You're right. According to Wikipedia, there are still.su domains out there. In fact, the org. in charge of that country code thinks it can let new sites use that domain! (In Soviet Russia...) http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/.su
That could be a factor. I severely doubt it's the main reason, though: even customers get annoyed when material that could fit on one CD gets spread to two. I know that's how Beatlefans felt about the CD vs. of The Beatles:1962-1966--an album that really was issued in two CDs to prevent cognitive dissonance from the vinyl edition.
Not until the RIAA's merger with the MPAA is complete. Since the RIAA is "elite" and the MPAA accepts all American film companies as members, that could take a while.
True. Not much help though. How many American commercial entities actually use the.us root? I'd guess only a few more than there are UK sites with the.gb suffix.
Most Russian sites I've seen use the.ru suffix...
No, that's the DEA's job.
Seriously, when the authorities do pot busts, they confisticate the property the pot was found in, right away. It's never given back, not even if the person busted gets cleared. Drug enforcement can get quite a few cars that way.
Maybe she had a three-album contract with Sony. Double albums count as two.
There are many artists who signed with Columbia and Sony. Far fewer signed with them twice.
(FYI: Columbia was the original label. It turned into Sony Music when Sony bought it.)
I don't know. That sort of video-on-demand sounds like a more general form of the on-demand services that cable companies already offer.
For "rental," that's okay. But video-on-demand does expire. Worse, the cableco. I used killed films at times that could not be easily predicted. It wasn't "first in & unprotected, first out" or anything simple like that; it didn't even always respect "save until told to delete."
These kiosk DVDs won't expire. And I feel more secure using a shiny plastic disc. DVDs are worth the premium for me if I'm buying.
Well, at least there is more than one drug company. I imagine that the number of drugs we get now is greater than the number we would get from direct government development by the number of companies competing with each other for prescriptions. The sit. could be better--there have been quite a few mergers in Big Pharma, and there is too much advertising. Prescription drug ads no more belong on TV and radio than cigarette ads do. But it could be worse...
In this case, the patents are to allow the method of making the original drug to be known, even if we can't take advantage immediately, and simultaneously to prevent the person searching for new drugs from going bankrupt hunting them down. If finding and testing drugs was cheaper, patents might not be needed.
Am I glad they found the means to synthesize taxol!
If I recall correctly, by the time taxol was discovered, the Pacific yew it came from was an endangered species. I hope they find a way to make it without Pacific yew, or that line of cancer treatment could be abruptly cut off.
Thanks for the post! I like your analysis: even those who disagree with your conclusions should find your analysis useful.
I believe that patents and copyrights should both exist, neither conflated nor annihilated.
I believe that patents and copyrights should fall under different standards. Patents should be handled under the utilitarian model: most inventions are more perspiration than inspiration. Either 17 or 20 years is decent. Since these patents cover drugs, we'd best make it 17. Software patents are banned--copyright is enough for software.
The sorts of work that copyrights cover include a lot of utilitarian work, but also a lot of genius work. Copyright law should cover both kinds, and it actually used to cover both kinds. So, I hereby propose that we return to the system used before the Sonny Bono Copyright Act: registration and notice of copyright required, 28+28 terms, explicit renewal required for the second 28. There would be less need for copylefts in this system, and works will get covered according to how the people who make them value them--but within limits. No work would be covered for more than one average lifetime.
I know most on/. prefer 14+14 with renewal, and given that software is copyrighted you have a point. If copyright is optional, either 14+14 or 28+28 can be made to work. I think 14 alone is too short for the genius works.
"Life" must never be part of a copyright term, because life is unpredictable. "Life+" guarantees that a work is covered too long; "life" alone encourages assasination of artists.
I do not want "copyright=14 years+revenue" for similar reasons: that too is indeterminate, and it'll lock out of the public domain the works that would most benefit the public domain. If "14+revenue" became law, the film industry would suddenly become profitable, and there will be 15th anniv. editions of every new film made...
There is a difference between a patent and a trade secret. Maybe not as much as there should be, but there is one. Patents blockade certain research paths, yes, and that is annoying-to-deadly, but at least the competition has an idea what the blocked paths are, and can prepare for the day when they can be pursued. Patents haven't been expanded anywhere near as much as copyrights, so for now we can be confident that the day will come. Trade secrets can be discovered independently or through spies; but if they aren't, then and only then is the research known only to the inventor.
