Slashdot Mirror

According to a poll made by Novus on behalf of the Pirate Party 9 out of 10 Swedes reject having personal communication monitored if there's no suspicion of a crime.

http://press.piratpartiet.se/2013/09/24/87-av-svenskarna-ar-emot-att-deras-kommunikation-overvakas-och-13-kan-tanka-sig-att-rosta-pa-piratpartiet-i-eu-valet/

This would be the Pirate Parties that haven't any manifesto beyond "movies should be free"?

Strange claim, since it's very far from the truth :) I suggest going through the manifestos and policies of both the German Piratenpartei as well as the Swedish Pirate Party - both having been elected by voters into local and international parliaments.

German (in English): http://www.piratenpartei.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/parteiprogramm-englisch.pdf

Swedish: http://annatroberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Piratpartiets_principprogram.pdf
(to be updated with results from the autumn conference just held - see https://mote.piratpartiet.se/forumdisplay.php?f=825 for the results of individual motions and propositions)

It doesn't really ignore that, since the Pirate Parties don't propose the elimination of copyright (source).

That said, and as someone who is employed to write Free Software, I'm skeptical of the existence of a real need for copyright; the system was created a long time ago when the conditions were massively different, and it exists because it already existed, regardless of the existence or not of a valid reason for it nowadays.

I'm sure copyright has many benefits for most copyright holders, but that's not really its supposed purpose, which is to encourage the creation of new works and inventions, and I believe that these would appear any way. We might even get a reduction in quantity but improvement in average quality.

That said, "copyright and patents" as a whole is impossible to speak about, since the differences between markets (e.g. B2B software and Pop music) are so great that what applies to one may be completely wrong for the other.

Nothing less is satisfactory. Copyright and patent monopolies are a cancer growing in western civilisation. We need to excise them before it's too late.

• http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm
• http://mises.org/against.pdf
• http://piratpartiet.se/international

is "would this happen without patents".

I can agree on that. And science studies have shown that progress would "happen" without patents; Promoting Intellectual Discovery: Patents Versus Markets.

Drugs simply won't happen without patents

But, besides the above science link, I totally disagree with this. There are alternatives to pharmaceutical patents. Governments fund drug reseach too. The US's National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars developing and testing Taxol, a drug used to treat breast and other cancers. The NCI then sold all the exclusive rights to the use of the research for FDA approval to Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). How much did BMS pay? A fraction of NCI's costs. Add how much money did BMS make? In 2000, BMS bought the rights in 1988-9, BMS made almost $1 Billion. Besides that, answering the question Do drug companies do more marketing or research? is answered as thus: Drug industry spends nearly twice as much on marketing than on research and development. Beyond that, Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy. Thomas Jefferson once said "inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Falcon

The child porn filter was started in Sweden in 2005 (1), and it has several times been used to block The Pirate Bay already, and it will be done again (2). Sweden prides itself with no censorship but ask Wikileaks and see what they think about it.(3)

(1) http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=622590
(2) http://www.piratpartiet.se/nyheter/press_release_swedish_police_shuts_down_pirate_bay_again
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship#Sweden

In Swedish by the Pirate Party European Parliament representative: http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/foliehatten-av-for-sveriges-marionettregering/

Short summary in English by the Pirate Party: http://www.piratpartiet.se/cables-us-driving-swedish-data-retention

Please don't go down this road, I've argued this way too many times, just go to their website and read up on things before making arguments that have been answered a thousand times before.

Today it is already the public sector (henceforth called "the government") that pays for the bulk of all drugs that are used in Europe, thanks to various systems for universal medical coverage. (See for example page 37 in this report from EFPIA, The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.) It is the government that pays for the pharmaceutical research today, by paying high prices to the pharmaceutical companies for patented drugs

According to a report from the Swedish Food and Drugs Administration (pdf in Swedish), the price for drugs dropped on average 70% when they became free of patents (page 13 in the pdf).

The price for a substance will then drop to 30% if we get rid of the patents. Add 20% to fund future research according to the proposal presented here, and we have reduced the government's bill for drugs to 50% of what it is today. We would cut the cost in half, while still giving more money to pharmaceutical research.

