Politics... World events

[Gorth]

3 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

 The research grant was the reason, from the 1st AJE article: "The bloc will pay less than $19.50 per jab, a senior EU official involved in talks with vaccine makers told Reuters, adding that partly reflected the financial support given by the EU and Germany for the drug’s development."

Nearly 40 bucks per person (since 2 doses required) is hardly cheap though, especially when one of the potential competitors is $2.50 per dose.

 

Since there is no such thing as lasting immunity against Covid19, any vaccine would only really be working for what? 3 weeks?

 

Edit: The scientists behind the vaccine. I hope this thing works out, even if not the cheapest option.

"The scientists who developed the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine are a Turkish-German power couple"

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/10/europe/biontech-pfizer-vaccine-team-couple-intl/index.html

 

[Malcador]

On 11/10/2020 at 4:57 PM, Bartimaeus said:

You forgot to switch accounts, HoonDing, .

I am oby, you fool.  I mean....uh...just kidding

[Zoraptor]

7 hours ago, Gorth said:

Since there is no such thing as lasting immunity against Covid19, any vaccine would only really be working for what? 3 weeks?

We don't really know how long any immunity lasts. Losing antibodies fairly early does not mean the immune response is lost ('memory' cells last way longer, and they will stimulate new antibodies when required) and while there are reinfections there aren't very many of them so far- and the reinfections don't seem to be notably bad, in effect, as per 'Spanish' flu. You can catch even something that is 'supposed' to give permanent immunity like mumps more than once, and you can catch it even if you're vaccinated against it, though either are unlikely. There's no reason not to think that most people who recover from sarscov2/ are immunised won't have some lasting immunity, it's just that respiratory tract infections are naturally resistant to immune response anyway by their nature, which is why they're so common compared to other diseases.

The classic 'bad' example would be 'Spanish' Flu where a prior infection meant you were way more likely to die from a subsequent one because your immune system recognised it and caused a cytokine storm, ie your immune system recognised the virus but it had changed enough for the immune response to be ineffective and go into a positive feedback loop. Alternatively you have something like standard flu where you might get it badly once but then either not get it again for a decade or only get it as a weaker form because the strains were still similar and your immune response mostly effective against it. Something like that is most likely, imo.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Zoraptor

[Gorth]

I wonder if Putin plays chess?

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/12/is-the-nagorno-karabakh-war-really-over

 

Uprisings in Armenia as people wants to overthrow the government (which had been trying to tie Armenia closer to the west), Azerbaijanis all happy with a Russian military presence (at least at the moment)  and Turkeys role in the region reduced to irrelevancy (regardless of how much posturing Erdogan does). Not bad for six weeks.

[majestic]

52 minutes ago, Gorth said:

I wonder if Putin plays chess?

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/12/is-the-nagorno-karabakh-war-really-over

 

Uprisings in Armenia as people wants to overthrow the government (which had been trying to tie Armenia closer to the west), Azerbaijanis all happy with a Russian military presence (at least at the moment)  and Turkeys role in the region reduced to irrelevancy (regardless of how much posturing Erdogan does). Not bad for six weeks.

Things don't seem to look very bright for Erdolf in Turkey right now. The Lira's not doing so well either and his son-in-law wants to resign. Or has resigned, or something like that. Must be kinda bad when even your extended family jumps the ship.

[Zoraptor]

Nothing official, but there are also a lot of rumours that Erdogan's cancer is back. On the scale of illness rumours it's closer to Putin having Parkinson's and about to imminently resign than Roosevelt having Polio and being wheelchair bound, but there are multiple other signs that Erdogan's hold on power is a bit wobbly. A decent number of heavy-ish hitters (eg ex PM Davutoglu) have left his party, the economy is in a shambles with the Lira plummeting and his popularity is being propped up by a load of military and nationalist adventurism. Which is like hooking your voters on drugs, it will provide a short term boost but the longer it goes on the more you need the next hit and the less the next hit actually gets you. Once you can't get it or something goes wrong you've got a big crash instead.

