Verily I say unto thee, that Kelsey Bjarnason spake thusly:
> On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:29:22 +0100, Homer wrote:
>
>> You're completely stuck on this idea that the act of simply
>> "spending money" should give someone an intrinsic "right" to do
>> something immoral, like make unsupportable claims of "owning"
>> knowledge. It doesn't.
>
> Sorry, I live in the real world.
Ah, the silly "Real World®" propaganda. Morality has every bit as much
a place in that "Real World®" as your pragmatic concessions, for all the
apparent eagerness with which you give them.
> Here's a notion: exactly how many new drugs do you think would be put
> out each year, if drug companies didn't think they'd be able to
> actually _sell_ the drugs?
That's a false dichotomy. Not having a patent does not magically prevent
them from selling products based on those ideas.
> Approximately zero, right?
Wrong.
Again, you ignore history, which /proves conclusively/ that invention
can and /did/ occur without these nefarious "incentives".
But you don't want to talk about that.
Why?
I've no doubt there'd be an initial backlash to the revocation of
patents, in the pharmaceutical industry and elsewhere, but ultimately
those industries would recover, and be restored to their previously
ethical business methods, which did /not/ rely on patent protection rackets.
The principle /still/ stands, that no one has the right to claim
exclusive "ownership" of mankind's cumulative knowledge. Pragmatic
considerations do not somehow revoke that principle, regardless of how
urgent those considerations might seem, especially when those
"considerations" are concessions to Intellectual Blackmailers.
And you couldn't possibly have picked a worse example than the
pharmaceutical industry, which must surely be the most corrupt of them
all - more so than either the Oil, Supermarket or Software industries.
But then it would appear you're not especially concerned by such
"trivialities" as corruption, being a "pragmatist" as you are.
If you ever change your mind, perhaps you might like to read this:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Tq89AAAAIAAJ&dq=CORPORATE+CRIME+IN+THE+PHARMACEUTICAL+INDUSTRY&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=AP7v7UuLDm&sig=t8A3oxi1PzvGPdDu85uxEsDmPuM&hl=en&ei=KB9JStO4M4P1_AaN9diFCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3
http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/online/research/drug.html
To be perfectly honest, I grow rather weary of hearing these sob stories
about how the poor, fat, Pharma industry "needs" all these "incentives".
I have very little sympathy for them, they're gangsters just like any
other that depends on racketeering to conduct "business". They may make
life-saving drugs, but they also hold the ill to /ransom/ for those
"life-saving drugs", so it's not like they're some noble benefactors.
AFAIAC they're nothing more than common blackmailers. Take away the
illicit device they use to blackmail, solve the problem. Simple.
If that means there's no one left (initially) to develop drugs, because
the fat; greedy; evil monopolists lack their precious "incentives", then
so be it ... nationalise the industry, like it should be anyway (health
is a /public service/, after all), and use government funds for the
research. Then no one will need to worry about Pharma patents killing
people who can only afford cheap generic drugs, that won't be available
until after it's too late, for no better reason than to provide an
unnecessary "incentive" to the fat; greedy; evil monopolists on Pfizer's
board of directors.
And talking of government funds, consider the money that /might/ have
been spent on medical research, if the fascist warmongers in Congress
didn't have this permanent agenda of foreign invasion. How much debt is
America in right now? Where did that debt come from? How many
"life-saving drugs" could /that/ have provided an "incentive" for, I wonder?
It's utter nonsense to talk about this supposed "need" for patents as an
"incentive", when there is so much /waste/ in the world, for such
unjustifiable causes, when that waste could have served as the resources
for invention that might otherwise "need" these "incentives".
> Silly me, arguing that we should actually expect to pay for such
> things.
You persist in this blatant lie that this is about refusing to /pay/.
Like Free Software, this has absolutely /zero/ to do with money, and you
know it. It's about /liberty/, the Freedom of access to knowledge.
That's all.
> Oh, and before you run off on some boneheaded side track
You mean all that boring, irrelevant stuff to do with "morality", which
you have such utter contempt for?
> R&D and testing and suchlike
Save it.
http://media.slated.org/albums/content/audio/01_-_Wintermaerchen.ogg
> But hey, yeah, let's do away entirely with the entire drug industry
No, let's just do away entirely with the false dichotomy that the only
way to recover research costs is through patents.
> who needs it?
You, apparently, to justify your argument for Intellectual Slavery.
> Or do you seriously expect them to
I don't "expect" them to do anything in particular. I have /hopes/,
certainly, such as the /hope/ that they'd conduct their business
ethically, but alas that may be too much to hope for, while these
illicit devices called "patents" exist.
> keep pouring those millions and billions
Don't forget the trillion and zillions as well, because as we all know,
the more money one spends, the more justification one lends to the
defensibility of one's immoral actions.
> into R&D and testing if, having done so, they're expected to hand
> over the formulae
"Hand over" /what/, exactly?
An idea? A series of ideas? A description of an arrangement of atoms and
molecules, and the process by which this arrangement occurs, just as it
might even occur in the natural world? An idea that may, or may not have
been conceived before, in whole or in part, in the distant past or
merely elsewhere in the present? An idea based on established axioms,
and pre-existing research paid for by others. Ideas conceived by the
application of existing knowledge, gained through taxpayer funded
education? Ideas handed down from one generation to the next, in books
and by word of mouth, to form the sum total of all mankind's knowledge?
Is /that/ what you think these gangsters should "hand over"?
> to every third-rate twit
Well naturally those not engaged in Intellectual Monopoly must be
"twits", by your debase standards.