Support your Pirate Party.

"I ask everyone to exercise extreme caution in this issue and keep two very important things in mind:

We cannot and should not second guess the results of a trial. We should not even hint whether he is guilty or not, not internally and not externally. If somebody asks, we reply that it is a serious crime he is being accused of, but that there is no basis for us to speculate about his culpability.

It is not Assange that we are helping. We don't know the guy. The organisation The Pirate Party helps the organisation WikiLeaks, and that on a sound ideological common ground. If the organisation Wikileaks has problems with their staff, they have to solve it, not us.Most contact between WL [Wikileaks] and PP [Pirate Party], has been between theirs and ours technicians, and not with Assange."

I'm a member, an activist and a supporter since the same day it was started but I'm not part of the core team.

They had a debate article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet today and they have it translated to English here. Basically they say that they will host it until its legal status is clarified. That means until it's clarified legal or when it's not possible to appeal to any higher courts.

Balls or not, they can certainly use a donation or two.

There has not been much happening in Piratbyrån for the last few years anyway.

Many of the active people from Piratbyrån have become active in The Pirate Party or other clusters like Werebuild, The Julia Group or Telecomix. (The Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau held the conference recently discussed here where security flaws in some VPN tools used for filesharer anonymity were exposed.)

My guess it that the core people in Piratbyrån felt that this cluster was no longer needed and used the death of their friend as an excuse to shut it down, as a post-mortem honour to him.

This is incorrect.

Right now, according to PP's own website we are currently the 5th largest party. Also, according to Sifo the sum of "Other" parties have around 1% of votes, with PP somewhere in that 1%.

Unfortunately, I'm somewhat doubting our ability to make it in the elections (about 4 months remaining). All the fuss around TPB really got us a lot of media attention, but it seems people lost interest a while ago. For a while I got approached by random people on the street who wanted to ask about TPB and PP and wanted to discuss copyright, and these days I rarely hear or read anything about it in the mainstream media.

Swedes, you used to be cool. What happened?

Global Warming. But there is still hope. You can help by donating to Piratpartiet.

the moment they put up an international donation page, they would get flooded with money. remember obama's campaign and how he floated on $5 donations as opposed to clinton and won.

http://www.piratpartiet.se/donate

On their web site under the link titled donations. http://www.piratpartiet.se/donate

if I were such an inventor and saw an invention I was the first to invent in Walmart without any compensation to me, I would feel wronged.

You would have first mover advantage. If I were to invent something I could then take my idea to a business like a fab. I go to Fab ABC and say I would like them to manufacture something I invented. Fab ABC asks to see it and I say only if you sign an NDA, non-disclosure agreement. they sign it so I show them my invention. They like it and say they can make it for X dollars. If I agree, okay we sign a contract, if not then I go to Fab XYZ.

After seeing my work Fab XYZ then asks me to invent something that does something else. That's what happens every day, employers pay employees to perform X work, in this case it's inventing things.

However, thinking about areas of science and technology where the cost of entry is high, the need for patent protection becomes clearer. Without sufficient protection, products that require substantial R&D expenditures are less likely to be developed because the developed product can then be produced by competitors. This is most evident in the field of pharmaceuticals, with the constant push-and-shove between developers and generics.

Pharmaceutical patents aren't needed either. There are two facts many people don't know about pharmaceutical businesses. They spend more on marketing than research. And the biggest cost of new drugs is testing to get FDA approval not development. Clinical testing for FDA approval can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Falcon

Had this guy died yesterday, this work would likely be gone forever.
End the copyrigth madness NOW !

I have read many of the posts in this discussion, and I thought I would weigh in.

First of all, as I went through creating the list of expiring copyrights, I noticed that as I got farther back in time the copyrights that expired were less interesting to me. For example the 28 year old ones are closing in on being able to legally start emulating most games of the older consoles. By the time we get into 1934, I had trouble finding ones that I cared about.

