Trans-Pacific Partnership May Endanger World Health, Newly Leaked Chapter Shows 132
blottsie writes WikiLeaks has released an updated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) chapter on intellectual property. The new version of the texts, dated May 2014, show that little improvement has been made to sections critics say would hurt free speech online. Further, some of the TPP's stipulations could have dire consequences for healthcare in developing nations. The Daily Dot reports: "Nearly all of the changes proposed by the U.S. advantage corporate entities by expanding monopolies on knowledge goods, such as drug patents, and impose restrictive copyright policies worldwide. If it came into force, TPP would even allow pharmaceutical companies to sue the U.S. whenever changes to regulatory standards or judicial decisions affected their profits. Professor Brook K. Baker of Northeastern U. School of Law [said] that the latest version of the TPP will do nothing less than lengthen, broaden, and strengthen patent monopolies on vital medications."
freedoms f----d (Score:3, Insightful)
So if a country deregulates absurd and life threatening over-regulations, Merck, Pfizer, GSK etc sue the country/taxpayers ?
Maybe Putin will do us a favor and launch the nukes.
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So if a country deregulates absurd and life threatening over-regulations, Merck, Pfizer, GSK etc sue the country/taxpayers ?
You are begging the question. If the regulations are "absurd and life threatening", then of course you are right. But are they? Nearly all governments, and most people, believe that patents encourage innovation by ensuring that innovators can profit from their investment of time and resources. You may disagree with that, and you may be right that patents, in their current form, are unnecessary for innovation. But you should not just hand wave away such a broadly held belief by simply labeling it "absur
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State-guaranteed monopolies don't encourage innovation, they encourage rent-seeking.
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State-guaranteed monopolies don't encourage innovation, they encourage rent-seeking.
Those are not mutually exclusive. If innovation enables you to extract rents, then of course that will encourage innovation.
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You're givin' us trickle-down there. Don't care for that crap.
You know, the entire House of representatives is up for election, every single one of the bastards. It's a big opportunity to vote out both factions of the incumbent ruling party. Sure would be cool to see it happen.
That's a hint y'all, you know, in case you really want to, like, do something about this TPP business.
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And replace them with who? Some bastard from the other party?
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I just got done saying vote both factions out. There are other alternatives. Take a chance with one of them. You can always vote them out in two years. But if you're going to keep on voting for business as usual, take your complaints to somebody who gives a damn.
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Also, anyone who votes for "the lesser evil" is wasting his vote on a guy he doesn't believe in.
Getting someone that actually represents you above 1% does a lot more good than getting the lesser evil above 50%
If nothing else it communicates to the one that didn't win the election that there is a voter base that isn't squeezed in the small area between the two parties.
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No one has ever tried to find out. But yes, anyone who has read the back cover of a psychology textbook can understand why the numbers are perfectly plausible.
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You have any rigorous, objective scientific evidence to back that up? Mindless speculation (like the "But I can't imagine anything else!" crap that religious nutters like to bring up) isn't allowed. Because if not, then you have zero justification to pass/maintain these laws, as the burden of proof is on those who pass the laws.
But even if you did, patents and copyrights are intolerable because they infringe upon private property rights and/or free speech rights (in the case of copyright). Freedom > safe
Re:freedoms f----d (Score:5, Insightful)
And do you really believe a pharmaceutical company would invest years of lab time and millions of dollars developing a cure for X if the guys down the street would be allowed to immediately copy it and sell it at production cost + 1%? There's no way they would ever be able to recoup the development costs, so they wouldn't bother. Drug research funding would be restricted only to academia, government, and philanthropists. Granted, there's much to be said for such a system, there's some serious perverse incentives in the current arrangement - but there's also nothing stopping those other research avenues now, and yet they remain woefully neglected in comparison.
Now I'm definitely not saying our patent system doesn't have serious issues, but there's something to be said for giving inventors a chance to recoup their initial investment. Myself, I like the idea of simply going back to requiring the president to individually sign every approved patent - we'd almost instantly drop the rate of patent approvals to only a few per day, and the thousands of others that didn't make the cut would just have to be discarded. Are there really thousands of inventions per day that enrich humanity enough to justify granting a 20-year monopoly to recoup the development costs? I doubt it. I'd be surprised if there were five.
Re:freedoms f----d (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents in pharmacuticals work well.
