[109110] in Cypherpunks
NGOs and the Indulgence Racket (was re: Compulsory licenses and
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Wed Mar 10 19:33:34 1999
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 18:51:41 -0500
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>, dcsb@ai.mit.edu,
cypherpunks@cyberpass.net, CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM,
e-carm@c3po.kc-inc.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
<This is not just a rant. It is genuine, full-bore, almost-theological
screed. You've been warned. You know where the 'd' key is.>
Sheesh...
From the "that which is not permitted is forbidden" department, we now have
people demanding, in the attached NGO communique, the granting of
"compulsory licenses" (all the world's a contradiction-in-terms...) for
"essential" (politically correct) medicines, as if these "compulsory
licenses" were so many 16th-century Papal indulgences.
Yes, it's a shame that AIDS drugs can't come out fast enough, and that the
drug company's royalties are astonomical. But, the blame for those drugs'
slow time to market -- *and* for exhorbinant drug research costs -- can be
laid squarely at the feet of the US FDA, who never saw a chemical formula
it didn't want to control.
More important, let's not forget those people demanding "compulsory
licenses" themselves. It seems that people like Ralph Nader, and his
co-"state-is-the-religion"ist, James "Jamie" Love, have been a little *too*
successful at stopping medical progress, and now they want to help a few of
their friends who are literally dying on that particular Luddite cross,
probably starting with a "vote" at this upcoming meeting of NGO's in
Geneva. (Of course, the "N" in "NGO", invariably means "Nearly", but that's
a rant for another day.)
I mean, wake up, folks: Why drill precise little micrometer-sized holes
into a logjam, when dynamite would do much better? Why? Because, you *want*
the logjam, that's why. It keeps the contributions coming in from the
plaintiff bar, who make their living preying on all those drought-wracked
folks suing each other into penury downstream.
Still, you've gotta love this whole nation-state scam, though, even if only
for the simple elegance of its graft. Create a monopoly and then
selectively violate it, depending on the contribution flow from the
"interest group" of the week.
Courtesy of the same people who brought you tax "subsidies" on health
"insurance", of course. The folks who'd make employees'*food* bills
deductible on a corporate tax return if they could get away with it, so
we'd be paying ten times what *that's* worth as well, now after 50 years of
such shenanegans. With the President's wife threatening to nationalize that
market, too, I bet. Calling it "foodcare", or something. Woops, I forgot.
Agriculture *was* the first nationalized business, wasn't it? Speaking of
the USDA and FDA... And don't forget mortgage interest, "synthetic" fuel,
and all those other market-manipulating boondoggles, still on our 1040s
every year. (Yes, Virginia, mortgage interest. Surely, you don't believe
that you would only buy or build a house just because the government lets
you deduct the mortgage's interest, do you, silly girl? And no, Virginia,
there really *isn't* a Santa Claus, either. :-))
Okay, so, maybe, just maybe, I'm a little hard on folks. Maybe people
*aren't* so evil.
Maybe they're just stupid. Or, even more charitably, innumerate.
David Friedman, in _The Machinery of Freedom_, talks about a game, a
financial protocol, if you will, where a 100 of the constituents of
politician -- let's call him Bill -- are sat in a circle around a big
table, each with a pile of 100 pennies in front of her. Bill goes around
the circle, collecting a penny from each, and, having done that, gives 50
of them to someone chosen at random. He repeats this process 100 times,
giving 50 cents each time to someone who hasn't "won" yet. At the end,
miraculously, everyone has 50 cents, each one of them thanking their lucky
stars -- and thanking Bill, too -- for all that "free" money they just got.
In the _Machinery of Freedom_ , Friedman thinks Bill is just evil and
pockets the difference, laughing all the way to the bank. But, maybe not.
