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Wipout Essay Results 246

Posted by michael from the a-for-effort dept.
chrestomanci writes "The Register is reporting on the results of a counter-essay contest run by wipout.net (an international organisation that seeks to limit the reach of the WIPO and intellectual property rights in general) against the WIPO's own essay contest, both with the title "What does intellectual property mean to you in your daily life?". A telling slogan reads: Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."
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Wipout Essay Results

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  • Today is World Intellectual Property day...
    What! Why didn't anyone tell me! I could have been planning a party!

    • Re: Wipout Essay Results (Score:5, Funny)

      by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @11:59PM (#3419836)
      " Today is World Intellectual Property day... What! Why didn't anyone tell me! I could have been planning a party!"

      We wanted to tell you, but you refused to sign the NDA.
      • You have broken the rules of the aforementioned NDA and must cease and desist telling people of this party. Slashdot must also delete all records of such a party.

        Our lawyers will be in contact with you. You better not have a copy of DeCSS when we search your house, you pompous ass.

  • Hmm (Score:2, Troll)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I dont belive the WTO goes around shooting aids victims.
    • Ok hows this: they have help but there holding it over their heads, out of reach, is that better. Their in action (putting profits over people) is causing deaths and pain. Would you really not give needed drugs to a child simply because their parent cannot afford it?

      • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @12:40AM (#3419894) Homepage Journal
        Ok hows this: Have you splurged on yourself lately. Maybe bought a new pair of shoes when the old pair would have got you around for a while longer. Or maybe eaten out when you could have eaten at home. You could have sent that money overseas to help buy that medicine. Did you put your own selfish greed and avarice over people - causing deaths and pain?

        It is a much more complex issue then you make it out to be and easy to center the problem on evil and heartless corporations.
        • The problem is that corporations may or may not be evil, but they have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits, and they also have a competitive pressure: if the cost of ethical behavior is too high, they suffer from the advantage obtained by the unethical behavior of their competititors.
  • http://www.wipout.net/essays/0216holt.htm
    This essay is pretty good, but suffers from some examples that aren't that interesting.

    Clearly the best is the Sri Lankan essay on medicines and Microsoft software license costs.
    http://www.wipout.net/essays/0314kumar.htm

    BTW, sorry about that FP stuff. CLearly we all suck...

  • You gotta wonder about wipout.net... (Score:3, Informative)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @10:07PM (#3419547)
    First thing I see after loading http://www.wipout.net [wipout.net] is
    This site looks best at 800x600. Netscape users please click here

    Under lynx, of course, all you see is an vast landscape of clickable (and un-ALT tagged) GIF's.

    They may be all for freedom of expression, but they haven't yet mastered freedom of browsing!

    • Someone explain to me how complaining about a site's lynx (or other text-mode browser) unfriendliness is unlike driving a Ford Model T on the freeway, and complaining that the freeway is built wrong because everyone is required to go fast.

      • Someone explain to me how complaining about a site's lynx (or other text-mode browser) unfriendliness is unlike driving a Ford Model T on the freeway,

        Maybe you don't understand what WIPOUT is about, so you don't see the irony: WIPOUT nominally is against arbitrary restrictions by IP owners which remove or diminish the use and freedom of "little-guy" writers and readers. Yet they choose to publish their website in a form that requires you to use a proprietary browser, and which makes it nigh-impossible for a visually impaired person to use it.

  • Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Brian_Ellenberger ( 308720 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @10:19PM (#3419585)
    "Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."

    No, 2,500 AIDS victims pulled the trigger on themselves by making stupid decisions about sex.

    Then the drug companies come along to help and they are attacked by bad Marxist panderings like this.

    Guess what, AIDS is an extremely tough disease and extremely expensive to fight. Extremely expensive. And the government's contributions don't even come close to the cost of developing AIDS drugs. And for every drug and research project that succeeds, many many more fail.

    If the drug companies were really in some big capitalist consipracy to screw over the world they wouldn't have picked AIDS (a preventable disease) to do it with. They would be screwing you over with the polio and smallpox. Instead, the evil drug companies pretty much eliminated those diseases from the planet.

    Brian Ellenberger
    • No, 2,500 AIDS victims died because they didn't have the proper education to make informed choices.

      Guess what, those people aren't dumber than you. I'm pretty sure that plenty of those 2,500 victims are smarter than you and me.

      • Guess what, those people aren't dumber than you. I'm pretty sure that plenty of those 2,500 victims are smarter than you and me.

        And most of them still made decisions that put them at risk for AIDS, and they're suffering for it.

        I'm all for curing the damn disease, and I have nothing but sympathy and sorrow for those who got it through no fault of their own--but I just can't bring myself to feel pity for people who engage in loose sex with AIDS out there, especially in countries where it's rampant.

        If there's ever been a solid medical reason for lifetime monogamy, it's AIDS. :( I don't care if you're African, American, Gay, Straight, or whatnot--when an uncurable disease is trasmitted primarily through sex, keeping your pants on until you make a lifetime commitment seems like the best idea in the world.

        I hate to say it, but that's how I feel.
        • Just because you've decided on a lifetime commitment doesnt make you immune if your partner is or gets infected. The social issues and the percentages work against such a strategy being efficient in countries where AIDS runs rampant.

          Keeping your pants on permanently is about the only way you can be pretty sure. If you have that choice.

    • Re:Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by x-empt ( 127761 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @10:33PM (#3419629) Homepage
      No, 2,500 AIDS victims pulled the trigger on themselves by making stupid decisions about sex.

      Not true! Many AIDS victims are born with HIV because of their parent's decisions. Unprotected sex is a big cause of the spreading, but when you spread your spermies into a woman. She might get HIV, but since you are unprotected she will probably also end up with a baby.

      Also, my two cents: Anyone saying that AIDS is a disease that punishes gays is definately wrong. I think its just another reason not to be gay in San Francisco :)
      • You also have to make the distinction between "stupid decisions" - and "stupid mistakes" - very different IMO

        Also, where I live there is a really serious drug problem, and every day, several shops/people are robbed by junkies who use a bloody needle as their weapon - i.e. "gimme the cash or you're gonna have a very long, painful death and a fucking lonely one too."