Dunno about the war being a genius ploy by Putin, so much as it being due to Armenia's stupidity. The number of Armenians (emotional actual Armenians, Turks larping their wet dream scenario and diaspora western based Armenians with no grip on/ knowledge of reality) saying they should drop Russia and 'join NATO' or similar is really rather funny. Can't join NATO with an active territorial dispute, can't join NATO if one of its members- say Turkey- doesn't want you in it. See for an almost completely direct comparison, Cyprus, which cannot join NATO because its north is occupied by Turkey, and Turkey has veto power anyway. EU isn't a defence pact and also doesn't want countries with active territorial disputes. So absolute best case scenario is having to give up Artsakh anyway, to get protection, if Turkey approves it. Which they won't.

In the end Armenia got a lot more out of it than they really deserved, have got an open ended commitment from Russia to their protection and that of most of Artsakh proper, and have had their main historical genocide level enemy near completely sidelined. That's a decent result from a war they were clearly losing fairly badly.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 hours ago, Malcador said:

I am oby, you fool.  I mean....uh...just kidding

We are all oby.

[Darkpriest]

Argue more on pronouns and other meaningless stuff, meanwhile in Asia

https://www.wsj.com/articles/asia-pacific-nations-sign-major-china-backed-trade-deal-11605434779?mod=mhp

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

Argue more on pronouns and other meaningless stuff, meanwhile in Asia

https://www.wsj.com/articles/asia-pacific-nations-sign-major-china-backed-trade-deal-11605434779?mod=mhp

Everything past the 2nd paragraph is behind a paywall.

I'm assuming it goes on to talk about some crappy situation that Obama tried to head off with the TPP

[Zoraptor]

Non paywalled CNN article.

To be honest, Obama tried to impose a crappy situation on all the other countries in the TPP via all the IP etc provisions. It's no accident that it was implemented smoothly and quickly once Trump pulled out, every single controversial provision was in at the behest of the US. The RCEP agreement barely raised a murmur here in comparison, about the only thing that got any coverage was India deciding to pull out (unsurprising since they're comparatively vulnerable to imports and way less geared towards exports).

A lot of people seem to think that Biden will join the TPP, but it doesn't seem likely at all. Too much domestic opposition, and no one else wants to add the provisions the US will want added before joining, and the US's leverage is massively reduced now that it's in force.

[Guest]

It's been a long time and at no point have I been an expert, but I seem to recall the IP stuff being fairly tame (in the "leaked" version), but made out to be a boogeyman in the media.

[Zoraptor]

It was fairly tame compared to what the US wanted, certainly, but the fact that the IP provisions got chucked as soon as Trump pulled the plug shows pretty conclusively that nobody else wanted it. Everyone else was just willing to swallow that dead rat to get a fta with the US.

(The healthcare related IP stuff was the really big negative, since the US was trying very hard to get both single purchase models (eg Pharmac here which buys all publicly funded medicines) and patent standardisations that would make buying cheaper generics a lot more difficult. The reputation of the US healthcare system in terms of cost/ admin is absolutely dire outside the US and no one else wants 1000% increases in the price of (not even funded by Pharmac, bought off the shelf) epipens because the US keeps issuing new patents every time the formulation changes slightly and the company is free to gouge as much as they like)

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

It was fairly tame compared to what the US wanted, certainly, but the fact that the IP provisions got chucked as soon as Trump pulled the plug shows pretty conclusively that nobody else wanted it. Everyone else was just willing to swallow that dead rat to get a fta with the US.

Sure, but that doesn't tell me anything other than no one wanted it. My kids didn't want to take their medicine or get their shots when they were young either.

[Zoraptor]

And that's why you add a sweetener if you want the kids to take their medicine or get their shots with minimum fuss. The IP provisions can hardly be compared to medicine though as they benefited the US to the detriment of everyone else, if they didn't they would have stayed in after the US left like the other provisions did (including some unpopular ones like the investor/ country arbitration system).

If the US wanted back into TPP/ CPPTA (or whatever it's now called) they'd have to offer a sweetener again, and probably a bigger one than in the initial negotiations given that the agreement is working fine without them. Trump's protectionism may have had mixed results but it has been popular with a lot of people in the US, so politically it would be very difficult to give even a similar sized sweetener, let alone a larger one. Even the good geopolitical reasons to go for it are not so much in effect now; many of the countries in CPPTA are also in RCEP and hence are tied to China in precisely the way TPP was meant to stop/ be a competitor to.

