The Vatican Concerned About Intellectual Property

from the access-to-knowledge dept

Tue, Oct 26th 2010 5:22pm — Mike Masnick

Last year, we noted that in one of the Pope's speeches, he had expressed concerns about how intellectual property laws were being used to hurt economic development and hold back things like medicines. It appears the Vatican has continued to study this subject. Jamie Love points us to a speech given by the Vatican's representative to the UN, Archibishop Silvano M. Tomasi, at the WIPO meeting back in September, where he highlights worries by the Vatican about how intellectual property can stifle access to knowledge and economic growth, especially in developing countries. The statement is so much more accurate than almost anything you hear from a politician concerning intellectual property.

Unlike most claims from politicians that intellectual property only provides benefits, it notes that the economic research is "contradictory," because while granting someone a monopoly certainly increases activity in those areas, it also limits other areas of growth:

Evidence to date is fragmented and somewhat contradictory, in part because many of the concepts involved have not yet been measured. A stronger system of protection could either enhance or limit economic growth. While strengthening IPRs has potential for enhancing growth and development in the proper circumstances, it might also raise difficult economic and social costs. Indeed, developing economies could experience net welfare losses in the short run because many of the costs of protection could emerge earlier than the dynamic benefits. This situation explains why it is often difficult to organize a convergence of interests in favor of reform of intellectual property in developing countries.

The adoption of stronger IPRs in developing countries is often defended by claims that this reform will attract significant new inflows of technology, a blossoming of local innovation and cultural industries, and a faster closing of the technology gap between developing and developed countries. It must be recognized, however, that improved IPRs by itself is highly unlikely to produce such benefits.

Of course, this actually applies to developed countries as well, but we'll skip over that for now. Still, it's nice to see at least some folks recognizing that intellectual property creates competing incentives, and that the only way to judge whether or not it's a net benefit involves looking at both impacts.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: access to knowledge, intellectual property, vatican

14 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 5:34pm

Religion
Given that the clergy is at least supposed to think above all about the people's well being, it is not that surprising.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 6:52pm
  
  Re: Religion
  Ignoring the well-being of content creators, are we? I expect the clergy to concern itself with the poor, not with the wealthy.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 7:22pm
    
    Re: Re: Religion
    Don't confuse content creators with copy"right" holders.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Timm, 26 Oct 2010 @ 7:25pm
    
    Re: Re: Religion
    Not the Catholic church I know. Until the 60's status and political rise of clergy was based mainly on the wealth you brought in to the church through tiding or "forgiveness of sins" through your record of funds obtained through your efforts in the willing of wealth and property to the church. Many a rich family was made poor by the practice of
    'guaranteeing" a trip to heaven; the worse the sins the more you paid.
    
    Don't get me wrong, the church does wonderful things. But the old ways are still remembered by my generation.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 8:15pm
  
  Re: Religion
  Actually, given that the Vatican is backward thinking in many aspects, this is sort of surprising (and in a good way too, which is even more surprising).
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Dave (profile), 26 Oct 2010 @ 7:40pm

Nicely said
He just became this Mormon's favorite pope ever.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 9:48pm

" it's nice to see at least some folks recognizing that intellectual property creates competing incentives, and that the only way to judge whether or not it's a net benefit involves looking at both impacts."

Nice to see it on Techdirt, too.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
nonanymous, 26 Oct 2010 @ 10:13pm

Patents are the target
Judging by one of the quotes, I think Vatican is targeting patent law more so than copyright

"On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for
protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property..., especially in the field of health care."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2010 @ 1:44am

This position is simply supportive of IPR but recognizes that some PR is needed.

Pretty conventional position for corporate America and there is nothing there that in any way gets to grips with IPR - the whole philosophical question of whether it really can be a property.

Perhaps it's just an effort by the church to rebuild relations with the rich and powerful.

That the Masnick fails to even try to analyze the position is disappointing ; time was when Masnick would have been all over that - he must be getting old or something.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- nonanonymous, 27 Oct 2010 @ 9:29am
  
  Re:
  That the Masnick fails to even try to analyze the position is disappointing ; time was when Masnick would have been all over that - he must be getting old or something.
  
  It used to be that anonymous cowards made at least some sort of sense. Not anymore. Lead paint chips must be doing their job.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2010 @ 7:17am

@2 and @3
nice try ...maybe you artists should just piss off.

I'm not a catholic lover but i'll at least say this at least they are saying somehting about it. It's awful darn hard to justify hollywood's persecutions of people these days with 150 year terms.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
staff, 27 Oct 2010 @ 12:43pm

misguided
"laws were being used to hurt economic development and hold back things like medicines"

See how damaging your bizarre hatred of IP is. You've even confused the Pope!

For a knowledgeable analysis of patent issues, please see http://truereform.piausa.org.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Natanael L (profile), 27 Oct 2010 @ 1:55pm
  
  Re: misguided
  Wow, how constructive your post was. You even managed to get a few arguments in there. Or not.
  
  For claiming that IPR is good for technology, you know awfully little about it. Your web site spits out this:
  
  "Internal Server Error
  The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
  Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@truereform.piausa.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
  More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
  Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
  Apache/2.2.16 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.16 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 Phusion_Passenger/2.2.5 Server at truereform.piausa.org Port 80"
  
  But no maybe I have violated your copyrights even though you never wrote any of that?
  
  By the way, how funny that you use open source, patent free, software. That really supports your entire cause for stronger "property rights".
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Gene Cavanaugh, 27 Oct 2010 @ 8:20pm

IPRs and economics
As an IP attorney, I can say only "excellent". I strongly agree, though I also feel it should be applied to all countries, developing or developed.

IP as it is commonly used is economically destructive.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]