        Then there are people who get into drunken fights, scuffle a bit and wind up with another persons blood in their cuts, etc... etc... You aren't always presented with a choice, some people are just unlucky. No pulling the trigger on themselves, just going through a normal day and having something unfortunate happen.
      • I'm sorry, but that's a strawman argument. The percentage of babies and children dying of AIDS is extremely small. And the gay comment is another strawman. I mentioned nothing about gays. AIDS is an equal opportunity killer of people who are stupid about sex.

        And finally the blame for the children's AIDS should go to the stupid parents and NOT the drug companies!

        Brian Ellenberger
        • In case of many women, it's a killer of people who trust their husbands. Or, in some parts of the world, of people who get transfusions. Or who get raped. But of course, in the sort of pluto-Calvinist world you inhabit, everyone is getting just what they deserve, right? Funny how people who are getting what they want tend to sustain that philosophy.

      • How many? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jcsehak ( 559709 )
        C'mon, I don't know the statistics, but I'm sure the vast majority of AIDS victims are not infants or blood transfusees (how d'ya like that word, spelling/grammar nazis?), they're people who've had promiscuous sex or used unclean drug paraphenelia. I have nothing but sympathy for anyone who contracts it, even it it was from a night with the goatse.cx man. Nobody deserves to die before their time. But the fact is, 99% of the time, AIDS is a preventable disease. I thank the original poster for his objectivity, especially in regards to the "evil drug corporations."

        Anyone saying that AIDS is a disease that punishes gays is definately wrong.

        Of course. Diseases don't punish people. They merely try to survive and reproduce, just like any other organism. But having sex with someone who's sexual history (and current status) you're not absolutely sure of is like sneaking up on a mother bear and her cubs-- no matter how uneducated you were about it, somewhere it should register that it could get you killed, and if you wind up dead, that definitely sucks, but don't play innocent with me, and don't critisize the government for not filling the pool when you jump in with your eyes closed.

        Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims.

        Besides, what's another two and a half people, in the grand scheme of things?
        • Do you realize that most likely all of these people didn't know what AIDS was when they contracted it or even now really willing to admit how? The culture there isn't quite the same as it is here and they haven't gone throught the "Safe Sex 80's" like we have in the United States. Of course its a preventalbe diesease but you have a culture to educate and that isn't free or easy either
          • Maybe you're right--I haven't been to Africa or gotten reliable statistics on it--but I have a hard time believing that all those Africans had no idea anything bad could happen to them as a result of having unprotected sex. STDs have been going on way before AIDS came around, and I can't imagine it's not widely known that sex without a condom can get you more than laid. A lot of the time, they *are* educated, but they ignore it. Take for example Fela Kuti, one of the most brilliant musicians EVER. He was warned by all sorts of people that his promiscuous sexual activites would get him in trouble, but he stubbornly believed that the condom was just a tool the white man used to rob the black man of some of his sexual pleasure. Guess what? He died of AIDS.
    • Dude, I'm callin' shenanigans on you. In sub-saharan Africa up to 20% of the population is infected with AIDS. Burundi is a good example, they have a 19% infection rate. It isn't as though they are being unsafe or overly promiscuous; there is no birth or disease control available to them, and furthermore, everybody has it, so avoiding it is rendered difficult.

      Yes, there IS a conspiracy of sorts. The conspiracy is that the pharmaceutical companies and their extremely powerful allies won't allow AIDS drugs to be manufactured overseas. Treatment is so expensive because the pharms. charge markups in excess of 1000% on the cost of manufacture. The conspiracy is that money is always weighed above human life in our country.
      • What is this communist tripe?

        There is no conspiracy. Anyone who wants any drug can get one. AZT, Aspirin, Heroin, you name it. You can get it anywhere. The question is, are you able to pay for it. I don't know anyone who sells drugs, whether the street dealer, Walgreens, or Bayer that will sell their drugs for free.

        Treatment may be expensive because of the pharmaceutical companies, but WITHOUT those very same companies you deplore these drugs would not even exist.

        Are you so foolish to think drug companies should develop drugs for free?? Who would by the equipment? Who would pay the researchers? You?

        Of course, your solution would be to mug every citizen in this country through taxation for the benefit of some barbarians in a foreign country.

        Instead of crying about human life and wanting to steal from me, why don't lazy buffoons like yourself go out and contribute something to society? Why don't YOU design that next aids vaccine and give it away for free.
        • Normally, I would explain to you how pharmaceutical companies realize this: that selling 50 prescriptions for 100 dollars to the 20% who can afford it at that rate is more profitable than selling 200 prescriptions for 10 dollars, even if the marginal cost is only 2 dollars. The power of the first world market steps on the power of the thirld world market. There's a huge market that simply can't afford the first world prices (we are talking about countries where the average daily wage is about a dollar.) The drug companies would make fewer profits by scaling to meet that market, and so they don't.

          But you don't actually care about the truth. I'm sure that your dimestore version of classical economics just can't account for such macroeconomic realities. You just want to justify business as usual. So I'm going to simply call you names. You are a blowhard and an ignorant prat.

      • "cost of manufacture" and "cost of development" are two different things. You can't just ignore the cost of research, the amortized costs of failed drug trials, and so forth.

        I'm not completely against circumventing traditional intellectual property laws in case like this, but if you don't provide a means for drug companies to profit from their research, or at least recoup their costs, then the drugs will never get developed in the first place. And frankly I think that people who make exaggerated statements like "1000% markup" don't seem to appreciate this fact.

        So fine, start giving away AZT for free. But since that isn't a cure, and you haven't provided for any drug company to spend the money that must be spent to develop one, don't go whining if those people still die.

        I'll grant you that there's an alternative: provide significant sums of money to major drug companies to perform research on such drugs, under the condition that they sell them at, say, only twice the cost of manufacture. But we're talking a truly large percentage of the R&D budgets of the major worldwide drug companies here. I'd be interested to see exactly how much that would be.
        • Yes, the solution is to take the pharmaceutical corps out of the loop. If they prove themselves unable to value life over profits, or are unable to develop a pricing structure that allows access to everyone, they have proven that they cannot live up to the responsibility they have.

