President and CEO Tom Donohue praises his group’s ability to have prevented making such things as cheaper drugs and environmental technology more accessible to all.
In remarks before the US Chamber of Commerce’s "5th Annual Intellectual Property Summit" yesterday, Chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue made some startling comments that should raise the eyebrows of those that think that piracy is merely about movies, music, or software.
Intellectual property rights is also about much more important concerns like health education, and even the environment, which Donohue lauds his organization’s ability to have prevented the effort by some to make developments in these areas accessible to all.
Donohue notes his ability to take on those trying to make cheaper drugs available to the sick and injured in third-world countries around the world: "For example, earlier this year at the World Health Organization, our broad coalition of associations and companies were able to turn back an anti-IP effort and send the message that such assaults against innovation norms will no longer go unchallenged.
Activist NGOs had been urging the World Health Organization to oppose IP protections for pharmaceutical products, medical devices, and biotechnology."
Say what you will about the merits of file-sharing, but certainly healthcare is a subject of pressing concern, especially when US citizens, supposedly among the most affluent in the world, can no longer afford the cost of medications or treatment. Can we honestly say with a straight-face that we expect people in third-world countries like Zimbabwe or Cambodia to pay themselves what many of us cannot?
It’s downright criminal.
Donohue defends the effort to by saying that undermining pharmaceutical patents "…jeopardizes American jobs as well as the possibility of finding the next wonder drug." Try telling that to the millions dying from AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.
To affirm Donohue’s already apparent insanity, he even goes on to call those that oppose intellectual property rights Marxists.
"Nowadays, academics, NGOs, and even governments are jumping into the fray to undermine IP rights all over the world by retooling the old Marxist contention that ‘property is theft’" said Donohue "This cadre of radicals are trying–sometimes successfully–to build public support against IP and innovation around the world."
Danaher even takes aim at those trying to make environmental technologies more accessible. This should certainly be of concern in light of global warming and large-scale pollution by many countries.
"In a similar vein, over the last year, governments, NGOs, and UN agencies have begun to call for a full abandonment of the patent system to allow developing countries to acquire environmental technologies," he continued. "What started with medicines has now shifted over to a new battleground–environmental technologies. Where these radical activists go next no one knows, which is why we must remain vigilant for new international challenges and aggressively fight them."
Yes, we certainly don’t know where these crazes "radical activists" will go next. I mean first they were concerned with the health of the planet’s population and then of the Earth itself? Those darn Marxists.
The speech was given to a group of businesses that unsurprisingly included Pfizer, General Electric, News Corp, and Proctor and Gamble among others in order to urged President Bush to follow the Senate and House’s lead and approve the PRO-IP Act.
The "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act" would toughen civil and criminal laws against counterfeiting and piracy, provide enhanced IP enforcement and prosecutorial resources, and improve IP coordination within the executive branch by creating a so-called "copyright czar" position in the White House. It’s the latter part that is the reason why Bush has threatened to veto the legislation for he is concerned about separation of powers and "legislative intrusion into the internal structure and composition of the President’s Administration."
Let’s hope Bush vetoes the bill and helps protect "radical activists" and Marxists for a change.
jared@zeropaid.com
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It’s shameless really to deny drugs to needy people around the world that can’t afford the high prices of these proprietary drugs.
He says it as if its some kind of insult. What he should be analyzing is why Max ism has become a better alternative to what they are offering. To be honest I think these patent/copyright holders have had it too good for too long and lost sight of what their business is really about. They are not selling an idea they are selling a product. Technically drugs were supposed to be held in copyright or patents to allow the companies to make back the cost of development not to give a monopoly that allows inflated prices. Its about time we cut the time before drugs go into public license.
I wonder if guys like him are cognizant about the degree to which they sound like douchebags?
If there is a Hell then its guys like this that are going to its deepest circle in fact God would have to create a lower Circle of Hell to appropriately punish these fucktards.
In the Dantean Cosmology the worst fate for a soul is to be eternally chewed by one of Satan’s 3 heads but its this guy that would go down past Judas Iscariot right into Lucifer’s antipodal colon to eternally choke on the sulfuric gases as the aether of his soul is broken down by hellfire only to be collected and reformed by hellice to be digested again in an endless cycle of sensory punishment.
A fate so horrific it would cause any man to immediately commit suicide if they were not already dead.
It would be awesome if he happens to get cancer then can’t afford the treatment he needs then suffers a long and agonizing death.
Jamyour41 he is the president of the Chamber of Commerce which is arguably the biggest business related lobby group in the world. He probably has money coming out of his unborn great great grand children’s asses.
This capitalist executive is incorrect: ‘Property is Theft’ is not a Marxist slogan it’s an anarchist one first stated by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
The full quote is as follows:
‘ If I were asked to answer the following question: ‘What is slavery?’ and I should answer in one word ‘Murder!’ my meaning would be understood at once. No further argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought his will his personality is a power of life and death and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why then to this other question: ‘What is property?’ may I not likewise answer ‘Theft’? ‘
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