A few media outlets are reporting on Irish rocker Bono's latest rantings. (See: CBC, New York Times, SlashDot). My SlashDot comment summarises my thinking on his views.

"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime."

You forgot the real issue here, which is that Bono, Gates and similar pseudo-philanthropists are actively involved with making a variety of "teaching" (sharing of knowledge) expensive and/or illegal. This is the core of what Bono is ranting about this time, suggesting the world's governments should go as far as the human rights violations in China to (theoretically -- no proof of "benefit") grant him more money.

There are those who think that making knowledge scarce, including criminalising private citizens owning and controlling their own communications technology, is the only way to make it possible to pay authors/inventors for their important contributions to society. This ignores all the experience and research to the contrary. Whether you believe this or not, you must admit that deliberately making knowledge scarce and thus more expensive greatly harms the interests of the worlds poor.

Sharing: the way to Make Poverty History.

The repercussions of deliberately making knowledge scarce will be an underlying issue that will show up in many global conflicts in the next decade, whether talking about poverty, western economic recovery or global climate change.

(Update: This article was linked to by Mike Masnick of Techdirt)