Just an odd question and a slight digression. Say I own a soybean farm. I don't buy a thing from monsanto. my neighbor does.
After the harvest, after my bean have been pollinated by insects that travel between fields, I keep my beans and plant them. Then I spray my crop down with roundup before they flower and the result of my next harvest is RR soybeans.
Should I be able to replant them?
No. You used a method to replicate a patetented product that does not appear in nature. We're you expecting to get a roundup immune soybean that was not created by Monsanto?
Not particularly.
But, if you did partial doses of roundup, say ld75, is there any reason to believe that over time you wouldn't start getting randomly mutated roundup-slightly better prepared soybeans?
Let's just go ahead and beg that question. I can breed for rr-ness. Now, if the patent covers the resistance, not the specific process for creating resistance, then it would not mater how I got to that point. Monsanto would still have cause. Otherwise, if I could get there through a novel pathway, it should be legal and I could sell my non-monsanto rr crops however I want.
Any idea which is the case? I don't feel getting into all those possible methods when that's really just a digression from the real topic, but I feel some likely exist.
Just an odd question and a slight digression. Say I own a soybean farm. I don't buy a thing from monsanto. my neighbor does.
After the harvest, after my bean have been pollinated by insects that travel between fields, I keep my beans and plant them. Then I spray my crop down with roundup before they flower and the result of my next harvest is RR soybeans.
Should I be able to replant them?
No. You used a method to replicate a patetented product that does not appear in nature. We're you expecting to get a roundup immune soybean that was not created by Monsanto?
Not particularly.
But, if you did partial doses of roundup, say ld75, is there any reason to believe that over time you wouldn't start getting randomly mutated roundup-slightly better prepared soybeans?
Let's just go ahead and beg that question. I can breed for rr-ness. Now, if the patent covers the resistance, not the specific process for creating resistance, then it would not mater how I got to that point. Monsanto would still have cause. Otherwise, if I could get there through a novel pathway, it should be legal and I could sell my non-monsanto rr crops however I want.
Any idea which is the case? I don't feel getting into all those possible methods when that's really just a digression from the real topic, but I feel some likely exist.
Probably depends on how the respective plants achieve resistance. Roundup inhibits an enzyme used to make certain amino acids; RR plants use a different version of the enzyme. If your plants used a third version of said enzyme, they might decide the process was too similar. If you made a plant that somehow didnt absorb or broke down the toxin, I'd imagine they wouldn't be able to do much...other than bury you in pointless litigation and legal fees.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
You can only breed for RR-ness if RR is not sufficiently lethal. Its like saying that we can just do a partial apocalypse and soon enough we will have dinosaurs that are immune to asteroids.
Edit: Basically what this comes down to is whether or not you isolate their strain or not. Its not exactly hard to test whether or not your RR strain is similar to theirs and "this isn't your product" is a perfect defense against patent infringement.
Goumindong on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If you told me that I could put in a lot of work and spend a lot of money for a shot at developing something, and if it works out, the largest countries in the world are going to just take my work without compensation, that would be pretty demoralizing to me, even if I knew I was also likely to make a fortune in America.
See, if I we're to become super rich off selling a drug in America I wouldn't really give two shits that it was also saving lives in other countries that couldn't have afforded to buy it anyway.
Scenario 1: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries don't make generic versions of it and millions of people suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Scenario 2: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries do make a Generic version and millions of people don't suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Neither scenario gets me anything extra. One of them reduces suffering in the world.
It's about rights in your property. Like I said before, just because your property is stolen for a noble purpose doesn't mean that its ok. Why did the baker deserve to lose his bread just because Jean Val Jean's family was starving? I think the better approach in these situations is selling on a discounted basis to the governments of these poor countries.
Yes I'm well aware you value calling dibs more than human life.
That's not what it is at all. I value rights in property, and if I have a property right, then it doesn't matter what your claim is to my property. It is my right to decide if it is meritorious enough to warrant giving you use of my property.
Except those rights aren't unlimited, and are protected by laws and the monopoly on orce government has to enforce those laws.
If there were to be some form of easement, to use real property terms on your intellectual property - such as fair use doctrine - that is fully within the purview of the government.
Property rights aren't a natural right - you don't have an unlimited right do do anything with your property of any sort. Property rights are given, not simply enumerated.
I agree in principle, and this is plainly borne out in the way that our property rights are implemented (the government may purchase easements or seize your land in certain, limited circumstances and of course, we accept taxation). However, I think that when you don't adequately protect property rights, you run a real risk that people stop accepting the legitimacy of the government monopoly on force. In this case, where we are talking about a poor country stealing your formula and manufacturing a generic drug without the owner's permission, it seems to invite a high degree of self help, which may well come in the form of a refusal to market in the infringing country. I can easily imagi e more drastic measures like only permitting partial manufacturing outside of secure facilities and requiring patients to come to those secure facilities to receive the completed drug, or even future technology that renders a drug inert (or even toxic) until a final, confidential step is taken to finish processing the drug, and all of these types of features (much like DRM) would ultimately harm legitimate users. Better in my mind to do everything we can to respect these rights, even if the result is more suffering for a certain population of illegitimate users, than to promote this type of self help, which I think can become very dangerous very quickly.
If you told me that I could put in a lot of work and spend a lot of money for a shot at developing something, and if it works out, the largest countries in the world are going to just take my work without compensation, that would be pretty demoralizing to me, even if I knew I was also likely to make a fortune in America.
