Slashdot Mirror
Wipout Essay Results
chrestomanci writes "The Register is reporting on the
results of a counter-essay contest run by wipout.net (an international organisation that seeks to limit the reach of the WIPO and intellectual property rights in general) against the WIPO's own essay contest, both with the title "What does intellectual property mean to you in your daily life?". A telling slogan reads: Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."
I dont belive the WTO goes around shooting aids victims.
http://www.wipout.net/essays/0216holt.htm
m
This essay is pretty good, but suffers from some examples that aren't that interesting.
Clearly the best is the Sri Lankan essay on medicines and Microsoft software license costs.
http://www.wipout.net/essays/0314kumar.ht
BTW, sorry about that FP stuff. CLearly we all suck...
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Under lynx, of course, all you see is an vast landscape of clickable (and un-ALT tagged) GIF's.
They may be all for freedom of expression, but they haven't yet mastered freedom of browsing!
"Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."
No, 2,500 AIDS victims pulled the trigger on themselves by making stupid decisions about sex.
Then the drug companies come along to help and they are attacked by bad Marxist panderings like this.
Guess what, AIDS is an extremely tough disease and extremely expensive to fight. Extremely expensive. And the government's contributions don't even come close to the cost of developing AIDS drugs. And for every drug and research project that succeeds, many many more fail.
If the drug companies were really in some big capitalist consipracy to screw over the world they wouldn't have picked AIDS (a preventable disease) to do it with. They would be screwing you over with the polio and smallpox. Instead, the evil drug companies pretty much eliminated those diseases from the planet.
Brian Ellenberger
I'm not a huge fan of patents, but drug patents are one of the few types of patents that make sense. Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation. And the cost of innovation is often steep, it has always been much easier to ripoff someone's idea than develop it yourself. Often times, the inventor doesn't profit at all from his invention. (see Xerox->Apple->Windows)
For pharamceutical companies, the cost to develop drugs is high, not just because of all the trial and error involved (although rational drug design does help), but because of all the FDA-mandated trials involved. The patent system, as far as I know, is the only system that has been developed to offset the costs of getting a drug FDA-approved.
Its not like a software patent, where the costs of innovation are mostly pizza and Jolt. I would like to see a better system for compensating drugs companies for the money they put into getting a drug approved, but I have not seen one. Maybe instead granting drugs patents for a set number of years, we could grant them based on the time it takes to recoup the trial costs? At least then we could minimize the damage done by granting a monopoly on a life-saving substance.
Websurfing: The Next Generation - StumbleUpon
I would like to see a system for drug patents that is 'the highest bid without going over' the relms of being reasonable.
IOW, it would be cool if a special exception was made for drug patents that caps their limitations in a way that is still high enough to pay for R&D and a significant profit, but low enough that thousands of people aren't dying because the cost is too high.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Guess what, those people aren't dumber than you. I'm pretty sure that plenty of those 2,500 victims are smarter than you and me.
No, 2,500 AIDS victims pulled the trigger on themselves by making stupid decisions about sex.
:)
Not true! Many AIDS victims are born with HIV because of their parent's decisions. Unprotected sex is a big cause of the spreading, but when you spread your spermies into a woman. She might get HIV, but since you are unprotected she will probably also end up with a baby.
Also, my two cents: Anyone saying that AIDS is a disease that punishes gays is definately wrong. I think its just another reason not to be gay in San Francisco
Ever need an online dictionary?
While the cost of development is high the cost of production is really low. Now when you have a bunch of people that wouldnt be able to pay for the drugs anyway why not just give them the drug at lower or no cost. Such cost differentiation is not unheard of. for example some drugs for pets are cheap, while the identical drugs for humans are expensive. Thats because people wouldnt pay the high costs of a drug for a pet.
Dude, I'm callin' shenanigans on you. In sub-saharan Africa up to 20% of the population is infected with AIDS. Burundi is a good example, they have a 19% infection rate. It isn't as though they are being unsafe or overly promiscuous; there is no birth or disease control available to them, and furthermore, everybody has it, so avoiding it is rendered difficult.
