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U.S. Puts 12 Nations On Watch For Piracy
ColinPL writes with a link to an AP article about a public scolding the US has given China, Russia, and several other nations. Failure to 'sufficiently protect' American copyrights is the cause of the Bush administration's ire, and has resulted in these countries showing up on a 'priority watch list' that could eventually lead to economic sanctions. "In addition to Russia and China, the 10 countries placed on the priority watch list were Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India,
Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela. In elevating Thailand to the priority watch list, the administration said it was concerned by a range of issues including a 'deteriorating protection for patents and copyrights.' Thailand is currently in a dispute with international drug companies including Abbott Laboratories of the United States over the cost of drugs to fight AIDS and other diseases. The Thai government in January issued compulsory licenses allowing the use of much cheaper generic versions of two leading drugs in Thailand."
If only China and Russia were big enough to not give a shit about US policy...
Uh, yay?
... anyone have a .torrent of it?
This isn't just the Bush administration. If you vote for either of the Big Two, the person you voted for has been bought and paid for by the MAFIAA, and they are in full support of sending the copyright Gestapo after law-breakers worldwide.
Dear United STATES of AMERICA.
You have your own part of the world. Please stay within it's boundaries and spend the saved time READING Wikipedia's article on law. You DO NOT and SHALL NOT ever control other nations laws. You cannot even abide by the very laws you were founded on these days, so why do you expect others to do the same?
Lots of love
Rest of the world.
If anyone realizes that having an economy that is increasingly dependent on "intellectual property" is a bad thing. Nowadays there is no compelling reason to buy things from the copyright holders other than maybe feeling guilty or an affinity for tangible copies. ESPECIALLY since the pirated versions often are much better than the retail versions in functionality and portability.
I remember on my camp in Kuwait, the TCNs (third-world country nationals) would come on to clean, and would also stop by our living quarters with a truck load of burned dvds and vcds for a few bucks a pop. And this was very often. I know it was even worse up in Iraq, with people ripping and burning movies to sell on the markets all the time.
So these other countries must be doing this in huge quantities to be on this list. It's rather impressive really.
Failure to 'sufficiently protect' American copyrights is the cause of the Bush administration's ire ...
Which, five or six years ago, might have meant something. Today, it doesn't. Can't imagine why that might be.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
After the MPAA threw it's hissy-fit tantrum a while back about how Canada is the #1 place for movie piracy because it's where screen records come from, that they're thinking of delaying out movie release for weeks, yada yada yada, Canada doesn't make it anywhere on the list? Heh. Maybe the federal government isn't quite as stupid about what the *AAs are doing as they typically act like.
..and Russia, China, Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India, Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela are all on notice! That'll learn 'em.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Why can't every day be World Intellectual Property Day?!
it was offshore banking. The US blacklisted a number of countries, and ruined their economies. Now it's "IP". Thank you for bringing freedom to the world.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Could that have anything to do with the fact that we just caved to US lobbyist pressure to buy some goodwill?
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
Even /. has bought into calling copyright infringement "piracy". If you don't think it's the moral equivalent of murder on the high seas, then don't use the RIAA term "piracy". You just play into their hands.
These countries can do everything cheaper as seen with off-shored outsourcing and all.
The only edge the US has is innovation.
If these countries can just copy everything and do it dirt cheap, it will harm entities in the US who spend money on innovation - be it pharmaceuticals, music or software.
I think a bit of personal not-for-profit p2p downloading and an exception for life-saving drugs in OK. But, the balatant disregard for copyrights and patents with businesses in these countries openly copying and selling pharmaceuticals, software and music should be stopped.
In the article, it says there was an announcement in the United States last Monday in which it was said that Brazil was removed from the top most part of the list of countries that ignore piracy and violate intellectual property.
Funny thing in the article is to read that they found out that Brazil didn't manufacture the products that were confiscated by authorities, but they were manufacture in China and crossed the border into Brazil via Paraguay.
By the way, check out www.iipa.com There's links to the 'Special 301' sections, along with graphs of what they think they're losing, and their wish list for correcting it.
Copying drugs to fight AIDS and other diseases.
Those bastards!
If this were really happening, what would you think?
I find it very interesting that Israel is on the list as it is the only country on the list that could really be affected by US sanctions.
Ok, they want to put Thailand on this list partly because Thailand has told them we are only going to pay a certain amount for anti-viral HIV medication instead of the hugely inflated US prices. Seems to me that saves US dollars in the end because it is US men (and other westerners too) going over for underage sex with potentially HIV infected girls which if treated appropriately would keep US healthcare costs down by decreasing transmission to US citizens.
While in the case of providing a free market you could argue that it is generally a good thing that democratic systems should have, but copyright is just a mean to an end, to try to bolster innovation. Needless to say it is a laughable 18th century relic, but nonetheless it is a tool.
Saying to another country that you're not protecting copyrights enough, is a sovereignty issue. It would be equivalent to saying that another country using this or that kind of philosophy in helping the economy is bad and should use another one. By all indications it seems that more lax copyright laws are better though, but noone should be forced to abolish or viciously protect copyright because another country demands it.
Discounting the fact that the USA demands stronger copyrights due to the corporate lobby, it is still not a rights issue. This particular watchlist stems from the fact that copyright is a mechanism that would completely break down in the countries it is still present, if more other influential or developed countries would severely weaken it's legal framework under their own sovereignty.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I think in the top 12 should be Italy... as far as I can see (and I live there) all small companies involved in graphic design, software development, and similar, use more pirated software than original, and often only pirated software. They claim it's because the software is too much expansive, but they didn't even try to us any free alternative, or to buy just the software they need. The hard disks of this companies are full of any kind of software for a total worth of hundred thousands of dollars. This is a problem for the few companies that try to use original software, because it's hard to compete on the market when you have higher costs than your neighborhoods.
I can just imagine the *US* telling *Israel* what to do.
It's not like the United States doesn't pirate tons of media from Japan.
..they forgot to put the US on the watch list. Considering the computer userbase here, the "amount" of piracy might be higher than in any of those countries, or even all of them taken together. Here's some numbers for you: Ukraine Internet Users: 5.278 Million (2005) Russia Internet Users: 23.7 Million (2005) China Internet Users: 123 Million (2006) India Internet Users: 60 Million (2005) United States Internet Users: 205.327 Million (2005) (According to https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/inde x.html)
That does not really reflect the whole picture (people there buy bootleg dvd's instead of downloading), but might give you some ideas to think of.
when you are going to sanction the whole world (more or less).
What is interesting to me is the fact that the whole world (more or less) thinks your products are so pricey that copyright infringement is a better option.