See, if I we're to become super rich off selling a drug in America I wouldn't really give two shits that it was also saving lives in other countries that couldn't have afforded to buy it anyway.
Scenario 1: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries don't make generic versions of it and millions of people suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Scenario 2: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries do make a Generic version and millions of people don't suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Neither scenario gets me anything extra. One of them reduces suffering in the world.
It's about rights in your property. Like I said before, just because your property is stolen for a noble purpose doesn't mean that its ok. Why did the baker deserve to lose his bread just because Jean Val Jean's family was starving? I think the better approach in these situations is selling on a discounted basis to the governments of these poor countries.
Yes I'm well aware you value calling dibs more than human life.
That's not what it is at all. I value rights in property, and if I have a property right, then it doesn't matter what your claim is to my property. It is my right to decide if it is meritorious enough to warrant giving you use of my property.
Except those rights aren't unlimited, and are protected by laws and the monopoly on orce government has to enforce those laws.
If there were to be some form of easement, to use real property terms on your intellectual property - such as fair use doctrine - that is fully within the purview of the government.
Property rights aren't a natural right - you don't have an unlimited right do do anything with your property of any sort. Property rights are given, not simply enumerated.
I agree in principle, and this is plainly borne out in the way that our property rights are implemented (the government may purchase easements or seize your land in certain, limited circumstances and of course, we accept taxation). However, I think that when you don't adequately protect property rights, you run a real risk that people stop accepting the legitimacy of the government monopoly on force. In this case, where we are talking about a poor country stealing your formula and manufacturing a generic drug without the owner's permission, it seems to invite a high degree of self help, which may well come in the form of a refusal to market in the infringing country. I can easily imagi e more drastic measures like only permitting partial manufacturing outside of secure facilities and requiring patients to come to those secure facilities to receive the completed drug, or even future technology that renders a drug inert (or even toxic) until a final, confidential step is taken to finish processing the drug, and all of these types of features (much like DRM) would ultimately harm legitimate users. Better in my mind to do everything we can to respect these rights, even if the result is more suffering for a certain population of illegitimate users, than to promote this type of self help, which I think can become very dangerous very quickly.
That doesn't really work, because that's not how drugs work. You can't DRM the final working molecule, and that is what poor nations will be using to heal their ill. It's really a case where the IP holder needs to play ball in a serious way, because there is not much incentive for a poor nation with excellent chemists to not simply tell them to fuck off and cure their populace.
IP rights are illusionary. They only exist when both sides agree to them, and with two sovereign nations, that can be tricky. America's history is absolutely rife with ignoring IP rights wholesale. It is, in many cases, the smart position to take.
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If you told me that I could put in a lot of work and spend a lot of money for a shot at developing something, and if it works out, the largest countries in the world are going to just take my work without compensation, that would be pretty demoralizing to me, even if I knew I was also likely to make a fortune in America.
See, if I we're to become super rich off selling a drug in America I wouldn't really give two shits that it was also saving lives in other countries that couldn't have afforded to buy it anyway.
Scenario 1: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries don't make generic versions of it and millions of people suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Scenario 2: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries do make a Generic version and millions of people don't suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Neither scenario gets me anything extra. One of them reduces suffering in the world.
It's about rights in your property. Like I said before, just because your property is stolen for a noble purpose doesn't mean that its ok. Why did the baker deserve to lose his bread just because Jean Val Jean's family was starving? I think the better approach in these situations is selling on a discounted basis to the governments of these poor countries.
Yes I'm well aware you value calling dibs more than human life.
That's not what it is at all. I value rights in property, and if I have a property right, then it doesn't matter what your claim is to my property. It is my right to decide if it is meritorious enough to warrant giving you use of my property.
Except those rights aren't unlimited, and are protected by laws and the monopoly on orce government has to enforce those laws.
If there were to be some form of easement, to use real property terms on your intellectual property - such as fair use doctrine - that is fully within the purview of the government.
Property rights aren't a natural right - you don't have an unlimited right do do anything with your property of any sort. Property rights are given, not simply enumerated.
I agree in principle, and this is plainly borne out in the way that our property rights are implemented (the government may purchase easements or seize your land in certain, limited circumstances and of course, we accept taxation). However, I think that when you don't adequately protect property rights, you run a real risk that people stop accepting the legitimacy of the government monopoly on force. In this case, where we are talking about a poor country stealing your formula and manufacturing a generic drug without the owner's permission, it seems to invite a high degree of self help, which may well come in the form of a refusal to market in the infringing country. I can easily imagi e more drastic measures like only permitting partial manufacturing outside of secure facilities and requiring patients to come to those secure facilities to receive the completed drug, or even future technology that renders a drug inert (or even toxic) until a final, confidential step is taken to finish processing the drug, and all of these types of features (much like DRM) would ultimately harm legitimate users. Better in my mind to do everything we can to respect these rights, even if the result is more suffering for a certain population of illegitimate users, than to promote this type of self help, which I think can become very dangerous very quickly.
That doesn't really work, because that's not how drugs work. You can't DRM the final working molecule, and that is what poor nations will be using to heal their ill. It's really a case where the IP holder needs to play ball in a serious way, because there is not much incentive for a poor nation with excellent chemists to not simply tell them to fuck off and cure their populace.