[Guest]

Again, it's been a while: wasn't the IP thing about, "hey, could you stop stealing ours"? Something something china = land of a 1,000 bootleg dvds, etc, etc. We need sweetener for that?

Again, it's been a while: wasn't the "sweetener" bolstering other economies in the region so that they would help act as a check on China?

Again, it's been a while: wasn't there stuff in there about easing up on human rights abuses, human trafficking, labor laws, etc. Not sweetener enough? Or maybe not what you mean by sweetener? Or not what the people who were happy to deal with Trump instead would think of as sweetener?

Again, it's been a while, but giving my young kids medicine or subjecting them to vaccination was more about doing what needed to be done for their long term health vs their short term happiness. I'm sure they would have thought much better of me at the time if I skipped the shot and gave them ice cream for dinner instead. Cuz that's what winner dads do.

[Zoraptor]

The IP thing was about getting everyone to agree to US rules. US rules favour the US. If you want to refresh your memory from the US perspective the EFF has a handy summary up that seems to cover most of your questions briefly, including peripheral to IP issues stuff- like all the human rights provisions being optional, unlike the IP provisions. Otherwise there's a longer pro TPP IP section take here (which frankly still makes it sound awful, and certainly illustrates how it was being driven by the US) and one specifically on the medical implications here.

China's IP theft was completely irrelevant, as they were never a party to the TPP. The TPP countries adhere to the international standards of IP, the US doesn't and is desperate to rewrite them for their own benefit. So, OTOH, the US's habit of issuing patents continually for things that simply aren't inventions- and in some cases are absolute and literal theft every bit as much as anything China has done- and expecting everyone to pay their companies royalties perpetually 100% was. The go to examples of exactly how broken and exactly how extortionate the US system is are (1) Basmati Rice patent, since accoridng to the USPTO Basmati Rice was invented by a US company (2) Mexican Yellow Beans are a unique US invention, in that case the guy who bought them from Mexico literally went back to the market he bought them from to demand royalties for his 'unique invention' from the traditional users. Sure they got fixed, eventually, and after a load of money was spent. If the TPP had been in effect we would have had to adhere to those patents no matter how utterly incompetent and outright scummy their issuance was, and have had to adhere to the constant patent renewals on things like epipens which aren't even approaching novel inventions any more.

[Lexx]

Yeh, I still remember all the drama about this. Germany had quite a few protests about it and you had to be very observant, because they just tried to push their garbage through the system under a new name. Very annoying.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

The IP thing was about getting everyone to agree to US rules. US rules favour the US. If you want to refresh your memory from the US perspective the EFF has a handy summary up that seems to cover most of your questions briefly

I mentioned the EFF briefly earlier and I'll do so again here since it appears that a lot of their material, at a glance, appears to be the same. They claim that the TPP would do X or Y, but did little to back any of that up.

Most of my experience with TPP went something like this:

Friend - "The TPP is going to do X"

Me - "Where did you read that?"

Friend - *mentions a thread on reddit*

Me - "Did they source it?"

Friend - "No"

Me - "Do they say where?"

Friend - "Sounds like it's in the [Y] section"

Me - *Reads [Y] section. Reads section before it. Reads section after it. Reads [Y] section again*

Me - "Yeah, it doesn't say that. At least not there"

Rinse. Repeat.

The EFF rarely quotes the document and where they do, quotes it in a limited way which makes it difficult to determine the context. There are lots of things they could have done to add transparency but didn't. Perhaps because their hands were tied. Perhaps because it benefits them to create boogeymen.

Quote

China's IP theft was completely irrelevant, as they were never a party to the TPP.

Again, it's been a while: China's IP theft was irrelevant because the object of the exercise was to cut off China's ability to market stolen IP. If no one in the region would trade in bootleg items, then China's ability to profit from them would be diminished. To which you'll say "black markets". To which I'll say, "which is why the US was sweetening the pot with other incentives and threatening a very cold shoulder if violations were found".

Quote

The TPP countries adhere to the international standards of IP, the US doesn't and is desperate to rewrite them for their own benefit.

Yes, funny how each partner country tried to do stuff that benefited them

You could argue that the US went too far or bargained too hard or gained concessions that it maybe didn't deserve...and I would probably agree with you without much of a fight (we're in total agreement that US patent law is pants-on-head retarded). But if your argument is that the US wasn't bending over backwards to give everyone else what they wanted without any regard for their own interests, then I'm not sure we're going to agree on how negation works or the meaning of the word "compromise".