For the questions as to why shouldn't we just write new stories and software etc? I do agree with that up to a point, and I have certainly written quite a few things that public domain or permissively licensed. But, first of all, the economically efficient price for information is its marginal cost, or zero. Second of all, if you care about stories and software being created, it is often easier to start from an existing work, and make improvements. For example, "What Child is This" uses the tune of Greensleeves. Or Shakespeare using existing plays, but improving them. Human time is precious, and if you can use less by 'stealing' that helps society. Why reinvent the wheel? In short, economically, copyright should last long enough to compensate the creator, and then it should be freed. (I have written about this before, but I know more now than I knew then: http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/1/8/122920/9442 )

As for the people who think that no body follows copyright anymore, so why do we care? There is some truth to that, but things that are legal are much easier to do. For example, it is legal to download freeciv, but not starcraft. I'll let you guess which is easier to do.

Now, on to kdawson's question about the odds that Congress lets 1923 works expire in 2018. I think there is a fair chance that the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension in 1998 was the last major copyright extension that occurs in the US. Why? Because more and more people are realizing that the public domain matters and is useful. In 1976, people stated with a straight face that if it wasn't available commercially, it wasn't available. So in 1976 it could be argued that keeping it in copyright kept it available to the public. In 1998, there was protest by a few people such as Michael Hart, founder of the Project Gutenberg. In 2009 places like Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and Google Books prove that public domain content is more accessible. Plus you have people like the pirate party calling for 5 year copyright ( http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english ). So I think there will be a serious fight to stop any further copyright extension. I wrote this slashdot story to try and get the message out that copyright is not what it used to be.

An alternative to pharmaceutical patents

Falcon

Also one blockbuster drug can pay for the research, development, and testing for a bunch of other drugs.

Absolutely. But, only if you can sell the blockbuster drug for what the market will bear. If you are forced to sell at near-marginal-cost (the whole point of this thread) then there are no blockbuster drugs.

I never said otherwise. A company should be able to sell something for whatever price they want as long as they spent their own money developing and testing it. If BMS had spent it's own money to develop Taxol instead of the taxpayers then while I may grumble about their prices I'd also let them set the price. I'm angry about it because the taxpayers paid for it not BMS.

the whole point of this discussion was whether you can make initial-cost-heavy-marginal-cost-light items without IP protection.

And I argue that if duplications costs are low, which they are with copyrighted goods, they should have limited monopolies. Without copyrights it's difficult to make a profit which I've been arguing all this tyme. Previously I said I am disabled and currently don't work but I want to start a photography business. Without copyrights I seriously doubt I'd want to do it. Why would I spend the thousands of dollars to start the business when someone else who didn't spend the money could come along and take my work without paying me?

Likewise, if you have a world where there are no drug patents then it isn't all that easy to make money off of drugs either.

Actually there is a proposal to fund drug research without patents, see An alternative to pharmaceutical patents. There are others but that's the only link I have.

I'm not trying to suggest that drug companies didn't make money in the 90s. I am suggesting that it is hard for drug and movie makers to make money in the 2010s.

According to the article Why Health Insurers Make Lousy Villains, dated 25 August 2009 "Pharmaceutical companies have a profit margin of 16.4 percent--seventh highest of the 215 industries that Morningstar tracks." Seventh highest out of 215? I wouldn't say the pharmaceutical industry is finding it hard to make a profit.

Falcon

Let's get into politics then!
Support your local Pirate Party and spread the word:

http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party#Other_Pirate_parties

Erhrmm. . . We swedes still lead the pissing contest I'm afraid
Piratpartiet in Sweden has:
Approx 50170 members which makes us the third largest party in the country.
Approx 22030 members in our youth section which makes us the largest youth section of all in the country.
7.1% of the Swedish EU-election votes and a solid, democratic seat in the parliament for the next 5 years.

But we all hope to be beaten by any other country soon! Germany is coming on strong at the moment it seems. . .

Thanks, that looks intresting. I don't read many books on this subject but I could recommend the swedish pirate partys reference list that has many good articles on patents since they want to reform and/or possible abolish patents. About 50% is in english and they provide a original source link at the bottom.

They were registered a bit too late for being able to participate in last months EU-elections.

... but Congratulations to the Swedish pirate party for their EU - parliament seat.