          That means that governments have to go in and finance more of the medical research when it comes to matters of life and death. The pharmaceutical industry can do the Aspirins and the Viagra of the world so they dont have to deal with those ethical aspects of their buisness they have such a hard time with.

          Government financing might not be the absolute best solution, but with cooperation between countries the medical research funding could get larger than it is today (altho a large part is already government financed). And the final products would be more available than they are today.
    • You don't get AIDS by sex alone. It can be conveyed in numerous other ways. A cut, for example could be exposed to it via contaminated substances, etc.

    • Re:Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by God! Awful ( 181117 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @01:39AM (#3420032) Journal
      Slashdot Reader: This is so unfair. Starving children in Burundi are dying of AIDS because they can't afford the medicine. People in Westernized countries should pay for the cost of research because they can afford it.

      Some time later....

      Slashdot Reader: Guess what. I just bought this DVD for $2 from a website in Burundi, but the damn thing won't work in my player because of the regional encoding. Why should I have to pay $30 for a DVD when you can buy the exact same thing in Burundi for $2?

      -a
      • What really worries about the fact that the private sector has pretty much taken over the medical research business is that they have almost no incentive to develop vaccines and cures when selling treatment is so lucrative - and while it's difficult to accumulate hard data about this sort of thing, I do know enough people in the public health sector (including some who did time in places like Genentech) to have heard stories about research going to places that could provide maximum return, rather than maximum benefit. I support "cure bounties" provided to public research facilities to motivate the develop of cures.

        I'm really uncomfortable with "one size fits all" models of incentivizing innovation and distributing goods. What may make sense of consumer electronics may very make no sense for food and medicine.

        • I don't think there is no incentive to develop vaccines and cures when selling treatment is so lucrative. If you can develop a cure/vaccine that will supplant the existing treatment (by a different company) then you will succeed. What typically seems to happen is that a government will fund research at a university. The researchers will develop a cure/vaccine under the presumption that when they succeed, they will be able to spin off a company to commericalize the technique.

          -a
    • "They would be screwing you over with the polio and smallpox. Instead, the evil drug companies pretty much eliminated those diseases from the planet."

      Smallpox, I don't know about, but I can tell you about Polio. The vaccine was invented by Jonas Salk, who was working for an university, funded by non-profits. He refused to patent it.

      Drug companies today don't even have an incentive to create vaccines or cures -- treatments are much more profitable.
    • Ironic. Polio and smallpox vaccines were developed in academic settings (Dr. Salk at the University of Pittsburg) or hospitals (Albert Sabin at the Children's Hospital) or by independent researchers (Jenner and the smallpox vaccine.) None of them were developed by drug companies looking for a profit, because vaccines are less profitable than treatment.

  • Drugs Patents Do Make Sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geoffsmith ( 161376 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @10:22PM (#3419598) Homepage
    I'm not a huge fan of patents, but drug patents are one of the few types of patents that make sense. Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation. And the cost of innovation is often steep, it has always been much easier to ripoff someone's idea than develop it yourself. Often times, the inventor doesn't profit at all from his invention. (see Xerox->Apple->Windows)

    For pharamceutical companies, the cost to develop drugs is high, not just because of all the trial and error involved (although rational drug design does help), but because of all the FDA-mandated trials involved. The patent system, as far as I know, is the only system that has been developed to offset the costs of getting a drug FDA-approved.

    Its not like a software patent, where the costs of innovation are mostly pizza and Jolt. I would like to see a better system for compensating drugs companies for the money they put into getting a drug approved, but I have not seen one. Maybe instead granting drugs patents for a set number of years, we could grant them based on the time it takes to recoup the trial costs? At least then we could minimize the damage done by granting a monopoly on a life-saving substance.

    Websurfing: The Next Generation - StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]
    • I would like to see a system for drug patents that is 'the highest bid without going over' the relms of being reasonable.

      IOW, it would be cool if a special exception was made for drug patents that caps their limitations in a way that is still high enough to pay for R&D and a significant profit, but low enough that thousands of people aren't dying because the cost is too high.
      • Although remember also that thousands of people would die had there never been high enough motivation to develop these drugs in the first place. I'm actually thinking maybe extending the patent until *double* the trial costs are recouped would be a better idea. Breaking even is hardly a suitable reward for such an important discovery, and as much as we wish it weren't so, a lot of great things are invented solely for the money.

        Just looking at the advances that were achieved during scientific competitions (particularly in aviation) shows the power money has over scientific progress.

        Websurfing: The Next Generation - StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]
        • The problem with this is that 9 out of 10 drugs never make any money.

          I don't know. There may be problems with the current system, but the results are impressive. There's a reason that America leads the way in drug innovation, and I'm pretty sure it has something to do with those evils of capitalism.

          The Human Genome project, a multinational behemoth, was expected to take 15-25 years and cost serveral billion dollars.

          A single American company (Celera) did it in year and half for a few hundred million.

          -Brett
          • Correct, as far as you go.

            Celera used the HGP's data to augment their own - so their task was significantly smaller (and thus cheaper).

            Current drug development does not, actually, use DNA sequences - that's going to be something new. We've never had the compute power to fold that many protiens and see what happens - so we make a drug and test it to see what happens in reality.

            I take issue with holding patents until double R+D is made. There is simply no excuse for holding a patent that long, ESPECIALLY as we do move to more DNA based drugs. DNA should not be patentable at all (patents do not cover "discoveries of nature" or somesuch).

            Maybe drug patents should be more like old copyrights - last a couple of years per renewal (5 to 10, I'd prefer ~7) and are renewable a few times. Now, add the following catch: to renew the 1st time, there must be significant progress towards market-status; to renew the 2nd, the drug must actually be on the market, and to renew the 3rd, the drug's market price must have shown a decrease.