Their application to software has been a disaster. They are granted so readily and for things so obvious, it's now become a common practice for companies to collect as huge a portfolio of crap-patents as possible just so they can win a legal battle by attrition, then cross-license with sufficiently powerful rivals so they can avoid suing each other into oblivion. It's reached the point where it's impossible to write anything more complicated than Hello, World without potentially infringing a patent somewhere.
Patent reform is needed. Raising costs wouldn't work, as it just disadvantages small companies and individuals. Tougher approval processes would go a long way though, and courts should have more power to penalize patent holders if the patent is later found in court to be obvious, trivial or based on prior art which the patent holder should have been aware of.
Re:freedoms f----d (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents in pharmacuticals work well...Their application to software has been a disaster.
Something the average software engineer might not appreciate is that patents for pharmaceuticals are a bit like copyright. They cover a specific molecule, which is basically an implementation. Anybody can tweak the molecule and if it works they can sell a competing product. Of course, doing so still costs hundreds of millions of dollars in testing/development costs, so that is why we tend to only have so many molecules in each class.
The patent office sometimes does issue very broad patents in pharmaceuticals, such as patents on a gene or molecular target, but for the most part they tend to get struck down by the courts, for all the same reasons that software patents cause so much trouble.
When applied to a single molecule patents work well in pharmaceuticals because they allow a company to be rewarded for its huge initial outlay in development costs despite their very low marginal cost of production. Now, companies do try to abuse patent law to extend their monopolies and this is something that I fully support punishing harshly. Society makes a deal - we'll pay $7/pill for about 10 years so that we have new pills, but after that anybody can get them for pennies - companies do not have some kind of right to profits - it is the offer society makes because it serves all of our collective interests.
I'm also for having the NIH actually fund more end-to-end drug development where the government bears all the risk of failure, but also owns the patents (which can then be freely licensed to US-based manufacturers, or those in countries who make similar investments and reciprocate). That would in theory lead to drugs that cost pennies from day one, while leaving the private pharma industry intact until such a time as the government-funded model is proven and ramps up and generally takes over (likely slowly hiring all the private pharma employees who actually do R&D/etc).
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*All* patents are supposed to only cover a specific implementation, maybe not quite so narrowly as pharmaceuticals, but to the point that it's not incredibly uncommon for corporations to steal independent mechanical inventions by modifying them just enough to no longer be protected.
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*All* patents are supposed to only cover a specific implementation, maybe not quite so narrowly as pharmaceuticals, but to the point that it's not incredibly uncommon for corporations to steal independent mechanical inventions by modifying them just enough to no longer be protected.
Of course, but the fact is that with software this is often not the case, and it costs a great deal of money and risk to litigate things.
With pharmaceuticals for whatever reason the vague patents tend to get worked out, but companies have still managed to use them to delay competition, which costs consumers a LOT of money.
Re:freedoms f----d (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents in pharmacuticals work well.
I have worked for pharmaceutical companies. They work well if you want these companies to make a lot of money. If general health of your population is the goal, then they are a total disaster. You don't work on cures, you work on treatments, for example. Why sell someone a week of pills, when you could sell them pills for a lifetime? Even worse is that a lot of money for these treatments is not invested by the company that holds the patent. But often heavily supported by the state through universities and grants.
The free market, capitalism, fails with health care at every level.
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That has nothing to do with patents per-se though, it has to do with the perverse incentives in a profit-driven medical research. Do away with pharmaceutical patents and most the Big Pharma research dollars would simply disappear into non-pharma research, and wouldn't increase humanitarian research one iota. Humanitarian research requires more philanthropic funding, and we clearly have a minimal number of such sources in the US.
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...and we clearly have a minimal number of such sources in the US.
Don't be so hard on the US. They really do provide a lot of funding compared to many countries. Sure it is distributed in perhaps not the best way (few very large grants), but its pretty substantial. For example my PhD was 100% funded under a NSF grant despite the fact that i was not in the US. We also had the requirement that we had to make all findings and contributions reasonable public.
That has nothing to do with patents per-se though, it has to do with the perverse incentives in a profit-driven medical research.
I can't quite see how non profit driven medical research would need patents?
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Nor can I, my point was that getting rid of patents and/or profit-driven medical research wouldn't necessarily improve the picture for humanitarian research.
