India Attempts To Derail ACTA 162
Admiral Justin writes "Ars Technica is reporting that India is attempting to gather support from other large countries that have been intentionally left out of the ACTA process to actively protest it. India fears that ACTA will eventually be used against it and other countries that were given no chance to be a part of the process of drafting it. Among the primary concerns are the possibility of medical shipments being seized if they use a port in transit that is controlled by a country with a patent on the pharmaceuticals."
I can relate (Score:5, Insightful)
India fears that ACTA will eventually be used against it and other countries who were given no chance to be a part of the process drafting it.
As a US citizen, I can relate to that.
Yep. Yer boned. (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. As a us citizen i can say for sure we're going to use this new treaty to really screw over pretty much..... everyone.
In both real world terms and on the net.
We like pushing our laws on other countries.. But theres no way we will allow it to work the other way around.
America is like the largest group of hypocrites on the planet... Who put us in charge anyway... That wasnt too smart.
Re:I can relate (Score:5, Insightful)
[India] fears that ACTA will eventually be used against it.
I find that quite sweet actually. The whole point of excluding the next economic power house is precisely to frame laws which may delay their rise to the top. It is not if ACTA gets used against India but when.
Re:I can relate (Score:5, Insightful)
As a citizen of any of the countries that are in it, we can relate.
Pleasepleaseplease (Score:5, Insightful)
Ars Technica is reporting that India is attempting to gather support from other large countries which have been intentionally left out of the ACTA process to actively protest it.
Please let this mean they're planning an all-out media blitz here in the US. I can see the commercials now, something between between a Tea Party "the government's gonna get you!"/"One World Government is coming!" campaign booster and a Broadview Security "THEYRE GONNA RAPE YOU AND STEAL YOUR CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!" commercial.
Seriously, plan the message carefully and you could run the same commercial on Fox News and PBS/NPR 24/7 and *everyone* would freak out and, hopefully, do something about this filthy excuse for a treaty.
Profits are more important than lives. (Score:5, Insightful)
So expect ACTA to pass and expect medicine to remain patented and restricted only for use by the richest 1%. It's the way society is designed, whether ACTA is instituted or not.
The question the modern capitalist must ask themselves is a question of priority. What is more important to you, the lives of poor individuals or profits?
Corporations have chosen profits but what do individuals choose?
Re:software patents and DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Of these two, DRM is actually the most worrying problem, IMO
DRM is not a problem; criminalizing talking about DRM is.
Re:Profits are more important than lives. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yep. Yer boned. (Score:5, Insightful)
We like pushing our laws on other countries.. But theres no way we will allow it to work the other way around.
Question is, are these even your laws? How many elected officials have insight into these negotiations, let alone the public?
The whole trade agreement thing is mostly just a way to get countries to commit to laws without letting the democracy thing getting in the way. Just sign here mister prime minister, it's good for business!
It's a shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
that we (the good ole USA) need to rely on other countries' governments to protect us from our government and its corporate puppet masters.
What about the WTO What if they say no to this? (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the WTO What if they say no to this? What they set the price for some IP to Free?
Re:Yep. Yer boned. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a shame, but it's not unprecedented.
We won the Revolution only because we had copious assistance from the French.
And despite what the militia fucktards think, armed insurrection is not going to topple the U.S. government if it gets out of hand. If you need to revolt, you're either going to need the military behind you (probably not the revolution you're looking for), or bring a tougher one. Hint: a tougher one don't exist.
Yep. Yer boned too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh, "we". Who are you? A top executive in the MPAA? Major share holder in Big Pharma?
Otherwise, you're not in the "we". Whether you're in the USA or not, you're at the other end of the stick.
i'd like to see them try (Score:3, Insightful)
india already flouts laws on hiv drugs. no one is stopping them because it pits humanitarian ideals versus craven corporate interests. the negative pr hit is far larger than any pittance they'd get from a poor country (nevermind the moral argument of lives in the balance, we are talking about corporations here)
so acta can be as draconian as they want. again, i'd like to see them actually try to enforce the bullshit
Re:Profits are more important than lives. (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually? (Score:5, Insightful)
I quote:
— meringuoid (568297) [slashdot.org] @ 2005-11-24 16:40 (#14107454 [slashdot.org])
Re:software patents and DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
I will agree with that statement if and only if one concurrently has the right to write and distribute software that easily cracks said DRM. "However you like" goes both ways, in such a case. If my rights to break it can be restricted, yours to use it can be too. If either of us can write software however we like, you can write your DRM, and I can crack it. The problem occurs when that "right" only applies to one side.