Edited November 17, 2020 by Achilles

[Zoraptor]

4 hours ago, Achilles said:

Me - "Did they source it?"

Well OK, have fun. I'm not generally too keen on posting such links without more specificity but that is precisely the reason why you don't get line by line citations- because the document is absolutely fricking massive and written in terse and opaque legalese that is very difficult for anyone let alone a layman to parse. But as it happens I can draw your attention at least to the DMCA like provisions the EFF mentioned as someone else once asked me for them.

"Article 18.68: Technological Protection Measures (TPMs)821.In order to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms use in connection with the exercise of their rights and that restrict unauthorised acts in respect of their works, performances, and phonograms,each Party shall provide that any person that:(a)knowingly, or having reasonable grounds to know,83circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work, performance, or phonogram;84or (b)manufactures, imports, distributes,85offers for sale or rental to the public, or otherwise provides devices, products, or components, or offers to the public or provides services, that:(i)are promoted, advertised, or otherwise marketed by that person86for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure;(ii)have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent any effective technological measure;87or(iii)are primarily designed, produced, or performed for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure,is liable and subject to the remedies provided for in Article 18.74 (Civil and Administrative Procedures and Remedies).Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied if any person is found to have engaged wilfully88and for the purposes of commercialadvantage or financial gain89in any of the above activities."

Edited November 17, 2020 by Zoraptor

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Well OK, have fun. I'm not generally too keen on posting such links without more specificity but that is precisely the reason why you don't get line by line citations- because the document is absolutely fricking massive and written in terse and opaque legalese that is very difficult for anyone let alone a layman to parse. But as it happens I can draw your attention at least to the DMCA like provisions the EFF mentioned as someone else once asked me for them.

"Article 18.68: Technological Protection Measures (TPMs)821.In order to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms use in connection with the exercise of their rights and that restrict unauthorised acts in respect of their works, performances, and phonograms,each Party shall provide that any person that:(a)knowingly, or having reasonable grounds to know,83circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work, performance, or phonogram;84or (b)manufactures, imports, distributes,85offers for sale or rental to the public, or otherwise provides devices, products, or components, or offers to the public or provides services, that:(i)are promoted, advertised, or otherwise marketed by that person86for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure;(ii)have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent any effective technological measure;87or(iii)are primarily designed, produced, or performed for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure,is liable and subject to the remedies provided for in Article 18.74 (Civil and Administrative Procedures and Remedies).Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied if any person is found to have engaged wilfully88and for the purposes of commercialadvantage or financial gain89in any of the above activities."

Yeah, I don't know that it was fun, but actually reading the source document is what differentiates someone who knows what the text says vs someone who believes what they've been told the text says. Granted I was working with a leaked version of the document, so I had to concede that what I was reading was not the final product, but still.

The EFF claims were difficult to confirm because they didn't source them. A cynical read of that makes it look like they wanted to create boogeymen and knew that their audience would go along with it (because, I mean, who wants to read source material). They are generous with hyperlinks, and appear to be content to send readers down rabbit holes that lead to other articles they've published, so it's not as though they don't know how to link to sources or even care very much about making their articles "clean".

Again, it's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I read that section back in 2015 when TPP chat was all the rage. I'm still not reading anything that comes even close to sounding draconian.

Quote

Article 18:68: Technological Protection Measures. IP creators have the right to not have their work stolen. If someone knowingly tries to steal IP, creates technology that helps with stealing IP, provides technology that helps with stealing IP, sells technology that helps to steal IP or sells stolen IP itself, or promotes stealing IP, then that person will be guilty of committing a crime. Each country in the agreement should come up with rules about what will happen to said criminals.

What part of that do you disagree with?

[Zoraptor]

...

If you're going to complain about editorialisation etc you should not be posting summaries, you should do as I did and post the actual text. Unsurprisingly the authors of the TPP wanted to market the TPP. Yes, if you read pro TPP press it was an enlightened document that would usher in world peace and prosperity. And if you read defences of slavery the poor slave owner was generously providing shelter, religion, education and food to the lazy uncultured savage. Everyone has seen the standard defence of IP absolutism, that the hoi polloi and imitators steal shamelessly off hard working creators and rights holders, it doesn't need to be reiterated.