IP rights are illusionary. They only exist when both sides agree to them, and with two sovereign nations, that can be tricky. America's history is absolutely rife with ignoring IP rights wholesale. It is, in many cases, the smart position to take.
Well, I suppose that if the theft is rampant enough, economic or even military sanctions could be leveled against the country by countries which profit from such copyrights. I'm not saying that I think this is likely, or that they should do so, but I don't think they would be in the wrong if they did. Not feasible against India or China, but maybe a small nation in Africa or South America.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
If you told me that I could put in a lot of work and spend a lot of money for a shot at developing something, and if it works out, the largest countries in the world are going to just take my work without compensation, that would be pretty demoralizing to me, even if I knew I was also likely to make a fortune in America.
See, if I we're to become super rich off selling a drug in America I wouldn't really give two shits that it was also saving lives in other countries that couldn't have afforded to buy it anyway.
Scenario 1: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries don't make generic versions of it and millions of people suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Scenario 2: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries do make a Generic version and millions of people don't suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Neither scenario gets me anything extra. One of them reduces suffering in the world.
It's about rights in your property. Like I said before, just because your property is stolen for a noble purpose doesn't mean that its ok. Why did the baker deserve to lose his bread just because Jean Val Jean's family was starving? I think the better approach in these situations is selling on a discounted basis to the governments of these poor countries.
Yes I'm well aware you value calling dibs more than human life.
That's not what it is at all. I value rights in property, and if I have a property right, then it doesn't matter what your claim is to my property. It is my right to decide if it is meritorious enough to warrant giving you use of my property.
Except those rights aren't unlimited, and are protected by laws and the monopoly on orce government has to enforce those laws.
If there were to be some form of easement, to use real property terms on your intellectual property - such as fair use doctrine - that is fully within the purview of the government.
Property rights aren't a natural right - you don't have an unlimited right do do anything with your property of any sort. Property rights are given, not simply enumerated.
I agree in principle, and this is plainly borne out in the way that our property rights are implemented (the government may purchase easements or seize your land in certain, limited circumstances and of course, we accept taxation). However, I think that when you don't adequately protect property rights, you run a real risk that people stop accepting the legitimacy of the government monopoly on force. In this case, where we are talking about a poor country stealing your formula and manufacturing a generic drug without the owner's permission, it seems to invite a high degree of self help, which may well come in the form of a refusal to market in the infringing country. I can easily imagi e more drastic measures like only permitting partial manufacturing outside of secure facilities and requiring patients to come to those secure facilities to receive the completed drug, or even future technology that renders a drug inert (or even toxic) until a final, confidential step is taken to finish processing the drug, and all of these types of features (much like DRM) would ultimately harm legitimate users. Better in my mind to do everything we can to respect these rights, even if the result is more suffering for a certain population of illegitimate users, than to promote this type of self help, which I think can become very dangerous very quickly.
That doesn't really work, because that's not how drugs work. You can't DRM the final working molecule, and that is what poor nations will be using to heal their ill. It's really a case where the IP holder needs to play ball in a serious way, because there is not much incentive for a poor nation with excellent chemists to not simply tell them to fuck off and cure their populace.
IP rights are illusionary. They only exist when both sides agree to them, and with two sovereign nations, that can be tricky. America's history is absolutely rife with ignoring IP rights wholesale. It is, in many cases, the smart position to take.
Well, I suppose that if the theft is rampant enough, economic or even military sanctions could be leveled against the country by countries which profit from such copyrights. I'm not saying that I think this is likely, or that they should do so, but I don't think they would be in the wrong if they did. Not feasible against India or China, but maybe a small nation in Africa or South America.
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
It doesn't strike you as absurd to spend lives and shitloads money chasing a comparatively insignificant number of dollars?
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
There are better reasons to engage in warfare with another country than over a corporation's IP. If it is that important to the company they can hire mercenaries themselves, not the US military or CIA, to punish the violators. America isn't their bitch to do as they please. That said, I'd disapprove of them doing that.
Well this isn't Shadowrun. Plus, private armies are even more expensive and have the nice little bonus of making everyone involved a terrorist by the modern definition
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
It doesn't strike you as absurd to spend lives and shitloads money chasing a comparatively insignificant number of dollars?
It isn't just about money. It's about rights, treaties and laws. If the use of force (thereby giving credibility to the threat of the use of force) is what it takes, then so be it. It's one of the many problems with national relations (there is no effective arbiter to resolve these types of problems).
You have no rights unless granted by a treaty, and where there is one a breach is typically not going to be considered sufficient cause for war. In the 1800s, sure, but not so much today
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
It doesn't strike you as absurd to spend lives and shitloads money chasing a comparatively insignificant number of dollars?
It isn't just about money. It's about rights, treaties and laws. If the use of force (thereby giving credibility to the threat of the use of force) is what it takes, then so be it. It's one of the many problems with national relations (there is no effective arbiter to resolve these types of problems).
So what? What good is accomplished by wasting lives in pursuit of the violation of treaties that aren't super important, don't cost a ton and will be adhered to the second the violator becomes wealthy enough to be worth any money?
You have no rights unless granted by a treaty, and where there is one a breach is typically not going to be considered sufficient cause for war. In the 1800s, sure, but not so much today
Plus, what are you going to do after you invade?
I guess you arrest the people copying the drugs and then leave. It isn't perfect, and obviously you try economic sanctions first, but the fundamental problem is that we make treaties with countries and then they flaunt their violations and there is no world government that can intervene effectively.