Yes, there IS a conspiracy of sorts. The conspiracy is that the pharmaceutical companies and their extremely powerful allies won't allow AIDS drugs to be manufactured overseas. Treatment is so expensive because the pharms. charge markups in excess of 1000% on the cost of manufacture. The conspiracy is that money is always weighed above human life in our country.
You don't get AIDS by sex alone. It can be conveyed in numerous other ways. A cut, for example could be exposed to it via contaminated substances, etc.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."
There is a great deal of question as to whether the infrastructure exists to deliver and administer the anti-AIDS drugs even if they we made available at zero cost.
We are talking about countries where the per capita health care spending is less than $10/year.
These are also the same places where other diseases that could be cured at far less cost than AIDS go uncontrolled. Malaria kills far more people than AIDS, and is far less expensive to fight. How can you make a moral case about AIDS drugs when in fact spending the money on fighting other diseases would offer greater relief from suffering with the same resources?
No?
ok... nevermind. it must be the ragweed, then...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
Have you read the English winner of the WIPO contests?
For me, it was a succinct summary of many of the problems with intellectual property. It would have been more fitting in the counter-essay competition. Basically, the author lists from a personal perspective how harmful all the laws can be and then says "But it's the law so watcha gonna do?" (I'm paraphrasing)
How is that an endorsement of IP?
Am I missing something?
It's not the morallity of the defense that's questioned, but of the attacker.
In other words, how can you make a moral case about any cure when charging outrageous prices for it?
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Some of the greatest medical inventors in this world's history purposefully did NOT patent their work. Radium, Penecillin, polio vaccine (not just once, but twice) and many other wonderful discoveries that cost years of research to develop were given to the world free of charge.
How many of you ever donated money to the American Heart Association, Jerry's Kids, or a thousand other medical related charity organizations? I have, more often than I can remember and I've no idea how much I've contributed to the advance of medical science. Why should I be charged these outrageous prices on pharmaceuticals my money helped to create?
Medical patents aren't about recouping costs - it's about putting more money into stockholder's pockets. Take a look at their financial statements before you claim they need those patents (and the right to charge whatever they want for the drugs while locked behind the patent) to pay for their R&D. Many of them also get money from the Government as well as private donations to help pay the costs of creating new pharmaceuticals. So Taxpayers are also helping to offset their R&D costs.
In my opinion, any company who accepts donations (of any kind) should not be granted a patent - any discoveries made with public money (even a single penny of public money) should be granted freely to the public and not locked down behind a patent.
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
Also look at the WIPO essays. The English one doesn't appear to argue directly for or against IP laws. He mentions the disadvantages that IP laws have in terms of education and entertainment, often being worse for both the user and the creator, while being glad of the protection he'll get for his own ideas. Personally I think what's needed is a non-patent-office, where people can register their ideas and allow them to be used freely, preventing real patents from being made on similar ideas. It would act as an archive of evidence demonstrating that many patents that are applied for are not original. This would prevent stupid patents that are based on common sense and that could easily be thought up by someone else without being aware that someone has come up with a similar idea.
C'mon, I don't know the statistics, but I'm sure the vast majority of AIDS victims are not infants or blood transfusees (how d'ya like that word, spelling/grammar nazis?), they're people who've had promiscuous sex or used unclean drug paraphenelia. I have nothing but sympathy for anyone who contracts it, even it it was from a night with the goatse.cx man. Nobody deserves to die before their time. But the fact is, 99% of the time, AIDS is a preventable disease. I thank the original poster for his objectivity, especially in regards to the "evil drug corporations."
Anyone saying that AIDS is a disease that punishes gays is definately wrong.
Of course. Diseases don't punish people. They merely try to survive and reproduce, just like any other organism. But having sex with someone who's sexual history (and current status) you're not absolutely sure of is like sneaking up on a mother bear and her cubs-- no matter how uneducated you were about it, somewhere it should register that it could get you killed, and if you wind up dead, that definitely sucks, but don't play innocent with me, and don't critisize the government for not filling the pool when you jump in with your eyes closed.
Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims.
Besides, what's another two and a half people, in the grand scheme of things?
c-hack.com |
" Today is World Intellectual Property day... What! Why didn't anyone tell me! I could have been planning a party!"