For a more sophisticated response which has nothing to do with how control-freaky DRM is, or how much artists do or don't deserve:

http://www.piratpartiet.se/wiki/Why_We_Are_Right

As long as the basic premise fails to shift from the idea that information is property, we will keep running into an ideological wall.

Should copyrights exist? Absolutely! But for much shorter periods of time than they do now.

Well just like the Pirate Party then - http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english :

"The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today's copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead."

But without copyrights, there would never had been either Casablanca nor the Beatles.

Nice straw man. They don't advocate abolishing copyright, rather they want about reform.

Right... just like mix tapes were theft, and recording tv shows was theft.

I admire the efforts you made to reach out to the people pirating your games, and (hopefully) reminding the people who download whatever, whenever, that someone put effort into creating it, and that someone does deserve some kind of reward.

But File-sharing does not mean theft, it means exchanging files. Every computer I own is running at least one piece of software which I obtained from P2P sites at the direction of the copyright holder. They do this because it saves them distribution costs, which is very important when you aren't charging for it.

Equating file-sharing with car-jacking is exactly the attitude that makes people decide that the pro-copyright side of this debate are a bunch of idiots, and the perpetual insistence that each and every copy should be a sale doesn't help credibility either.

If you believe that Life + 70 years is a reasonable term for copyrights, that the patent system works perfectly, or that privacy is not a right, than you are disagreeing with the pirate party (Their statement of principals can be found here: http://www.piratpartiet.se/documents/Principles%203.2.pdf). If you continue to approach the copyright debate by calling everyone who disagrees with you "nothing more than a bunch of college kids who want shit for free" than you shouldn't be too surprised if you find yourself pushing people who might otherwise defend copyright away.

I support the right of creators to get paid for what they produce. I don't pirate games, but I do give old ones that I no longer play to friends, and accept their old games in return. When you insist that I am a "teenage hoodie checking out of society", and that "violating artist rights is what the PIRATE Party wants", you tell me that you do not support my rights to content that I have obtained legally. That's not helping your case that other people should support your ownership rights.

The Pirate Party has an English page here that describes the basics. It has gained a lot of support after they, together with bloggers etc, managed to drum up public opposition to a wiretapping law, a law forcing ISPs to store traffic data, new copyright enforcement laws and the Pirate Bay trial. It has been growing since 2006 and spreads internationally, but this is the first parliamentary seat.

The pirate party isn't a fake party in Sweden though.
http://www.piratpartiet.se/
http://www.piratpartiet.se/storlek

We'll see if they get enough votes for the EU parlament or not.

The pirate party isn't a fake party in Sweden though.
http://www.piratpartiet.se/
http://www.piratpartiet.se/storlek

We'll see if they get enough votes for the EU parlament or not.

I do wish the Pirate Party website had an English version, as I would like to read their info!

I don't know about you, but this page looks like it's in English to me.

While the comments on the size of Pirate Party are correct, it can also be formulated slightly different: PP is, in the moment of writing, the fourth largest party in sweden (with respect to the number of party members). (source )

By the rate of new members, PP should pass 'Centern' in the coming week or something like that, and thus become the third largest party.

PP's youth organisation is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the largest by far (actually has more members than the second and third combined).

It should however be noted that party membership in Sweden is not widespread, thus the actual voting result in an election will not necessarily reflect the membership records.

If you would like to contribute to the cause (for nothing else than just to spite the big media companies), you can make a donation here.

While I'm not sure they deliver merchandise abroad, they have a small shop where you can buy the obligatory t-shirt. Yes, the revolution accepts Visa.

While the comments on the size of Pirate Party are correct, it can also be formulated slightly different: PP is, in the moment of writing, the fourth largest party in sweden (with respect to the number of party members). (source )

By the rate of new members, PP should pass 'Centern' in the coming week or something like that, and thus become the third largest party.

PP's youth organisation is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the largest by far (actually has more members than the second and third combined).

It should however be noted that party membership in Sweden is not widespread, thus the actual voting result in an election will not necessarily reflect the membership records.

If you would like to contribute to the cause (for nothing else than just to spite the big media companies), you can make a donation here.

While I'm not sure they deliver merchandise abroad, they have a small shop where you can buy the obligatory t-shirt. Yes, the revolution accepts Visa.