And this little DRM thingy doesn't seem to be working out too well at the moment. Despite the **AAs opinion that DRM is the only way to protect their business product (which is distribution) the entire world (more or less) is telling them that their product is too expensive.
I'd be willing to be that counts as the world talking with one voice? s
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If you can't afford to pay American pharmaceutical companies, you deserve to have AIDS.
Let's be a bit more honest about this 'list', ok?
If the US govt. says they 'just' put a dozen nations on a piracy blacklist, what it really means is that a dozen nations have been on said list for some time now, allowing the US govt. to harvest statistics, map patterns, etc.
Saying this just went into effect is BS. I'd bet it's been a working list for at least the last year or three. The only reason a 'statement' is released is to keep two or more politically driven hot-button issues in sync in the public mind.
It has been widely known that US copyright and patent system needs reform. In my point of view the USPTO does nothing but stops growth and fosters monopoly. Developing countries like India, in the name of being a trade partner, will come on board with IP protection. However, expecting them to follow US laws is foolish. Who gives a rat's behind if lobbyists were able to get this bill going.
How the hell did Copyright become so entangled, and so disproportionately important that the equally as corrupt American government take such a public stand on it?
Why has it come to this? This is so sad.
ilovegeorgebush
Was anyone else anticipating the new version of the "Axis of Evil" speech?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0- number/
http://rudd-o.com/archives/2007/04/30/spread-this
As an Indian I can attest that there is nothing going on in India to protect "Intellectual property". I am neglecting the facts that KPO is a branded commodity for US, and the Bollywood industry has been doing its own part of playing RIAA in India.
1) India is big, poor, and in short, 3rd world country. It has problems involving supply of water (clean or not), clean air etc. It surprises many people in India when they learn that other countries don't have regular power failures. I don't think there is absolutely anything anyone can do to stop piracy. If they could, they would stop theft of electricity first. And I am not even sure "Intellectual property" is widely accepted as property.
2) Bollywood et. al. will never add the DRM. Dirt cheap electronics from China and Taiwan are driving the market, and anyone having a TV is buying a DVD player. And unlike most other countries, movies in Bollywood are made for the lowest section of society. No one can take the risk of screwing this market. Just some days ago I bought a DVD and was able to just copy-paste-play it. Region lock is not known to most people.
Those are what I consider the good parts. The bad part is, though, that open source is a far off concept - a competition between free Windows and free Linux. I don't even remember a place where I can buy Windows legally. If you ask the dealer, he will just burn a CD for you, for free or for 15 rs. (.25 ). Unless Linux becomes as big as Windows, good luck having it a "Desktop OS".
Pretty soon, the RIAA and MPAA will have every "first world" and most "second world" countries on their list. That should tell them that they need to change strategies at the very least.
Also, when something like this happens, involving multiple countries, shouldn't the World Trade Organization or some such organization step in?
Strange, here's a map of global piracy
China and Russia don't seem to be a problem at all?
http://www.icc-ccs.org/extra/display.php
The US doesn't make anything the world wants except for software and entertainment and weaponry...hmm...where have I heard this before?
Anyway, Bush knows our economy is shit even though he lies and says otherwise. It's propped up by a circle-jerk of 'service providing' that people here can't really afford. The only real revenue stream is selling copywritten content.
It's all about the dollars....just like occupying Iraq.
It's a sad time to be a citizen of the USA, but we will get these scumbags out and try to get lesser scumbags who won't be quite as obnoxious and damaging to our ideals.
Even the most corrupt tax-and-spend liberal couldn't piss away over a trillion dollars on abject failure in the space of 7 years.
Blar.
Even /. has bought into calling copyright infringement "piracy". If you don't think it's the moral equivalent of murder on the high seas, then don't use the RIAA term "piracy". You just play into their hands.
First of all, piracy is not murder on the high seas, it's robbery on the high seas. Secondly, language is constantly evolving. A word that means one thing one day, may mean something else later. "Gay", for example, means light-hearted and happy. However, it now also means effeminate, homosexual, etc. It did not have those secondary meanings a century ago, or even fifty years ago. "Hacker" is another example. It used to refer to a person who modifies electronic equipment to get higher performance. Now it has the added meaning of breaking or bypassing computer security systems. Once the alternate definition becomes broadly known it becomes official.
So, rage all you want. You will never get "piracy" back. Nor will we get "hacker" back. It's a lost battle.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You can't spell DMCA without the "D"....
/. basement-dwellers that this post is going to cause will be funny.
Yep, the entertainment industry gives at least twice as much to Democrats as they do to Republicans. Since 1990, they've given $137,219,474 to Dems, and $63,574,385 to Repubs.
The recording industry is even more skewed, giving $13,635,639 to Dems and $3,727,147 to Repubs since 1990. That's 78% to Dems - with some election cycles having 85% of the recording industries political contributions going to Dems.
But that's nothing compared to the movie industry, which gave $47,800,285 to Dems and $7,192,062 to Repubs since 1990. Up to 93% of movie industry political contributions have gone to Dems in some election cycles, with that number never lower than 78%.
There's a reason why the DMCA was signed by a Democratic President. Hell, there are millions of reasons, all of them green...
The cognitive dissonance among sheltered
"If anyone realizes that having an economy that is increasingly dependent on "intellectual property" is a bad thing. Nowadays there is no compelling reason to buy things from the copyright holders other than maybe feeling guilty or an affinity for tangible copies. ESPECIALLY since the pirated versions often are much better than the retail versions in functionality and portability."
Wow - now that's a gross over-generalization, and only part of the first sentence is even close to right here...
Going back to front (sort of):
"Nowadays there is no compelling reason to buy things from the copyright holders other than maybe feeling guilty or an affinity for tangible copies."
To meet one gross over-generalization with another, you mean besides keeping the copyright holders in business so that they can continue to produce content? There's a basic economic reality you're missing here - producing any product or content takes time and resources, and to continue to do that requires that money is made to pay for the time and resources.
(And, before somebody bites my head off, yes, I know the internet is a cheap means of distribution, and yes, I know the RIAA treats its content creators horribly - I'm talking in the broadest of strokes here. When it comes down to it, any content creator needs to at least eat.)
But, you know what, you're right - we don't need that pesky literature, movies, and music anyway. If shadow puppets were good enough for our ancestors, they're good enough for us!
"ESPECIALLY since the pirated versions often are much better than the retail versions in functionality and portability."
Um, no, not really. Windows Vista is DRM-happy to the point of stupidity, and the RIAA has done everything it can to drive music fans into the hands of file-sharers, but that doesn't mean that the greater utility lies in files on a computer. Actually, in most cases a physical media tends to have better functionality and portability.