We wanted to tell you, but you refused to sign the NDA.
and what about the person who contacts AIDS even though a condom was worn. What then sir? Enlighten us
Anyone who has wears a condom in hopes that he will be protected from STD exposure damn well should know that it is not 100% effective. So unless he is truly ignorant of the facts, he is willfully putting his life at risk, and should not whine "but I wore a condom!" if the roulette wheel lands on double-zero.
It is not an inalienable human right to have sex with another person free from any and all consequences.
What the general public calls "safe sex" is laughable. And thanks to our collective denial instict, the more honest term "safer sex" never caught on---not to mention the even better choices, "safer-but-not-totally-risk-free sex," or "safer-but-still-don't-complain-if-he-doesn't-call -you-afterwards sex".
It is of course quite amusing that the only way to enslave drug companies and their employees to work for free is by in fact using guns or other forms of deadly persuasion.
The Marxist here can decry the drug companies TODAY for not giving away the fruits of their labor for free. He can equate inaction with murder.
But what happens when drug companies refuse to develop drugs because these same marxists constantly steal them?
They have no choice but to persuade their citizenry not with money, but violence.
So, you won't develop that drug for $4.75 an hour? fine, do it or you go to the slave labor camps!
Suggesting Capitalists are murderers! nothing could be more amusing. Of course, it is not amusing to the 100 million who have died in the last century at the hands of Marxists and their murderous toys.
But who gives a fuck about them?
I don't read or respond to AC posts
The IP system, at least in the US, is broken. Whether or not its broken beyond repair is a matter of conjecture.
Of course, as Stallman states, using the phase IP is in fact dangerous and supportive of the system. But its the only word which collectively refers to patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and so on and so forth: all of which have essentially one thing in common -- controlling information.
Anyways, here's my solution to the current IP problems: (1) Reduce both the scope and duration of IP laws; (2) Give innovators the choice between "control without compensation" or "compensation without control," but not both. This allows MS to be compensated, but does not allow them to control; it also allows FSF to control (to ensure freedom) but not be compensated (which is basically the way the situation is now). Also, an option should be given for an intermediate between control or compensation; in such an intermediate, there would be less control and less compensation than in either extreme, however.
Btw, in regards to AIDS drugs, to those of you defending companies not giving poor people in Africa drugs at the cost of protection, I hope that you people find yourself sick with some disease and too poor to pay some greedy corporation for the cure.
AIDS "treatments" are NOT useful for very long. HIV adapts rapidly; by the time the 20-year patent on HIV treatments has expired, the "treatment" will completely useless. Thus, the PUBLIC is NEVER EVER compensated for their support of patent owners to HIV-treatments.
Some countries which I praise have chosen to IGNORE drug patents for the GOOD OF THEIR CITIZENS. This is what countries SHOULD do if they need to, as drug companies can't sue a government (sure, they could sue a gov't in that gov'ts own courts, but that would be unwinnable).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
But you don't actually care about the truth. I'm sure that your dimestore version of classical economics just can't account for such macroeconomic realities. You just want to justify business as usual. So I'm going to simply call you names. You are a blowhard and an ignorant prat.
In case of many women, it's a killer of people who trust their husbands. Or, in some parts of the world, of people who get transfusions. Or who get raped. But of course, in the sort of pluto-Calvinist world you inhabit, everyone is getting just what they deserve, right? Funny how people who are getting what they want tend to sustain that philosophy.
But this problem gets solved all the time and without any official checks on income.
The pets example was one. Nobody who can afford a drug will eat the version made for dogs no matter howe much cheaper it is, even if they know its the same stuff.
So i dont compare african people with pets i will give another example. Banana Republic and old navy owned by the same corp (i think) have clothes of pretty much the same quality (with some differences in design) and fro very different prices. But do more well to do people "cheat" by buying old navy when they should be buying banana. Most dont. They actually want to buy the more expensive stuff in order to express their place in society.
Now i think similar price differentiation can easily be achieved with aids drugs. If you put a large notice on the drug packaging that says "not approved by FDA" that will prevent many people that can afford the fda approved stuff from using it.