Maybe, like some of those 16th century churchmen soliciting indulgences
because they actually thought they were doing God's work, Bill is, himself,
just stupid. Maybe DeToqueville *was* right when he said that democracy was
a just form of government, because constituents elect someone exactly like
themselves. A constituency of idiots -- or innumerates -- will elect one,
in other words. Maybe Bill actually takes the remaining $50 and puts it
into the bank, very conscienciously, gratefully wondering where all *his*
"leftover" money came from, saying something profound, like, "Woah, baby,
whadda country!" I mean, cattle futures apparently work that way, too,
right?
Okay, maybe they don't, but you take my point.
When seen in this light, the Libertarian movement, much less the
Republicans in the USA or the Conservatives in Britain, seem more like
political "protestants", nailing their theses to the door of the
nation-state, than they are any actual answer to the problem of overweaning
state power itself. The reformation, and the counter-reformation, and the
counter-counter-reformation, and so on, were a bloody mess after all, and
they were the major reason why at least half of my ancestors removed
themselves to Charleston, on *this* side of the Atlantic, back in the mid
17th century. (The latter half moving to Iowa and then Michigan from
Holland at the end of the 19th, because this side of the ocean was also
where all the money was: a direct result of the actions of the former half
:-).)
It certainly didn't cure the disease, but it sure had it's palliative
properties. The church, for the most part, doesn't control the state
anymore, at least where where people make money, anyway. And, maybe
someday, the state won't control the economy either, and for much the same
reason: people will have migrated their economic activity into a
bearer-settled cryptographically secure "continent", where, in the immortal
words of an unknown Harvard Law student, "taxes are a tip."
So, to, um, resurrect, some topicality to this rant then: Can demands for
"compulsory licenses" on those absolutely rediculous recent patents on
digital commerce business processes be too far behind the above demands for
AIDS-patent indulgence?
I mean, it's getting pretty bad out there. Priceline has, apparently,
patented the NYSE's "trading post" system of stock auction, only they've
gone and applied it, on the internet, to airline tickets, of all things.
That wouldn't be too bad (it's only 20 years from issue till we can do
anything after all :-)), except that somebody has *now* actually patented
the use of *encryption* in digital commerce. A few more patents like that
could spoil your whole business plan and IPO.
So, maybe, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. That is, find the queue for
the public trough. In other words, whose (apparently chin-wiping) facetime
do *I* have to purchase, or who do I have to threaten to picket, or stand
and whine in front of a camera at, to get a "compulsory license" issued to
me on, say, the blind signature patent?
God knows, I don't want to actually *pay* for the damn thing. Nobody *I*
know seems to want to these days, anyway. No, better yet, I want it
"given" to me. Compulsorily.
...Okay... I've calmed down now.
I've calmed down because most of the people on these lists have the sense,
and the tools, to free themselves; to migrate across that Great Silicon
Ocean they're propably staring at as they read this, to a freer world on
the other side. They have financial cryptography, they have a geodesic
network, and they have the exponentially increasing value of information in
an emerging digital, dare I say geodesic, economy. And yes, Virginia,
information assets *are* getting exponentially more valuable, as
manufactured goods, and, worse, natural resources, decline in price just as
quickly.
And, fortunately, because the people on these lists witness this economic
volcano first hand every day, most of them aren't *innumerate*, either.
They are people who can actually *count* their pennies as they're "given"
back to them in the meantime. They can *see* that lobbying for "compulsory
licenses" that is, hiring a Nader-esque "NGO" to lobby for Papal
indulgences to get them into digital commerce heaven, is a fool's game. Or
at least I *hope* they can see.
So, yes, there *is* a better way, and that is to innovate faster -- to
actually make more money -- than the indulgence-sellers of the nation state
ever can, even faster than, god help us, the people who are nailing their
theses on the Diet's doors.
Innovate. Make more money, faster. Progress. *That* we know how to do, and
to do well.