While the comments on the size of Pirate Party are correct, it can also be formulated slightly different: PP is, in the moment of writing, the fourth largest party in sweden (with respect to the number of party members). (source )

By the rate of new members, PP should pass 'Centern' in the coming week or something like that, and thus become the third largest party.

PP's youth organisation is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the largest by far (actually has more members than the second and third combined).

It should however be noted that party membership in Sweden is not widespread, thus the actual voting result in an election will not necessarily reflect the membership records.

If you would like to contribute to the cause (for nothing else than just to spite the big media companies), you can make a donation here.

While I'm not sure they deliver merchandise abroad, they have a small shop where you can buy the obligatory t-shirt. Yes, the revolution accepts Visa.

The Pirate Party was quick to write a spicy retort in the form of a pressrelease: Pirate Party: "Corruption and miscarriage of justice"

Also, more versions in english:
Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial
Pirate Bay judge and pro-copyright lobbyist accused of bias

Lawyer Peter Althin, representing the Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde calls for retrial

There have been a series of interesting events surrounding the extended Pirate Bay process. It started with PRQ (the web hotel hosting TPB) being illegally raided, and to add the icing on that cake, the minister in charge acting in violation of the Swedish constitution by directly ordering law enforcement (see New Technology's "Was the Raid a Judicial Scandal?" [in Swedish]). Then the FRA and IPRED bills passed in direct defiance of election promises and popular opinion folding to foreign pressure, as was the trial itself. It is hardly surprising that it turned out that the judge was cherry picked. The judge, Thomas NorstrÃm, argued that "My view has been that these activities do not constitute a conflict of interest," and he was not swayed in his judgement by involvement with copyright protection groups.

There was great surprise over the April 17th ruling. Even the legal experts that expected a conviction were taken aback by the prison sentence and the size of the compensatory fine.

The current debate on Swedish technical boards is one of conspiracy theories. Swedes are generally relatively hesitant of suggesting conspiracies, but this one reeks of collusion.

The former Chief Prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem says (in Swedish) that this will hurt the international renown of Swedish courts as well as damage domestic belief in judicial neutrality and safety.

Also interesting is the public statement from the Pirate Party which calls this "Corruption and miscarriage of justice" and "The copyright lobby has really managed to bring corruption to Sweden".

This may turn out to be a huge inconvenience for the copyright organisations and for the ruling coalition.

I give you this not-hard-to-find-link: http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english

I'd say that the third point of the program (respect for the right to privacy) is the primary point of interest for most of the members.

Good luck sir. You have my support by way of donation.

I thought this was an interesting question so I looked up. The number of members in 2006 was 9154 (source: http://forum.piratpartiet.se/FindPost138694.aspx (In Swedish I'm afraid)
Sverigedemokraterna 3627 members (April 2009) 162,463 votes - 2,93%
Feministiskt Initiativ 1700 members (December 2006) 37954 votes - 0,68%

Those two are the only parties that got more votes than the pirate party that didn't make into the Riksdag. It would seem that the membership count in pp has doubled since the election.

I really hope that this Pirate party gets elected to power in Sweden and abolish the copyright laws. The economic chaos that would ensue and the ridicule that that country would be subjected to worldwide would hopefully make even the most pea brained anti-copyright wannabe crusader realize what a stupid and childish idea that is.

Actually, what's childish is your over-the-top strawman argument. If you'd bothered to check out their web site, you'd see that they're for copyright reform, not abolition. Go back and study your subject, ignorant child.

There's a >slightly more up-to-date diagram on the Pirate Party's site that might be interesting to follow over the next few days.

Just look at those numbers! IPRED being implemented in Sweden has caused a considerable increase in members but it's positively dwarfed by this.

Members atm:
http://lekstuga.piratpartiet.se/pp-ticker/longpolling/ticker.html
20 000 in a couple of minutes. Makes it a total of roughly 5000 new members today.

See for yourself. They've been around since '84, I'd say that the message is pretty solidified by now.