The DMCA is not well regarded, even in the US. It's regarded as highly draconian, whatever your personal opinion. No one else wants it, and it is not the international norm.

US demands are for IP rights to become, effectively, eternal and absolute which is a massive loss of rights for every except rights holders. This is also not the norm and has never been, it is a shift. Consumers have rights too, and the US lobbies extensively to have them extinguished. No one wants $1000 epipens eternally because the US issues patents- protection for novel inventions- for incremental changes, no one wants to buy a tractor then lease the software for additional charge then buy another tractor when the software gets deprecated in 5 years time just because that's great for John Deere shareholders. No one wants Monsanto running around suing people for IP infringement because they stuffed up and their RoundUp Ready corn is not actually sterile and has infected seed stocks as a result. No one wants to have to rebuy media constantly because the IP holder used DRM that, shock horror, goes obsolete and they want the best of both worlds from the product/ licence dichotomy.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Zoraptor

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

...

If you're going to complain about editorialisation etc you should not be posting summaries, you should do as I did and post the actual text. Unsurprisingly the authors of the TPP wanted to market the TPP. Yes, if you read pro TPP press it was an enlightened document that would usher in world peace and prosperity. And if you read defences of slavery the poor slave owner was generously providing shelter, religion, education and food to the lazy uncultured savage. Everyone has seen the standard defence of IP absolutism, that the hoi polloi and imitators steal shamelessly off hard working creators and rights holders, it doesn't need to be reiterated.

I'm not sure I follow. Posting summaries of what? Post actual text of what? I didn't read pro TPP press; I read the leaked version of the TPP (large parts of it anyway, not the whole thing cover to cover).

Quote

The DMCA is not well regarded, even in the US. It's regarded as highly draconian, whatever your personal opinion. No one else wants it, and it is not the international norm.

Is the argument that "how things are regarded" should be the basis for action? Again, my young children didn't regard getting shots very well. Still needed to be done though, right?

Quote

US demands are for IP rights to become, effectively, eternal and absolute which is a massive loss of rights for every except rights holders. This is also not the norm and has never been, it is a shift. Consumers have rights too, and the US lobbies extensively to have them extinguished. No one wants $1000 epipens eternally because the US issues patents- protection for novel inventions- for incremental changes, no one wants to buy a tractor then lease the software for additional charge then buy another tractor when the software gets deprecated in 5 years time just because that's great for John Deere shareholders. No one wants Monsanto running around suing people for IP infringement because they stuffed up and their RoundUp Ready corn is not actually sterile and has infected seed stocks as a result. No one wants to have to rebuy media constantly because the IP holder used DRM that, shock horror, goes obsolete and they want the best of both worlds from the product/ licence dichotomy.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the section you posted or the question I asked in response.

Hint: I think I've already stated that I agree that US patent law is - I think the term I used was "pants on head retarded". Does that mean there should be no IP protection until that's corrected? So again, what part of the section that you quoted within it's context do you disagree with.

EDIT

I guess the part where I'm stuck here is that you seem to be advocating for "two wrongs make a right". US patent law is stupid so international IP theft should be ok. What am I missing here?

Edited November 17, 2020 by Achilles

[Zoraptor]

...the rest of the world has IP protections already. I'm not sure how that's news but apparently it has to said again. If you think that saying consumers have rights too and countries upholding those rights is advocating IP theft then you're very much mistaken, if you think that pointing out that patents/ copyrights are grants of limited term exclusivity is advocating IP theft then you're also very much mistaken- and falling into the classic mkreku trap where everyone who dislike DRM etc ipso facto has to be a pirate.

What the US wants isn't IP protection, it's the perpetual right for its companies to collect licensing fees despite copyright and patents being concepts that are intrinsically limited term and limited scope; and the removal of the consumer rights part of the equation. If you buy a product you have certain rights, if you licence an intangible you have certain rights. The US approach is to protect and extend only the rights of the IP holders, while extinguishing the rights of the end user. That's what the problem with 'technological protection measures' is, they mean that as soon as the DRM system goes obsolete you lose the licence to play you've already paid for, without compensation. And of course, it's actually in the best interests of the IP holder to have constant planned DRM/ media obsolescence as it means they can then charge you every 5 years for the same work.

