Brampton Factor: Bringing tech to the developing world

The many schemes pioneered by Western tech powers to spread hardware and software into emerging markets appear to be well-meaning. But what are the deeper motives - and the best approaches? Martin Brampton takes a closer look.

Suddenly activity is heating up to provide low-cost computing to developing countries. But questions about the participants' motives are never far from the surface. And is development best achieved by charity or by self-interest?

Earlier this year Microsoft launched a scheme to sell a Windows bundle for $3 in emerging markets. Rival hardware schemes by Intel and Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project are beginning to deliver trial quantities of products. Just this week there have been signs of a possible collaboration between the two.

Some have sourly commented that providing computers to poorer nations is a poor substitute for food, water and basic education. While it is true there are immense problems looming for provision of the most basic requirements, that seems insufficient reason for ignoring the large numbers of people in developing countries who may be able to gain from increased information access.

Raising indigenous skill levels is essential to development. The cynical might point out that better IT could also be used to enable a violent response to the problems facing the world.

The emphasis of all these programmes is on children. Perhaps this gives the initiatives more appeal, although the problem of child soldiers might raise awkward questions. There is something to be said for starting with children, although without some kind of follow-through into adult life, the benefits of IT will be severely constrained. That question leads to the more general issue of whether these moves liberate developing economies or lock them more firmly into dependence.

Hardware projects - OLPC and Intel's Classmate - are liable to get tangled in arguments about the location of manufacturing plants. Intel has committed to building Classmates in Brazil, while OLPC has yet to develop any plans for manufacturing outside Taiwan. But these are as much issues of scale as anything. Intel's plan to build Classmates in Brazil will only go into effect as volumes rise.

Microsoft is particularly worrying in relation to dependence. And the company's willingness to sell its software for $3 raises all kinds of questions. Software vendors like to talk about intellectual property rights (IPR) as if they were God given. This ignores the fact that attempts to apply IPR universally are very recent. During the critical development period for the 'developed' economies, rules were highly discriminatory. For much of the nineteenth century, the US refused copyright protection to foreign authors and it was only with accession to the Berne Convention in 1989 that the US finally dispensed with all vestiges of discrimination.

So there is certainly a question about whether it is sound policy for developing countries to accept the IPR arguments put to them - especially while Europe and the US use tariff barriers and subsidies against agricultural products.

Things look even murkier when we consider the justifications for IPR legislation. One aim is to provide innovators with a reasonable return. If published figures are at all accurate and applicable to Microsoft products, it follows that reducing global piracy to US levels would almost double Microsoft's gross revenues. But since there would be negligible extra costs, the profits would certainly seem to be in excess of reasonable returns.

Of course, reducing piracy might actually produce a negligible volume of additional sales. This makes the figures for lost revenue so beloved by software vendors completely illusory. In fact, many think the effect might well be lost sales and bemoan the fact that Microsoft is not always believed to try very hard to combat piracy.

The complaint is related to another aim of IPR rules. Patents, in particular, are aimed not just at protecting innovation but also at encouraging technology transfer. Details of the invention have to be lodged in a public registry and patent laws often rescind the rights of patents that are not 'worked'.

Widespread use of a closed source operating system creates only a very limited degree of technology transfer. Critics argue the real loser from piracy is open source software, which would be the readily affordable alternative to expensive proprietary software.

From this point of view, offering Windows for $3 is a form of dumping. It involves selling a product at an unrealistically low price in order to destroy competition. If software were not pirated, there would be more incentive for development using local, low cost skills. Open source clearly encourages this with its inherent potential for technology transfer.

Schemes like Microsoft's also raise an issue that riles many consumers. There is widespread support for some protection, as consumers accept there are benefits from innovation or from brand recognition. But most consumers are hostile to rules that allow sellers to control the movement of their goods. For instance, the scheme to manipulate DVD markets by splitting the world into regions would have been hugely unpopular had it not been for the ready availability of players to handle all regions. By and large, in a world that constantly pays lip service to globalisation, consumers see no reason to be prevented from buying wherever they choose.

Microsoft has already annoyed UK customers by charging them far more for Vista than in the US. Developing a pricing scheme that runs from a fraction of the US price to a multiple is likely to lead to discontent.

For the growing number of people concerned about the encroachments of a Big Brother society, this is doubly troubling. This is becase enforcement of differential pricing tends to rely on software constantly communicating back to the vendor, using the internet. The steady increase of intrusions into our everyday activities is worrying many people.

It seems that despite the desirability of the loftiest aims of schemes promoting IT transfer to developing countries, there are many complex issues. While we should not stop trying to make improvements, we need to look carefully at the problems to make sure we are not doing more harm than good.