You will get the research that is patented--someday. You might never get research that has truly been kept secret. For-profit drug corps., and drug corps. that want to pay back their R&D investments, must use one method or the other until something better comes along. It's not just you paying.
Don't tempt corps. to apply the full weight of copyright law to drug-research papers.
Okay. We might not need as many drugs as we do now. But how can we be sure which actual drugs we'll want before we find them?
If synthetic drugs will be replaced with naturally occurring compounds, and since in your plan the government will be in charge of everything anyway, the natural compounds must be tested as thoroughly as the synthetic drugs. Some natural drugs are safe and work. Some don't work, however, and a few aren't safe. Your system should treat ephedra exactly like ephedrine: both are okay, or neither are.
The research costs for Twinkies were sunk decades ago; the basic formula hasn't changed since 1930 or so. Last I checked, brand-name Twinkies were $1.00 for two, or $3.50 or so for a dozen. They cost less than that when they came out, but money was worth more then. Of course, generic "Twinkies" do cost $0.50 for two...
The research costs for the sorts of cookies that sell for $3.50 a bag were sunk some time ago: 100 years for Oreos perhaps, approx. 75 for chocolate chip and chocolate chunk, centuries for most other classic varieties. More recently researched cookies sometimes cost $3.50 a cookie, or $3.50 for six cookies, or $7.00 a tub. Prices on older cookies held mostly steady through inflation. And cookies don't require that much skill to make: most people can follow a cookie recipe. Even more can make cookies from a box mix (also approx $3.50 for "a bag" of results, not counting oil & eggs).
The research costs for coffee were sunk 1000 years ago, and it didn't require that much research to discover it. I'll presume that it cost far more, relatively, back then than it does now. Recently researched coffees have been known to cost $3.50 for 12 oz. or $6.00 for 6 oz. or $14.00 for 2 oz. Even coffee at $2.99 a pound often uses 13-oz. pounds nowadays.
I'm not saying that the price of that heart drug is reasonable. I'm not saying that that corp. isn't gouging you and your grandma; $100.00 a day is likely typical for new medicine, regardless of how essential it is for the patient, but that doesn't make it easier to take or pay. But still, if discovering that drug required as much R&D as Twinkies did, and if the drug is as hard to process for market as coffee is, then it's logical that it costs more than Twinkies or coffee. That patent will expire someday; someday the price will go down.
Thank you.
So, you think pharmaceuticals would work out much better if they came from the government, but not from the current American government. That's not good. We can vote out bad governments, but we clearly also vote them in. The administration that is pure enough, and free enough from corporate influence, to allow only government-controlled drugs to be made will have to include safeguards against the next government that is as corporate-friendly as the one we've had in place for the past four years. Even then, there is no way to stop that admin from allowing the corps. to work alongside the government in drug-making.
There are incentives other than the profit incentive that rush drugs. The reason so many drugs get approved too quickly today was, back in the early '90s, an AIDS drug was under the approval process, but because the process was longer then, somewhere between thousands and millions of people would die while it was being tested. Humanitarians everywhere protested the time lag, and so the fast-track process was born. If there were no corporations involved, the government wouldn't fast-track as many drugs as they do now, but they would still fast-track the ones seen as most desperately needed. If COX-2 inhibitors fall into that class (rheumatoid arthritis isn't deadly, but it is painful and debilitating), then the Vioxx problem could happen again--and I'm not yet convinced that there'd be any other COX-2 inhibitors ready to replace it under your system.
Yes, the gov. could research drugs that the corps. wouldn't, and that could be beneficial. But it can't research them and all the drugs that all the corps. do research: that would take billions of dollars, and the kind of gov. that would start this sort of program is not the kind of gov. that would just shove it all onto the national debt. The funds can't come from selling the drugs, which are all at cost of manufacture or less; therefore, they must come from taxes of some sort. You know how even a noble American feels about taxes when he is aware of paying them.