> who thinks he has some sort of "right" to the information?
You mean like Intellectual Monopolists do?
There is a subtle difference though, unlike the Intellectual Monopolist,
this "third-rate twit" does not demand /exclusive/ "rights" to that
information, because just like the rest of humanity, he has no such
/exclusive/ rights.
> Get real.
More "Real World®" pragmatism?
Yes, I'm painfully aware of how the "Real World®" works.
That is, after all, why I'm here - advocating. If there was nothing
wrong with society as it currently stands, then I'd have nothing to
advocate, would I?
> Whatever universe you're in, try visiting ours sometime.
Only if you promise it has some of these "Real Worlds®" I keep hearing
so much about, mostly from delusional pragmatists like you.
>>> But of course, *you* should have free access to them all
>> Correct. I am not responsible for companies misguidedly investing
>> in unethical business methods.
>
> Right, because R&D are so unethical.
You know, if you actually had anything even approaching a valid
argument, then you wouldn't need to keep injecting these blatant lies
and hyperbole.
It's not the /research/ that's unethical, it's the false claim of
"owning" knowledge.
Why are you deliberately avoiding the truth?
> Much more sensible to just stir random things together, hand them out
> and whichever mixtures don't kill people, well, publish those ones,
> right?
In your false dichotomy, where research only occurs if there are
patents, then certainly.
> Sorry, it's insane.
So is your dogged support of Intellectual Monopoly, despite history
proving conclusively that it's completely unnecessary, and despite the
blatantly obvious fact that the true origin and provenance of knowledge
can never be incontestably proved.
>>> because you contributed... er... sorry, what was your
>>> contribution again? Nothing? Ah, yes, that explains why you
>>> should have free reign over their ideas.
>>
>> Assuming you could prove that I had in no way ever contributed to
>> the sum total of all knowledge
>
> *This* is what you can come up with? Because you *may* have written
> a treatise on the effectiveness of daisies on the appearance of home
> gardens, you should be magically granted access to
> multi-billion-dollar R&D data in tech, in medicine and in other
> fields?
You think that the sum total of a person's education (formal or
otherwise), and indeed the society which nurtured him, is not relevant
to his current work?
Everything that person currently knows, he either *learned from others*
or simply observed from the natural world around him. He may then have
drawn conclusions, which may or may not be correct, but just like the
acquired knowledge from which he drew those conclusions, can *never* be
proved original, because we cannot know the mind of every human to have
ever lived.
If any given knowledge pre-existed /anywhere/ under /any/ circumstances,
then /no one/ has the "right" to claim exclusive "ownership" of that
knowledge, because that is simply a lie, irrespective of how much
/money/ that monopolist spends on "R&D" or anything else.
> I can't believe there exist people who actually buy into that sort of
> nonsense.
Likewise I can't believe there are supposedly Free Software advocates
who would "buy into" the premise of Intellectual Monopoly.
> Well, apparently there are.
Indeed.
> Sorry, can't help you
Don't worry, I don't need your help. I'm managing to promote dissent
against Intellectual Monopolies just fine by myself, although it would
seem I'm not alone:
Glynn Moody:
[quote]
Sarkozy Will Go "All the Way" for Monopolies
Curious stuff coming out of France:
"By defending copyright I do not just defend artistic creation, I
also defend my idea of a free society where everyone’s freedom is based
on respect for the rights of others. I am also defending the future of
our culture. It is the future of creation."
Er, sorry, mon brave, you seem to have forgotten that copyright is a
monopoly: as such, it's antithetical to freedom. Indeed, it *takes away*
the freedom from all those it is imposed upon, which is practically the
entire population of the world. Artists create irrespective of copyright
- they have to, because of an inner urge, not because copyright says
they get a monopoly.
And as for the "future of our culture", you obviously don't understand
that it is inextricably bound up with *past* culture. If it can't build
on what everyone has created before, just as they did - and copyright
makes this increasingly difficult - your culture won't have any future.
[/quote]
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/06/sarkozy-will-go-all-way-for-monopolies.html
[quote]
Intellectual Monopolies Kill: Two Examples
One of the reasons I object to the term "intellectual property" is that
its cuddly familiarity makes it hard for people to understand that
intellectual monopolies kill thousands of people every year - something
that seems unlikely for "property". Here are just two of the many ways
in which they do so - both involve patents on genetic material.
[/quote]
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/05/intellectual-monopolies-kill-two.html
Larry Lessig:
http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html
(Video)
> the real world
There's that mystical "Real World®" again.
> doesn't work that way.
And of course this mystical "Real World®" doesn't work my way, because
I'm a bad, bad boy for promoting this treacherous idea that businesses
should conduct themselves ethically, and that claiming exclusive access
to mankind's cumulative knowledge is fundamentally wrong.
Of course. What was I thinking?
> Go be happy with your flowers somewhere else, the 60's are over, the
> hippies are gone
Ah, so I'm a Hippie now as well, am I?
You forgot Commie and terrorist.
Well naturally, only Goddam Hippy, Commie, terrorists support this vile
thing called morality, after all, and those saintly pragmatists deliver
us from this "evil" ... into the comforting arms of slavery.
> get a grip.
I feel humbled by such incisive rebuke.
> Meantime, plonk.
Pity, I felt you had more to offer than that.
Oh well, better luck next time.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which
| the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf
| denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty.
| Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of
| the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today
| among human creatures." ~ Abraham Lincoln
`----
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01:59:24 up 32 days, 5:57, 4 users, load average: 0.10, 0.05, 0.05
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