02.05.11
Gemini version available ♊︎Bill Gates Promotes Patent Monopolies
Summary: Microsoft’s co-founder carries on abusing the system by fostering even more monopolies and lobbying governments/schools so that people follow his own selfish instructions
For a couple of years now we’ve been showing that the Gates Foundation is one of the world’s biggest shills for patents, which are of course a tool for keeping the poor poorer and making the rich even richer. As a quick recap of some posts covering this subject, consider the following:
- Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Extortionists With Software Patents
- Report: Bill Gates Becoming Patent Troll Like Nathan Myhrvold
- AGRA-Gates Lobbying for Monopolies on Life
- Gates Foundation Keeps Increasing Investments in BP, Super-Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold Joins the Feast
- Impressed by OpenOffice, Bill Gates Schemes to Use Software Patents Against It
- Wikileaks/Cablegate Sheds Bad Light on Bill Gates’ Rogue Patent Investments
- Explanation of What Bill Gates’ Patent Investments Do to Developing World
- Microsoft’s Three Biggest Patent Trolls and Whitewashers: Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, and Traul Allen
- Benjamin Orndorff From Microsoft/Gates and Ellis Represents the CTPN Patents Cartel
- Patents Roundup: Bill Gates, Acacia, and Other Patent Trolls in the Headlines
- Monsanto Investor Bill Gates Finds Way for Taxpayers to Fund His Patents (on Dangerous Life Forms)
- Bill Gates Takes His GMO Patent Investments/Experiments to India
- Searete a Part of Intellectual Ventures, a Patent-trolling Firm
- How Mr. Gates Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Destructive Patents
- Bill Gates et al Told Off by Haitian Farmers for Monsanto Lobbying/Investments
- Bill Gates Sells Drugs in Less Developed Nations (for Profit)
- Gates Roundup: Monsanto, Colonisation, Clinton Ties, and Control of Education
- Bill and Melinda Gates Instruct Countries They Invest in to Feed Pharmaceuticals They Invest In
- Is Nathan Myhrvold’s and Bill Gates’ Pyramid Scheme Finally Collapsing?
- With Microsoft Monopoly in Check, Bill Gates Proceeds to Creating More Monopolies
- How the Gates Foundation Privatises Africa
- Frederick Kaufman on the Gates Foundation’s Monsanto Venture; 100,000 Indians to Protest by Fasting
- Black Friday Film: What the Bill Gates-Backed Monsanto Does to Animals, Farmers, Food, and Patent Systems
- Monsanto Plants Its Lies in the Gates Foundation-funded NPR
- The Gates Foundation-Connected GlaxoSmithKline Indirectly Paid Scientists to Exaggerate Vaccine Needs
All that lobbying from Gates is doing enormous damage not just to the United States. Informed people like Glyn Moody criticise him for it. Soon enough (apparently days from now) Gates will add some more minions for lobbying congresspeople regarding patents (maybe software patents) because in Twitter, the highly-informed Jamie Love wrote: “Next week the Gates Foundation will hire a top IPR lobbyist from Microsoft, to work for the Foundation.”
It could not come at a better time now that Microsoft is trying to make patent systems more hostile towards its competition [1, 2] amid the Patent Reform Act of 2011 [1, 2, 3]. Lobbyists are, by definition, distorting the minds of politicians and our IRC regular, “hazzy”, wrote to his congressman some days ago and received this response:
Dear Mr. Bell:
Thank you for contacting my office regarding software patent litigation.
I find the trend towards litigation over software property rights to be very alarming. I understand the toll that this takes on digital entrepreneurship and growth. It has been estimated that the cost of litigating these issues exceeds $11 billion dollars.
There is also a need to ensure that companies, and especially foreign companies, do not rob others of the fruits of their technological ingenuity. The promise of monetary reward and recognition is often what drives many software developers to apply their minds to the technical devices that help make our society prosperous. I believe incentives matter, and I do not plan to enforce an open-source system that tends to remove incentives from our marketplace. I sincerely hope that a reasonable solution can be found to solve this dilemma, and I will be monitoring any related legislation that comes before Congress.
I appreciate the opportunity to hear your concerns.
Sincerely,
Bill Huizenga
Member of Congress
Mr. Huizenga must have been greased up by some lobbyists who told lies on behalf of corporations that employ them to do so. Bill Gates has been one of the super-lobbyists for several years now and to quote CIO.com: “Did you know that there are more than 34,750 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for just 435 representatives and 100 senators? That’s 64 lobbyists for each congressperson.”
Bill Huizenga could have been subjected to the army of lobbyists from Microsoft, the Gates Foundation, or the firm of Bill Gates' dad (Bill). Those Bills can affect patent bills and we’ll catch up with Gates news some time in a couple of months (we last caught up in January) to cover this more properly with a lot of links. It is blind trust in authorities and the corporate press that leads people to disappointment and without delving deeper into such issues, it will be hard to understand why society becomes increasingly hostile towards people (see TSA for example) and increasingly friendly towards corporations (which now demand privacy rights, as though they are people with feelings). In a new piece from OpenSource.com, Rebecca Fernandez raises a point that Techrights routinely raises. Critical thinking is a skill that “our students need… and resources for teaching it,” but guess who’s controlling schools now? That’s right, it's Mr. Gates who bought this system.
Our education system, in all its forms, does a poor job of fostering critical thinking. This is a real problem, because we humans are inclined to embrace ideologies rather than information. There’s nothing more troublesome to society than warring ideologies—and there’s simply no way to find middle ground with anyone who can’t question theirs.
Fernandez says that the US education system “does a poor job of fostering critical thinking,” but this is a feature to those who control this system. A gullible population is more docile and passive.
If people do not respond to the plutocrats’ attack on society, then the PR industry will decide for people how to think and how to feel. In addition to PR, the plutocrat Bill Gates is already buying a lot of press outlets (TV, newspapers, blogs, and so on). He is killing the watchdog journalists. Those whom they used to protect will suffer. They will have their dignity robbed and still worship the same people who robbed them. It all began with lobbyists who were met with apathy and FTAs that relied on secrecy (c.f. ACTA). What we need more of is projects like Wikileaks for this reason precisely. █
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