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Patents in pharmacuticals work well.
No they don't work well. They encourage companies to only invest money in developing new drugs which are profitable for them. This means diseases which predominantly affect first world countries and which effect enough people to make it worth their while. They then hold us ransom by charging exorbitant prices for these drugs which, in same cases people need to survive. This is not a model which works: healthcare costs are sent spiralling upwards and new uses for old drugs, less common diseases and tropical
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Patents in pharmacuticals work well.
[citation needed]
Their application to software has been a disaster. They are granted so readily and for things so obvious,
Let me tell you a little story about an asthma inhaler that went up in price by an order of magnitude because of patents on putting the same shit into a new suspension, and invite you to go fuck yourself as I am charged ten times as much as necessary per breath of sweet, sweet air* that you clearly take for fucking granted because of a minuscule use of HFCs that really wasn't hurting anyone.
* Not every breath, just the ones that I really appreciate — the ones I wouldn't have without m
Re:freedoms f----d (Score:4, Insightful)
And do you really believe a pharmaceutical company would invest years of lab time and millions of dollars developing a cure for X if the guys down the street would be allowed to immediately copy it and sell it at production cost + 1%?
Let me tell you how it actually works. The really pioneering research is done by universities and government funded labs. They do the really risky, in terms of ROI, work that leads to new medicines and treatments. Once they have something that could be turned into a valuable product they either sell the IP or set up a small company that the big pharma guys can buy. The big companies then make a product, get it approved and sell it for a nice profit. I'm not saying that is an easy or cheap process, but they are not the ones responsible for most of the major advancements. The research they do is mostly aimed at increasing their profits, not improving health.
It would be better if governments just banded together, like say through the EU, and funded the whole process from initial R&D to release themselves, and made it all available for as little cost as possible. Unfortunately there are not enough socialists to make it happen, but that would be the best option for public health and keeping costs down.
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The risky work, yes. Not necessarily the *expensive* work. As with software the last 10% of the project can easily require 90% of the resources.
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You may be completely right but your example doesn't provide enough detail to know if you are right. The problem is that once the patent expires anyone can produce the drug and all they have to worry about is production and marketing costs. The development/testing costs are only the responsibility of the original company that did the work and presumably brought the drug to market. Maybe they entirely covered those costs in the first year the drug was on the market or they could still be paying off that cost
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Huh. It appears you are correct. And that's a very good question.
I still think it would be a good idea. At the least the director of the patent office should have to sign it. That might actually work even better if you're content to have more patents around, but not an insane number - make it so that the person calling the shots is putting paperwork on their own desk with every patent they allow to be approved. Not many people are going to want to hand-sign patents nonstop for several hours every day,
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I'm sure that the parent poster can define their own use of the term "rent seeking", but in case you're genuinely unaware of the more common uses of the term, in general, it involves taking a situation where an item or good is normally fully owned by the person who bought it, and making it a situation where the item or good is somewhat changed, so that it must be paid for by perpetual fees, without the payer gaining all the rights they had in the older situation. "Rent seeking" is not the same thing as mere
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Re:freedoms f----d (Score:4, Interesting)
Nearly all governments, and most people, believe that patents encourage innovation by ensuring that innovators can profit from their investment of time and resources
Given your blanket generalization I'll retort "No, they don't". Numerous countries have been force into following the American model to compete (Europe), but that is not the same thing as "agreeing" as you so bluntly claimed. China has ignored US patents and Copyrights for decades, with no detriment to their trade. In fact the trade deficit between the US and China has consistently grown.
The US strong arming someone into enforcing US Patent laws is not the same thing as a country agreeing with the Laws. Perhaps you should consider why numerous countries are very hostile toward US companies, especially in the Medical and Agricultural sectors.
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I know it's hard to remember given how impotent Europe is these days, but in fact the US was forced into following the European model by European powers, both on copyrights and on patents. It took a while until the US managed to beat Europeans at their own game.
Re:freedoms f----d (Score:4, Informative)
Actually Europeans have looked up at Americans most of the 20th century. I even distinctly remember a folk song about what kind of celebrations are to be held "now that rich uncle from America is coming".
