What do you think we should be doing to encourage early stage venture capital to come in early and stick around, to help build some of that innovative value in Australian companies?

There are a few issues to be sorted here.

1. The extension of copyright was completely outrageous. I am saddened that the economic rationalists of the country didn’t unite in outrage. But

2. I don’t think it’s terribly important. Mickey Mouse gets to make some more money for another twenty years. But the important things are going on within the first twenty years of innovation. In this regard copyright is actually a foundation of creative commons and GPL, so there’s no real dichotomy between strong property rights and these forms of common ownership.

3. Our ‘free trade’ agreement with the US also tries to lock us into the US’ restrictive approach. But from my reading, the words used are not very strong. So if we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do we could do it. It’s been a while since I read it and I’m afraid I don’t have time to check now, but I think it has something in it about not excluding software arbitrarily from patent protection. But that doesn’t mean you can’t ramp up the level of innovation that you require those patenting things to show, or try to encourage the Judicial jurisprudence to look back towards earlier common law doctrines that tended to very severely restrict the patentability of software.

4. Probably one of the most important things to do in this interactive age is to make sure you have generous ‘fair use’ provisions, and again I think the free trade agreement shouldn’t stop us doing this.

5. Even if our hands were much more tied, there are plenty of things we could do – like having stronger presumptions that Govt funded software would be released and open sourced, committing education and other sectors to the use of and contribution to open source software wherever practicable. (We could make ourselves a thriving hub of English speaking open source development).

6. We could also do whatever we can to throw the switch to openness where it’s in our and/or the world’s interests. We’ve done this with the Bureau of Stats which used to sell its data. It now releases most of it on the net – encouraging lots of very useful research into Australia. So we get more than our money back. (I think it cost $7 mil in revenue, though a fair bit of that must have been ‘recycled’ through university grants etc, so the ‘net’ cost must be a fair bit lower.) We should do the same with the ABC – put up every program that they have on their system and in their archives to podcast. Imagine, if you except the few things that the ABC except now – like book readings and so on – it would cost the ABC very little in foregone revenue (they don’t sell too many back issues of LNL). So for a few hundred thousand dollars we get all the kudos and all the exposure of the world’s first (I’m assuming) ‘open source’ national broadcaster. Others would of course follow, but we’d have led the pack.

I am very much in agreement with your point about software patents now inhibiting IT innovation.

But I think the problem is more widespread than just software. The most stringent tightening of Australia’s intellectual property laws as a result of the FTA were actually in the field of copyright. For instance, we took our cue from Sono Bono and extended copyright to 70 years after the death of the right holder.

Nick I was wondering what your perspective on issues like creative commons are. Do you believe that ever-stronger copyright laws are now beginning to stifle intellectual enquiry and artistic creativity?

In a weird way, it makes the protected/foreign owned Holden/Ford operations here both stupid (forcing us to buy overpriced cars) and cunning (letting the big boys wear all the R&D costs while being forced to buy Australian engineers).

If we could have an industry policy that encouraged multi-nationals to buy our engineers, while still having cheap cars, maybe we’d have something. World class education would seem to be the golden ticket, but the UK have tied up automotive engineering and design as specialities whilst ditching their hideous mass manufacturing to a large degree. It’s very smart stuff we could feasibly emulate. The real, extra bonus manufacturing is all done in minute crafts associated with motor racing, which simultaneously has encouraged investment in education (it’s very glamorous stuff) while offering decent starter jobs for graduates who end up in the multi-nationals. Maybe we should jump on something nobody else is doing though (helicopters? small runs of bush bashers for top-end cattle herding duties and a Red Bull sponsored racing series?)

As a broader view, the british motor industry had to die (big scale) to survive (small scale) and it’s now thriving as a hub of specialist engineering – in comparison to Sweden (who are now mere branders and re-assemblers) they’ve been a real success. Big scale stuff is 1950s era thinking and best left to economies that have lots of cheap labour, even for premium brands.

To a certain extent, competing on regulations and taxation is all that should happen anyway, any level of government picking winners will lead to significant distortions in resource allocation. There is no ideal level of manufacturing activity for Australia other than the one that individual investors pursue without recourse to state encouragement in the form of tax holidays or other industry or company specific incentives.

But if manufacturing is part of systems integration, a piece in a set of social, economic and technological connections, well theres a fair chance a fair few will come at that.

21st century manufacturing, Travel the world, redesign whole factories, play with with the most advanced technologies around, meet hot design and marketing chicks and interface with ‘em!

But if manufacturing is part of systems integration, a piece in a set of social, economic and technological connections, well there’s a fair chance a fair few will come at that. I hope so.

I’m digesting various accounts of the summit now flowing towards me and yours is one of the best yet.

The “expanding the definition of manufacturing and what it indirectly as well as directly delivers for an economey” is a theme that should really become a meme.

And re the whole IP/regulatory issue, it’s worth noting the concept of patents was originally introduced not just to protect commercially viable ideas but to also to make the knowledge more widely available to develop new market opportunities.

And also that developing regulatory expertise for the fast evolving 21st century is an exportable service too.

The Commonwealth government should insist that State Governments not seek to poach existing business off each other, and going further should prevent them competing with each other with incentives to attract foreign investment except as part of some process co-ordinated with a national approach to investment attraction.

Aww, now you want to take fun away from hearty state competition. Maybe we could have a “catch and release” program instead?

Ultimately, it’s about skills and innovation though and they should all smoodged together eg: a bright 16 year old boy or girl should have the opportunity to explore and get inspired by career paths that lead from and between Batman TAFE auto design stuff, the VCA’s CGI courses or Monash’s biomedical programs, pushing the envelope on the Synchrotron or VPAC for graduate work on thinking big about nano/micro technologies and/or messing around with intelligent transport systems or medical/retail stock systems because they had a sudden brainwave about arphids or social IT technolgies while goofing off in World of Warcraft or Second Life (A big, VicGov-backed and very funky chunk of Melbourne’s about to materialise in about a fortnight’s time in Second Life in a way that seems bloody obvious once you’ll see it. But no one did see it until some very bright 20something interns suggested it. And made it work)

It’s gonna be their kinda world. So let’s train, encourage, resource and support the next generations here to be multidisciplinary researchers, engineers, designers, planners, thinkers, artists, directors, marketeers, project managers, data wizards, hustlers and entreprenuers while outsourcing all the low wage humping, lifting and assembling we can. Seems to be working OK for the UK – they share the same command of global culture and its lingua franca and an sharp eye for an innovative angle as us – but while they’re currently more glamourous, we’re cheaper, work harder and give better meeting at the top end of globalisied knowledge-driven industries.

It’s telling that our most recognisable brand name abroad is Qantas, a very overrated services provider while countries with a fifth or less of our population have established globally recognised premium manufacturing brands like Saab, Nokia, Fisher & Paykel, Volvo and Kerry Gold.