Take movies for example - I can go visit my parents in another city and bring a couple of movies along, and the DVDs are quite light, easy to carry, and all I have to do is put them into any DVD player in North America to have them work. No file copying, no waiting for a download to finish, no taking up space on my hard disk - everything is just on the DVD. When it comes to the DRM stupidity we have been seeing, we have to remember that it's the DRM causing the problems, not the physical format itself.
"If anyone realizes that having an economy that is increasingly dependent on "intellectual property" is a bad thing."
This is the one place where you are at least partially correct. But you shouldn't be saying "intellectual property" here - you should be saying "service-based," because that is what is really there. The United States used to have some of the greatest manufacturing power in the world, and now it seems it actually produces very little. But that's a more complicated argument, and not really relevant to this discussion.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I have to say I agree with this action to some degree. Namely as it relates to drug companies though. I've been involved people that work in the pharmaceutical business, and getting a drub approved by the FDA is NOT easy. Many never make it to market, and almost all of them require a lot of money to develop in R&D. While making a product is no guarantee of making money, they should be allowed some protection for doing the work. Without a patent on the drug, the minute it hits the market it will be reverse engineered by a different drug company and sold cheaper. Some say that is the way it should be, but I honestly don't agree. The company creating the drug is spending a lot of time and money in R&D, without which we wouldn't get the current drugs we have and rely on. Why should another company get to easily piggy back on their efforts? Where is the motivation to find new cures in that environment?
As to the cost of the drugs, the companies are trying to make money. They're not non-profit organizations. Should they be? That's a different question all together which I won't address here. The rest of the world complains about the price of drugs and refuses to pay the prices the drug companies want to charge, instead deciding not to honor the patents on the drugs if the price doesn't come down. The result? The US has much higher drug prices than most of the rest of the world because we end up paying for the companies R&D costs since the rest of the world won't. Sorry, I can't feel bad about sanctions against countries that refuse to carry the burden of R&D costs and leave the US to carry it all. Do I feel the costs be lower? Definitely. However, I also don't know the R&D cost for a particular drug so whose to say the costs aren't in line with a reasonable time line to recoup R&D costs? I can't say I think having for profit companies develop the drugs helps things.
Given this situation, what's the way to handle it OTHER than patents? How can a company recoup the R&D costs (plus a profit) for a drug at a price level that is fair to all countries? Why shouldn't the countries in the rest of the world be forced to honor the drug companies' patents? It's not like it's a field where the companies can simply say "Pay up or you don't get the cure".
I don't really care much about the copyright portion of this story, but I get irked when I see people ranting against drug companies. They're definitely not perfect, but they are getting screwed by the rest of the world as bad as they screw the people in the US imo.
KhyronBiggest consumer group for pirated US products live inside US borders. Mind to clean your own yard first, gentlemen. Another question is competitive pricing. Would you pay $500 for a new DVD? Certainly not. RIAA thinks Chinese should, their monthly average income is $200 (in cities, like Shanghai, poorer areas it might be like $20-$50), and one legal movie could cost 1/10th to 1/20th ($10-$20) of their income. It's same portion as if we say 1/10th of US citizen who's income is $5000/mo, is used to buy a $500 movie. No wonder, that Chinese rather buy $1 (10 yuan) pirates. And in the end, western pirated movies are mostly for tourists buying pirates. Pirating some gong li movie is not away from any western studio. Chinese themselves watch mostly their own productions and music, and consume them. Pirating say Faye Wong is not away from some US producers ability to pay illegal Mexican gardener doing his lawn and wife. Bush administration is just panicking their growing trade surplus with China. US just cannot compete much longer against labor force of 1.4 billion. I'd be tempted to say, that just finally mind your own business America.
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What manner of threat comes after public scolding? Is there a the stern email in the works? Perhaps a terse statement read by the president on the lawn in front of the white house or during his fireside chat? That'll teach those pirates.
"Blacklisted and ruined their economies" is an interesting perspective. To which nations you refer is not immediately apparent. When offshore banking was perceived to be merely the province of people seeking to reduce their tax load, the industry was largely ignored. It seems some of that activity wasn't even illegal, the industry helped people to exploit loopholes.
One could say the industry was exploited as an anonymous money laundering service by tax evaders, drug kingpins (not to be confused with the drug czars) and later by terrorists. When this became more commonly known, it found itself facing closed loopholes and reduced taxes on the upper income brackets (both of which had the effect of reducing their legitimate client base and could be more accurately characterized as "changing market conditions" not an attack on the offshore financial industry). Later it faced attempts at increased regulation to help law enforcement trace money flows related to organized crime and terrorism.
Despite changing market conditions and increased regulation of international money flows to and from the United States (and other democratic nations) the industry seems to be thriving. So far as I can tell, there hasn't been a concerted effort by the United States government to shut down the industry, rather to force the industry to help track activities which are not only illegal in the United States, but illegal in most nations of the world, including the host nations of these banking systems.
So what are you talking about? Am I missing some key bit of the history of this industry?
(I Am Not A Tax Attorney so my understanding of this issue may be incomplete, in error, or inane. I further admit to paying scant attention to the particulars of this issue, and you might well know a great deal more about the collapse of national economies due to a black list than I.)
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Excellent. That will spur those countries on to innovate and work around the US protectionism. Eventually, we should see a slew of great new products.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If the US is so upset about copyright infringement abroad, why don't they stop exporting the culture to these countries? If the problem is so huge and their IP so insecure, it should be economically viable to pull out of those particular markets. If the countries want the US culture enough, they'll be forced to clean up their act. The only disadvantage is to the US, who would prefer to export the IP and to blackmail the countries at the same time (read: have their cake and eat it too).
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
We (Canada), aren't part of the new 12-point-axis-of-copyright-evil.
Can't have the thai people being cured of AIDS without the US getting a cut. Who do they think they are?
Really my biggest issue in a lot of this stuff is that many US patents are stolen IP anyway. Or things that patenting should not have been allowed for. Big companies buy things invented in less well off nations and assume that because it is the first they have seen of them they can patent the whole idea rather than just the product they bought. There's probably tribal stuff that dates back thousands of years that people have patents for in the US because it could be marketed and sold. In any other country in the world though these patents aren't worth the paper they are written on. It takes a nation so oblivous to their surroundings with their heads so far up their own asses to even think there is sense in it. The funniest thing is most of these cases end up with the US company winning in a US court, because the judges dont see it any differently. Patents in the US are quite insane and quite worrying indeed...