The change is not as long ago as you might think. It hasn't been more than maybe two decades that people form the US are seen as religious nutjob simpletons who sue everyone and everything if it doesn't go their way. Before that, US people were more seen as rich and self-confident with a "if anyone can accomplish that, I can" attitude that we actually aspired to.
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There are always aspects of the US that Europeans have found attractive. But those have always coexisted with a firm belief that Europe is culturally superior. Receiving aid from the US only has bred more contempt, and European intellectuals invented all sort of rationalizations for why their supposedly superior culture kept failing while the US was thriving.
A secondary effect is that the people who figure it out just pack up and leave Europe if they can, further increasing the majority of those hostile to
Re:freedoms f----d (Score:4, Insightful)
and European intellectuals invented all sort of rationalizations for why their supposedly superior culture kept failing while the US was thriving.
Now I'm waiting for American intellectuals to invent all sort of rationalizations for why their supposedly superior culture keeps failing while some developing countries are thriving. ;-)
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What a lame attempt at sarcasm. Yeah, Europeans have all sorts of erroneous beliefs and prejudices about "developing countries" as well, starting with the erroneous idea that they are "failing".
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Oh, sorry, I misread you. What would Americans have to rationalize? The US still is the richest and most powerful country on earth. We aren't getting any aid or handouts from Europe.
Europeans have been "getting into the markets" of countries they consider inferior
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Chauvinistic "holier-than-thou" idiots exist in every group. Be it nations, be it continents, hell, be it corporation branches. You also have the Americans who claim that Europeans could only have their high standard of living because of alleged gifts from the US.
Whoopsie, hope I didn't hurt your feelings...
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European anti-Americanism isn't an occasional exception, it is long-standing and widespread phenomenon in mainstream European society. It's been an integral part of European history and European intellectual life since the US was founded.
Since I am from Europe, why would you be hurting my feelings? All you are proving is your ignorance.
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Re:freedoms f----d (Score:4, Insightful)
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Out of curiosity, what is the medication?
the prison system will just pay full price for dru (Score:2)
the prison system will just pay full price for drugs that people need and it will be on the backs of all us tax payers.
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Have you ever seen those denialists (R, any state) in those fine committees? Have you ever seen them get the issues addressed at them? Have you ever noticed the absurdity, the totally absurd charade of their so-called 'answers' in "addressing the issues"?
Your prescription, though fine for people of intellect, good will and reason (often related), your fine advice fails miserably and absurdly in the face of nitwits with money-backed power. Face reality; some people are best served with a clue bat.
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Maybe Putin will do us a favor and launch the nukes.
Or maybe we'll all win the lottery.
Nothing will change until we make it change.
The first thing to do is to follow the money trail and identify:
1. The companies who've paid the politicians
2. The names of the people in the company who've made the decisions
3. The names of politicians who've taken the money
How do we get that effort started? What will it take, who can do it?
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The first thing to do is to follow the money trail and identify:
How do we get that effort started? What will it take, who can do it?
It's that already done: https://www.opensecrets.org/ [opensecrets.org]
How do plan we make people care?
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How do plan we make people care?
Here's a plan [represent.us]. Here's another plan [mayday.us]. Here's another plan [wolf-pac.com].
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So if a country seeks to prevent life threatening mistakes through regulations, Merck, Pfizer, GSK etc sue the country/taxpayers ?
LMFTFY
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It's 'the US' (exercise to reader: why the quotes?), the 'US' I said, doing everything to justify ebola outbreaks.
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You know what is meant. Can we sed "can sue" to "can sue AND WIN" and repeat the whole spiel?
The one area where patents have reasonable terms (Score:2)
As I understand it, pharmaceuticals are the one area where the duration of patents is about right to offset the massive delays and costs of development (due to more stringent testing requirements than the average product). On the other hand, it also means people die because they can't afford the patented medication. Quite the conundrum.
Re:The one area where patents have reasonable term (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really a conundrum, the problem is easily solved by making medical research not-for-profit.
Enforced monopolies are bad for society.
Re:The one area where patents have reasonable term (Score:4, Insightful)
It needs both approaches together. Sometimes research needs the sort of massive funding only commercial interests can provide. Other times there wouldn't be any profit it in (Disease too rare, treatment too cheap) and you need non-profit work from academia, charity or government. Neither is right in all circumstances.