            Not set in stone (duh, it's a post on slashdot. ^_^), but that system would have the following advantages:
            1) There is a window for R+D cost recovery
            2) There is no possibility of a company squashing "virtual" competition by sitting on a patent.
            3) There is a requirement that price drop after some years on the market. Not a perfect solution to the aids victims, no, but IMHO closer to ideal. For the drugs like AIDS treatments, maybe the US or UN should fund a significant part of R+D, so the recovery is lower, so the drugs can have low caps set on their prices and the companies still make money.

            Anybody? (Moderators, if you feel like modding, that's cool too, though I'd certainly rather have a reply or two.)
          • True. After speaking with a couple of Nigerian doctors recently, I really understand. One was a intensive care surgeon working in the US, and he said "100% of my patients woud die if I were in Nigeria would die. 90% of my patients would die if I were in Europe. No medical system in the world even begins to compare."

            'nuff said.

    • yes but (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Edmund Blackadder ( 559735 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @10:34PM (#3419638)
      While the cost of development is high the cost of production is really low. Now when you have a bunch of people that wouldnt be able to pay for the drugs anyway why not just give them the drug at lower or no cost. Such cost differentiation is not unheard of. for example some drugs for pets are cheap, while the identical drugs for humans are expensive. Thats because people wouldnt pay the high costs of a drug for a pet.
      • You're right about pet medicine, however the purpose of that is still to maximize profit by minimizing consumer surplus. The same principle applies to movie theatres, where they charge less for seniors and children than for adults... even though they use up the same number of seats, and even when they could fill all the seats with higher-paying adults! Its sounds a little counter intuitive, but it does maximize the profits of the theatre.

        If a similar principle existed in the case of the AIDS drugs, the drug companies would use it to their advantage. In fact, there is another good example of consumer surplus that sounds similar to this case. Often in rural communities (and especially before massive regulation in the US), doctors would charge patients based on how much they could afford. Basically, the same kind of thing we'd all like our health care system to be now, except it happened all on its own with no state funds or regulation whatsoever. It would be interesting to know why that's not the case here.

        Consumer Surplus: it's your friend.

        Websurfing: The Next Generation - StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]
      • That's a good idea. But I'm not sure how it would be implemented in practice. The reason it works for pet drugs vs. human drugs is that most people don't realize that they could just take the pet drugs, so the consumers are differentiated. But there's not an obvious way to differentiate between those who can afford to pay and those who can't.

        Or, in all likelihood, the bigger problem is that it's not easy to prevent the people who can buy them cheap from reselling them to the people who are supposed to buy them for a lot - i.e., to stop a black market from forming. Sure, it seems like a good idea to charge the rich more for drugs than the poor, but what's to prevent the rich from simply buying their drugs from the poor or from doctors serving the poor? Then, instead of differentiating the market, the price of drugs has simply been reduced greatly, the drug companies make less money, and the incentive to make new drugs is decreased.

        I'm not saying it's not a good idea, just that it may be hard in practice.

        I'm actually fairly pleased at the current system of drug R&D. It's not perfect, but as others have pointed out, it has led to great advances in the last 50 years. Drug patents stink for the poor in need, but they also only last 20 years. Once they're up, everyone gains the benefits of that research for the rest of eternity.
        • But this problem gets solved all the time and without any official checks on income.

          The pets example was one. Nobody who can afford a drug will eat the version made for dogs no matter howe much cheaper it is, even if they know its the same stuff.

          So i dont compare african people with pets i will give another example. Banana Republic and old navy owned by the same corp (i think) have clothes of pretty much the same quality (with some differences in design) and fro very different prices. But do more well to do people "cheat" by buying old navy when they should be buying banana. Most dont. They actually want to buy the more expensive stuff in order to express their place in society.

          Now i think similar price differentiation can easily be achieved with aids drugs. If you put a large notice on the drug packaging that says "not approved by FDA" that will prevent many people that can afford the fda approved stuff from using it.

          But you can do much better. You have so much racism and class resentment working in your favor. So if you put a note on the drug that says "free aids drugs to be given to dirt poor africans, not approved by the fda, take it on your own risk" nobody will take this unless they have no choice and no way to afford the other stuff. Even the more well to do africans will take the expensive version. Of course the drugs will be of the same quality.

          I really dont mean to be offensive to anyone. Racism is a regretable reality, but in this situation it can really be used to provide some cheap drugs without risk for drug manufacturers of eroding the sales of their expensive brands.
      • While the cost of development is high the cost of production is really low. Now when you have a bunch of people that wouldnt be able to pay for the drugs anyway why not just give them the drug at lower or no cost. Such cost differentiation is not unheard of. for example some drugs for pets are cheap, while the identical drugs for humans are expensive. Thats because people wouldnt pay the high costs of a drug for a pet.
        Actually, the cost of production of a lot of drugs is fairly high (and I would bet the AIDS drugs fall into the very high category being a cocktail). And if they gave the drugs away or sold them at a reduced price, they would immediately be opening themselves up to a multitude of problems. First, how do you determine who get the drug for free? Is it just based on income? What about insurance? How do you stop people from defrauding the company? And there will be hundreds of lawsuits from people who are paying full price claiming they should get the discounted rate as well. Having 2 different pricing schemes for pets and humans is incredibly different (and incredibly easier to handle) than having 2 different pricing schemes based on income.
        • If the cost of producing drugs is so high - why when they come out of patent can they be produced by a different company for a tenth or even a hundredth of the previous cost? It's because companies factor in not only the cost of failed research and successful research (most drugs don't make it to market) but also a profit too.
      • While the cost of development is high the cost of production is really low. Now when you have a bunch of people that wouldnt be able to pay for the drugs anyway why not just give them the drug at lower or no cost. Such cost differentiation is not unheard of. for example some drugs for pets are cheap, while the identical drugs for humans are expensive. Thats because people wouldnt pay the high costs of a drug for a pet.

        So you are not disagreeing with drug patents (because if they didn't exist drug companies wouldn't have any incentive to research drugs or bring them to market as stated above), but you have a problem with people not being able to pay for the drugs that they need, right? It seems we already have a system in place for this (medicare and public hospitals etc). You can argue (probably pretty easily) that these systems are broken or do not work to their full potential, but your beef is not with drug patents.