I live in Argentina. If this is enforced (which I doubt) it could mean a lot for the free software community. Nothing drives Linux adoption faster than having a bunch of thugs from the government knocking at your company's door to investigate if you have any pirated software. They already tried it once with an organization called Software Legal (similar to the BSA I think, and backed by all the big names in the software industry) and suddenly there was a such number of people trying to migrate that the local LUG couldn't handle the load. Let them shoot themselves in the foot again, I don't care!
In fact the situation is a bit shameful anyways, so if Brazil is actually doing better than us in this respect, that's good to hear. (Although it seems a bit strange, given that Brazil has a much greater percentage of people living in extreme poverty.)
I thought we Canadians were the kingpin behind 70% of all movie piracy in the WORLD, thats was the MPAA idiots we just saying like the other day. Do to all that and not make the top 12! Well those other countries must be crazy Pirates! Yar!
Really they need to shut the hell up. Though in this case, the report is a bit, um, I don't know, common knowlege... In fact you could probably add a few more south asian countries in there like Malyasia, Singapore, etc....
URGENT REPORT: This just in, CHINA is the leader of Piracy! In other news, fire hot, sissors sharp, more details at 11pm!
Intellectual property has been the driving force in industrialized countries for the past two hundred years starting from the beginnings of industrial revolutions into today. Intellectual property rights, meaning largely patents and more lately copyright, have in the past and also today individual and companies engage in innovation and invention activities by assuring them that after their work they also can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
In example if you take look to an automobile like newest BMW or Volvo, they include many innovations and sometimes new inventions in mechanics, materials or metallurgy. If there would be no patent nor copyright protections, BMW and Volvo would go out of business very soon because in a game with no intellectual property protections the manufacturer with biggest economies of scale would win, which eventually would like into a harmful monopoly and stagnation of invention and innovation. This is to just make an example that all economies that are engaged to research and development activities are more or less dependent on intellectual property: i.e. not just US is dependent of intellectual property, so are Europe and Japan and other developing countries.
I also realize that you are pointing more and are worried on US transformation into information and service based economy where industrial and manufacturing segments of economy have seen little growth or have been decreasing. I would like to point out that in today's economy which is basically global interconnected network, there is no difference where a product is manufactured or new invention thought of because everything can be traded and exchanged. Also there is no real risk in this, because of countries that are connected to this network are dependent of it: i.e. if US, Europe, China or Japan would put large protectionist import or export restrictions, world economy would come crashing down so fast that there would be shakeout in almost every government.
On a note, US still today has a large industrial manufacturing sector, it hasn't gone away. Yes, there aren't so many jobs in industry today, but that has much to do with automation.
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The companies probably just need to lower prices and offer better services to compete.
...if you don't complain when we take your oil. Deal?
Those bastards!
This is one of those things that's come up a couple of times in the past year or two that just turns my stomach every single time. I understand that US pharmaceutical corporations have no economic reason to spend billions researching cures to AIDS and other pandemic ailments only to give them away around the world, but seriously!
Why is it not, instead, the case where governments all around the world pool their resources, research and distribute medications, and solve the whole AIDS problem once and for all like we did with Smallpox? Have we no compassion whatsoever? And even if we don't, don't we all realize that millions of people infected with AIDS in Africa means that there are millions of people who are totally capable of transmitting the disease elsewhere? Even if we made it a thing of the past in developed, wealthy countries, it would still affect us all.
Also, props to parent for recognizing the most heinous part of this whole international copyright-infringement farce.
The US government does NOT serve the people anymore; the US government serves the corporations. Do not expect anything good to come from our government until we overthrow it, which will not happen until the citizens are truly enslaved, if ever.
I'm glad to see Canada made the list. Laws are supposed to be put in place to benefit the voting population... I don't think copyright/patent law is really a benefit to us anymore and stronger laws even less so I'll vote against any party that bows to US pressure on this issue and convince everyone else I know to do the same. Not all Canadians are up to speed on copyright enough to care about it but if there's one thing that pisses us off it's caving to US pressure...
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
the administration said it was concerned by a range of issues including a 'deteriorating protection for patents and copyrights.'
This would carry more weight if the American patent and copyright system wasn't so screwed. Emulating American policy in this regard is probably the last thing the poeple of these countries would want their governments doing.
"In addition to Russia and China, the 10 countries that placed America on the priority watch list were Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India, Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela. Their administrations said it was concerned by a range of issues including a 'deteriorating respect for other nations and generally being a butt munch.'"
Why isn't the USA on this list?
Bad science from ben Goldacre take on the Thailand AIDS dispute
Relevant is this (below are quote):
* Abbott has retaliated by completely withdrawing its new heat-stable version of Kaletra from the Thai market and withdrawing six other new drugs from the country for good measure.
* In fact, the Thai government has a good history of forcing the drug companies to release their wares at more realistic prices and, interestingly, it has broken no laws. The 2001 Doha declaration made it clear that governments should put public health before companies' patent rights, and under the TRIPS agreement from the WTO, governments can sign up to respect a patent, with the caveat that they can make the drug themselves, or import a generic version, in a national emergency.
* So the US, for example, announced its intention to import generic Ciprofloxacin following the anthrax panic, sidestepping the patent on that drug, in the name of practicality in a crisis. The US terrorist anthrax epidemic killed six people, which says a lot about how the definitio
* we are speaking of 100.000's of contaminated and 120.000+ full blown AIDS in Thailand
My take on this : the US administration don't care a slight bit on intellectual property if it is not their own, they don't care a little bit if other country are within their right as soon as they see a bit of $$ loss, they don't care a *shit* about AIDS drug being unaffordable for "poor" people of other country.
But my biggest GRIP is that despite doing something LAWFUL within international treaty bound, and the US admin has the gale of protesting this, Abbott has the gale of taking back half a dozen drug due to that, and NOBODY seems to pick that up on the US side. I am betting there are more than 32 death a day in thailand due to treatment being too expensive (and that's not counting the death in other country due to the same reason).
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I don't think so.
What?
In the early days of the USA they ignored most Intellectual Property laws, until they developed a pool of their own.....
Oh noes! ZOMG! Call Captain Copyright! lulz :D
Can USA stop interfering with other nations laws?
Why should China or Russia or other nations care about the copyright of Americans?
They should care about their own citizens.
How about Iraq place sanctions on the US, for failing to adequately punish homosexuals?
USA should stop trying to place world police, and interfere with laws in other nations.
In fact you* do care or your government wouldn't be signing treaties to protect US laws.
*ok, not You as in You, but you as in your country.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's nice to at least know where all of my software is coming from...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
A dollar to every third person in the US, big deal. They sell to the world.
and yioy convienantly left out that very few treatments are 1 pill. Lets say it's 20 doses.Doses are more accurate then 'pill' in this case.
so at 20 doses, that would need to sell to 5 million people at a dollar a dose to recap.