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pharmaceuticals are the one area where the duration of patents is about right to offset the massive delays and costs of development
With some simple reforms, the delays and costs could be massively reduced. Some of the testing phases could be combined or eliminated. Computer simulations could be used for some early phases. The US could accept more testing done overseas, as long as appropriate protocols are followed. And there could be harsh financial sanctions on bureaucrats that let applications sit in their inbox while patients are dying.
Re:The one area where patents have reasonable term (Score:4, Insightful)
Where should these tests be held? I hope the good people of Guinea get lucky, then at least in name it would be fitting.
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I don't really feel like siding with pharma corps, but considering the development cost, the alternative to people not able to afford medication is medication not existing because there is no ROI on developing it.
You could of course go the European way and have general health care coverage so you can by definition afford the medication, but if I got the general sentiment towards that right something like an affordable healthcare plan is considered evil in the US.
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I don't really feel like siding with pharma corps, but considering the development cost, the alternative to people not able to afford medication is medication not existing because there is no ROI on developing it.
You have scientific evidence of this being the case, I suppose? How could you know what would happen in an alternate reality where they don't have these/any patents? Or is it just speculation?
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I know that there are three main motivators for human: greed, fear and greed. So unless you can make some billionaires scared of some disease you want researched (and then convince them somehow to give it away once it's done), what's left is simply money.
I don't like that system and I'd be cheerleader for anyone who can change it, but human simply is a greedy old bastard who can't be assed to move his ass unless he gets money for it or something rammed up said orifice if he doesn't move.
If you have a soluti
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I know that there are three main motivators for human: greed, fear and greed.
But what you don't know is how the system would work without patents. There would likely be alternate business strategies and perhaps some government intervention of a different sort. You can't really say, since scientific evidence is lacking. We shouldn't except restrictions especially if they don't have science backing them up.
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I agree, and I agree that patent laws are WAY out of whack, but simply kicking them out the window is not going to be a good idea either.
I'd say that a company has to publish their (verifiable!) research cost and once cost*X is reached, the patent is off. X is to be determined, but I'd suggest choosing a number bigger than 1...
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cost*X in revenue, of course. Just to appease the nitpickers. :)
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This would make it kind of pointless to develop drugs that have a high production cost.
You could count profit instead - but not profit on the drug, but profit on the patent. Let the company pick any cost per unit of product as the 'patent profit', then count that down for each unit of product sold. However, also force the company to license the patent for the same amount to anyone else that wants it.
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So we're told, and yet pharmaceutical companies sit as some of the biggest in the world alongside oil companies and banks.
If it were true that patent durations on medicines were essential to recoup the large R&D costs then you would expect that such companies were only just scraping a profit because the patent terms would only just be long enough as it is to make that profit as they claim.
But the fact that their profits are so massively high implies that there's a good chance you could reduce medical pa
Secret proceedings, I'm not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that all of these meetings are being held in secrecy and away from public discourse is very telling. Like NAFTA, this is being touted as something great for free trade, but in fact is intended to benefit an oligarchical subset of society. Worse, that same subset has no consideration for the remainder of the citizens of the USA.
Simple, write your Reps and get them to denounce this garbage legislation. Vote them out of office if they don't denounce this bill and distance themselves. If you have 2 candidates that both want the bill, petition your own candidate on the ballot and lose the cronies.
Be warned too, that just like SOPA this is going to continually be pushed behind the scenes under new names and false pretenses.
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You mean the guy who shut your Parliament down rather than face a vote of no confidence? I don't see how you can regard him as legitimate or, for that matter, why you still tolerate having a Governor General.
Cui bono? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who are the parties driving this agreement? The corporate lobbyist in China and the US who are secretly drafting this agreement for their own benefit.
As Thomas Jefferson once stated, "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
Listen to US billionaire Steve Wynn in his own words call the communist China, where most of his revenue comes from, "the most laissez-faire place on the planet at the moment" [cnbc.com]. When I grew up communism was the evil empire but it appears if they start taking American Express those transgressions are quickly overlooked.
China has illuminated what the most successful government model is for economic growth as they have surpassed the US in global trade and will soon become the largest economy in the world. This secret treaty is an effort to codify the globalist's privileged trading status and would accelerate the vast income inequality that plagues both China and the US. Every American should remember that the revolutionary Boston Tea Party was a reaction to a tax imposed for the direct benefit of the East India corporation's monopoly. Any elected official that privately or publicly supports this travesty should be held accountable at the voting booth.
