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Endangered? Not quite. Health and the FOSS movement have made
significant contributions. Let me be provocative.<br>
<br>
What is missing is mass based support for these issues in the rich
countries. The Pirate Party at least represents a start, if symbolic
for now, but it does set up a serious political dialectic. <br>
<br>
How many people stood by as the DNS system was rendered "competent"
for copyright "claims" - most everyone official including WIPO with
its arbitral tribunals on cyber squatting. What was missing was
vigilence. And if you give rentiers a hand they are likely to take
an arm and a leg thrown in for good measure - who can resist
extensive monopoly power. This is an issue that is coming full
circle. <br>
<br>
It is amazing, in health developing countries have legal rights to
copy medicines for HIV (or anything for that matter) but cannot do
so because of US Super 301 legislation. Oh, in a crisis Greece can
cut pharma prices, Italy can issue Compulsory Licenses, but let a
developing country try that and all hell breaks loose. Authors
rights, by rich country fiat, trump the right to health and the
right to life. What is a treatable condition in the first world is a
death sentence in the third. So much for deference for human rights.
They are valuable but susceptible to parochial interpretation by
rich countries, and not least by third world rulers.<br>
<br>
Even this whole "stealing jobs" issue in the rich countries
particularly in high-tech sectors is linked to the globalisation of
protection and enforcement of IPRs (instead of territorial
specificity without 'most favoured nation' and 'national
treatment'). Looking at the value chain, it is not that developing
countries do not benefit, but in some cases it is limited
(maquiladoras after NAFTA, or horrible conditions in Special
Economic Zones or enclavity). Transnational corporations do benefit,
especially because they can rig transfer payments and vary royalty
payments (IPR contracts can be as opaque as derivative contracts,
and that IPR accounting treatment is where tax haven competition is
at) and the rights holders payments are rather mobile (so taxes can
be limited and profits also wiped out by changing rates). Hardly any
point in not going where the greatest accounting opacity is if you
want to maximise profits. And if you are serious about innovation
then a country like the US even allows profit repatriation on a tax
holiday basis... a real bounty.<br>
<br>
Somehow rich country citizens (of course many are disempowered by
low intensity democracy and/or false choices) thought that these
kinds of forces could be strengthened to kick butt elsewhere and
that they would remain loyal to the nation... ?<br>
<br>
On 2012/01/19 03:19 PM, Deirdre Williams wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAMz5XN4E=pYXE3zoC4Tji7rkvu+KyL95tn6RO_hi1dA17CmuyQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">Perhaps the right 'to think differently about an
age-old issue' is currently one of the most endangered of human
rights? :-)
<div>Really an extremely un-funny idea.<br>
<div>Deirdre<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 19 January 2012 07:44, Aldo
Matteucci <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:aldo.matteucci@gmail.com">aldo.matteucci@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://deepdip.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/are-intellectual-property-rights-human-rights-2/"
target="_blank">http://deepdip.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/are-intellectual-property-rights-human-rights-2/</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>and don't get your blood-pressure up</div>
<div>it's just a way to think differently about an age-old
issue</div>
<div>have fun :)))</div>
<br>
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</blockquote>
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<div><br>
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-- <br>
“The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge"
Sir William Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979<br>
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