I chose 20, because it is the lowest number of doses I can think of anyone in my household has ever needed for any non-over the counter treatment.
Now that the numbers are more realistic it is clear that there are two reasons dose costs are higher in the US:
1) The US doesn't buy in bulk.
2) The US doesn't buy in bulk.
Do you know who has the cheapest drugs, cheaper then Canada? The Vetrans administration. DO you know why? They Buy in bulk. If the US as a whole bought drugs in bulk* they would be much cheaper. I would actually prefer it was the states that did it, but that's another discussion.
*Bulk doesn't mean buying a million units up front, it can also be a guatentied sale later on.
Now I pulled this piece out specifically because it shows how ignorant you are, and how stupid that post is:
"On the face of it, importing medications from Canada, Australia, etc. sounds like a good idea: the drugs are cheaper there, so we can save money by importing them, rather than buying them at home. In the short term, it probably is beneficial.
In the long term, it's disastrous."
You do no Canada pays the pharma for those druges right? I will tell you why:
The BUY in BULK from the same PHARMAS buying state side does.
Welcome to the global economy, now sit at the damn table and adjust for the market change, or shut the hell up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Piracy here is so rampant that you cannot walk a block in the city center without finding a street vendor openly selling movies,music and software. Once they make enough money they can just get a small shop in one of the malls.
Hell, one of the biggest piracy centers in the country has to be the oldest university.They have a huge corridor filled with almost every single software,movie or music you can think of.Movies for the low price of $2.32. Full DVD copy,menus,cover and all.
...after my story about HD-DVD decryption keys hit the proverbial Digg fan. It got censored on Digg TWICE.
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
- copywrite vt. to create (promotional text). See Copywriting on Wikipedia.
- copyright vt. to secure exclusive rights in the expression of (a work of authorship). See Copyright on Wikipedia.
Tip: Using "copywrite" (past participle "copywritten") instead of "copyright" (past participle "copyrighted") makes your argument look less sophisticated. It implies that you have never read copyright statutes (Title 17, United States Code, and foreign counterparts), which use the phrase "copyrighted work" throughout their text. The only real revenue stream is selling copyrighted works. Fixed.Cheap tactical politics on the U.S. behalf.
They should look at themselves first before going overseas.
and Follow the WTO rules if you want people to take you seriously.
You also realize that the innovations are being created by people that they are hiring on H1-B visa's from those countries and working over here as mathmeticians, statisticians, engineers, scientist. Basically they are here doing the technological innovations you are talking about while a number of the graduates from here cannot get these jobs. These companies are blatantly breaking laws or are skirting around the laws.
You'll find in some of these cases the issue has gotten so bad that a lot of the new innovative technologies are going to Asia as fast as it is proven here. Geez, I wonder how that could be happening? I also have seen some of these companies who turn around and just do there manufactuing in Asia after a year or six months ( No point in worrying about them stealing it, they've already got the technology)
So how about the patent disregard that MS has been showing lately to AT&T. Put the code in in Seattle and sell and install it in another country and it appears to be okay. Well at least according to the Supreme Court.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
Glad to hear our government is reading China the riot act for important things like piracy, instead of minor issues like tainted food.
The notion of "intellectual property" is about as concrete and acknowledged around here as those of "intelligent design" and "whinny the pooh."
In all seriousness, though, it makes me sick to see international policy (or the threat thereof) being dictated solely by corporate interests.
I have to wonder - what part of the words "gross over-generalization" were unclear? I wasn't talking about the RIAA - I was talking about everybody in general - and the only thing I can say in general is the most basic of economic models and the need to eat.
"The more the copyright holders lose business, the more pressure is on them to seek out more reasonable business models."
Define "reasonable." If you want to call me a content creator, then I am a content creator in the field of writing and literature. And, the business model there, with bookstores and magazines, is quite reasonable all around. In music, on the other hand, the RIAA has been shafting the creative artists on one hand, and putting all of its customers under threat of lawsuit with the other. As business models go, that's just DUMB. But, both involve copyright holders. So, who do you shaft? Or, do you prefer to talk about one industry in particular, which is a reasonable DISCUSSION model.
"The way you talk, it's like if the RIAA members go out of business, nobody will be making music any more. In reality, they have such a stranglehold on the market, if they go out of business, that leaves huge opportunities just waiting to be exploited."
Again - "gross over-generalization." I didn't mention the RIAA. Frankly, I'd like to see the RIAA members go out of business - that would allow the creative artists to finally find an equitable system.
I would ask you, however, as I am starting to get really fucking pissed off about this, not to equate all copyright with the RIAA. The music industry is not the be-all and end-all of the creative arts, and just because one industry organization pisses on what copyright stands for, it doesn't make all of the rest of us a bunch of unreasonable, greedy bastards.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
My position is due in no small part to the fact that I make no money from my copyrights.
I'm assuming that media organizations play the lead role in this consideration; it's a shame that pop music and movies have become our most valuable export.
time for Operation Ninja.
In the US, we never pirate your copyrighted works. We just dig out a patent from our piles of trivial and obvious patents and sue you for patent violation whether or not you have actually done it.
Since when is knowledge of lawyer jargon needed to make a point about US exports? Thanks for the tip tho.
Blar.
"I might make significantly less money but society as a whole would win from abolition of the copyright law. Copyright has nothing to do with good of society, justice or anything else. Copyright is an impedance to human development (where would we be if patents appears before spoken language? Language would never been invented then)"
This is the problem with extremists on this side of the copyright debate - you honestly have no idea of what copyright is, do you?
Society as a whole would not win from the abolition of copyright law - it would lose quite a lot. In fact, it could very well be a death blow to culture.
Sounds extremist? It actually isn't, if you think about it. But you have to understand what copyright is, first.
Copyright is a legal framework that can be boiled down to two functions (I'm going to use book terms, as that's what I'm familiar with). The first, most important, and least noticed, is setting rules for the interactions between the author and the publisher. The second sets rules for the interaction between the publisher and the reader. There is a third role - author and reader, but that really doesn't matter a whole lot in the greater scheme of things, regardless of what the RIAA would have you believe.
The rules for interaction between the publisher and the author create a situation where an author can create a work and submit it without having to worry about the publisher stealing it and publishing it without permission. Similarly, it protects a publisher from having an author publishing the same work at the same time with several different publishers. This is incredibly important.
Now, let's say for a moment that copyright law is abolished. Now there's NOTHING stopping a publisher from screwing over an author, or vice versa. But, you need that protection. If showing a manuscript to a publisher means that you're in serious danger of being shafted, you're not going to show the manuscript to a publisher. Same deal for self-publication - you need to be sure that somebody isn't going to scoop you with your own content. Otherwise, you're just not going to bother.