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Hey, you're right. Time to excise the Boston Tea Party out of the history books.
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No need. It's been so heavily mythologised, only historians seem to know what it was actually about. Lots of people have somehow come to believe it was a big protest against whatever they dislike.
This is especially amusing in the case of the Tea Party, who took their name from it and believe it to be a protest against high taxation. Taxes were involved - but the key change in tax law that started it was a tax exemption. The British passed a tax on tea, but granted an exemption to the politically well-connec
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Ya, but tell that to them and get called a revisionist commie liar who hates Merica.
Then you try telling them that they're engaging in projection, and they get a confused look on their face.
OK, if not patents and IP protection, then what? (Score:1)
I am well aware that patents are abused, both in pharmaceuticals and other technology industries. But if they're evil and something else needs to be put in place, then what would it be? If there was no way for a company to recover its investment in R&D, how would you propose getting a company to invest in the first place?
Pharmaceuticals are especially bad -- millions of dollars in research, millions in testing and regulatory clearances, plus a new product can take years to get onto the market. If there'
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Working with knowledge and not bricks does not mean you certainly need a lot more protection.
There are certainly some cost structures that should be changed if we abolish copyright and patents, but it doesn't mean no industry can survive, even the medical industry. Look for example at Aspirin. The patent is gone on it, but its still a big money maker for Bayer. Being first in the market brings considerable advantages. Never mind that the company is german that made it, likely not by chance, because germany
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"If you criticize a Democrat, you must be a Republican.
If have a criticism of capitalism, you must be a communist! You hate money!"
Let's not fall down that slippery slope.
This isn't about angry anarchists wanting to abolish patents or completely overhaul IP laws. Citizens are pissed, and rightfully so, because they have NO INFLUENCE on these new policies. Everything is being discussed and decided behind closed doors. Many high ranking politicians do not even have access to the information.
We expect corp
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New Zealand will sign! (Score:4, Informative)
I tell ya, living in New Zealand is a little like living in Night Vale at the moment.
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There might be full public disclosure. But sure as hell we won't have a say in any changes before it is signed. NZ Governments over the past 20yrs, both Labour & National, have run roughshod over democracy (when was the last time a national referendum was heeded?).
I've nothing against free trade but not at the expense of our rights as a sovereign nation, yet that is exactly what John & Co. will allow to happen
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Whats it going to take for people in New Zealand to elect a government willing to say NO to the USA, to big US corporations and to totally one-sided and unfair trade agreements like this?
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Honestly I wish I knew. The level of apathy in this country is appalling. The recent election saw barely 2/3's of eligible voters turn out to vote.
I encourage my kids to pay attention to the issues and discuss them with their friends, and hopefully get them out in force. However it would seem that many are more interested in the latest BS than the welfare of their nation
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Here in Australia voting is compulsory and it doesn't make a difference, we still get the same kind of politicians unwilling to say NO to the USA (doesn't matter if its liberal or labor, both will do whatever the US government and the big US corporations want)
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Claims (Score:2)
It is interesting that the article makes several claims but does not back thest claims up by referring to the draft. Here is a quote from the draft that seems to contradict some of the claims about availability of medicine;
The Parties have reached the following understandings regarding this Chapter:
The obligations of this Chapter do not and should not prevent a Party from taking measures to protect public health-{by promoting access to medicines for all, in particular concerning cases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other epidemics as well as circumstances of extreme urgency or national emergency.} Accordingly, while reiterating their commitment to this Chapter, the Parties affirm that this Chapter can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of each Party's right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.
In recognition of the commitment to access to medicines that are supplied in accordance with the Decision of the General Council of 30 August 2003 on the Implementation of Paragraph Six of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (WT/L/540) and the WTO General Council Chairman's statement accompanying the Decision (JOB(03)/177, WT/GC/M/82), as well as the Decision on the Amendment of the TRIPS Agreement, adopted by the General Council, 6 December 2005 and the WTO General Council Chairperson's statement accompanying the Decision (WT/GC/M/100) (collectively, the “TRIPS/health solution”), this Chapter does not and should not prevent the effective utilization of the TRIPS/health solution.
This won't stop until we are in chains (Score:2)
As much as I hate violence, it's time to get physical baby!