But you can do much better. You have so much racism and class resentment working in your favor. So if you put a note on the drug that says "free aids drugs to be given to dirt poor africans, not approved by the fda, take it on your own risk" nobody will take this unless they have no choice and no way to afford the other stuff. Even the more well to do africans will take the expensive version. Of course the drugs will be of the same quality.
I really dont mean to be offensive to anyone. Racism is a regretable reality, but in this situation it can really be used to provide some cheap drugs without risk for drug manufacturers of eroding the sales of their expensive brands.
Slashdot Reader: This is so unfair. Starving children in Burundi are dying of AIDS because they can't afford the medicine. People in Westernized countries should pay for the cost of research because they can afford it.
Some time later....
Slashdot Reader: Guess what. I just bought this DVD for $2 from a website in Burundi, but the damn thing won't work in my player because of the regional encoding. Why should I have to pay $30 for a DVD when you can buy the exact same thing in Burundi for $2?
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Magic Johnson has been on the "cocktail" since 1991. His viral load is almost zero. I'm sure he understands that any day now that combination of drugs he takes might cease working. I suspect his optimistic attitude is a big, big help in keeping him healthy.
I hope he survives long enough to give that weenie mayor of ours Jimmy Hahn what-for when he stands for reelection. Hahn's tactics were appalling. Heh, maybe if the San Fernando Valley succeeds in splitting from LA Hahn won't be our mayor anymore. Stay tuned...the battle coming up this Fall will be very interesting.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
It's called "the public domain."
If you come up with a good, original idea, just publish it on any old website (like this one), and submit it to google for archival purposes. Then, if anybody tries to patent it, you can sue to have the patent invalidated due to prior art.
Therein, of course, lies the crux of the problem. You would have to mount the costly legal effort to have the patent invalidated. That's supposed to be the Patent Office's job, but at least here in the USofA, the Patent Office is pitifully negligent when researching prior art. There's a simple reason for that: the PTO is paid to grant patents, not deny them. There's no penalty for a patent investigator (or a patent attorney) if a patent is later invalidated.
Hmmm, a hefty fine for invalidated patents could be a simple, market-oriented way to reduce the number of "bad" patents? Any thoughts?
Ooh, ooh, I think I'll file a patent on "A Method For Reducing The Rate Of Invalidated Patents" and make a million bucks!
I'm really uncomfortable with "one size fits all" models of incentivizing innovation and distributing goods. What may make sense of consumer electronics may very make no sense for food and medicine.
"They would be screwing you over with the polio and smallpox. Instead, the evil drug companies pretty much eliminated those diseases from the planet."
Smallpox, I don't know about, but I can tell you about Polio. The vaccine was invented by Jonas Salk, who was working for an university, funded by non-profits. He refused to patent it.
Drug companies today don't even have an incentive to create vaccines or cures -- treatments are much more profitable.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Actually I do realize that (as someone who works in the AIDS field). The problem isn't having sex, which is something that needs to happen to have children, its having it be promiscuous. The culture in Africa and now back in the West again is "Sex is Good" no matter what. If you can get laid then you should. The problem is that they don't need that to have babies, they just need a partner. Africa needs a lesson on safe sex.
Just because you've decided on a lifetime commitment doesnt make you immune if your partner is or gets infected. The social issues and the percentages work against such a strategy being efficient in countries where AIDS runs rampant.
Keeping your pants on permanently is about the only way you can be pretty sure. If you have that choice.
Yes, the solution is to take the pharmaceutical corps out of the loop. If they prove themselves unable to value life over profits, or are unable to develop a pricing structure that allows access to everyone, they have proven that they cannot live up to the responsibility they have.
That means that governments have to go in and finance more of the medical research when it comes to matters of life and death. The pharmaceutical industry can do the Aspirins and the Viagra of the world so they dont have to deal with those ethical aspects of their buisness they have such a hard time with.
Government financing might not be the absolute best solution, but with cooperation between countries the medical research funding could get larger than it is today (altho a large part is already government financed). And the final products would be more available than they are today.
