• morningsun76
  • morningsun76
  • the answer has been with you the whole time
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  • From: In two worlds
  • Registered: 2004-09-10

Topic: Copyright, Patent and "Intellectual Property" Law

Found this one at Rense.com:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy … ge=printer

About the patenting of genetically engineered life .. sure to be a big ethical conundrum very soon.  It's already been reported that Iraqi farmers are now being forbidden under US-imposed patent law to save their own seeds for the next season, so that the big corporations who "own" the seeds can keep making money every year selling them. 

If this isn't an obvious fraud, I don't know what is.  What arrogance to claim copyright on life itself, just because you figured out a way to modify it?  You didn't INVENT it in the first place, so if anything the copyright belongs to God, but I don't think God views lifeforms in terms of their patent-ownership status with respect to one another.   

Honestly, I wonder how long it will be before Sharper Image starts billing all of us for breathing the air because some of it has been filtered by an Ionic Breeze machine.  "Better pay up or we'll have the cops come out to make sure you stop breathing OUR AIR.   Hell, we have the patent paperwork right here, read it and weep."  That's the end result of all of this.  Pay the "Owner" for everything, including Mother Nature herself.

  • morningsun76
  • morningsun76
  • the answer has been with you the whole time
  • Offline
  • From: In two worlds
  • Registered: 2004-09-10

Re: Copyright, Patent and "Intellectual Property" Law

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP... groan) Act of 2007 has the backing of many of the most powerful politicians on the House Judiciary Committee, including John Conyers (D-MI), Lamar Smith (R-TX), and "Hollywood" Howard Berman (D-CA).

In addition to strengthening both civil and criminal penalties for copyright and trademark infringement, the big development here is the proposed creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). This is a new executive branch office tasked with coordinating IP enforcement at the national and international level. To do this work internationally, the bill also authorizes US intellectual property officers to be sent to other countries in order to assist with crackdowns there. In addition, the Department of Justice gets additional funding and a new unit to help prosecute IP crimes.

The bill, which will have a committee hearing soon, is supposed to kick-start the copyright reform process talked about for so long. But copyright reform means one thing to the PRO IP sponsors and another to the consumer groups that have been advocating for it.

Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, said in a statement, "seizing expensive manufacturing equipment used for large-scale infringement from a commercial pirate may be appropriate. Seizing a family's general-purpose computer in a download case, as this bill would allow, is not appropriate."

In addition, she protests the increase in "already extraordinary copyright damages" and calls for damages to be linked more closely to actual harm suffered by copyright holders.

The Digital Freedom Campaign, backed by the EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Consumer Electronics Association, was more muted in its criticism, instead choosing to praise the legislation for launching a "conversation" about copyright reform. The Digital Freedom Campaign's Maura Corbett said that meaningful copyright reform "must include limits on statutory damages and the codification of the vital principles of fair use," and she hopes that PRO IP "will serve as a catalyst to larger, more meaningful reform."

Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 … money.html