[governance] Are IPR "human rights"?

[Riaz K Tayob]

Endangered? Not quite. Health and the FOSS movement have made 
significant contributions. Let me be provocative.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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... ?

On 2012/01/19 03:19 PM, Deirdre Williams wrote:
> Perhaps the right 'to think differently about an age-old issue' is 
> currently one of the most endangered of human rights? :-)
> Really an extremely un-funny idea.
> Deirdre
>
> On 19 January 2012 07:44, Aldo Matteucci <aldo.matteucci at gmail.com 
> <mailto:aldo.matteucci at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     http://deepdip.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/are-intellectual-property-rights-human-rights-2/
>     and don't get your blood-pressure up
>     it's just a way to think differently about an age-old issue
>     have fun :)))
>
>     ____________________________________________________________
>     You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>     governance at lists.cpsr.org <mailto:governance at lists.cpsr.org>
>     To be removed from the list, visit:
>     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>
>     For all other list information and functions, see:
>     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>     To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
>     http://www.igcaucus.org/
>
>     Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> “The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir 
> William Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20120119/df8f85fb/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t