08.13.09
Another Type of Ownership of Mathematics and Human Life
Summary: New examples of insanely dangerous ownership of ideas
FOUND IN Fox ‘news’ was this report about ownership of ideas.
A North Carolina man who allegedly cracked the code to mentally calculate any multiplication problem is now offering to reveal his secret – for the bargain price of $33.
That would be a similar thing to patenting of algorithms and business methods. These are ideas that can be applied mentally (or with pen and paper), as they require no manufacturing of anything physical.
The Wall Street Journal also has this short piece about attempts by ‘pharmonopolies’ to ban their competition. [via]
India plans to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that the European Union allowed big pharmaceutical companies to use the bloc’s tough patent laws to have national customs agencies detain generic drugs in transit to developing countries, according to India’s commerce secretary.
This falls under a class of patents that simply kill or monetise deaths [1, 2, 3].
“This falls under a class of patents that simply kill or monetise deaths.”Groklaw has this detailed analysis of a story where “Pfizer’s lawyers hired a detective who ended up intimidating a witness the day before he was due to testify…”
Shades of Microsoft, as we noted before. They are like a group of gangsters who see themselves as magically pardoned by the law, so they bully their possible opponents without a challenge. Steve Stites said a few days ago: “In my case there is the little problem that Microsoft spent approximately 18 months stalking me.”
Those commonalities between Microsoft and the pharmaceutical cartel should not be entirely surprising. Taking also lobbying into account, there’s this new article about Merck’s role in the problem. █
“It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care.”
–Paul Farmer
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aeshna23 said,
August 13, 2009 at 9:21 am
It is not and never has been and never should be the task of the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care. That is the job of those that think such access is a priority. The owners of pharmaceutical stock may have other priorities about how their money is spent–be it on the environment, their religion, the poor in the own country, libraries, free software, or their own personal consumption.
Yuhong Bao said,
August 14, 2009 at 12:55 am
And Rockefeller created the Rockefeller Syndicate which lets Big Pharma gain control of the medical industry:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/03/22/the-ama—-murder-by-injection.aspx
pinguinpat said,
August 14, 2009 at 9:10 am
aeshna23,
I wonder, when you wrote your comment, did you switch off your ‘I am a human’ function? If you look at a bit of history you should see that a lot of poor countries (if not all) where robbed out of people (slavery) and sources of all kind (uranium, gold, oil…). Thats a matter of fact most (if not all) poor countries still get stolen of there ‘goods’
I don’t know in what world you are living, but in my world children have to work in mines, by the time they are 40 year they day because of longed cancer from the dust they had to work in. Should any energy company make a demand of working condition? Of course not , they die anyway! Imagine less profit, just for some better working conditions!!
It isn’t that pharma can’t make profit in 3th world countries, it’s less. Some comparison with Microsoft: they don’t care that people get into trouble because of they’re software (Medicare, …) the goal is to sell products to people who even don’t even have food sometimes (Africa,India, you name it). Why shouldn’t lobbyists go to there? Gates could get less money for the stocks he’s selling, and that other id*o… euh Balmer could get a smaller bonus, immoral?? Of course not, everybody else is doing it, so why shouldn’t they??