You accept piracy as a cost of business in China or India (where they literally pirate cars) but Chad? Mali? These aren't countries that offer us any advantages which justify the theft, as far as I am aware.
To be clear, this is not "SKFM thinks we should go to war over corporate profits." I just think that there is a general problem with relationships between sovreigns in the modern world, and IP infringement is just one way those problems manifest. If there is no other effective solution, I just don't think that we should throw our hands up and say that the poor nations stealing from the citizens of rich countries is some sort of intractable problem with no solution.
The cost of violently enforcing IP law on other states (cause that's what it would take) is not even close to being worth the gain.
You don't think that a trade embargo and withholding of all foreign aid could get a country to stop? I mean, that isn't practical for China or India (but this problem is probably intractable in those cases anyway) but for countries that we give much more in aid than we get back from them in trade relationships or other relationships? I would like to think we could win in at least some of these cases based on economic sanctions alone.
The cost of violently enforcing IP law on other states (cause that's what it would take) is not even close to being worth the gain.
You don't think that a trade embargo and withholding of all foreign aid could get a country to stop? I mean, that isn't practical for China or India (but this problem is probably intractable in those cases anyway) but for countries that we give much more in aid than we get back from them in trade relationships or other relationships? I would like to think we could win in at least some of these cases based on economic sanctions alone.
There's to little to gain politically for that. It only escalates tensions which would fray the alliance or treaties further. Worst case scenario - it becomes a hot war. Over IP rights. Good luck selling that to the public.
edit: Winning comes with a cost America can't pay. We're still recovering from an economic implosion, unemployment is still high, the wealthy aren't pitching in to help to get he country on track and the military has been treated like shit for years by Dubya. Assuming you do win, then what? You expect the military to be there indefinitely or create an Iraq situation? What if its several countries simultaneously? Do you expect America to take them all on at once and become its occupation force? What if America gets into a large scale war that's needed - like Afghanistan was? So many reasons why this is bad logic. Any countries we do this too will no longer be in the labor business for big business. That'll effect their bottom line further. They'll have to find other ways to exploit sweatshops and child labor.
The cost of violently enforcing IP law on other states (cause that's what it would take) is not even close to being worth the gain.
You don't think that a trade embargo and withholding of all foreign aid could get a country to stop? I mean, that isn't practical for China or India (but this problem is probably intractable in those cases anyway) but for countries that we give much more in aid than we get back from them in trade relationships or other relationships? I would like to think we could win in at least some of these cases based on economic sanctions alone.
Maybe we could do something about the many problems people face in the developing world like lack of clean drinking water and death from lack of access to even minimal medicine in some places
or you know we could launch an invasion of Khazakstan because someone pirated The Office
You have no rights unless granted by a treaty, and where there is one a breach is typically not going to be considered sufficient cause for war. In the 1800s, sure, but not so much today
Plus, what are you going to do after you invade?
I guess you arrest the people copying the drugs and then leave. It isn't perfect, and obviously you try economic sanctions first, but the fundamental problem is that we make treaties with countries and then they flaunt their violations and there is no world government that can intervene effectively.
You accept piracy as a cost of business in China or India (where they literally pirate cars) but Chad? Mali? These aren't countries that offer us any advantages which justify the theft, as far as I am aware.
To be clear, this is not "SKFM thinks we should go to war over corporate profits." I just think that there is a general problem with relationships between sovreigns in the modern world, and IP infringement is just one way those problems manifest. If there is no other effective solution, I just don't think that we should throw our hands up and say that the poor nations stealing from the citizens of rich countries is some sort of intractable problem with no solution.
Would there even be justification for the arrests? As a rule, US law doesn't apply to non-nationals outside the US (for which we are eternally thankful), so they would only be guilty of at most a trade treaty violation. Except I'm not even sure individuals can be considered to have violated international treaties of this kind, and in any case a country has final jurisdiction over its nationals on its own soil, so it would be incumbent on the state to perform the arrests
There's also a major image problem. Modern America has always couched its military actions as either defending itself or PROTECTING FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY or humanitarian intervention with the motivation of "making the world a better place." By nakedly serving the interests of IP law of a US corporation that's a massive shift in attitude. Not only would there be a huge international backlash, but I suspect there would be massive recruitment problems for the military (because seriously, who would sign up to go fight a war for Pfizer's drug patents?)
this is the first time I've honestly heard someone say that fighting piracy (other than the sea faring kind) should escalate to killing people if that's what it takes
this is the first time I've honestly heard someone say that fighting piracy (other than the sea faring kind) should escalate to killing people if that's what it takes
That's our Spacekungfuman!
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I'm not being a hawk here. I think sanctions are probably enough. If economic sanctions did not work (either because the country doesn't care or they can't effectively police their own country) then I suspect that we could convince them to let us run some sort of action inside the country like we do now with drones. An all out war is hard to fathom, but the main reason for that to be honest is that it is now unacceptable to actually conquer somewhere, so you will always end up with an Afghanistan/Iraq debacle.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Spacekungfuman, when you say military action, do you mean killing people? Because a lot of folks jumped to that conclusion.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I'm not being a hawk here. I think sanctions are probably enough. If economic sanctions did not work (either because the country doesn't care or they can't effectively police their own country) then I suspect that we could convince them to let us run some sort of action inside the country like we do now with drones. An all out war is hard to fathom, but the main reason for that to be honest is that it is now unacceptable to actually conquer somewhere, so you will always end up with an Afghanistan/Iraq debacle.