Competing drugs in the same class from corporations is, well, competition. From the government, copmpeting drugs in the same class might look like pork. The public can demand research, but it can also demand the end of research. This is part of your plan, of course; that's why you have transparency. But you ask that the public be educated enough to know which lines of research should be followed, or that it listen to the researchers when the decision whether to continue is made. We can guarantee neither in a democracy.
So this might not solve the benzodiazepate/SSRI problem. In our world, Valium and its kin had been around and apparently working fine for a good forty-five years before Prozac was discovered. In that time, there was nearly twenty-five years between when it was decided that Wellbutrin wasn't that good a replacement for Valium-type drugs and when the next non-Valium-type drug that was effective in that area was released--and buspirone isn't quite as effective; it's just safer. Prozac came approx. five years later...
Anyhow, if Valium and its kin work well enough for forty-five years, why invent Prozac? Why even have more than one drug in the Valium class out at a time--which would kill Haldol (to the relief of some), but might also keep Xanax off the market (for better or worse)? Drug research would be funded as much as Congress wants, but how can the public tell legit research from pork?
If you think that Valium & Prozac are lifestyle drugs that never needed to be invented, try to imagine this argument in some more critical field. Say, anti-seizure drugs.
Your idea is noble. I am just cynical and afraid of unintended consequences.
Noble idea, but slight problem:
If the government is doing all the drug research, who determines if the drug should be released?
The government? But that would require a more noble government than even corporate research would, if the government was the only one researching the drugs. We have problems even now with getting the government to recall things like Vioxx. What would have happened if the government had invented Vioxx and got all the patent revenue/pharmataxes?
And if you think alternatives are bad now, what happens when only one entity is researching drugs? Once Lipitor is found, why hunt down Zocor? Why discover SSRIs if benzodiapazates work just fine? It may save money, but it'll cost something.
"(There is something to be said about business cycles actually strengthening the economy by threatening to cull the herd, but I don't see corporations being that altruistic...)" Cull the herd?
I know, you were being metaphorical. You meant culling corporations. But one of the things we're discussing here is people needing life-saving or life-extending drugs who are unable to afford them. You can imagine what happens if they don't get the drugs.
I do like your economics. I just found your choice of phrase there somewhat chilling.
Actually, for many people, their life is worth whatever their insurance company is willing to pay. Few people even know the full cost of their medical treatment; they only know the co-pays and insurance bills.
Now, suppose you belong to an HMO. Suppose that you need treatment for some incredibly painful and/or deadly condition, that some particular treatment can be made by only one corp., and that this corp. is trying to charge $200,000 to the HMO for it. Let us also suppose that it's a recurring treatment, not one-time: most drugs work and are sold that way. If there is any cheaper alternative at all to something that expensive, a sane HMO will make you use the alternative.
Therefore, if there is more than one treatment for any given painful condition, a smart company will charge only a slightly ludicrous price per dose/bottle. $200, yes. $2000, maybe. $200,000--no.
True. But maybe, just maybe, it will be found sooner because the researchers had to do a workaround instead of building on the (in this hypothesis inferior) patented structure...
"Going after people who download without distributing would be really samll potatoes.
But boy, I wish they would. Maybe then something would get done."
Yes. Something would get done--but to whom?
Bad example.
Glucose testers and the related test-strips are treatments for diabetes. No one has been cured of diabetes simply by blood-sugar testing. The strips are expensive, but enough people do buy them that the corps. who make them find them profitable. The strips are far less expensive than most brand-name drugs would be without insurance.
Amputation is a treatment/cure for gangrene. It doesn't do anything for the underlying diabetes, but it does get rid of the existing dead tissue once and for all. Amputations aren't done often, and they aren't done to the same tissue twice.
Hospitals and insurance cos. may make more money from amputations. Big Pharma makes more from glucose test strips, insulin, and whatever new blood-sugar-controlling drugs they've invented. (Yes, there are diabetic drugs that are not insulin, and they're not unpopular.)
Careful with the absolutes...
Suppose that this university-developed Hepatitis-C drug, the one that had to work around that patent, turns out to be more effective than the original because of that work-around? Then we would have progress, and likely we'd have it before the corp. with the patent decided to try it.
It may be unlikely. But it's possible.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. According to Wikipedia, there are still .su domains out there. In fact, the org. in charge of that country code thinks it can let new sites use that domain! (In Soviet Russia...)
