Posted with permission. From enigma_foundry:

Not A Frog, But A Horse

The discussion of the IP originating from a Frog and its potential to benefit a Tribe of Natives in the Amazon illustrates an extremely pernicious trend in corporate propaganda. First, a debate is created between two points of view that accepts, as a given, a whole set of very wrong and dangerous ideas. Because of the way the "debate" is framed, these ideas themselves are never really questioned. In fact, from the way the debate is framed, one would struggle to discern that the underpinning assumptions could be called into question. The post on the
Tree Frog is very instructive as an example of this corporate propaganda. For example:

". . . Brazil, like other developing nations, is trying to fight back against what it perceives as biopiracy, the theft of biological resources from the country's native habitats for commercial use."

From this statement, you would believe that someone is physicallygoing into the Amazon and taking some real property, for example some exotic hardwood trees, cutting them down, and removing them from the Amazon.
But this is where the idea that so called "Intellectual Property" is equivalent to real property is introduced, without question or acknowledgment that many consider this equivalency deeply flawed.
(See RMS postings at www.gnu.org on the subject). Of course nothing is being "stolen" at all, as we find out later:

"And they are questioning the rights of foreigners to exploit their locally derived products. At a United Nations gathering in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba last month, delegates from developing nations called for changes to international law that would allow governments to block - or at least share profits from - foreign patents on biological resources found in their territory."

OK so this is about patents on traditional medical practices, that Big Pharma is trying to monopolize through the use (or mis-use, perhaps) of patent law. Never mind that these practices have been handed down presumably for generations, and would therefore be considered part of the public domain and therefore unpatentable. Of course anyone could then use this information-western Big Pharma or Third world generic manufacturers (of which there are many). Western Pharma could still use this information-but would be unable to obtain a legally enforceable
monopoly on the production of any medicines flowing from this information.

"The theory of biopiracy at its best would give alert indiginous [sic] peoples to the potential value of their knowledge and existing rights in medicinal compounds that they have discovered (or created), and,
especially, to trade that knowledge to parties in a better position to enhance the compounds into a commercially valuable product, so they do not give up valuable rights for a pittance."

So here we are with the Trojan Horse-accept the pittance that BigPharma would like to share with the government, which might even trickle down to those that shared the knowledge with Big Pharma in the first place,
and you have accepted the Patent regime which has sentenced many inthe Third World to premature death because of lack of medicines. How generous.

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enigma_foundry
enigma_foundry@eml.cc

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:41 PM | Comments from Readers, International, Patents, Pharma

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