So, these people have this drug patented, you want it. They produced it because they knew they could patent it and make good on their investment. But, you say, we should take it. It's for the good of the people.
Suppose you take it. Now, who is going to invest to kill the next plague? Or even other, current plagues, like cancer, or arthritis?
You're proposing to kill the system that produced this drug. Are you sure that you want this to be the last drug produced like this? Is this more important than all other diseases that might be cured at a profit in the future?
If you haven't thought about these questions, maybe you should think about whether you're hearing anything but one side of a complex story.
Liberty uber alles.
Speaking of records, consider what this technology will do for sound when everyone who attends a concert (or just listens to the radio) is able to play back portions of their augmented memory at will. Whether this is in the form of speakers or jacked in more directly to your neurons doesn't change the basic problem. When technology makes augmented memory available it will be a 'killer ap,' and whole industries will be opposed to it, attempting to cripple it by schemes such as forcing watermarking into content and mandating blocking or degrading of that content in memory augmentation devices.
But do we want to enter the new era intentionally crippling ourselves in service to the profits of old business models? Current research shows that the blind can be enabled to see by transforming visual information into aural patterns. Since the process uses a laptop, what's 'seen' can be saved to disk. Should this data be bowlderized if it includes Mickey Mouse on a TV in the background? We could make an exception for the 'disabled,' but 20 years from now not being 'borged with fully capable equipment will be seen as a disability.
The cleanest thing to do is establish a doctrine that experience belongs to the experiencer, and can be freely shared with others. Anything less than this, and we'll be inviting all sorts of corporate and governmental characters to become literally engaged in censoring what's 'inside' our 'borged heads.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Ironic. Polio and smallpox vaccines were developed in academic settings (Dr. Salk at the University of Pittsburg) or hospitals (Albert Sabin at the Children's Hospital) or by independent researchers (Jenner and the smallpox vaccine.) None of them were developed by drug companies looking for a profit, because vaccines are less profitable than treatment.
I don't think there is no incentive to develop vaccines and cures when selling treatment is so lucrative. If you can develop a cure/vaccine that will supplant the existing treatment (by a different company) then you will succeed. What typically seems to happen is that a government will fund research at a university. The researchers will develop a cure/vaccine under the presumption that when they succeed, they will be able to spin off a company to commericalize the technique.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Ok, how do you sort out the honest ones then? You're in a village in africa, and you are going to demand your partner get tested for something you barely know what it is?
How many people with AIDS do you think are going to be totally honest about it, again, in a country where AIDS runs rampant? How many are even going to know?
And, yes, I'm sure you have a choice about having sex or not when your family marries you off to someone. You can always say no and get beaten instead.
It's quite different in the western world, where you can actually demand a test before getting into a relationship. Not that the honesty thing is very common tho...
The cost of developing the drugs isn't just cost of development. Even worse, the 20 year (IIRC) patent starts ticking when you enter testing with the FDA, which can take an ungodly amount of time testing the drug. You're not making dime one until the FDA approves it.
After that, you've got a limited amount of time to recoup your development and testing costs, plus trying to make a profit, plus covering future development, plus making up for failed drug development efforts, plus cost of capital over the development period.
Given a $50M (number pulled out of my butt) plant, you've got 50M * (1+costOfCapital) ^ (yearsInDevelopment) to recover, which isn't trivial, and I'll bet $50M is chump change in that industry.
Once generics enter the market, you're toast because of the aforementioned low production costs, so you've got to charge out the wazoo during your exclusive patent period to stick around. Note what happens to stock prices of drug companies when a drug either gets approved or moves to a different stage of testing. Analysts know what they're doing in that regard. I mean, they're not VCs.
Irrespective, I would suggest drug prices ARE hysterically overwrought, but there might be some cause for that.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
The contest was announced on Slashdot. Slashdot rejected two reminder stories from me one month and one week before it closed. Despite all the sound and fury in this forum and elsewhere, it received only fifty-some submissions. Two of them were mine.
If this is all we care about IP, we've already lost. Son of SSSCA will slip through as amendments, and we'll all be buying our hardware from Hilary Rosen.
You disagree? Did you submit an essay? Did you? I didn't think so.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.