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/.su
That could be a factor. I severely doubt it's the main reason, though: even customers get annoyed when material that could fit on one CD gets spread to two. I know that's how Beatlefans felt about the CD vs. of The Beatles:1962-1966--an album that really was issued in two CDs to prevent cognitive dissonance from the vinyl edition.
Not until the RIAA's merger with the MPAA is complete. Since the RIAA is "elite" and the MPAA accepts all American film companies as members, that could take a while.
True. Not much help though. How many American commercial entities actually use the .us root? I'd guess only a few more than there are UK sites with the .gb suffix. .ru suffix...
Most Russian sites I've seen use the
No, that's the DEA's job.
Seriously, when the authorities do pot busts, they confisticate the property the pot was found in, right away. It's never given back, not even if the person busted gets cleared. Drug enforcement can get quite a few cars that way.
For some reason, I now have a mental image of an FBI vehicle parked by the side of an interstate with radar gun and breathalyser on hand.
Maybe she had a three-album contract with Sony. Double albums count as two.
There are many artists who signed with Columbia and Sony. Far fewer signed with them twice.
(FYI: Columbia was the original label. It turned into Sony Music when Sony bought it.)
I don't know. That sort of video-on-demand sounds like a more general form of the on-demand services that cable companies already offer.
For "rental," that's okay. But video-on-demand does expire. Worse, the cableco. I used killed films at times that could not be easily predicted. It wasn't "first in & unprotected, first out" or anything simple like that; it didn't even always respect "save until told to delete."
These kiosk DVDs won't expire. And I feel more secure using a shiny plastic disc. DVDs are worth the premium for me if I'm buying.
The DRM mechanism in the DVD is CSS.
But saying a rocket "lands" implies guidance. This rocket fell out of the sky.
How about "Russian Rocket Crashes in Wyoming"?
Well, at least there is more than one drug company. I imagine that the number of drugs we get now is greater than the number we would get from direct government development by the number of companies competing with each other for prescriptions. The sit. could be better--there have been quite a few mergers in Big Pharma, and there is too much advertising. Prescription drug ads no more belong on TV and radio than cigarette ads do. But it could be worse...
In this case, the patents are to allow the method of making the original drug to be known, even if we can't take advantage immediately, and simultaneously to prevent the person searching for new drugs from going bankrupt hunting them down. If finding and testing drugs was cheaper, patents might not be needed.
Am I glad they found the means to synthesize taxol!
If I recall correctly, by the time taxol was discovered, the Pacific yew it came from was an endangered species. I hope they find a way to make it without Pacific yew, or that line of cancer treatment could be abruptly cut off.
Thanks for the post! I like your analysis: even those who disagree with your conclusions should find your analysis useful. /. prefer 14+14 with renewal, and given that software is copyrighted you have a point. If copyright is optional, either 14+14 or 28+28 can be made to work. I think 14 alone is too short for the genius works.
I believe that patents and copyrights should both exist, neither conflated nor annihilated.
I believe that patents and copyrights should fall under different standards. Patents should be handled under the utilitarian model: most inventions are more perspiration than inspiration. Either 17 or 20 years is decent. Since these patents cover drugs, we'd best make it 17. Software patents are banned--copyright is enough for software.
The sorts of work that copyrights cover include a lot of utilitarian work, but also a lot of genius work. Copyright law should cover both kinds, and it actually used to cover both kinds. So, I hereby propose that we return to the system used before the Sonny Bono Copyright Act: registration and notice of copyright required, 28+28 terms, explicit renewal required for the second 28. There would be less need for copylefts in this system, and works will get covered according to how the people who make them value them--but within limits. No work would be covered for more than one average lifetime.
I know most on
"Life" must never be part of a copyright term, because life is unpredictable. "Life+" guarantees that a work is covered too long; "life" alone encourages assasination of artists.
I do not want "copyright=14 years+revenue" for similar reasons: that too is indeterminate, and it'll lock out of the public domain the works that would most benefit the public domain. If "14+revenue" became law, the film industry would suddenly become profitable, and there will be 15th anniv. editions of every new film made...
