nervous about the Internet and social media. Calls for control and censorship of the Internet are increasing.
Â
Right now there is a big battle going on among the titans of industry over new proposed legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act. The movie industry, the record industry, and other big operators want to restrain what they call piracy, people taking their products without payment or agreement. But there are other big corporations that are pushing back. Wikipedia shut down for a day in protest. 6 Google, one of the biggest corporations in the world, also protested. 7
Every rich and developed country carried out piracy. During its period of rapid growth, the United States stole more efficient advanced British technology. Britain did the same with countries that it was crushing: Ireland, the Low Countries, Belgium, India. Itâs what we accuse China of doing today, following in our footsteps.
The trade agreements imposed by the rich and powerful level very heavy penalties against piracy. So-called intellectual property rights are built into the World Trade Organization rules and other trade agreements, with very stringent requirements. One of the most important examples is the protection given to the pharmaceutical industry. So, for example, there are guidelines to prevent countries with pharmaceutical industries, like India, from producing cheap drugs that will be available to the general population, undercutting the profits of major international corporations.
The pharmaceutical companies argue they need the profits for new research and development. Otherwise there wonât be new drugs. The movie and record industries say they need massive profits to support creative artists. These arguments have a superficial plausibility until you look into the issue closely. The economist Dean Baker has shown pretty conclusively that these are not persuasive arguments. So, say, with pharmaceutical research and development, according to his calculations, which look pretty reasonable to me, if the pharmaceutical companies were forced on the market and the entire research and development cost were picked up by the public, there would be a huge saving to the public, because most of the work is done under public auspices anyway, at universities, the National Institutes of Health. 8 The pharmaceutical companies pick it up at the sort of tail end and do the testing, the marketing, the packaging. So yes, they make a contribution, but a lot of their effort is put into making copycat drugs. You just shift a molecule so you can sell something.
With regard to creative artists, Baker also has some suggestions that seem sensible to me. Namely, they should be publicly funded. 9 Thatâs basically what happens with, say, classical music or opera. If you could extend that, you wouldnât need intellectual property rights and the piracy issue would disappear.
Â
How does the United States square its trumpeting of the free flow of information and democratic rights of expression with its response to WikiLeaks?
Â
The profession of dedication to rights is always tinged with a fundamental hypocrisy: rights if we want them, not if we donât. The clearest example of this is support for democracy. Itâs pretty well established over many decades that the United States supports democracy only if it accords with strategic and economic objectives. Otherwise it opposes it. The United States is by no means alone on that, of course. The same is true of terror, aggression, torture, human rights, freedom of speech, whatever it might be.
Â
So the line that the enormous trove of information that was disseminated through WikiLeaks was somehow compromising U.S. security doesnât wash.
Â
It compromised the security that governments are usually concerned about: their security from inspection by their own populations. I havenât read everything on WikiLeaks, but Iâm sure there are people who are searching
Â
Right now there is a big battle going on among the titans of industry over new proposed legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act. The movie industry, the record industry, and other big operators want to restrain what they call piracy, people taking their products without payment or agreement. But there are other big corporations that are pushing back. Wikipedia shut down for a day in protest. 6 Google, one of the biggest corporations in the world, also protested. 7
Every rich and developed country carried out piracy. During its period of rapid growth, the United States stole more efficient advanced British technology. Britain did the same with countries that it was crushing: Ireland, the Low Countries, Belgium, India. Itâs what we accuse China of doing today, following in our footsteps.
The trade agreements imposed by the rich and powerful level very heavy penalties against piracy. So-called intellectual property rights are built into the World Trade Organization rules and other trade agreements, with very stringent requirements. One of the most important examples is the protection given to the pharmaceutical industry. So, for example, there are guidelines to prevent countries with pharmaceutical industries, like India, from producing cheap drugs that will be available to the general population, undercutting the profits of major international corporations.
The pharmaceutical companies argue they need the profits for new research and development. Otherwise there wonât be new drugs. The movie and record industries say they need massive profits to support creative artists. These arguments have a superficial plausibility until you look into the issue closely. The economist Dean Baker has shown pretty conclusively that these are not persuasive arguments. So, say, with pharmaceutical research and development, according to his calculations, which look pretty reasonable to me, if the pharmaceutical companies were forced on the market and the entire research and development cost were picked up by the public, there would be a huge saving to the public, because most of the work is done under public auspices anyway, at universities, the National Institutes of Health. 8 The pharmaceutical companies pick it up at the sort of tail end and do the testing, the marketing, the packaging. So yes, they make a contribution, but a lot of their effort is put into making copycat drugs. You just shift a molecule so you can sell something.
With regard to creative artists, Baker also has some suggestions that seem sensible to me. Namely, they should be publicly funded. 9 Thatâs basically what happens with, say, classical music or opera. If you could extend that, you wouldnât need intellectual property rights and the piracy issue would disappear.
Â
How does the United States square its trumpeting of the free flow of information and democratic rights of expression with its response to WikiLeaks?
Â
The profession of dedication to rights is always tinged with a fundamental hypocrisy: rights if we want them, not if we donât. The clearest example of this is support for democracy. Itâs pretty well established over many decades that the United States supports democracy only if it accords with strategic and economic objectives. Otherwise it opposes it. The United States is by no means alone on that, of course. The same is true of terror, aggression, torture, human rights, freedom of speech, whatever it might be.
Â
So the line that the enormous trove of information that was disseminated through WikiLeaks was somehow compromising U.S. security doesnât wash.
Â
It compromised the security that governments are usually concerned about: their security from inspection by their own populations. I havenât read everything on WikiLeaks, but Iâm sure there are people who are searching
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