(Think of it this way - you walk into a pawn shop with some family heirloom and when you put it on the table for appraisal, the shopkeeper just takes it away from you - and you can't do anything about it. How many more times are you going to go to that pawn shop?)
So, how do you provide some protection to keep yourself in business, either as a publisher or an author? Contract law. If there's a binding contract between the two parties saying that they're not going to shaft each other, the protection is there. Of course, now you have lawyers involved with the submission process itself, and that costs extra money. A LOT of extra money, in fact, because a smart person negotiates the contract, and there are a lot of smart people in this business. So, now the costs of publication just went up a LOT.
If you're a publisher, and you're smart, you're going to cut those costs out if you can, but this means that you can't take submissions anymore, because those will involve negotiating contracts just to be able to look at the work, regardless of if you publish in the end. So, you'll commission books instead with a core of regular authors. But, because you know that any publisher out there can scoop you unless you have a contract with them to do otherwise, you're going to be very careful about what you commission - you're only going to go with stuff that will make you money. And that's not new, experimental stuff.
So, what have you just done by removing copyright? Well:
1. Cultural growth just ground to a crawl, simply because the people who can afford the advertising and infrastructure to get the content out there can't take the risks of bringing out new authors and new material. Think the remake of The Fog was a step in the wrong direction? This is the direction it would go.
2. What's left for innovative creative people is self-publication - now, p
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
quote:
s -transcript.nl.html
Copyright law exists. Patent law exists. They have almost nothing in common in terms of the requirements that they put on the public. Trademark law also exists. It has nothing in common with copyright law or patent law about what it requires of the public. So, the idea that there is some general thing which these are instances of already gets people so confused that they cannot understand these issues. There is no such thing. These are three separate unrelated issues, and any attempt to generalise about them guarantees confusion. Everyone who uses the term "intellectual property" is either confused himself or trying to confuse you.
And if someone else says something about "intellectual property", I will not respond directly to what he said without first explaining the confusion buried in it, because you see, the confusion buried in a statement is usually more harmful than whatever may be false that he actually tried to say.
There is a tendency to, we all have it, to follow other people in their choice of terminology. If someone says an outrageous thing and he uses the term intellectual property, you will feel drawn into responding in the same terms. So, learn to resist that temptation.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/torino-rm
Teasing the nobles, and rightfully so!
I find it interesting that the number of people in those countries totals to nearly 3 billion, which is not too far from half the earths population.
I'm just surprised Canada and the UK aren't on the list, given all the piracy that goes on there. It's almost like this list has nothing to do with piracy.
The above baseless, proof-less and indeed, wrong assertion by an AC gets modded +4 'Insightful'? God this place is going to the trolls.
I call BS, and here's substantiation: The man writing the article (a Canadian university law professor), is in position to know since, unlike the AC, he actually does research rather than just post some knee-jerk opinion U.S. Copyright Report More Rhetoric Than Reality
...maybe the next thing someone could explain to me is why the countries who are on this "priority watch list," should do anything other than laugh, exactly?
;)
America doesn't have the ability to do anything to anyone any more. In terms of conventional military, that's still tied down and in the ongoing process of being bled dry in Iraq and possibly Afghanistan. (Maybe Iran soon, too, if the Chimp still has his way)
The country's economy is also screwed; it's running on credit to China, and when China presents the bill, I can't even imagine what's going to happen...other than an assumption that it won't be in any way pretty.
Maybe the plutocrats who are concerned about this could try and use trade embargoes/sanctions as a punitive measure, but the amusing thing about that is that ultimately, it'd end up hurting them a lot more than it would the countries being sanctioned, given what I've already observed about the state of the country's economy.
The only offensive measure that the country really has left that I can see is nuclear weapons...and I get the feeling that that's actually the whole reason why Rumsfeld and a few other people were talking about using them again at one point; because I think deep down, they knew that. Using those however wouldn't gain anything...people can't be force fed "premium content" if they're dead.
Come to think of it, it makes me wonder why sites like Prison Planet are still going so strong. I read about the UK becoming more totalitarian these days, but they seem to be the only real country that is. America can still hurt people domestically, of course...but aside from what they're still doing in the middle east, that's about as far as it goes. The more I think about it, the more it actually feels as though we're moving towards a freer scenario, at least in some respects.
It's also why, to be honest, I've never been able to understand the pro-FSF people on this site seeing threats and enemies under every rock; the world isn't anywhere near as fearful a place from where I'm sitting as it used to be, at all.
Economic sanctions against China and India? That would be interesting. I wonder how Americans would react to not being able buy any manufactured goods? I could see them trying to call their favorite manufacturer and finding the line busy. More relevant to my immediate interests, I wonder if the US would consider Taiwan to be part of China during such sanctions. I imagine the computer industry (Dell, Compaq, etc.) would be hit hard when they couldn't buy memory, motherboards, etc.
It wouldn't be that hard for the US to reclaim it's call centers. However, reclaiming it's manufacturing capabilities would be a long, hard battle.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
PS - That's William Marshall (Dr. Daystrom) as the head pirate.
Well: I download a lot from torrents.
;-)
I installed Peer Guardian 2., I found out that the MPAA/RiAA do watch us. PG2 is smart enough to cut off acccess to these guys so that they wont be able to log me.,
Not 100% reliable, yet its 99% reliable.
It is a fact that Patents kill - particularly drug patents. Patents are a grubby mechanism for redistribution of wealth to the rich. America's own economic growth was most rapid before the invention of the US patent system. Now they want other countries to curtail their economic growth by pandering to the demands of the unhinged madmen that run the US Empire in the interests of american business, religious lunatics, and the military industrial sector.
Other countries should just ignore the US Empire and its demands. America is the nation of stupidity and institutionalised corporate facism. Let us all have the self respect to face down the Evil Empire, and pour cold urine on their crooked demands.
Copyright only prevents other people from innovating. The right to innovate is what pretty much everyone here fights for, when we talk about operating systems (MS Vs Open source OSes, for example). What should it be different in other areas?
Freedom to innovate can only be good, if you see it in a global scale.
How many of you wouldn't buy Thai AIDS drugs if you had an infected relative?
What are you, a Ferengi? You certainly don't sound like a human being (excluding the really evil ones throughout history). Your attitude is just plain evil, straight from the Devil himself. Going along with your hypothetical situation, when you finally die, all of your accumulated profit will be for nought, and you will have the same status as the poor people who couldn't afford your exorbitant prices for treatment: dead as a doornail, owning nothing, awaiting judgment for what you did here on Earth.