Re:software patents and DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
DRM is a problem.
(See, you did not say why. So I also don’t, to refute your statement. But I can add arguments on top anyway, to make it an actual argument. Like:)
DRMed information is lost, when the server or decoding system is gone.
Criminalized circumventing DRM also is why it is a problem.
I’d go so far as saying that being a problem is the point of DRM.
Re:software patents and DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
That was the point in both of my previous posts. You've said nothing that disagrees with it.
OP (of this thread) said: "DRM is actually the most worrying problem."
Again, DRM is not a problem. The erosion of rights of free expression and speech is. The solution should not be to outlaw DRM, or place some legal restrictions on its implementations. This could have many unintended consequences. The solution should be to not restrict everyone's rights w/respect to DRM in the first place (i.e. cracks, discussion, research, etc.).
Re:Yep. Yer boned. (Score:2, Insightful)
Voter apathy is ungodly high simply because we've been conditioned to believe that anybody not in one of the two parties isn't worth electing. When there is so little difference between D and R who can blame people for simply letting themselves get railroaded.
Uh, me? The people have the power to vote in whoever they want. The fact that they choose not to use it is their own fault.
Re:It's a shame... (Score:3, Insightful)
"And despite what the militia fucktards think, armed insurrection is not going to topple the U.S. government if it gets out of hand."
They need only be part of a mass movement that sustains them.
The government doesn't have enough personnel to secure the whole US against serious _popular_ resistance. The thing about modern armed forces designed to destroy other sophisticated modern armed forces is that they aren't capable of putting all that many boots on the ground. Iraq and Afghanistan are difficult enough, and tiny compared to the USA, and not full of people Americans object to killing.
In any mass movement, the military itself would be in play, with results depending on the allegiance of individuals or units. There are lots of folks in Combat Arms who aren't going to shoot their kinfolk, and might savor putting politicians against the wall if the situation is right. Direct "toppling" isn't necessarily the mechanism by which government might be changed. Coup and other methods might offer themselves.
Never underestimate the appeal of mass movements. Should the economic situation get bad enough (the major reason people revolt, not for freedom but for food), ANY conduct becomes reasonable. The ghey and genteel Civil War was a long time ago. In modern civil wars, there is no useful reason to let enemies survive so they are often liquidated (why save them so they can fight again?). The best way to fight any serious internal conflict would be to exterminate ones enemies since they have no worth.
Everything is cozy now, so none of this is more than speculation. The US isn't hurting, no one is starving, and the economy is showing some signs of health. Crime is low, even auto fatalities are low. It's boring and there is every reason to keep it that way.
Re:I can relate (Score:5, Insightful)
So how do we help them derail it?
Re:Profits are more important than lives. (Score:5, Insightful)
we're corporatists
Which is just a nice word for fascism
Re:i'd like to see them try (Score:2, Insightful)
heya,
Yes, but the end result is, India is just being short-sighted. They're flouting their obligations, to get some short-term gain, at the risk of damaging them and the rest of the world in the long term.
Put it this way, pharmaceutical research is one area where the old argument that patents help innovation really holds water. It's damn expensive to develop and trial a drug, and if there's no gain or the company thinks it's research will just be taken by some dirtbag like India and used then they're just not going to invest in that particular area.
Case in point - malaria research. Basically eradicated in the Western world, very little research done on it as compared to say, cancer or the hell, ironically even weight loss...
Whether you like pharmaceutical firms or not, countries like India and Brazil that screw over pharmaceutical companies are only shooting themselves (and the rest of the world) in the foot.
If they wanted, why doesn't India invest in it's own damn medical research huh? Gee, cause it's cheaper to just steal the research designs from other people who've developed it already, of course.
Cheers,
Victor
What the? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any capitalist will answer: profit.
If you want someone to care about people find a socialist or a communist. Capitalist are not nice people, it is in their motto:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens."
-- Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations, 1776)
Read it and try to understand its true meaning. Not the meaning for when you are well off and society is running smoothly but when there is some problem. Like say a disaster.