      • So what? When you do the books, development and production are both costs. You still have to pay for both of them.

        However, I agree that we shouldn't allow economics to trump the moral value that says "if you can help somebody, you should".

        Simply declaring that some people should get the drug for free would help the patients, but it would screw the company and in the long run that screws the patients because the company... well... we know.

        So, what's my idea? How about replacing the fixed-duration patent with a different kind of bargain? Instead of a fixed duration, the company would instead be gauranteed a return on its investment. As soon as that return was achieved, the patent would expire.

        This would eliminate the problem of companies charging confiscatory prices because they want to squeeze in profit before the patent expires.

        This still wouldn't solve the problem of poor countries not being able to afford the drug. However, it would make obligations to sell at reduced prices in poor countries more palatable to the company. That's because when the company subsidizes the poor country, it also extends its monopoly in the rich country.

        For some drugs, the duration of the patent might actually be *shorter* under this system, since the company will be eager to earn its return as quickly as possible. There would still be some drugs that companies wouldn't want to develop, because it might take too long to earn the return (e.g., drugs to treat rare conditions that require lots of R&D) but we already have that problem, and reducing patent protection certainly won't solve that either.

      • The theory is not only that it defrays the cost of researching drugs but is an incentive to make them. They are patented because patents run out. The difference is a long term versus a short term, or an individual versus a society benefit. Yea it sucks if you're one of the poor people not able to afford medicine. In this case the government has a responsibility to society as a whole. If a few people are really hurt (maybe even die) for most people to get better then it will typically happen. It just so happens that in this case it is the poor getting screwed.

        The main assumtion that is fatally flawed in your argument is assuming that cost is irrelevent to desire to do research. That is simply not true. It is a "feel good" solution. Sometimes a few have to suffer for society to do better. What we have to do is decide when the cost of the few is so great that the benefits to society are not worth it. In the case of medicine (in the United States, I know absolutly nothing about other countries) If you can not afford the medicine there are govt programs to help, and making you eat a lot of vegall and ramen noodles is better than the drug company never makeing the drug in the first place.

        This argument is very similar to the one I hear sometimes about curing impotence but not cancer. The cure for impotence has put more money in drug companies research funds than any amount of donations to date. The assumtion is that there is and always will be X amount of resources to throw at the problems and there is not.
        And lastly cost of production being low is irrelevant. Lets say you spend 1 billion do develop a drug (not unheard of) and it costs a few dollars to produce (also not unheard of). Should you therefore sell it for a few dollars - no of course not you would be broke quite quickly. Prices drop over time (and are intially very expensive) not only because of cost of manufacturing decreasing but also because the cost of development is amortized across each sale. Plus you need to recoup costs quickly, especially if all your R&D efforts are extremely expensive.
      • The cost of developing the drugs isn't just cost of development. Even worse, the 20 year (IIRC) patent starts ticking when you enter testing with the FDA, which can take an ungodly amount of time testing the drug. You're not making dime one until the FDA approves it.

        After that, you've got a limited amount of time to recoup your development and testing costs, plus trying to make a profit, plus covering future development, plus making up for failed drug development efforts, plus cost of capital over the development period.

        Given a $50M (number pulled out of my butt) plant, you've got 50M * (1+costOfCapital) ^ (yearsInDevelopment) to recover, which isn't trivial, and I'll bet $50M is chump change in that industry.

        Once generics enter the market, you're toast because of the aforementioned low production costs, so you've got to charge out the wazoo during your exclusive patent period to stick around. Note what happens to stock prices of drug companies when a drug either gets approved or moves to a different stage of testing. Analysts know what they're doing in that regard. I mean, they're not VCs.

        Irrespective, I would suggest drug prices ARE hysterically overwrought, but there might be some cause for that.
    • Some of the greatest medical inventors in this world's history purposefully did NOT patent their work. Radium, Penecillin, polio vaccine (not just once, but twice) and many other wonderful discoveries that cost years of research to develop were given to the world free of charge.

      How many of you ever donated money to the American Heart Association, Jerry's Kids, or a thousand other medical related charity organizations? I have, more often than I can remember and I've no idea how much I've contributed to the advance of medical science. Why should I be charged these outrageous prices on pharmaceuticals my money helped to create?

      Medical patents aren't about recouping costs - it's about putting more money into stockholder's pockets. Take a look at their financial statements before you claim they need those patents (and the right to charge whatever they want for the drugs while locked behind the patent) to pay for their R&D. Many of them also get money from the Government as well as private donations to help pay the costs of creating new pharmaceuticals. So Taxpayers are also helping to offset their R&D costs.

      In my opinion, any company who accepts donations (of any kind) should not be granted a patent - any discoveries made with public money (even a single penny of public money) should be granted freely to the public and not locked down behind a patent.

    • What about patents on drugs researched by public universities and manufactured by private corperations?

    • Re:Drugs Patents Do Make Sense (Score:4, Funny)

      by inerte ( 452992 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @11:56PM (#3419830) Homepage Journal
      I'm not a huge fan of patents, but software patents are one of the few types of patents that make sense. Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation. And the cost of innovation is often steep, it has always been much easier to ripoff someone's idea than develop it yourself. Often times, the inventor doesn't profit at all from his invention. (see Marijuana->Cocaine->Ecstasy)

      For software companies, the cost to code is high, not just because of all the trial and error involved (although rational programming does help), but because of all the Standars Committees Specs involved. The patent system, as far as I know, is the only system that has been developed to offset the costs of getting a software User-approved.

      Its not like a drug patent, where the costs of innovation are mostly stealling other researchers. I would like to see a better system for compensating software companies for the money they put into getting a software approved, but I have not seen one. Maybe instead granting software patents for a set number of years, we could grant them based on the time it takes to recoup the trial costs? At least then we could minimize the damage done by granting a monopoly on a life-saving feature.
    • But Patents do not necessarily mean innovation. For instance:
      http://www.aegis.com/news/ads/2001/AD01 2206.html
      One company has patents on two HIV testing methods. The company is withholding the better one because it is generating more revenue on the worse (slower) one.

      cheers,
      -b
    • Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation.

