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MPAA, Pharma Demanding US Push Other Countries To Have Significantly More Draconian IP Laws Than The US

from the how-nice-of-them dept

Wed, Dec 15th 2010 7:11pm — Mike Masnick

The constant push to expand government granted monopoly privileges for those who benefit most from them never ceases. It seems like every other day or so, we hear about US lobbyists for those industries pushing for greater legal support around the globe. The latest is with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement that the USTR is currently negotiating. The MPAA wrote a letter, which was co-signed by the major pharmaceutical trade group and the US Chamber of Commerce, pushing for the agreement to include rules that go well beyond current US copyright and patent laws. This, of course, is part of the standard game of leapfrog that the industry plays: get other countries to push stricter laws, then complain that the US is not living up to "international obligations," and get them to bump up their own laws and continue the cycle. In fact, the Obama administration has apparently made it clear that they will not even consider allowing intellectual property rules to be decreased as a part of this agreement and will only look to ratchet up protections. This is, as KEI points out, even though many of the participants in the negotiations are developing nations, who would be greatly helped with lower intellectual property standards, and previous US administration have been more than happy to agree to such agreements:

After being told the Obama Administration would not consider anything that lowered IPR norms in the TPP negotiations, and only measures that raised norms, KEI reminded USTR has the Clinton and Bush Administration both were willing to lower IPR norms, when they were persuaded it was appropriate. This included:

President Clinton's December 1, 1999 speech to the WTO endorsing new changes in U.S. trade policy to address concerns over access to medicines.

President Clinton's Executive Order 13155 of May 10, 2000, concerning Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals and Medical Technologies.

President Bush's decision to agree to the November 14, 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

President Bush's decision to accept the waiver to 31.f of the TRIPS agreement on 30 August 2003.

President Bush's July 16, 2004 agreement between USTR and Canada to modify NAFTA to allow exports of medicines under compulsory licenses.

President Bush's May 10, 2007 agreement on the bipartisan New Trade Policy, which eliminated patent extensions, eliminated linkage of drug registration and patents, and relaxed test data protection for the Peru Free Trade Agreement.

For the Obama Administration to claim that it can only harmonize upwards is really disappointing, given the promises that Obama made during his presidential campaign.

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Filed Under: copyright, tpp, treaties
Companies: chamber of commerce, mpaa, phrma

18 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2010 @ 7:58pm

Well Obama here is no surprise.
He is not a leader he has no idea of the issues apparently and give it all those decision making to others.

We don't have leaders with good pointing moral compasses anymore, which is a shame.
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disengranchisedcitizen, 15 Dec 2010 @ 7:58pm

Is Obama Sin Laden just a puppet to these gangsters or just clueless ?
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someone (profile), 15 Dec 2010 @ 8:03pm

Obama talks the talk but does not walk the walk
"For the Obama Administration to claim that it can only harmonize upwards is really disappointing, given the promises that Obama made during his presidential campaign. "

Nearly everything he campaigned on was a lie, pretty obvious to most people by now.
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Greevar (profile), 15 Dec 2010 @ 8:06pm

Re:
New guy, same bullshit.
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The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 15 Dec 2010 @ 8:09pm

Re: Obama talks the talk but does not walk the walk
Well, he is a politician after all. What did you expect?
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Greevar (profile), 15 Dec 2010 @ 8:38pm

Something has to give.
There has to be a point where enough people decide that this has to end. The only way we can affect any meaningful change is to completely disregard these ridiculous laws and actively work to undermine the power they grant to the undeserving leeches. The only way to bring attention to the absurdity of these protectionist policies is to violate them. Civil disobedience is the only way they will listen.

They act like the works they sell are their property. Ideas that people they employ came up with and executed somehow belongs to the publishers alone. They throw up barriers to our cultural heritage and demand a ransom to get it back one piece at a time. They lock up ideas and in doing so, lock out creativity that can be derived from and enrich our culture. There are people that are dying because drug companies are too tight-fisted to share their medicinal research to save lives because they're too invested in squeezing every penny out of every ailment possible.

Our government is too complacent, apathetic, or too ignorant to see the wrong these laws are doing. They are so disconnected from reality that they don't feel the pain that so many people deal with every day. Why would they want to change things? They're not perceptively inconvenienced by the laws they force on us. They have no discomfort with the state of things because they live the high life enjoying the perks of being for sale to the highest bidder. They've never had to go without.

Copyrights and patents don't offer incentive to create, they offer incentive to control and keep others from benefiting from the good that such things can provide. It's more beneficial to rights holders to troll others for having a similar idea and trying to actually use it in a way that might be good for us all. You have to realize that something is wrong when it's more profitable to beat people down with the law and extract payment than to actually execute an idea that might do some good.