Adam Smith says that in a disaster, it is perfectly reasonable to charge a premium for emergency supplies and only a beggar would expect a fair price. For a capitalist, profits are the only thing that counts and the butch, the brewer and the baker under Adam Smith will let people die who can't pay the prices they charge. Of course, this also means that if ever something was to happen to them, they would be the ones doing the dying.
And it works, when society is doing well. You can life your entire life as a baker and never be faced with someone who is on the edge of starvation. I was a baker in my younger years and I never had someone beg for bread.
In practice supermarkets charge a "low" price for food and accept truly minuscule mark-ups on essential items. Eating in the west can truly be cheap, eating healthy is another matter. But this doesn't mean the Adam Smith way is a nice way. It is not for nothing that the poorer people often eat unhealthy, go and check the prices for healthy food (fresh vegetables) with the cost of absolute bottom line food. 50 cent frozen pizza etc. You can live on that for a day, no way you can cook a decent meal for that. So, the delivers off cheap food for all also deliver unhealthy food. Not so nice of them after all is it? Their profits are more important then the health of their customers.
Free choice? yes, you are free to eat bad. YOU are free to eat bad, because you can probably afford to eat better. But with ever lower wages and ever higher costs of living, a lot of people cannot. It is already well known that Africa is a dumping ground for western food that is no longer sellable in the west. Chicken refrozen a dozen times over is flooding the market, ruining the local industry. Profits of western capitalists again more important then decency.
Read up on the true effects of free market economy and you will see just how badly real capitalist are for people who do not belong to the elite. And you like me are most likely part of that elite or at least close enough not to be harmed by them to much. For now. Until something goes wrong. Like the economic crisis. Notice how the truly rich are not hurting at all. No, loosing 1 billion when you got a dozen is NOT hurting.
Re:I can relate (Score:3, Insightful)
Some EU countries are already seizing shipments of cheap generics being sent from India to other developing nations, if they happen to transit through European ports.
It just goes towards exposing the hypocrisy of such countries that keep on shrieking about aid convoys being attacked and privacy being trampled upon elsewhere.
What is the cost in terms of human lives when right to medicine and right to cheap medicine are denied?
what a douchebag (Score:4, Insightful)
morality check: which is more important?
1. saving human lives
2. enforcing ip law
if they pirate the drug design and make the drugs without a license, guess what happens? THEY SAVE HUMAN LIVES
i think that pretty much trumps every goddamn thing you wrote, no?
poor countries can't afford to abide by ip law, genius
so they have my blessing and the blessing of everyone else with a simple moral compass, to rip off a rich country's pharmaceutical research TO SAVE LIVES
corporate profit is not important than human life, despite the fact that so many douchebags like yourself think otherwise
Here is what will happen... (Score:3, Insightful)
The major reason for India's tirade seems to be the fact that (in addition to Pharmaceutical situation, of course) it was left out of negotiations. In a multi-polarized world, India increasingly sees itself as an important node in the global market. Had the negotiations proceeded in an all-inclusive manner, I am pretty sure most countries' governments would have happily and silently signed oppressive laws into place.
In a way, this "unfair" tactic by western countries, I believe did push India over the edge, but surely the humanitarian, people-friendly position is not why India and other countries are opposing this law. It benefits the Indian Pharmaceutical companies and it is in India's benefit to fight this both for trying to keep its industry alive and asserting its influence.
For the record - I am Indian. And yes, I am opposed to many tough measures in the ACTA -- but I have this sneaky suspicion that just to appease India and other countries, the other countries will throw a ball in their direction -- give them some special concession in a very limited area -- and then all these countries will happily climb on to the ACTA bandwagon!
For all those expecting a showdown between India/China vs. the rest of the world -- chances are that it will never actually develop into something more than a few provocative statements here and there -- fervent negotiations will go on to give them some choicest concessions, so they can all start oppressing people everywhere asap... of course, this will be marketed heavily as something "amazingly good" for the people of the world!
Re:It's a shame... (Score:3, Insightful)
We get "popular revolution" every 2, 4, and 6 years. So there's no pressure for the masses to join the militias.
But that's beside the point. The point is, yes, there is enough military power in the military to stop any military attack on the military from any militia or military on this planet. So as long as that military is protecting the government, this form of government is not going to be revolved by military action. We, or anyone else, would need to get a lot of countries together to accomplish anything revolutionary here.
Which is why we need to get better at the 2/4/6-year thing, and use ideas and facts to control our destiny, instead of letting money and propaganda be the determining factor.