Rad wrote on Jun 25^th, 2008 at 6:08pm:

Ah, righto. Medical issues of course the ones which most clearly show the problems; drugs, after all, are mostly (leaving aside such things as RNA interference) just a matter of chemical formulas. What protection applies to those - patent law, but it's not always a great fit, and the dilemmas of paying for them ...

In the specific case of anti-HIV medications, the drug companies invested enormous amounts of money - many, many billions of dollars - to treat the disease in the West, ultimately leading to a breakthough in the form of reserve transcriptase inhibitors and the development of the HAART therapeutic application of them.

The problem is the humanitarian one of how to apply this in countries in which the prevalence rate of HIV infection is over 30% of the population; how to balance the need for the companies which invested the money in developing the therapies to recoup that investment with the humanitarian problem of making the therapies affordable to large numbers of people in economies where much of the population is around the USD1 per day line (economies of scale are an issue too; even after discovering a drug, demonstrating safety and efficacy, and then being licensed for use, making it affordable involves much futher research and then investment in manufacturing techniques and suitable plant).

Governments of those countries who wanted to start applying these therapies (even in the most simple ways, such as for prophylaxis - treating pregnant HIV-positive women to prevent the transmission of HIV to their newborns) had the choice of breaking patents to try and start manufacture of the medications themselves to bring down the cost, or trying to work out something else. Drug companies, for their part, have the problem that they can't simply manufacture or donate below-cost or license patents free of charge to those markets which cannot pay rich-world prices, because that product then rapidly becomes a commodity that undermines their pricing in the rich world (via black markets, or their licensees turning around and directly competing against them).

The main framework for managing this conflict at the moment (leaving aside the contributions of medical charities and aid organizations in subsidizing treatment) is the rules of WTO treaties which in particular have in place a "compulsory licensing" mechanism by which countries can apply to the WTO to legally break the normal patent monopoly.

At least with HIV, the disease was prevalent enough in the rich world for the investment in development of the treatments to take place. The problem of disease which has been eliminated or which has not ever been present in Western countries is the more acute one. Malaria is perhaps the best example, but there are numerous others. The approach taken by the Gates foundation isn't necessarily popular; they and the WHO have their conflicts.

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I can appreciate that the issue is not black and white, and that piracy has hurt the industry.  However, there are techniques for fighting piracy, like water-marking, that have proven to be more effective than DRM and rights restrictions in other marketplaces (such as e-books) which do not infringe on the consumers' rights to use what they legally purchase. 

It seems that the economy of producing software has become similar to the movie industry.  It is so expensive to produce a high-quality, full featured program these days that you have to be able to expect large returns.  I'm sure this is what has led to software companies targeting corporate users, as there is more money to be had from selling to businesses than selling to consumers.  It also forces computer game writers to write sequels to games they know will sell (again - similar to the movie industry.)

However, continuing the entertainment industry analogy, I don't approve of the movie and music studios suing individuals for having digital copies of their music.  In the same vein, I don't approve of software companies placing prohibitive restrictions on honest customers. 

I said before that I agree that you have to make it difficult enough to copy to keep honest people honest, but copy protection seems to be quite out of hand.

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Someone is always going to complain no matter how elegant the final solution turns out to be.  I haven't ever had an issue with Norton copy protection or how they enforce their policies.  My comments were aimed at the industry on a philosophical level.

And in a strange co-incidence: Macrovision is hiring!.

Note that they are looking only at copying of commercial DVDs (and not those which are pirated commercial counterfeits, which may not be a major factor in the US/UK markets but are a general global problem) and not at torrent-type downloads, which like the counterfeit product market aren't something you can battle easily.

If the survey included information on torrent-type piracy of mainstream films, my guess is that it'd look much much worse - and also less in favour of Macrovision having a useful deterrent effect at the "keeping honest people honest" level, although I think they do have a fair case to make and I'd also observe that I've never seen Macrovision on DVDs cause technical problems like it used to in the videotape days when it was a scourge to legitimate customers (and as the SafeDisc/SecurROM type schemes are now).

In actual fact, there is basically nowhere in the Western world in which making backups of prerecorded media makes the slightest bit of rational economic sense at all. Actual media failure rates are sufficiently low, and scratch rehabilitation is so available and so cheap (and works), that putting any time, effort, or money put into backup of prerecorded content on optical media is quite silly.

Of course, there are common human cognitive failures which come into play such as the endowment effect which leads people to make many such poor choices (you want to "protect" what you "own" even if it's cheaper to just replace it), but this doesn't change the simple reality that as a matter of public policy, allowing backup of prerecorded media is not justified because of the truly colossal economic loss that comes from enabling of routine piracy.

For countries with very weak consumer-protection law there may well be a justification for improving mandatory standards of consumer protection and for regulators to act to encourage competition to improve aftermarket care; that is a far, far more effective public-policy approach and benefits consumers far more than any other approach.

As I'm mentioned several times before, once again I live in a country where the law strikes a pretty good balance: the Consumer Guarantees Act requires that all products meet a requirement of "reasonable quality" which specifically includes durability as a criterion (see also the question of Extended Warranties upsold by retailers).

[ If the actual intent in copying is not really backup, but that is merely used as a proxy for the ability to engage in format shifting, that is a different discussion. ]

Since I've linked The Economist and mentioned HIV/AIDs policy earlier (they give a lot of coverage to the issue), a book favourably reviewed there a couple months ago came up this morning as Elizabeth Pisani was the feature guest this morning on New Zealand public radio (download available for 7 days from the broadcast date).

You can disagree all you like, but the experience of rental agencies and retailers here shows otherwise. Rental discs in particular receive appalling treatment, which is why rental outlets here typically employ scratch-removal equipment that is quite effective (and having purchased the equipment, offer it as a cheap service). Similarly, one of the game software retailers here in New Zealand offers free scratch repair for one year from purchase as a standard thing, as part of their Consumer Act obligations. Better service wins customers, of course.

Now, one of the quid pro quos in this is making illegal copying a more clearly identifiable offense. In countries in which "backup" copies are not considered infringing (in New Zealand, there is no such automatic "right") or which format shifting is considered part of "fair use" (here ringfenced to apply only to sound recordings in the latest amendment to the Act for prerecorded media; format shifting of broadcast media is different) even in egregious cases of infringement these are available as defenses; this in effect raises the already astronomical cost of attempting to defend one's property against blatant infringers to an unreasonably high level. Removing these faux defenses mean that it is generally much easier and cost-effective to bring successful prosecutions against offenders, and making it possible to actually penalize offenders benefits legal users.

The law as it stands in my country seems to be to be a good balance, and I'm pretty happy with it.

MrMagoo wrote on Jun 28^th, 2008 at 5:42am:



MrMagoo wrote on Jul 11^th, 2008 at 12:24am:

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Zmdmw52, you should check to be sure, but I do believe that Adobe allows Acrobat 7/8/9 to be activated on two PCs at the same time. I was moving my Acrobat 8 Standard license from one PC to another a few months ago, and Adobe Technical Support told me that it was not necessary to deactivate the product on the old PC before installing and activating it on the new PC.

On a more general note, the logic of your argument presupposes that you are entitled to selectively adhere to the terms and conditions of the license agreement as you deem appropriate.  That is false.  If you want to purchase a license for Product X, then you are obligated to honor its terms and conditions.  If you don’t like those terms and conditions, then don’t purchase Product X.  The situation is “black & white”, and really is quite simple & straightforward.