There is a difference between a patent and a trade secret. Maybe not as much as there should be, but there is one. Patents blockade certain research paths, yes, and that is annoying-to-deadly, but at least the competition has an idea what the blocked paths are, and can prepare for the day when they can be pursued. Patents haven't been expanded anywhere near as much as copyrights, so for now we can be confident that the day will come. Trade secrets can be discovered independently or through spies; but if they aren't, then and only then is the research known only to the inventor.
You will get the research that is patented--someday. You might never get research that has truly been kept secret. For-profit drug corps., and drug corps. that want to pay back their R&D investments, must use one method or the other until something better comes along. It's not just you paying.
Don't tempt corps. to apply the full weight of copyright law to drug-research papers.
Okay. We might not need as many drugs as we do now. But how can we be sure which actual drugs we'll want before we find them?
If synthetic drugs will be replaced with naturally occurring compounds, and since in your plan the government will be in charge of everything anyway, the natural compounds must be tested as thoroughly as the synthetic drugs. Some natural drugs are safe and work. Some don't work, however, and a few aren't safe. Your system should treat ephedra exactly like ephedrine: both are okay, or neither are.
The research costs for Twinkies were sunk decades ago; the basic formula hasn't changed since 1930 or so. Last I checked, brand-name Twinkies were $1.00 for two, or $3.50 or so for a dozen. They cost less than that when they came out, but money was worth more then. Of course, generic "Twinkies" do cost $0.50 for two...
The research costs for the sorts of cookies that sell for $3.50 a bag were sunk some time ago: 100 years for Oreos perhaps, approx. 75 for chocolate chip and chocolate chunk, centuries for most other classic varieties. More recently researched cookies sometimes cost $3.50 a cookie, or $3.50 for six cookies, or $7.00 a tub. Prices on older cookies held mostly steady through inflation. And cookies don't require that much skill to make: most people can follow a cookie recipe. Even more can make cookies from a box mix (also approx $3.50 for "a bag" of results, not counting oil & eggs).
The research costs for coffee were sunk 1000 years ago, and it didn't require that much research to discover it. I'll presume that it cost far more, relatively, back then than it does now. Recently researched coffees have been known to cost $3.50 for 12 oz. or $6.00 for 6 oz. or $14.00 for 2 oz. Even coffee at $2.99 a pound often uses 13-oz. pounds nowadays.
I'm not saying that the price of that heart drug is reasonable. I'm not saying that that corp. isn't gouging you and your grandma; $100.00 a day is likely typical for new medicine, regardless of how essential it is for the patient, but that doesn't make it easier to take or pay. But still, if discovering that drug required as much R&D as Twinkies did, and if the drug is as hard to process for market as coffee is, then it's logical that it costs more than Twinkies or coffee. That patent will expire someday; someday the price will go down.
Thank you.
So, you think pharmaceuticals would work out much better if they came from the government, but not from the current American government. That's not good. We can vote out bad governments, but we clearly also vote them in. The administration that is pure enough, and free enough from corporate influence, to allow only government-controlled drugs to be made will have to include safeguards against the next government that is as corporate-friendly as the one we've had in place for the past four years. Even then, there is no way to stop that admin from allowing the corps. to work alongside the government in drug-making.
There are incentives other than the profit incentive that rush drugs. The reason so many drugs get approved too quickly today was, back in the early '90s, an AIDS drug was under the approval process, but because the process was longer then, somewhere between thousands and millions of people would die while it was being tested. Humanitarians everywhere protested the time lag, and so the fast-track process was born. If there were no corporations involved, the government wouldn't fast-track as many drugs as they do now, but they would still fast-track the ones seen as most desperately needed. If COX-2 inhibitors fall into that class (rheumatoid arthritis isn't deadly, but it is painful and debilitating), then the Vioxx problem could happen again--and I'm not yet convinced that there'd be any other COX-2 inhibitors ready to replace it under your system.
Yes, the gov. could research drugs that the corps. wouldn't, and that could be beneficial. But it can't research them and all the drugs that all the corps. do research: that would take billions of dollars, and the kind of gov. that would start this sort of program is not the kind of gov. that would just shove it all onto the national debt. The funds can't come from selling the drugs, which are all at cost of manufacture or less; therefore, they must come from taxes of some sort. You know how even a noble American feels about taxes when he is aware of paying them.