The stats from midnight (yes, it's just turned saturday here in Sweden) shows they now have 19693 members - a gain of 4868 members in 12 hours - almost 33%! That makes them the fifth largest party in Sweden, only 3226 members from number four - and almost 1/5 the size of the largest party (Socialdemokraterna) who has 100639 members. Adding to that, their youth organization is now the largest political youth group in Sweden with 9397 members ("Moderata ungdomsfÃrbundet" is second with 9153 members).

So what the numbers themselves are not that huge, but in relation to the numbers from the major parties - they become significant. Get the snowball rolling and the other parties might have to watch out.

It is starting to look like the conviction was the best thing that could have happened - a lot of people are upset and are doing what they can to change things!

Note: all numbers are from the pirate party webpage

You can support your own pirate party. It is now an international organisation. If you want to donate to the swedish pirate party, go here http://www.piratpartiet.se/donera

Outside of Sweden, pirate parties have been started in several countries, inspired by the Swedish initiative. Officially registered pirate parties exist in Spain, Austria, Germany and Poland, while those in the USA, France, Argentina, Finland, and Australia are currently unregistered, but active.

In June 2007 different members of international pirate parties met in Vienna, Austria to discuss the future of the movement. The conference was called "Next Step Politics!? Pirates to Brussels in 2009!?". The event was organized by the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts and activist groups such as monochrom and transforming freedom.

In 2008, the German Pirate Party became the second Pirate Party to contest an election, in the Hesse state election, 2008, and received 0.3% of valid votes. Additionally, there are discussions on Pirate Party International about forming parties in the Netherlands, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Serbia, Romania, Republic of Ireland and a letter of notification that a party is forming in Peru.

It's not a local phenomenon.

... speaking about statistics don't forget the membership statistics for the swedish Pirate Party: http://www.piratpartiet.se/partiet/medlemsstatistik-admin Notice any trend the last couple of days?

Legislation will get worse and worse to the point where we are all under constant surveillance. We don't need to give "them" any more leverage to these draconian laws. We are in our right to fileshare on a personal level - that is, with friends and family. Let's stop filesharing with "strangers" and we're untouchable.

Why? Do you think your rights will be protected if you bend over? Do your think they'll let you file share with friends and family? Hint: DRM, anti-DRM laws and other crippleware. Sharing with my friends that again share with their friends only leads to to six degrees of Kevin Bacon before everyone from me to the Pope has it. They will not stop until such a thing as private communication is brought to an end. If you are Swedish you should know about FRA, IPRED, that just recently Aktuelt showed another proposal from the government to give SEPO access to FRA surveilance and so on. Already the EU directive on telecommunications is supposed to keep tabs on everyone you're in contact with, as you say laws are being put in place to shut down all anonymizing services, open access points and so forth. And this doesn't bother you? You just want to play along "by the rules", in your own words? You want to do the same when they require that everything you do be decrypted and passed through their proxies so they can be sure you're not a vicious file sharer too?

I would say: fight it. The Pirate Party has increased massively in size the last six months and keep reaching new heights. They're now chasing Folkpartiet in membership counts and is Sweden's second biggest youth party - if they keep going like they have in the last months they'll be the biggest soon. This is pretty much a whole generation saying "we want file sharing". If you're Swedish, help them out in the EU election in June - Europe needs someone to speak up against all the Orwellian laws showing up all over the place. Because it will not get better by itself, it'll only get worse. I've decided to donate to them even though I'm in Norway, noone here seems to have the balls to stand up to the EU, which has become the place to pass all the unpopular laws and for national politicans to just throw up their hands and say "we must".

Here's a proposed "alternative to pharmaceutical patents

That proposed alternative boils down to "the government should pay for all of the research necessary - after all, the government (here in Europe) already pays through universal health care, and look at all the great drugs".

Problem is, it neglects to realize the number of drugs invented in the US as opposed to Europe. Most of them are invented here. So unless you're suggesting that the US government not only provide universal health care, but also pay significantly higher rates than Europe does, the amount of drug research worldwide would decline. A lot.

That proposal was but one, one I don't particularly support. However even in the US the government does drug research as well as finances research. The NCI or National Cancer Institute, a US government agency, spent $183 million to develop and test Taxol for instance.

Falcon