Cheers,
Robert Hettinga
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 14:21:44 -0500
Reply-To: love@cptech.org
Originator: info-policy-notes@essential.org
Sender: info-policy-notes@essential.org
From: James Love <love@cptech.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list INFO-POLICY-NOTES
<info-policy-notes@essential.org>
Subject: Compulsory licenses and access to essential medicines
NGO-sponsored meeting in Geneva, March 26, 1999
http://www.cptech.org/march99-cl/pr1.html
Press Release
For Additional Information, contact
Nathan Ford, MSF London, at: 44.171.713.5600
Jamie Love, CPT, Washington, DC 202.387.8030
Bas van der Heide, HAI, Amsterdam, 31.20.683.3684
Compulsory licenses and access to essential medicines
NGO-sponsored meeting
Geneva, 26 March 1999
Geneva, March 1999. The role of compulsory licensing[1] of patents in
broadening access to essential medicines will be examined in a meeting
sponsored by Médecins Sans Frontières, Health Action International and
the Consumer Project on Technology. 'We are very concerned about the
growing number of lives at risk because of unequal access to medicines'
says Dr Bernard Pécoul of Médecins Sans Frontières. The meeting will
include discussion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa and Thailand, and
other instances where compulsory licensing of medical patents may be
appropriate for public health reasons.
Compulsory licensing is a legal mechanism used for both patents and
copyrights in a wide range of fields such as computers, nuclear energy,
music recordings and biotechnology. However, the use of compulsory
licensing for HIV/AIDS drugs or other essential medicines is
controversial: pharmaceutical companies and some governments in the
industrialized countries have opposed the use of compulsory licensing
for essential medicines. This is the subject of current international
trade disputes involving the US, Thailand, South Africa and other
countries.
Public health and consumer groups, governments of industrialized and
developing countries, pharmaceutical companies, and international
organizations such as the World Trade Organization and the World Health
Organization will take part in discussions on compulsory licensing of
patents to essential medical technologies at the NGO-sponsored meeting.
'The issue of compulsory licensing is too important to leave to patent
officers and trade officials. The public health community has to get
involved', explains Bas van der Heide of Health Action International.
Public health groups expect that some of these disputes will be put to
the World Trade Organization which can review the acceptability of
compulsory licensing under the international agreement on Trade Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property.
'This meeting is important because of the alarming rise of communicable
diseases in recent years' says James Love of the Consumer Project on
Technology. 'There is a vast disparity in world income and access to
essential medicines. New global trade agreements which set international
norms on the protection of intellectual property should address the
problems of access for the poor.'
In May of this year the World Health Assembly will meet in Geneva and
discuss a resolution which addresses WHO's role in monitoring health
implications of trade agreements and cooperation with the World Trade
Organization on matters concerning trade and public health.
------------
[1] Compulsory licensing is defined by WHO as "when [a] judicial or
administrative authority is allowed by law to grant a license, without
permission from the holder, on various grounds of general interest."
-------------
The meeting will take place in the Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10,
Switzerland on March 26, 1999, 9.00-17.00. Members of the press are
invited to attend the meeting. Registration is obligatory for security
reasons.
To register for the meeting contact Marie Paule Pierotti at MSF:
Tel 41-22-849-8400
MSF-International-GVA@geneva.msf.org
Further information can be obtained from
Bas Van der Heide
Health Action International
Tel +31.20.683.3684 Fax +31.20.685.5002
bas@hai.antenna.nl
Dr. Bernard Pécoul
Médecins Sans Frontières
Tel +33(0)1.60.62.26.33, Fax +33(0)1 40.21.29.62
bpecoul@msf.org
James Love
Consumer Project on Technology
Tel 202.387.8030, Fax 202.234.5176
love@cptech.org
A web page for the meeting is on the Internet at:
http://www.cptech.org/march99-cl
Background information about compulsory licensing of is on the web at:
http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl
Médecins Sans Frontières is the world's largest independent medical
relief organization, providing care to victims of war, disasters and
epidemics in 80 countries world-wide. (http://www.msf.org)
Health Action International is an informal network of more than 200
consumer, health, development action and other public interest groups
involved in health and pharmaceutical issues world-wide.
(http://www.haiweb.org)
Consumer Project on Technology is a US based non-profit research and
advocacy organisation created by consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Its
activities focus on information technologies, intellectual property and
research and development. (http://www.cptech.org)
--
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org
--- end forwarded text
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
