereign rights when it agreed to practically impose US law in Canberra via the short route of a trade agreement.

The Philippines, as a sovereign state, should show creativity in its trade deals, and should not abide by a lopsided deal that protects, defends and promotes Microsoft and other US products.