Okay, economic sanctions. US only because the world probably won't go along with it. So you cut aid. From here the two countries you picked aren't even on the list so the aid is < 300 million, a drop in the bucket, but far less than it would cost them to just ignore it and keep on trucking. Mali has a population of 15 million, so the total amount of aid is less than $30/person anyway, so all they need is to give everyone one cut rate drug dose and they're still ahead
Spacekungfuman, when you say military action, do you mean killing people? Because a lot of folks jumped to that conclusion.
Do militaries do anything else? It's not like this is disaster relief, they'd be there to kill, or at least infiltrate, extract and kill anyone who gets in their way
If you told me that I could put in a lot of work and spend a lot of money for a shot at developing something, and if it works out, the largest countries in the world are going to just take my work without compensation, that would be pretty demoralizing to me, even if I knew I was also likely to make a fortune in America.
See, if I we're to become super rich off selling a drug in America I wouldn't really give two shits that it was also saving lives in other countries that couldn't have afforded to buy it anyway.
Scenario 1: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries don't make generic versions of it and millions of people suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Scenario 2: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries do make a Generic version and millions of people don't suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Neither scenario gets me anything extra. One of them reduces suffering in the world.
It's about rights in your property. Like I said before, just because your property is stolen for a noble purpose doesn't mean that its ok. Why did the baker deserve to lose his bread just because Jean Val Jean's family was starving? I think the better approach in these situations is selling on a discounted basis to the governments of these poor countries.
Yes I'm well aware you value calling dibs more than human life.
That's not what it is at all. I value rights in property, and if I have a property right, then it doesn't matter what your claim is to my property. It is my right to decide if it is meritorious enough to warrant giving you use of my property.
Except those rights aren't unlimited, and are protected by laws and the monopoly on orce government has to enforce those laws.
If there were to be some form of easement, to use real property terms on your intellectual property - such as fair use doctrine - that is fully within the purview of the government.
Property rights aren't a natural right - you don't have an unlimited right do do anything with your property of any sort. Property rights are given, not simply enumerated.
I agree in principle, and this is plainly borne out in the way that our property rights are implemented (the government may purchase easements or seize your land in certain, limited circumstances and of course, we accept taxation). However, I think that when you don't adequately protect property rights, you run a real risk that people stop accepting the legitimacy of the government monopoly on force. In this case, where we are talking about a poor country stealing your formula and manufacturing a generic drug without the owner's permission, it seems to invite a high degree of self help, which may well come in the form of a refusal to market in the infringing country. I can easily imagi e more drastic measures like only permitting partial manufacturing outside of secure facilities and requiring patients to come to those secure facilities to receive the completed drug, or even future technology that renders a drug inert (or even toxic) until a final, confidential step is taken to finish processing the drug, and all of these types of features (much like DRM) would ultimately harm legitimate users. Better in my mind to do everything we can to respect these rights, even if the result is more suffering for a certain population of illegitimate users, than to promote this type of self help, which I think can become very dangerous very quickly.
That doesn't really work, because that's not how drugs work. You can't DRM the final working molecule, and that is what poor nations will be using to heal their ill. It's really a case where the IP holder needs to play ball in a serious way, because there is not much incentive for a poor nation with excellent chemists to not simply tell them to fuck off and cure their populace.
IP rights are illusionary. They only exist when both sides agree to them, and with two sovereign nations, that can be tricky. America's history is absolutely rife with ignoring IP rights wholesale. It is, in many cases, the smart position to take.
ALL property rights are illusionary. If a farmer is letting land lie fallow, can I just plant some seeds and do my own harvesting? If someone leaves their music device on their desk while they're out for an hour or two, can I just grab it and listen to some tunes? How about if they're off on leave, can I take it home with me too as long as I return it fully-charged? If you go on holiday and leave a spare key under the mat, can I come in and sleep in your bed since you're not using it?
In all these cases there is nothing physically stopping me from doing it - and in some (like the music device one) there may not be any harm or cost involved to those who have their property used without permission. And that's just the ones done without the property owner's knowledge. What's stopping me picking up your phone and walking off right in front of you? Especially if you're on your own and I've got a bunch of big beefy friends. Property rights only exist if I can back it up with the threat of force - usually the police.
The only thing stopping Bangladesh ignoring the IP for a medicine, or confiscating tourists' phones for resale when they enter the country, is what people or governments are going to do to them in retaliation.
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
It doesn't strike you as absurd to spend lives and shitloads money chasing a comparatively insignificant number of dollars?
It isn't just about money. It's about rights, treaties and laws. If the use of force (thereby giving credibility to the threat of the use of force) is what it takes, then so be it. It's one of the many problems with national relations (there is no effective arbiter to resolve these types of problems).
WIPO
But here's the thing, treaties are not the divine right of man writ into law. If your interpretation/enforcement of a treaty is screwing a country over then they can go ahead and just end their agreement. Then they aren't actually violating your government backed claim to intellectual property since they do not recognize it in the first place. Seeing how intellectual property isn't actually property, and given the inherently interdependent nature of discovery I'm not really seeing how coercion, let alone force of arms, is justified.
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
It doesn't strike you as absurd to spend lives and shitloads money chasing a comparatively insignificant number of dollars?