Really man, I hope you were just playing a hypothetical game here. If you are really like this in real life...I shudder. (Though you should look into playing some Ferengi characters in the next iteration of Star Trek; you'd be a natural.)
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
So, what have you just done by removing copyright? Well:
1. Cultural growth just ground to a crawl, simply because the people who can afford the advertising and infrastructure to get the content out there can't take the risks of bringing out new authors and new material. Think the remake of The Fog was a step in the wrong direction? This is the direction it would go.
2. What's left for innovative creative people is self-publication - now, perhaps the grass-roots movement would help a bit there, but there would be so little money in it that the creative arts would be reduced to the state of a hobby - and that means much slower development than you have now.
Since when has popular culture belonged to publishers and advertisers? I don't recall the Enlightenment requiring copyright laws to get started, in fact it could be argued that the long censorship of knowledge (essentially a totalitarian form of copy protection) delayed it by hundreds of years. Every other modern cultural shift has essentially been caused by a few innovative people being copied or imitated (and improved on) by everyone else. The ability to incorporate existing popular culture into new works is vital to cultural growth, more vital in my opinion than the ability to make money off of it. Disney would be dead if not for its retelling of public domain stories. Popular music would be dead (or consist of very old music) if not for widespread remixing of genres. Tolkien would have still written fiction, and most likely would have published the stories he liked in the manner he wished to publish them instead of shoehorning them into publisher's models of successful literature. Arguably, a completely free culture will produce much richer works because they will be produced out of love for and interest in the subject or medium, not as "products" to be "consumed". The big problem I see with copyright today is that huge swaths of the popular culture are owned by corporations ultimately interested in money, not culture. The pressure of commercialized culture stifles truly innovative works, not only because of mass advertising but because commercial works cannot compete, and the owners know that and actively fight competition.
Self publication is so easy that we're all doing it right now on slashdot. We post our comments, slashdot publishes them for us (with only a tiny disclaimer at the bottom mentioning copyright), and if slashdot ever tried to pretend to own all the comments everyone would just leave. In the long run, it is simply cheaper and easier to post links to original content than to try to claim authorship of someone elses work. When someone copies someone elses post and tries to claim authorship, they're moderated down to -1, solving the stolen authorship problem. If posters litter the Internet with the same things they post to slashdot, no one really cares because it's their choice and slashdot survives on its own culture and environment, not the exclusivity of content. Ultimately people even pay slashdot money for posting/viewing privileges. So clearly there is not a fundamental necessity of copyright in order for a culture to grow and thrive, it is merely one model that worked well in an age of physical distribution an d high production costs.
Obviously a slashdot model doesn't work for every kind of content; it relies on a discussion based model. Nevertheless, other forums deal in pictures, artwork, movies, music, literature, and many others. If you really care about culture, look at those models and the people participating in culture for the advantages it gives them in and of itself. That's how culture has always evolved naturally. I think culture-as-profit was a fluke. Now that modern tools make the creation, manipulation, and publication of art easier, artists are not required to devote their entire lives to trying to get their life's work published without starving. Most artists are normal people devoting some of their time to art they love, and the ability to share it (and to share in the art other people have created) is reward enough. Can you honestly claim that things like P2P filesharing and youtube will cause the growth of popular culture to slow to a crawl?
Didn't Republicans have control of congress at the time? Actually, it seems that a Republican introduced the DMCA. I'm not seeing the Democratic conspiracy here. Maybe the venerable AC thinks that mind control was involved?
This whole business model is flawed. If the US wants to make money and 'enforce intellectual property' rights in countries where people may earn $200, then you have a very very bad and unsustainable business idea. This is why you have no choice but to resort to enforcing these policies through the law, fines, jail, etc.
The average man on the street in Guangdong or Suzhou doesn't care about and doesn't know anything about DVD region locking, the mafiaa or any of the stuff we have to deal with. You expect this dude to pay US$25 for a DVD? Good luck with that.
And to think that any of these countries really care? They have bigger problems to deal with, sanitation, water, air quality, pollution, electricity, etc.
But that would mean that our political leaders were just serving the ends of the pharmaceutical companies, not the American people or the law. And surely that can't be the case, not with our noble leaders and their "family values," "character," and such.
Ayuh! AIDS is a disease of them homa-sexuals. We, uh, we, uh, cannot support the treatin' of them homa-sexuals with them there immoral and decadent perversions^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlifestyles. If uh, if uh, they was copyin' Aspirin, which saves God-fearin' Christian folk from headaches, we could turn a blind eye in the name of charity.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Tell me - did you actually READ what I wrote? Because, frankly, you're putting a lot of words in my mouth to spew out your own agenda.
"Since when has popular culture belonged to publishers and advertisers?"
When did I ever say it did? What I said was: "Copyright is a legal framework that can be boiled down to two functions (I'm going to use book terms, as that's what I'm familiar with). The first, most important, and least noticed, is setting rules for the interactions between the author and the publisher. The second sets rules for the interaction between the publisher and the reader. There is a third role - author and reader, but that really doesn't matter a whole lot in the greater scheme of things, regardless of what the RIAA would have you believe."
You said: "Tolkien would have still written fiction, and most likely would have published the stories he liked in the manner he wished to publish them instead of shoehorning them into publisher's models of successful literature."
First of all, I've read Tolkien's collected letters, and it seems to me that he published his work exactly as he wanted. Second, you're giving the publisher credit for a lot of power it doesn't have. A publisher can put a book out on the market, but it cannot strongarm readers into buying it. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings succeeded on their own merits, and their place was dictated by their success with the readers, not by any publisher's model.
"Arguably, a completely free culture will produce much richer works because they will be produced out of love for and interest in the subject or medium, not as "products" to be "consumed"."
First of all, if you want to see what you would get in a system free of any feeling of obligation to copyright, I suggest you look at the fanfiction scene - and it isn't pretty. In fact, quality fanfiction is a lot rarer than quality professional fiction. Second, again, did you READ what I wrote? Here's a reminder:
"Now, let's say for a moment that copyright law is abolished. Now there's NOTHING stopping a publisher from screwing over an author, or vice versa. But, you need that protection. If showing a manuscript to a publisher means that you're in serious danger of being shafted, you're not going to show the manuscript to a publisher. Same deal for self-publication - you need to be sure that somebody isn't going to scoop you with your own content. Otherwise, you're just not going to bother.
"(Think of it this way - you walk into a pawn shop with some family heirloom and when you put it on the table for appraisal, the shopkeeper just takes it away from you - and you can't do anything about it. How many more times are you going to go to that pawn shop?)