      Not arguing with you there, but the drug companies relentlessly play this angle, when the reality is that their advertising budget is usually higher than their R&D budget.

      This is an industry which bribes doctors with free holidays and the like to prescribe expensive drugs; then collects billions of dollars of government subsidies on those drugs. That is their business model.

      The reason they were angry enough to sue the third world governments was because they were not getting a cut of aid money from the west. They knew they weren't going to get much out of the third world countries, they were after the aid money from the west.

      These are not nice companies.

      some more reading here:
      http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_50 / 3761001.htm

    • It is an unproven assertion that patents (in general) lead to more innovation of any form (or even to higher profits). The protectionistic attitude of patent holders is not the healthy one the patent and copyright systems in North America seem to have been designed to protect.

      If patent laws were changed to require a company to actually be in the process of creating a patented product for distribution (and prove it) this would be drastically better than now. Now, however, you just have to describe the hypothesis to keep your competitor from even trying it.

    • Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation.

      Unfortunately for this argument, much of the development cost of many drugs is paid for with public monies. AIDS drugs, in particular, disproportionately result from large-scale publically-funded research.

      Thus, the patents do not actually subsidize the cost of innovation per se. They do help to subsidize the cost of the development of that innovation (FDA testing, etc.).

      Sadly, the revenue and spending patterns of drug companies (as documented, for example, in this Families USA report [tilrc.org]) suggest that the system is broken. Patents on life-giving substances are just too powerful, and a 20-year wait for these substances to become public is just too long.

  • While I don't have time to read the articles at this point in time as I supposed to be doing university work, I couldn't help thinking of a powerful and publicised example of the patent [myriad.com] that Myriad [myriad.com] has on the BRCA2 gene used to in detecting breast cancer.

    As far as I understand this has daunting and far reaching implications as it means they control the application of using this gene to determine the possibility of cancer. Furthermore they want this patent to be applied globably so say if a women in Australia wants this test, she is expected to fly all the way over to their US labs. So yet another reason patents are a bad thing.

  • The Crow and the Owl (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This one is great, I'm about half way through the list and just read this one:

    The Crow and the Owl [wipout.net]

  • It's refreshing to see that people here reading and commenting on slashdot have the intelligence to understand the importance of presenting differing points of view on such important mater as intellectual value.

    It's really all we have in trying to keep a usable and fair balance between private ownership and public commons of values useful to many in being or trying to be productive.

    Now if only those who are down on the Wipout essays would go over to the opposition and read and comment on there winning essays....

    Maybe we all would get a much bigger picture of who's on what side of the fence on the issues at hand.

  • Any relation? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Ambush ( 120586 )
    Looks like John isn't the only one in the family into writing lengthy essays.

    3rd: EDDAN ELIZAFON KATZ, (Oakland, USA)

    =:-)

  • I'd say. . .it means that no one's allowed to touch my superego without asking.

  • Balderdash (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @11:27PM (#3419753)
    Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."

    There is a great deal of question as to whether the infrastructure exists to deliver and administer the anti-AIDS drugs even if they we made available at zero cost.

    We are talking about countries where the per capita health care spending is less than $10/year.

    These are also the same places where other diseases that could be cured at far less cost than AIDS go uncontrolled. Malaria kills far more people than AIDS, and is far less expensive to fight. How can you make a moral case about AIDS drugs when in fact spending the money on fighting other diseases would offer greater relief from suffering with the same resources?

    • <P>Qoute:<I>Malaria kills far more people than AIDS</I>
      <P>Maybe in the 1980s and before. From the link <A HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/back ground_briefings/aids/newsid_341000/341288.stm"&gt ; BC titled "Aids Africa's top killer
      "</A>, AIDS is the largest killer in Africa.
      <P>$10/year is misleading. If they were to produce the drug in that country then the cost of the drug would match up to the $10/year heath care spending. In other words, they could produce it real cheap.

    • Re:Balderdash (Score:3, Informative)

      by mochan_s ( 536939 )

      Qoute:Malaria kills far more people than AIDS

      Maybe in the 1980s and before. From the link ; BC titled "Aids Africa's top killer " [bbc.co.uk], AIDS is the largest killer in Africa.

      $10/year is misleading. If they were to produce the drug in that country then the cost of the drug would match up to the $10/year heath care spending. In other words, they could produce it real cheap.

    • Stupid Troll (Score:2, Insightful)

      by inerte ( 452992 )
      It's not the morallity of the defense that's questioned, but of the attacker.

      In other words, how can you make a moral case about any cure when charging outrageous prices for it?
      • In other words, how can you make a moral case about any cure when charging outrageous prices for it?

        There is no cure for "AIDS" for which to charge "outrageous prices", only caustic drugs which purportedly slow the progression of the diagnose of "HIV+" to "AIDS Patient". Nevertheless, some people become long term patients - typically not because of some drug, but because they have some purpose in life. http://www.aliveandwell.org [aliveandwell.org]

        Does anyone know much about the current status of Magic Johnson? (NBA basketball player, announced he was HIV positive ~1991, retired from the game, still living). He has/had an interesting ritual - sold everything he owned every morning ('cause he has "HIV" & that means you'll be dead at any time, right?), only to purchase everything back when the day was over and he was still alive. I'm wondering specifically if he takes any drugs for the "condition"?
        • I'm wondering specifically if he takes any drugs for the "condition"?

          Magic Johnson has been on the "cocktail" since 1991. His viral load is almost zero. I'm sure he understands that any day now that combination of drugs he takes might cease working. I suspect his optimistic attitude is a big, big help in keeping him healthy.

          I hope he survives long enough to give that weenie mayor of ours Jimmy Hahn what-for when he stands for reelection. Hahn's tactics were appalling. Heh, maybe if the San Fernando Valley succeeds in splitting from LA Hahn won't be our mayor anymore. Stay tuned...the battle coming up this Fall will be very interesting.