It isn't just about money. It's about rights, treaties and laws. If the use of force (thereby giving credibility to the threat of the use of force) is what it takes, then so be it. It's one of the many problems with national relations (there is no effective arbiter to resolve these types of problems).
WIPO
But here's the thing, treaties are not the divine right of man writ into law. If your interpretation/enforcement of a treaty is screwing a country over then they can go ahead and just end their agreement. Then they aren't actually violating your government backed claim to intellectual property since they do not recognize it in the first place. Seeing how intellectual property isn't actually property, and given the inherently interdependent nature of discovery I'm not really seeing how coercion, let alone force of arms, is justified.
You realise you just advocated the abolishment of contract law, don't you?
Military action can mean a lot of things besides killing people. And here I thought the Benghazi conspiracists had a cartoonish view of the military.
When you're sending in a military taskforce (along with everything they need--planes, transports, supplies, support workers) to somehow stop people from manufacturing, programming and distributing commercial goods, presumably by arrest, yeah, that would mostly mean killing the second the rather upset nationals of the country in question declined cooperation.
Unless the military is painstakingly going to arrest every person they find related. Which they're not, because it is directly contrary to the function of a modern military force. And if they did, people would probably still die unintentionally.
Military forces can also build things, offer specific services (usually security or medical related), or demolish things (in a nonviolent, pre-agreed manner, like derelict buildings). A army concerned with enforcing IP would do none of those things. Frankly, I think SKFM meant something tantamount to Interpol, with IP violators playing the part of Arsene Lunpin.
I'm not being a hawk here. I think sanctions are probably enough. If economic sanctions did not work (either because the country doesn't care or they can't effectively police their own country) then I suspect that we could convince them to let us run some sort of action inside the country like we do now with drones. An all out war is hard to fathom, but the main reason for that to be honest is that it is now unacceptable to actually conquer somewhere, so you will always end up with an Afghanistan/Iraq debacle.
Convince who?
"Yo Brazilian president you know those citizens of yours who are saving the lives of other citizens with cheap drugs American companies won't sell or license to you on the cheap? Yeah we want to bomb them. You're cool with Americans killing Brazilians saving other Brazilians, yeah?"
It takes a special kind of weird to imagine the 'unfairness' of IP theft being worth killing people over, but the unfairness of being born in a poor country and needing medical treatment that you cannot afford is not even worth mentioning.
And when I say 'weird' I mean ''need to put forth increasingly extreme and shocking points of view for attention'.
Hahahahaha you're advocating wars to enforce American IP law?
Jesus Christ I hope you'll be first in line to die for the glory of Apple
This is what it comes down to. SKFM, if you're not willing to pick up a gun and march into Chad or wherever to enforce apples claim to the iphone, you have no right to expect other people to. Which I suspect you do.
You have no rights unless granted by a treaty, and where there is one a breach is typically not going to be considered sufficient cause for war. In the 1800s, sure, but not so much today
Plus, what are you going to do after you invade?
I guess you arrest the people copying the drugs and then leave. It isn't perfect, and obviously you try economic sanctions first, but the fundamental problem is that we make treaties with countries and then they flaunt their violations and there is no world government that can intervene effectively.
You accept piracy as a cost of business in China or India (where they literally pirate cars) but Chad? Mali? These aren't countries that offer us any advantages which justify the theft, as far as I am aware.
To be clear, this is not "SKFM thinks we should go to war over corporate profits." I just think that there is a general problem with relationships between sovreigns in the modern world, and IP infringement is just one way those problems manifest. If there is no other effective solution, I just don't think that we should throw our hands up and say that the poor nations stealing from the citizens of rich countries is some sort of intractable problem with no solution.
What.
I don't believe in universal human rights. I believe the only rights we have are those we can enforce against the government, which are essentially pools of safety from the government's monopoly on the lawful use of force. So outsiders do not have any inherent rights w/r/t foreign governments, unless said government has consented to those rights by treaty AND the government actually abides by said treaty. Many players in the international community disapprove of certain of [SOVERIGN ENTITY]'s actions, but the international community never sanctions [SOVERIGN ENTITY], and so even if those actions violate what look like rights acquired by treaty, they aren't violating true rights at all because the individuals have no recourse for the violation (only other countries do). Contrast this with the right to free speech in the US, which is actually enforceable against the government by an individual through the courts.
So when the subject is intellectual property rights, its not about the money, its about "rights, treaties and laws". When the subject is human rights or the Geneva Convention, its not about "true rights", and treaties aren't real laws anyway.
I feel your stance on the validity of international treaties is somewhat contradictory.
If economic sanctions did not work (either because the country doesn't care or they can't effectively police their own country) then I suspect that we could convince them to let us run some sort of action inside the country like we do now with drones.
I doubt he means to send in bees to steal their honey as recompense.
We don't have morasses of secret bilateral military and economic treaties any more. We have large multilateral international institutions. There is only one WTO, for instance. The very deliberate purpose of such institutions is to prevent SKFM's particular worries from escalating into another World War One, by making it easy to negotiate for a synchronized boycott of nations that violate economic treaties. Getting booted from the WTO means losing Most Favoured Nation status with all WTO members, for instance, not merely the country you provoked.
Obviously such measures are flexible in the face of superpower(s), but I hope it is obvious why calling for the re-introduction of gunboat diplomacy to the world system is horrific. We don't, in fact, want a world where countries feel obligated to project power on their own. Miscalculation and then deadly war is inevitable.