44 minutes ago, Achilles said:

I'm not sure I follow. Posting summaries of what? Post actual text of what? I didn't read pro TPP press; I read the leaked version of the TPP (large parts of it anyway, not the whole thing cover to cover).

"Article 18:68: Technological Protection Measures. IP creators have the right to not have their work stolen. If someone knowingly tries to steal IP, creates technology that helps with stealing IP, provides technology that helps with stealing IP, sells technology that helps to steal IP or sells stolen IP itself, or promotes stealing IP, then that person will be guilty of committing a crime. Each country in the agreement should come up with rules about what will happen to said criminals."

That's what you posted , as a quoteblock, so I assumed it was a quote, from somewhere. The quote from the actual document, is what I posted previously, to whit:

"Article 18.68: Technological Protection Measures (TPMs)821.In order to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms use in connection with the exercise of their rights and that restrict unauthorised acts in respect of their works, performances, and phonograms,each Party shall provide that any person that:(a)knowingly, or having reasonable grounds to know,83circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work, performance, or phonogram;84or (b)manufactures, imports, distributes,85offers for sale or rental to the public, or otherwise provides devices, products, or components, or offers to the public or provides services, that:(i)are promoted, advertised, or otherwise marketed by that person86for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure;(ii)have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent any effective technological measure;87or(iii)are primarily designed, produced, or performed for the purpose of circumventingany effective technological measure,is liable and subject to the remedies provided for in Article 18.74 (Civil and Administrative Procedures and Remedies).Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied if any person is found to have engaged wilfully88and for the purposes of commercialadvantage or financial gain89in any of the above activities."

Your 'quote' isn't a quote of the document and isn't even a proper summary. I did you the credit of presuming it was some pro TPP summary rather than the exact equivalent of what you've been railing against, just from the opposite position. Cracking DRM on a CD so you can play it on a computer isn't IP theft, as you've paid for the CD/ licence. Unless, you change the definition of theft to make playing something you've a licence to illegal because... the companies' DRM doesn't work, and work back from there.

End of the day if you think the US patent etc system is so rubbish why on earth do you want it extended elsewhere and why on earth do you think the opposition to it has to be based on IP theft? You cannot simultaneously say that the US system is rubbish, but should be adopted/ honoured by everyone else. Opposition isn't based on wanting to steal IP, it's based on it and provisions like 18:68 based on it being an awful system that no one else wants to adopt.

 

 

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

The US approach is to protect and extend only the rights of the IP holders, while extinguishing the rights of the end user. That's what the problem with 'technological protection measures' is, they mean that as soon as the DRM system goes obsolete you lose the licence to play you've already paid for, without compensation. And of course, it's actually in the best interests of the IP holder to have constant planned DRM/ media obsolescence as it means they can then charge you every 5 years for the same work.

All this may be true, but the section you quoted doesn't say that.

Quote

That's what you posted , as a quoteblock, so I assumed it was a quote, from somewhere.

Ah, I see. No, that was me putting the section you quoted into layman's terms. Apologies for the confusion.

Quote

End of the day if you think the US patent etc system is so rubbish why on earth do you want it extended elsewhere and why on earth do you think the opposition to it has to be based on IP theft? You cannot simultaneously say that the US system is rubbish, but should be adopted/ honoured by everyone else. Opposition isn't based on wanting to steal IP, it's based on it and provisions like 18:68 based on it being an awful system that no one else wants to adopt.

Because I don't think that "not liking how we do patents" means "patents shouldn't exist" or "patent protection shouldn't be a thing". Because I don't believe that two wrongs make a right (i.e. cracking DRM because I don't agree with it). Because I don't believe that China should be able to prop up part of its economy selling bootleg goods.

The patent system needs reform. Theft is bad. Both of those things can be true at the same time. In fact, it may even be the case that they are separate things.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Achilles

[Zoraptor]

That's a completely false dichotomy though. Every TPP country is already a member of TRIPS, we already have patent and IP protection.

It's not the US trying to bring order to the wild west of IP and combat rampant IP theft, there's already order there. It's the US trying to alter those existing IP agreements for its own benefit.