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Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

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Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#131

Post by crdoconnor »

rayiner wrote: post #74
themgt wrote: post #34

When the director of policy for Doctors Without Borders tells the public that "U.S. negotiators have basically functioned as drug lobbyists" and "We consider this the worst-ever agreement in terms of access to medicine", there's really little more that needs saying. I love that the best defense unnamed "U.S. officials" can offer is that "major compromises" will likely still be made. In other words: yes we're acting a…

I don't see why his affiliation with Doctors Without Borders carries argument-ending weight here. They do noble work, but their interest is the well-being of people outside the U.S. The best case scenario for them is U.S. companies doing all the expensive R&D, and their patients outside the U.S. getting the resulting drugs for free. The USTR, in contrast, has the sole responsibility of maximizing the benefit to the U…

>I don't see why his affiliation with Doctors Without Borders carries argument-ending weight here.

Because he has the requisite knowledge to understand it and because he clearly hasn't been bought.

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#132

Post by lugg »

jonlucc wrote: post #104
vacri wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is U.S. companies doing all the expensive R&D And they're certainly not struggling despite that; not sure why they need a treaty to 'protect' them. > It's in our interest if people outside the U.S. have to pay us a bunch of money to get the drugs we invent. Only if you think dollars are the only important thing. Plenty of people see welfare (including foreigners) as being a worthy thing in its own right.

If you think Big Pharma isn't struggling, you haven't payed close enough attention. There is a bit of a crisis in innovation that is commonly blamed on the low-hanging fruit being gone. To cope, almost all of the big US companies have cut their discovery and preclinical teams significantly. In their place companies are paying contract companies to do large chunks of the more monotonous chunks of research or buying as…

That sounds more like an industry with an unsustainable business model adapting and converting to a sustainable crowdsourced model.

"struggling" isn't the word I would use in this situation.

Things change, oil dries up. Doesn't mean we need to start making redflag laws to protect the old models.

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#133

Post by vacri »

jonlucc wrote: post #104
vacri wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is U.S. companies doing all the expensive R&D And they're certainly not struggling despite that; not sure why they need a treaty to 'protect' them. > It's in our interest if people outside the U.S. have to pay us a bunch of money to get the drugs we invent. Only if you think dollars are the only important thing. Plenty of people see welfare (including foreigners) as being a worthy thing in its own right.

If you think Big Pharma isn't struggling, you haven't payed close enough attention. There is a bit of a crisis in innovation that is commonly blamed on the low-hanging fruit being gone. To cope, almost all of the big US companies have cut their discovery and preclinical teams significantly. In their place companies are paying contract companies to do large chunks of the more monotonous chunks of research or buying as…

And yet they have enough money to get the influence to get the US government to strongarm other governments through treaties. That's not cheap.

I do hear what you say about the font drying up, but it's also no secret that medication is ridiculously expensive in the US. Big pharma is very wealthy, and very politically powerful, despite the low-hanging fruit being gone. The point I'm trying to make is that they don't need a treaty to protect them.

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#134

Post by bediger4000 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #100
bediger4000 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've written this, or something similar, before. It's kind of disingenuous. For instance, I have a leatherman "Micra" in my pocket. It's my property. I can tell I still own it by putting my hand in my pocket... yep, it's still mine. Now, "intellectual property" is another matter all together. I can't tell is my "intellectual property" is being infringed on without a large effort to police it. Is my fantastic new wa…

> For instance, I have a leatherman "Micra" in my pocket. It's my property. I can tell I still own it by putting my hand in my pocket... yep, it's still mine. You've confused possession with ownership. If you loan it to someone -- or someone steals it -- you won't find it in your pocket, you won't possess it, but you will still own it. Ownership is a relation created in law. It is different than possession. In fact,…

Spoken like a true gentleman, and you raised a few good points. I still feel that there's a difference between physical property and "intellectual property" - probably because "intellectual property" is mostly licensed. It's the licensing that sets apart "intellectual property" and it's the giant, state support for enforcement of licenses that makes the difference. If we talked about people leasing or renting software or music, it might make more sense, but licensing something to a consumer, all the while encouraging them to think they've bought it, seems like a recipe for disaster.

The other thing about "intellectual property" is the distinct possibility of independent invention. Even if we disallow my use of my own capital hardware to make a duplicate via some state financed mechanism, there's still a very real possibility that someone else also invented the "intellectual property" in question. Several people invented the steam engine. Several people invented the telegraph, at more or less the same time. Someone in the Bronze age seems to have invented safety pins. Algorithms get independently discovered all the time - see KMP string matching for a classic, but there's certainly a lot of others. A bunch of people discovered continuations at different times. How do we stretch the idea of property to cover all this? This seems like it will lead to trouble.