Posts
Not particularly.
But, if you did partial doses of roundup, say ld75, is there any reason to believe that over time you wouldn't start getting randomly mutated roundup-slightly better prepared soybeans?
Let's just go ahead and beg that question. I can breed for rr-ness. Now, if the patent covers the resistance, not the specific process for creating resistance, then it would not mater how I got to that point. Monsanto would still have cause. Otherwise, if I could get there through a novel pathway, it should be legal and I could sell my non-monsanto rr crops however I want.
Any idea which is the case? I don't feel getting into all those possible methods when that's really just a digression from the real topic, but I feel some likely exist.
Probably depends on how the respective plants achieve resistance. Roundup inhibits an enzyme used to make certain amino acids; RR plants use a different version of the enzyme. If your plants used a third version of said enzyme, they might decide the process was too similar. If you made a plant that somehow didnt absorb or broke down the toxin, I'd imagine they wouldn't be able to do much...other than bury you in pointless litigation and legal fees.
- John Stuart Mill
Edit: Basically what this comes down to is whether or not you isolate their strain or not. Its not exactly hard to test whether or not your RR strain is similar to theirs and "this isn't your product" is a perfect defense against patent infringement.
I agree in principle, and this is plainly borne out in the way that our property rights are implemented (the government may purchase easements or seize your land in certain, limited circumstances and of course, we accept taxation). However, I think that when you don't adequately protect property rights, you run a real risk that people stop accepting the legitimacy of the government monopoly on force. In this case, where we are talking about a poor country stealing your formula and manufacturing a generic drug without the owner's permission, it seems to invite a high degree of self help, which may well come in the form of a refusal to market in the infringing country. I can easily imagi e more drastic measures like only permitting partial manufacturing outside of secure facilities and requiring patients to come to those secure facilities to receive the completed drug, or even future technology that renders a drug inert (or even toxic) until a final, confidential step is taken to finish processing the drug, and all of these types of features (much like DRM) would ultimately harm legitimate users. Better in my mind to do everything we can to respect these rights, even if the result is more suffering for a certain population of illegitimate users, than to promote this type of self help, which I think can become very dangerous very quickly.
That doesn't really work, because that's not how drugs work. You can't DRM the final working molecule, and that is what poor nations will be using to heal their ill. It's really a case where the IP holder needs to play ball in a serious way, because there is not much incentive for a poor nation with excellent chemists to not simply tell them to fuck off and cure their populace.
IP rights are illusionary. They only exist when both sides agree to them, and with two sovereign nations, that can be tricky. America's history is absolutely rife with ignoring IP rights wholesale. It is, in many cases, the smart position to take.
Well, I suppose that if the theft is rampant enough, economic or even military sanctions could be leveled against the country by countries which profit from such copyrights. I'm not saying that I think this is likely, or that they should do so, but I don't think they would be in the wrong if they did. Not feasible against India or China, but maybe a small nation in Africa or South America.
wow
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
It doesn't strike you as absurd to spend lives and shitloads money chasing a comparatively insignificant number of dollars?
There are better reasons to engage in warfare with another country than over a corporation's IP. If it is that important to the company they can hire mercenaries themselves, not the US military or CIA, to punish the violators. America isn't their bitch to do as they please. That said, I'd disapprove of them doing that.
It isn't just about money. It's about rights, treaties and laws. If the use of force (thereby giving credibility to the threat of the use of force) is what it takes, then so be it. It's one of the many problems with national relations (there is no effective arbiter to resolve these types of problems).
Plus, what are you going to do after you invade?
So what? What good is accomplished by wasting lives in pursuit of the violation of treaties that aren't super important, don't cost a ton and will be adhered to the second the violator becomes wealthy enough to be worth any money?
if a chinese citizen is upper class he or she would probably have an iPhone than an iPhun anyway and just pay the extra
I guess you arrest the people copying the drugs and then leave. It isn't perfect, and obviously you try economic sanctions first, but the fundamental problem is that we make treaties with countries and then they flaunt their violations and there is no world government that can intervene effectively.
You accept piracy as a cost of business in China or India (where they literally pirate cars) but Chad? Mali? These aren't countries that offer us any advantages which justify the theft, as far as I am aware.
To be clear, this is not "SKFM thinks we should go to war over corporate profits." I just think that there is a general problem with relationships between sovreigns in the modern world, and IP infringement is just one way those problems manifest. If there is no other effective solution, I just don't think that we should throw our hands up and say that the poor nations stealing from the citizens of rich countries is some sort of intractable problem with no solution.
The cost of violently enforcing IP law on other states (cause that's what it would take) is not even close to being worth the gain.
Jesus Christ I hope you'll be first in line to die for the glory of Apple
You don't think that a trade embargo and withholding of all foreign aid could get a country to stop? I mean, that isn't practical for China or India (but this problem is probably intractable in those cases anyway) but for countries that we give much more in aid than we get back from them in trade relationships or other relationships? I would like to think we could win in at least some of these cases based on economic sanctions alone.
There's to little to gain politically for that. It only escalates tensions which would fray the alliance or treaties further. Worst case scenario - it becomes a hot war. Over IP rights. Good luck selling that to the public.
edit: Winning comes with a cost America can't pay. We're still recovering from an economic implosion, unemployment is still high, the wealthy aren't pitching in to help to get he country on track and the military has been treated like shit for years by Dubya. Assuming you do win, then what? You expect the military to be there indefinitely or create an Iraq situation? What if its several countries simultaneously? Do you expect America to take them all on at once and become its occupation force? What if America gets into a large scale war that's needed - like Afghanistan was? So many reasons why this is bad logic. Any countries we do this too will no longer be in the labor business for big business. That'll effect their bottom line further. They'll have to find other ways to exploit sweatshops and child labor.