Abolish copyright. Abolish patent. They serve no one but those who wish to exploit others.
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Qritiqal (profile), 15 Dec 2010 @ 8:59pm

Re: Re:
Actually, given that Clinton and Bush seemed to have a clue about these issues, it appears that this is a new guy with a whole bunch of "never seen before" bullsh*t.
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The Mad Hatter (profile), 15 Dec 2010 @ 10:49pm

Chicago Machine Politician. What did you expect?
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2010 @ 11:29pm

Re: Something has to give.
"squeezing every penny out of every ailment possible."

The correct word in this context is "aliment" not "ailment".
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2010 @ 11:35pm

On the bright side, alternatives are starting to show up.

http://vo.do/pioneerone

Do yourself a favor don't consume anything from those other people, they are a cancer inside society undeserving of attention.

If it is not free it is not worth it.
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 15 Dec 2010 @ 11:51pm

Re: Re: Something has to give.
Food? I thought he was talking about illness.
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someone (profile), 16 Dec 2010 @ 6:17am

Re: Something has to give.
"Civil disobedience is the only way they will listen."

Voting for people who are not your normal politician would be a better first step than breaking laws.

"Our government is too complacent, apathetic, or too ignorant to see the wrong these laws are doing."

Maybe it is the American people who are too complacent, apathetic and ignorant to see that voting for the same lying politicians does not result in the "change" they are seeking.
Besides when dealing with things as intangible as copyright, do you think the average VOTER even understands the issues?

"Abolish copyright. Abolish patent. They serve no one but those who wish to exploit others."
I agree that both of these are being exploited, reform is needed. Throwing out the baby with with bathwater seems a little extreme.
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ltlw0lf (profile), 16 Dec 2010 @ 7:13am

Re: Re: Something has to give.
Voting for people who are not your normal politician would be a better first step than breaking laws.

I tried...but the 1.1 million+ other people out there voted for the same normal politicians. I even wrote in a few candidates that I thought deserved to be on the ballot but weren't because they couldn't get one of the two parties to pick them up. Not a single person I voted for was elected into office.

Unfortunately, the voted for another group of the same normal politicians (all Democrats around here, and every Democrat incumbent was voted in another term too.)

Besides when dealing with things as intangible as copyright, do you think the average VOTER even understands the issues?

This is one thing that I think will cause people to change...maybe not right away, but at some point everyone, including "Anonymous" is going to have to agree that the Copyright Maximalists have just gone way too far. Which I, like most of you, hope will happen in my lifetime. Then change will happen over-night...hopefully at the ballot box and not at the tip of the spear.
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Greevar (profile), 16 Dec 2010 @ 7:26am

Re: Re: Something has to give.
No type of reform will be sufficient to solve this issue. If anything of copyright is left, those that wish to exploit it will push to have it's power expanded once again and we will be back where we started. No, we must abolish these laws. Mankind did just fine before their inception and we do not need them now.
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Greevar (profile), 16 Dec 2010 @ 7:32am

Re: Re: Re: Something has to give.
And to your point on voting for different politicians:

Slavery was never abolished because people voted for better congressmen, it happened because there was conflict with the laws of slavery.
http://questioncopyright.org/redefining_property

Civil disobedience is the most effective tool any citizen has. Conflict always brings attention to issues and being non-violent, it makes the dominant group exhibit their tyrannical behavior.
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Michael, 16 Dec 2010 @ 7:45am

Re: Re: Something has to give.
I'm sorry, but your wrong. It doesn't matter who you vote for anymore. They are all beholden to the same master. There is no solution to the current political situation but revolution. The only question is when. There is no way a politician that would go against the establishment grain can get elected, the establishment saw to that long ago. It need to be torn down entirely before it will get better. Unfortunately people will suffer a great deal before they actually stand up and fight as a nation. The current partisan atmosphere ensures that the country will remain divided enough to present no real danger to the system, and thats not an accident. The cost will be great, and until people are willing to pay that cost, things will not get better.
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PRMan, 16 Dec 2010 @ 7:47am

Re: Re: Something has to give.
Muphry's Law strikes again.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2011 @ 1:48am

very rarely do the highest in the government (e.g. presidents, prime ministers and their top people - cabinet ministers in UK, not sure what the american equivalent is) make any of the decisions that they claimed they would/will. This is often due to those people lower down in the government blocking these things, or often a case of "it's worse than we thought, we have no choice but to....." (like we're getting in UK with our parliament). It is never a case of what the top guy says goes, that's just how politics works.
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