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#135

Post by walterbell »

spacehome wrote: post #129
zanny wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor is relative. The rich at war with everyone are not the 6 figure developers, or even the one-time cashout millionaires who sell their startup to Google. Its the billionaires who control entire swathes of global industry and are ego tripping power maniacs who are addicted to it. Its the Waltons and Kochs, not the Carmacks and Grams. Its even more the dynasties whose names are not national news because they own eve…

I read stuff like this a lot, and it sounds plausible, but how can you know this? Where can I go to read someone connecting the dots from billionaires working in secret to advance trade deals through corrupt politicians?

Some nodes in an influence graph became visible in a FOIA request, http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/06/05/confidential-ustr-emails-... and 10 public interest groups are seeking a release of Wall St emails, http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2015-05-with-controver...

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#136

Post by saint_fiasco »

rayiner wrote: post #113
pdeuchler wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big fan of your comments usually, so it's disappointing to see such a specious argument. Not only is this a false dichotomy (free drugs vs getting paid fairly), it's dramatically removed from reality. Currently, without the TPP, the large pharmaceutical companies make billions in profit every year even including the rampant "piracy" in countries like India and China. Or, with the TPP, all of those generics go poof ,…

I'm using the limiting cases to illustrate the incentives of the parties, not as a characterization of the actual argument being made. My point is that Doctors without Borders and the USTR serve different constituencies with conflicting interests. As for getting "paid fairly" I disagree with the general notion that companies that make unimportant things should get paid "what the market will bear" while companies that…

"What the market will bear" is actually pretty low in this case (medicine for the people helped by Doctors without Borders). The whole point of patents is to artificially reduce supply to increase the price.

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#137

Post by vinceguidry »

smokinn wrote: post #115
icanhackit wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. negotiators have basically functioned as drug lobbyists I made a similar comment a few days ago - what we need is a crowd-funded lobbying platform for everyday people. A kind of Kickstarter for law and policy. If a few thousand or even tens of thousands of people chip in a few dollars to lobby for a change in policy, we can compete with corporations who have bought their way into power. While we're complaining o…

There's no way everyday people can compete with corporations anymore. There are approximately 244,673,000 adults aged 18+ in the US: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html 318,857,056 * (1 - 0.233% of Persons under 18 years, percent, 2013) ~= 244,563,362 And according to https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/ , to match the $3.24 Billion spent on lobbying in 2014 you'd have to get absolutely everyone in the U…

> There's no way everyday people can compete with corporations anymore.

Really? It's like you've never heard of a PAC before.

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#138

Post by walterbell »

click170 wrote: post #116
smokinn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way everyday people can compete with corporations anymore. There are approximately 244,673,000 adults aged 18+ in the US: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html 318,857,056 * (1 - 0.233% of Persons under 18 years, percent, 2013) ~= 244,563,362 And according to https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/ , to match the $3.24 Billion spent on lobbying in 2014 you'd have to get absolutely everyone in the U…

Yes but how do you do that when the supreme court has ruled that money equals free speech? There's lots of people who can see that money in politics is the problem. How do we solve it though? Wait for a supreme court judge to die and hope their replacement aligns with our views on this topic? Petition the whitehouse? Fund a kickstarter campaign to get our own people lobbying for this?

Fund alternative media whose cost structure is much lower than TV networks, e.g. this TISA explainer video on banking, public services regulation and corporations, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wwkikCpQ6pk . The Young Turks is the top online news show on YouTube, I wish they had episode transcripts. There is a related PAC to reverse Citizens United, http://www.wolf-pac.com

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#139

Post by lugg »

thedaveoflife wrote: post #107
zanny wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those writing the TPP have no interest in passing any of the profits of these trade deals off to impoverished third world nations to enrich their societies. If you want a mutually beneficial trade agreement, you don't need secret meetings or a rush to get it through congress.

The reason it is kept secret is presumably because the general public has difficulty seeing the ancillary benefits (reduction of trade barriers) and pays close attention to the obvious drawbacks (IP rights for "evil" corporations). This contention is fairly well supported by a cursory read through this or any other internet thread about a trade agreement. Whether the good in the TPP outweighs the bad is an open quest…

They must be some pretty weak and nuanced ancillary benefits if you're unable to explain them in such a way this "dumb" populace can understand the trade offs.

> Whether the good in the TPP outweighs the bad is an open question that I don't have an answer to. I am just trying to provide some counter arguments to an otherwise one-sided discussion on here.

Its not an open question, its a closed, hidden question we don't get access to, let alone any answers to.

This is a one-sided discussion because it is a one-sided situation.

Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

#140

Post by deciplex »

bediger4000 wrote: post #4
fixxer wrote: post #2

Can a progressive democrat please explain to me why their hero is supporting this? PS To those trying to claim he isn't a progressive... Obama may not be the progressive you want, but he is the one you deserve.

Indeed. I generally like Obama (except for Espionage Act prosecutions, continued existence of Guantanamo detention centers, and drone wars), but this one makes no sense. Can a conservative republican explain why the Republican leadership is supporting this? I can't really understand why free market people would be in favor of state-granted and enforced-at-taxpayer-expense monopolies. Nor do I understand why extreme p…

"Republican leadership... free market people... patriot... small government types"

Figure out which of these does not belong, and you will have your answer.

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