Competing drugs in the same class from corporations is, well, competition. From the government, copmpeting drugs in the same class might look like pork. The public can demand research, but it can also demand the end of research. This is part of your plan, of course; that's why you have transparency. But you ask that the public be educated enough to know which lines of research should be followed, or that it listen to the researchers when the decision whether to continue is made. We can guarantee neither in a democracy.
So this might not solve the benzodiazepate/SSRI problem. In our world, Valium and its kin had been around and apparently working fine for a good forty-five years before Prozac was discovered. In that time, there was nearly twenty-five years between when it was decided that Wellbutrin wasn't that good a replacement for Valium-type drugs and when the next non-Valium-type drug that was effective in that area was released--and buspirone isn't quite as effective; it's just safer. Prozac came approx. five years later...
Anyhow, if Valium and its kin work well enough for forty-five years, why invent Prozac? Why even have more than one drug in the Valium class out at a time--which would kill Haldol (to the relief of some), but might also keep Xanax off the market (for better or worse)? Drug research would be funded as much as Congress wants, but how can the public tell legit research from pork?
If you think that Valium & Prozac are lifestyle drugs that never needed to be invented, try to imagine this argument in some more critical field. Say, anti-seizure drugs.
Your idea is noble. I am just cynical and afraid of unintended consequences.
Noble idea, but slight problem:
If the government is doing all the drug research, who determines if the drug should be released?
The government? But that would require a more noble government than even corporate research would, if the government was the only one researching the drugs. We have problems even now with getting the government to recall things like Vioxx. What would have happened if the government had invented Vioxx and got all the patent revenue/pharmataxes?
And if you think alternatives are bad now, what happens when only one entity is researching drugs? Once Lipitor is found, why hunt down Zocor? Why discover SSRIs if benzodiapazates work just fine? It may save money, but it'll cost something.
"(There is something to be said about business cycles actually strengthening the economy by threatening to cull the herd, but I don't see corporations being that altruistic...)"
Cull the herd?
I know, you were being metaphorical. You meant culling corporations. But one of the things we're discussing here is people needing life-saving or life-extending drugs who are unable to afford them. You can imagine what happens if they don't get the drugs.
I do like your economics. I just found your choice of phrase there somewhat chilling.
Actually, for many people, their life is worth whatever their insurance company is willing to pay. Few people even know the full cost of their medical treatment; they only know the co-pays and insurance bills.
Now, suppose you belong to an HMO. Suppose that you need treatment for some incredibly painful and/or deadly condition, that some particular treatment can be made by only one corp., and that this corp. is trying to charge $200,000 to the HMO for it. Let us also suppose that it's a recurring treatment, not one-time: most drugs work and are sold that way. If there is any cheaper alternative at all to something that expensive, a sane HMO will make you use the alternative.
Therefore, if there is more than one treatment for any given painful condition, a smart company will charge only a slightly ludicrous price per dose/bottle. $200, yes. $2000, maybe. $200,000--no.
True. But maybe, just maybe, it will be found sooner because the researchers had to do a workaround instead of building on the (in this hypothesis inferior) patented structure...
"Going after people who download without distributing would be really samll potatoes.
But boy, I wish they would. Maybe then something would get done."
Yes. Something would get done--but to whom?
Bad example.
Glucose testers and the related test-strips are treatments for diabetes. No one has been cured of diabetes simply by blood-sugar testing. The strips are expensive, but enough people do buy them that the corps. who make them find them profitable. The strips are far less expensive than most brand-name drugs would be without insurance.
Amputation is a treatment/cure for gangrene. It doesn't do anything for the underlying diabetes, but it does get rid of the existing dead tissue once and for all. Amputations aren't done often, and they aren't done to the same tissue twice.
Hospitals and insurance cos. may make more money from amputations. Big Pharma makes more from glucose test strips, insulin, and whatever new blood-sugar-controlling drugs they've invented. (Yes, there are diabetic drugs that are not insulin, and they're not unpopular.)
Careful with the absolutes...
Suppose that this university-developed Hepatitis-C drug, the one that had to work around that patent, turns out to be more effective than the original because of that work-around? Then we would have progress, and likely we'd have it before the corp. with the patent decided to try it.
It may be unlikely. But it's possible.