We won't be safe until the people who keep trying to make this laws are dead. You think I'm kidding? They will keep pushing these laws until someone either they get accepted. They know eventually they will wear us down. Well, is this what you want? Every time you pay Netflix, you pay for cable TV, every movie you go see/rent/buy, or music you buy, you are telling these people it's okay to walk on our rights.
Your money is seen as a yes vot
Re:This won't stop until we are in chains (Score:5, Interesting)
While I can see the temptation, it isn't going to work so well. That war was of states verses states, with access to military hardware on both sides. A revolution in the US today would consist of semi-organised armies of volunteers with rifles verses a government with long-range artillery, bomber aircraft, advanced intelligence-gathering equipment and much more powerful fully-automatic assault rifles. No contest. The best you could hope for would be a long insurgency, fighting dirty and adopting terrorist tactics of hiding in the civilian population and keeping identities secret, French Resistance style - but that's not enough to overthrow a government. The idea of a violent uprising isn't realistic.
A better proposal would be to shift the rules a bit through technology. A sufficient investment in new forms of communication technology could effectively undermine a lot of commercially-based power - it doesn't matter how strict the copyright laws are if they can't be enforced, and if all communications are encrypted and avoid passing through any bottlenecks where control can be exerted then it becomes much harder for government to monitor or control them. Mass-piracy, properly exercised, could cripple the entertainment-media industry. It just has to be made into something which is near-universally accepted by the public, easy enough for anyone to take part with less effort than buying from legitimate channels, and safe from any form of copyright enforcement.
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While I can see the temptation, it isn't going to work so well. That war was of states verses states, with access to military hardware on both sides. A revolution in the US today would consist of semi-organised armies of volunteers with rifles verses a government with long-range artillery, bomber aircraft, advanced intelligence-gathering equipment and much more powerful fully-automatic assault rifles.
Erm, yeah. So how did less than a thousand Islamic State "fighters" just defeat a state (Iraq) sponsored force 10 times their size when the state sponsored force has all of the stuff you seem so fearful of? You seem to think it will be a simple us vs them battle whereas the truth is that the "us" and "them" are both part of the same government. You do not think that some general will command his people to defend citizens from a government assault or that some FBI analyst might pass information about upcomin
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Because:
1. The state-sponsored force was a mess. Mismanaged, divided, and without command during a political crisis.
2. IS forces were composed largely of professionally trained soldiers - people who had been loyal to Saddam, and found themselves quickly expelled from their career as part of the process of destroying his power base after the US invasion.
And on top of that, they still havn't won. They havn't taken over all of Iraq, the older government is still around. All IS have manged to do is secure contr
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And about two days later new ones would step into their places. For every CEO, there is a vice CEO waiting in the wings. You think a multi-million-dollar company doesn't have contingency plans in case the boss gets hit by a bus?
Biggest problem is tax (Score:1)
They create more patents and "Intellectual" Property, companies sell their IP to a subsidiary in Bermuda that rents the "property" back to them for all of their profits. They in turn don't need to pay tax.
And the more ridiculous the IP the more insane it becomes, with some companies renting nothing more than their own name as a trademark.
This idea that the west can live of IP tax is flawed.
Entitlements (Score:1)
Embalm, Burn, Bury (Score:3)
Leave nothing to chance.
This is not a free trade agreement, this is corporations attempting to legislate without actually having to deal with pesky legislatures.
Anyone who supports the US Constitution should be against this.
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For freedom, not companies. They get to sue government when they don't like a law and get paid for it.
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Agreed, but just because you have one boil doesn't mean you should agree to get more.
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Oh, and most of these are not legally treaties, although they (unconstitutionally) try and have the effect of treaties (again, they do this precisely because they know they could never get an actual treaty with the desired terms through the Senate) . The one good side of doing it that way is that a future President could abrogate the existing agreements at the stroke of a pen.
Note the economic leftist verbiage (Score:1)
It sounds more like it would allow them to sue over costly regulations and force them to justify them in court.
I am fine with that.
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Probably because the people pushing for the treaty want to get it signed into extremely difficult to revoke international law before the public gets a glimpse of it, and the assistant/intern/etc who is leaking the information doesn't want to lose their livelihood and/or their ability to continue to shed the light of publicity onto this fetid little conspiracy.