Maybe we could do something about the many problems people face in the developing world like lack of clean drinking water and death from lack of access to even minimal medicine in some places
or you know we could launch an invasion of Khazakstan because someone pirated The Office
Would there even be justification for the arrests? As a rule, US law doesn't apply to non-nationals outside the US (for which we are eternally thankful), so they would only be guilty of at most a trade treaty violation. Except I'm not even sure individuals can be considered to have violated international treaties of this kind, and in any case a country has final jurisdiction over its nationals on its own soil, so it would be incumbent on the state to perform the arrests
There's also a major image problem. Modern America has always couched its military actions as either defending itself or PROTECTING FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY or humanitarian intervention with the motivation of "making the world a better place." By nakedly serving the interests of IP law of a US corporation that's a massive shift in attitude. Not only would there be a huge international backlash, but I suspect there would be massive recruitment problems for the military (because seriously, who would sign up to go fight a war for Pfizer's drug patents?)
That's our Spacekungfuman!
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Okay, economic sanctions. US only because the world probably won't go along with it. So you cut aid. From here the two countries you picked aren't even on the list so the aid is < 300 million, a drop in the bucket, but far less than it would cost them to just ignore it and keep on trucking. Mali has a population of 15 million, so the total amount of aid is less than $30/person anyway, so all they need is to give everyone one cut rate drug dose and they're still ahead
Do militaries do anything else? It's not like this is disaster relief, they'd be there to kill, or at least infiltrate, extract and kill anyone who gets in their way
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
To be fair we're going off of Space's view in how to use the military to protect corporate IP's. He has some...strange ideas.
ALL property rights are illusionary. If a farmer is letting land lie fallow, can I just plant some seeds and do my own harvesting? If someone leaves their music device on their desk while they're out for an hour or two, can I just grab it and listen to some tunes? How about if they're off on leave, can I take it home with me too as long as I return it fully-charged? If you go on holiday and leave a spare key under the mat, can I come in and sleep in your bed since you're not using it?
In all these cases there is nothing physically stopping me from doing it - and in some (like the music device one) there may not be any harm or cost involved to those who have their property used without permission. And that's just the ones done without the property owner's knowledge. What's stopping me picking up your phone and walking off right in front of you? Especially if you're on your own and I've got a bunch of big beefy friends. Property rights only exist if I can back it up with the threat of force - usually the police.
The only thing stopping Bangladesh ignoring the IP for a medicine, or confiscating tourists' phones for resale when they enter the country, is what people or governments are going to do to them in retaliation.
WIPO
But here's the thing, treaties are not the divine right of man writ into law. If your interpretation/enforcement of a treaty is screwing a country over then they can go ahead and just end their agreement. Then they aren't actually violating your government backed claim to intellectual property since they do not recognize it in the first place. Seeing how intellectual property isn't actually property, and given the inherently interdependent nature of discovery I'm not really seeing how coercion, let alone force of arms, is justified.
You realise you just advocated the abolishment of contract law, don't you?
When you're sending in a military taskforce (along with everything they need--planes, transports, supplies, support workers) to somehow stop people from manufacturing, programming and distributing commercial goods, presumably by arrest, yeah, that would mostly mean killing the second the rather upset nationals of the country in question declined cooperation.
Unless the military is painstakingly going to arrest every person they find related. Which they're not, because it is directly contrary to the function of a modern military force. And if they did, people would probably still die unintentionally.
Military forces can also build things, offer specific services (usually security or medical related), or demolish things (in a nonviolent, pre-agreed manner, like derelict buildings). A army concerned with enforcing IP would do none of those things. Frankly, I think SKFM meant something tantamount to Interpol, with IP violators playing the part of Arsene Lunpin.
Convince who?
"Yo Brazilian president you know those citizens of yours who are saving the lives of other citizens with cheap drugs American companies won't sell or license to you on the cheap? Yeah we want to bomb them. You're cool with Americans killing Brazilians saving other Brazilians, yeah?"
And when I say 'weird' I mean ''need to put forth increasingly extreme and shocking points of view for attention'.
This is what it comes down to. SKFM, if you're not willing to pick up a gun and march into Chad or wherever to enforce apples claim to the iphone, you have no right to expect other people to. Which I suspect you do.
I feel your stance on the validity of international treaties is somewhat contradictory.
I doubt he means to send in bees to steal their honey as recompense.
We don't have morasses of secret bilateral military and economic treaties any more. We have large multilateral international institutions. There is only one WTO, for instance. The very deliberate purpose of such institutions is to prevent SKFM's particular worries from escalating into another World War One, by making it easy to negotiate for a synchronized boycott of nations that violate economic treaties. Getting booted from the WTO means losing Most Favoured Nation status with all WTO members, for instance, not merely the country you provoked.
Obviously such measures are flexible in the face of superpower(s), but I hope it is obvious why calling for the re-introduction of gunboat diplomacy to the world system is horrific. We don't, in fact, want a world where countries feel obligated to project power on their own. Miscalculation and then deadly war is inevitable.