    • Re:Balderdash (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ian Bicking ( 980 ) <ianb@nOspaM.colorstudy.com> on Saturday April 27, 2002 @12:27AM (#3419879) Homepage
      Indeed -- AIDS is overblown in Africa, simply a disease of definition. This paper [upenn.edu] gives the WHO's definition:
      The WHO's clinical-case definition for AIDS in Africa (adopted in 1985) is not based on an HIV test or T-cell counts but on the combined symptoms of chronic diarrhea, prolonged fever, 10 percent body weight loss in two months and a persistent cough, none of which are new or uncommon on the African continent.
      Which is to say, AIDS in Africa is a total fraud. Mbeki was right when he criticized the "epidemic". To say that Africa is undergoing a very serious decay of health systems is entirely true -- the problem isn't a lack of AIDS drugs, but a lack of basic public health facilities -- clean water, mosquito and malaria control, hospital facilities, trained medical professionals, etc.

      With the WHO's definition of AIDS it is scary if people were to actual receive the drug coctail based on that diagnosis (I don't know -- maybe they wouldn't). AZT kills people -- it is a very harmful drug, and if they didn't have something that looks like American AIDS before they start taking AZT, they will after.

      I'm afraid this is one place where the activists have been a very negative influence. The attacks on Mbeki were intense and they totally ignored his reasons. IMHO, AIDS in non-risk populations hasn't, isn't, and won't be a serious health issue here or in Africa -- but people have formed their identity around the disease, and that makes it very hard for them to let go.

    • There is a great deal of question as to whether the infrastructure exists to deliver and administer the anti-AIDS drugs even if they we made available at zero cost.

      No there isn't. Provide all of the drugs needed at zero cost and I absolutely garantee you that it will get to the people who need it. They are dying and people who Know they are dying will do what ever they have to. Walk a thousand miles to get it... not a problem if the only other option is to die.

      • Provide all of the drugs needed at zero cost and I absolutely garantee you that it will get to the people who need it.

        Current experience shows that this is not the case. Many people in Africa die from common diseases because they are unable or unwilling to travel 20 miles to a free clinic. Given the chronic nature of AIDS it is highly questionable as to whether making a drug coctail available that requires a complex dosage regimin and regular trips to a clinic for treatment will make the slightest impact in the death rates from this disease. There is even a great deal of concern that partially administered treatment programs will lead to new mutations of the disease that are resistant to current drugs.

  • that the World Intellectual Property day just happens to fall within the same time period as the Great Slashdot Blackout?


    No?


    ok... nevermind. it must be the ragweed, then...

  • Do we need counter-essays? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dunkstr ( 513276 ) on Friday April 26, 2002 @11:42PM (#3419794)

    Have you read the English winner [wipo.int] of the WIPO contests?

    For me, it was a succinct summary of many of the problems with intellectual property. It would have been more fitting in the counter-essay competition. Basically, the author lists from a personal perspective how harmful all the laws can be and then says "But it's the law so watcha gonna do?" (I'm paraphrasing)

    How is that an endorsement of IP?

    Am I missing something?

    • Didn't you read all the way to the end? This person is stating all of the "restrictions" of the new copyright law first, but then he says that he knows it will also protect him and that he'll adapt to the restrictions.

      Apparently, that's what the WIPO wants us to do, adapt to the new system, accept the restrictions because they might someday actually benefit us - if we happen to create something it can belong to us forever. This is a mockery of what was intended when Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the others who wrote the Constitution intended for the FREE people of America. Copyright was to be a reward incentive so that learned men would share their knowledge instead of taking it with them when they died - write something and it will be protected for a limited time before it becomes available for everyone to share and learn.

      Adapt? I don't think so - and I'm an author and artist and a sometime songwriter. Those restrictions this person mentioned are NOT acceptable. No IP law at all would be better than having every word I write scrutinized just in case someone else said it much the same.

  • Also look at the WIPO essays [wipo.org]. The English one doesn't appear to argue directly for or against IP laws. He mentions the disadvantages that IP laws have in terms of education and entertainment, often being worse for both the user and the creator, while being glad of the protection he'll get for his own ideas. Personally I think what's needed is a non-patent-office, where people can register their ideas and allow them to be used freely, preventing real patents from being made on similar ideas. It would act as an archive of evidence demonstrating that many patents that are applied for are not original. This would prevent stupid patents that are based on common sense and that could easily be thought up by someone else without being aware that someone has come up with a similar idea.
    • It's called "the public domain."

      If you come up with a good, original idea, just publish it on any old website (like this one), and submit it to google for archival purposes. Then, if anybody tries to patent it, you can sue to have the patent invalidated due to prior art.

      Therein, of course, lies the crux of the problem. You would have to mount the costly legal effort to have the patent invalidated. That's supposed to be the Patent Office's job, but at least here in the USofA, the Patent Office is pitifully negligent when researching prior art. There's a simple reason for that: the PTO is paid to grant patents, not deny them. There's no penalty for a patent investigator (or a patent attorney) if a patent is later invalidated.

      Hmmm, a hefty fine for invalidated patents could be a simple, market-oriented way to reduce the number of "bad" patents? Any thoughts?

      Ooh, ooh, I think I'll file a patent on "A Method For Reducing The Rate Of Invalidated Patents" and make a million bucks!

  • The Sweet Irony (Score:4, Insightful)

    by benzapp ( 464105 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @12:25AM (#3419873)
    It is of course quite amusing that the only way to enslave drug companies and their employees to work for free is by in fact using guns or other forms of deadly persuasion.

    The Marxist here can decry the drug companies TODAY for not giving away the fruits of their labor for free. He can equate inaction with murder.

    But what happens when drug companies refuse to develop drugs because these same marxists constantly steal them?

    They have no choice but to persuade their citizenry not with money, but violence.

    So, you won't develop that drug for $4.75 an hour? fine, do it or you go to the slave labor camps!

    Suggesting Capitalists are murderers! nothing could be more amusing. Of course, it is not amusing to the 100 million who have died in the last century at the hands of Marxists and their murderous toys.

    But who gives a fuck about them?