"So, how do you provide some protection to keep yourself in business, either as a publisher or an author? Contract law. If there's a binding contract between the two parties saying that they're not going to shaft each other, the protection is there. Of course, now you have lawyers involved with the submission process itself, and that costs extra money. A LOT of extra money, in fact, because a smart person negotiates the contract, and there are a lot of smart people in this business. So, now the costs of publication just went up a LOT.
"If you're a publisher, and you're smart, you're going to cut those costs out if you can, but this means that you can't take submissions anymore, because those will involve negotiating contracts just to be able to look at the work, regardless of if you publish in the end. So, you'll commission books instead with a core of regular authors. But, because you know that any publisher out there can scoop you unless you have a contract with them to do otherwise, you're going to be very careful about what you commission - you're only going to go with stuff that will make you money. And that's not new, experimental stuff."
And then you wrote: "Self publication is so easy that we're all doing it right now on slashdot. We post our comments, slashdot publishes
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
It is small enough.
now they're on double secret probation
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
And the several minor shoothings after it since then?
Most USians are too dumb to see any relation between Iraq and safety back home, but you have to question if all those wasted resources facilitating the indiscriminate murder of Iraqis could not be best invested in controlling gun crime back in the US.
After all 30000 or thereabouts of USians are killed with guns every year.
That is low intensity "terrorism", but if you guys are happy to keep facilitating the oil industry activities at the expense of innocent civilians, your brave youth and idiotic waste of tax payers money, well, what can we do about it?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"I guess my questions were ill-posed, and my comments inflammatory. Sorry."
With that, you just earned my respect. I've seen a lot of people doing ostrich impressions on Slashdot in the copyright debate - it's refreshing to see somebody who is honestly trying to think through the issues and isn't afraid to recognize when they've misstepped.
I notice you do have some misconceptions, though, so perhaps I can help out there a bit.
"When I said that popular culture belonged to publishers and advertisers, I was referring to the fact that copyright owners almost always reserve all rights to their works, making it difficult for elements from their works to be reused in others to further cultural development. You didn't specifically mention anything about this circumstance of modern copyrights, but it is nonetheless a result of it. We watch television, listen to music, and read books that are ultimately all copyrighted and therefore not reusable in new works unless one has permission from a lot of different owners."
Okay - I'm gathering that you're referring to the phrase "All rights reserved," and I can see how you could come to a misconception because of it. So, a bit of legal background for you - copyright is not a single right, but an umbrella term, so to speak, covering a number of different distribution rights. So, if I own the copyright to work X, I can sell the first North American print rights to publisher A, the first European print rights to publisher B, and the first online publication rights to publisher C - and all of these are covered under copyright. By saying "All rights reserved," I am saying that you, the reader, do not have one of these publication rights. So, if you owned magazine D, you cannot go and reprint the article in it without getting my permission first. Or, to take a televised example, if you tape game 5 of the Stanley Cup, "All rights reserved" refers to broadcast and distribution rights - so you can watch your tape to your heart's content, but you can't take it to the local TV station and broadcast it, or make copies for all your friends (those rights belong to somebody else - but you CAN ask for permission, and if the rights aren't already sold/given away, you may get them).
There are limits to this, however - you CAN reprint a reasonable part of it without asking permission, so long as you credit the source. That's called fair use. If it is a story, I can copyright the exact implementation of the story, but not any of the ideas behind it (and this is often confused with patent law, where you can patent an idea - you can do no such thing with copyright). So, if I have a story about an invasion of the brain-eating aliens from planet X, and the world saved by the great hero Duke Duke, you cannot use my exact aliens, planet X, or Duke Duke. But, you can have aliens just like them, a planet just like planet X, and a hero just like Duke Duke, so long as there's just enough of a difference that they're your version, rather than mine. If I saw your story and decided to launch a copyright suit, I would need to prove a point-for-point similarity - in short, I would need to prove that you had simply taken my implementation and filed off the numbers, so to speak.
"There are (at least) two populations of artists; commercial artists who need to sell their works for a living, and those who create art for its own sake and have other sources of income they rely on. The definition of artist is also ambiguous when not talking specifically about commercial artists. Clearly, a commercial artist is one who has sold or is trying to sell his or her work. A generic artist is just someone who is creative and makes things, much more difficult to draw boundaries around. Most of the population fits into the latter category, and they were the ones I was referring to. I think at some point in history (which may be now) the sheer number of these casual artists will essentially replace the commercial artists, or at least a large portion of them, or they will cause commercial
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Your country should have not been there in the first place.
There is nothing you can do now that will ever compensate for the hineous crime your government has commited, the very least you could do is, yes, leave Iraqir to their own devices, it can't be much worse as it is now.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... and Vietnam, and Korea, the US definition of winning a war, seems to be quite a bizarre one..
So whatever rocks your boat buddy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So do not push this falacy that we need copyright to protect them.
As for movies, being a different beast that has always lived under the umbrella of copyright, what we would see is far less production but enhanced quality.
And in any case, making movies is getting cheaper, in a few years anybody will be able to produce films of good quality, and by then the net will be 100 times or more faster than it is today, thus brinign a similar situation to what the music industry is facing.
Copyright is no longer the proverbial golden eggs hen it comes to the arts.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... or authorship recognition can be perfectly recognized in a regime without copyright as most people understand it.
After copyright law, they would be wealthy patrons (corporations, individulas, governments, unions, social organization, universities, etc).
In a world without copytight but with clear attribution and authorhip rights, the author would be recognized and people would comission work from good authors for a variety of reasons.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If I discovered something for the benefit of mankind I would gladly give it for free.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If something can be reversed engineered so quickly that the inventor does not have any first seller advantage, then one has to question how innovative the inventor really is.
The argument that patents are neede to produce innovation is complete bullshit.
Different interest groups would band together to solve especific problems: charitable organizations, governments, philantropists have the resources to research for medicines just for the good of mankind.
The pharmaceutical companies need so much money to produce a drug for marketing and to deal with the bureaucracy (which is necessary since the greed of the companies would make them cut corners to get medicines in the market as soon as possible, remove the greed incentive and most of the bureacucracy is immediately reduced).
Many advancements in medicine have been done without patents. THere is no logical reason why the whole industry cold do without them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Projects that are beyond the capabilities of private corporations are undertaken by the state or non profit organizations.
Helath is a public service, private companies, that take decisions based on profit only instead of the common good, should have no bussiness producing medicines.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Taiwan, alltough everybody and his dog, do not consider it an independent country, for praactical terms is not under Beijing rule, most likley they are not even part of the WTO (otherwise China would throw a hissy fit).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.