  • IP system is broken (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dh003i ( 203189 )
    The IP system, at least in the US, is broken. Whether or not its broken beyond repair is a matter of conjecture.

    Of course, as Stallman states, using the phase IP is in fact dangerous and supportive of the system. But its the only word which collectively refers to patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and so on and so forth: all of which have essentially one thing in common -- controlling information.

    Anyways, here's my solution to the current IP problems: (1) Reduce both the scope and duration of IP laws; (2) Give innovators the choice between "control without compensation" or "compensation without control," but not both. This allows MS to be compensated, but does not allow them to control; it also allows FSF to control (to ensure freedom) but not be compensated (which is basically the way the situation is now). Also, an option should be given for an intermediate between control or compensation; in such an intermediate, there would be less control and less compensation than in either extreme, however.

    Btw, in regards to AIDS drugs, to those of you defending companies not giving poor people in Africa drugs at the cost of protection, I hope that you people find yourself sick with some disease and too poor to pay some greedy corporation for the cure.

    AIDS "treatments" are NOT useful for very long. HIV adapts rapidly; by the time the 20-year patent on HIV treatments has expired, the "treatment" will completely useless. Thus, the PUBLIC is NEVER EVER compensated for their support of patent owners to HIV-treatments.

    Some countries which I praise have chosen to IGNORE drug patents for the GOOD OF THEIR CITIZENS. This is what countries SHOULD do if they need to, as drug companies can't sue a government (sure, they could sue a gov't in that gov'ts own courts, but that would be unwinnable).
    • Btw, in regards to AIDS drugs, to those of you defending companies not giving poor people in Africa drugs at the cost of protection, I hope that you people find yourself sick with some disease and too poor to pay some greedy corporation for the cure.

      The thing you don't seem to grasp is that, unfortunately, drugs cost money, LOTS of money, to develop. We're talking multiple billions of dollars. Now this money has to come from somewhere, in this case, the sale of the drugs. If you adopt a policy of having the drug companies spend billions on R&D and then simlpy taking the drug and producing it for free they WILL go out of bussiness. Then what do you do? A new disease surfaces and there aren't any companies around willing to research a cure for it since they know it will just be taken away from them and they'll loose billions.

      Now the system could be changed where all drug R&D is funded purely by tax dollars and then the results are made freely available, however that requires major changes to the system, not to mention tax increases. With the system we have now you can't just ignore the drug comanies' patents or they will simply stop doing drug R&D and move into a different field where they can make a profit.

      The US is still a free country and you can't force a company into a bussiness it doesn't want to be in. If drug research becomes unprofitable, companies will move out of it into something else and then it simply won't get done.

      Also, it seems as though there is far more death in Africa due to thing like malaria, starvation and other problems which are far easier, and cheaper, to stop than AIDS. It's not like if AIDS treatments were made freely available people would stop dying, there are deeper problems.

      Life is, unfortunately, not simple. It takes millions of man hours and lots of expensive equipment, which translates to billions of dollars, to research and develop new drugs. That must be paid for somehow, if it's not, the research will stop.

    • in regards to AIDS drugs, to those of you defending companies not giving poor people in Africa drugs at the cost of protection, I hope that you people find yourself sick with some disease and too poor to pay some greedy corporation for the cure.

      Current AIDS treatments do not cure the disease, they merely prolong the life of the infected person. Given the state of society in Africa, what is the likely result of expenditures on AIDS treatment? An increasing population of infected people capable of spreading the disease, dependent on an alreaady totally overburdened health care system? Wouldn't it be much more sensible to spend the money on prevention? Along with treatment and prevention of other diseases that also ravage the populations?

      The situation really is a disaster, but until there really is a cure, it isn't going to get better.

  • So, these people have this drug patented, you want it. They produced it because they knew they could patent it and make good on their investment. But, you say, we should take it. It's for the good of the people.

    Suppose you take it. Now, who is going to invest to kill the next plague? Or even other, current plagues, like cancer, or arthritis?

    You're proposing to kill the system that produced this drug. Are you sure that you want this to be the last drug produced like this? Is this more important than all other diseases that might be cured at a profit in the future?

    If you haven't thought about these questions, maybe you should think about whether you're hearing anything but one side of a complex story.
  • While 'borging [wearcam.org] is currently primitive, we aren't far away from a day when we'll be using technology for memory extension. Yet when we go to share excerpts from the 'film' of our day with other people, it will turn out that our digitized record contains a number of things we've experienced that are currently regulated as intellectual property. Your record of your day turns out not to belong to you.

    Speaking of records, consider what this technology will do for sound when everyone who attends a concert (or just listens to the radio) is able to play back portions of their augmented memory at will. Whether this is in the form of speakers or jacked in more directly to your neurons doesn't change the basic problem. When technology makes augmented memory available it will be a 'killer ap,' and whole industries will be opposed to it, attempting to cripple it by schemes such as forcing watermarking into content and mandating blocking or degrading of that content in memory augmentation devices.

    But do we want to enter the new era intentionally crippling ourselves in service to the profits of old business models? Current research shows that the blind can be enabled to see by transforming visual information into aural patterns [seeingwithsound.com]. Since the process uses a laptop, what's 'seen' can be saved to disk. Should this data be bowlderized if it includes Mickey Mouse on a TV in the background? We could make an exception for the 'disabled,' but 20 years from now not being 'borged with fully capable equipment will be seen as a disability.

    The cleanest thing to do is establish a doctrine that experience belongs to the experiencer, and can be freely shared with others. Anything less than this, and we'll be inviting all sorts of corporate and governmental characters to become literally engaged in censoring what's 'inside' our 'borged heads.
    ___

  • The contest was announced on Slashdot [slashdot.org]. Slashdot rejected two reminder stories from me one month and one week before it closed. Despite all the sound and fury in this forum and elsewhere, it received only fifty-some submissions. Two of them were mine.

    If this is all we care about IP, we've already lost. Son of SSSCA will slip through as amendments, and we'll all be buying our hardware from Hilary Rosen.

    You disagree? Did you submit an essay? Did you? I didn't think so.

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