Lobbyists As The New Celebrities? Cheering On Those Who Abuse The System

from the the-greedconomy dept

In the first half of this decade, the press liked to cheer on those hedge fund bosses, who abused the financial system to great wealth. These days, of course, with the economy in the tank, the press needs to find some other class of system-abusers to cheer on. As Copycense notes, it looks like DC lobbyists may be getting the celebrity treatment these days, similar to the hedge fund batch a few years ago. It's as if the press gleefully looks for those who abuse the system for greed to celebrate. What a shame.

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Bad Science Blog Highlights The Harm Done By Pharma Patents

from the it's-a-start dept

CG was the first of a bunch of folks who sent in a link to Dr. Ben Goldacre from the always excellent Bad Science blog taking on the issue of the harm done by pharma patents:

Ignoring patent and licensing issues has allowed Dr Yusuf Hamied, director of Cipla, to innovate: even though each drug is officially owned by a different company, he could put a common combination of three treatments (Stavudine, Lamivudine and Nevirapine) into one simple, single combination pill. This increases treatment compliance -- it's easier to take your medication correctly -- and that keeps you alive longer, while reducing the emergence of resistant strains.

Hamied calls his pill Triomune (he also offers "Antiflu", a copy of Tamiflu for the developing world, and many more). In 2001 he was selling to MSF clinics for $350 per person per year, more than 30 times cheaper than the official versions of these drugs. Triomune is now only $87 a year. This is amazing. Hamied is a hero.

Richard Sykes, head of GlaxoSmithKline (and now retired rector of Imperial College London) disagreed. He called Hamied a "pirate" and described the quality of Indian generic drugs as "iffy". Hamied says GSK is a "global serial killer" for charging high prices for their medication. So who is right?

From there, Goldacre runs through the traditional arguments both in favor of and against pharma patents, and concludes:

If the global $550bn pharmaceutical industry are trying to make an economic case for patents in the developing world, then they must argue that the benefit to drug development from the financial incentives in these tiny corners of the world market is so significant -- so vital, the final link in the incentive chain -- that it is more important than millions of unnecessary deaths. I am not a health economist, but I doubt that is a fair swap, and this is not what patent laws were invented for.

Indeed. I'm glad to see Goldacre take on this issue, though I hope that he'll spend some time exploring the work done by many before him that goes much more deeply into the problems with pharma patents. For example, in explaining why pharma patents can be "good," Goldacre trots out the line "It takes about $800m and 10 years to bring a drug to market," but that's been widely debunked. If Goldacre (or anyone else) is interested in the subject, they should check out Merrill Goozner's detailed and thorough analysis of this claim in his book, appropriately entitled The $800 Million Pill, which thoroughly debunks the notion that it costs a pharma company $800 million to bring a pill to market.

On top of that, he should look at the some of the work done by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in detailing how patents harm innovation in the drug process. Or, hell, he can look to the US government itself. The GAO put out a report a few years ago, noting that patents appeared to be hindering, not helping, the development of new drugs. Another great source of detailed information is the chapter in David Levine and Michele Boldrin's book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, that directly deals with the case of pharma patents (pdf). It goes through the history of different patent laws in different countries and totally debunks the idea that patents create true incentives for pharma. There's plenty of evidence of harm, but very, very little true evidence that patents create actual incentives for innovation.

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Big Pharma Abusing Patent Laws To Seize And Destroy Legal Indian Generic Drugs

from the helping-the-needy dept

The deeper you look at how pharmaceutical companies use and abuse the patent system, the worse it looks. It's much more horrifying than what's happening in the tech industry in many ways (especially since lives are often at stake). The latest such example highlights the desperate lengths that Big Pharma will go to, in attempts to stamp out perfectly legal competition. India has a legal and thriving generic drug market that was built up initially via a ban on pharma patents in India (which, as an aside, shows again that a ban on patents can actually help create a thriving industry). More recently, India was forced, almost entirely against its own wishes, to implement patents on drugs. Even so, many of its generics are not covered by patents, and there are a number of developing countries that also do not recognize patents on certain drugs. Thus, it should be perfectly legal for Indian generics to ship those drugs from India to developing nations. And... it is. Except that pharma companies have convinced EU trade officials to seize and/or destroy such shipments that pass through EU borders in transit to these developing nations.

Thus, if a legal Indian generic drug maker has a shipment of those drugs to Peru, where the same drugs are also perfectly legal and not blocked by patent law -- those drugs might still get seized because en route to Peru, they may pass through some European countries, where Big Pharma has used its lobbying clout to get customs officials to search for and confiscate any such medicine, claiming they are violating patents in the EU. Because of this, the Indian firms need to spend a lot more money and ship via other means.

To deal with this, India is looking to file a complaint with the WTO, and at least according to the experts in the WSJ article above, India has a strong likelihood of winning. Big Pharma and the border patrol folks are defending their actions, claiming it's to stop counterfeit drugs, but that's not what's happening here at all. These drugs are not counterfeits. They're legal generics, not intended for the EU at all, and they're being confiscated for no good reason other than the fact that Big Pharma doesn't want to compete.

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Surprise, Surprise: Pharma Abusing IP Laws To Prevent Competition

from the live-by-ip... dept

The deeper and deeper you look into the pharmaceutical market and the way those firms use patents, the worse and worse it looks. There's little evidence that pharmaceutical companies really need the kind of exclusivity that patents provide, but it's become so established an idea, that some actually believe that pharma would disappear without patents. However, the truth is quite different. The chemistry industry -- the precursor to the pharma industry -- actually fought against patents in the early days, knowing that robust competition was what drove innovation and profits. Patents only allowed the leaders to stomp out competition and limit the overall market, increasing their own profits, but slowing innovation and product development.

Thus it should come as no surprise at all that a new report has found that pharmaceutical companies are regularly abusing patents for anti-competitive purposes (thanks Rob Hyndman for the link):

Pharmaceutical companies are manipulating the intellectual property rights system and are "actively trying to delay the entry of generic medicines onto their markets," a top EU official said of an EU inquiry into the pharmaceutical sector released Wednesday. As a result, there has been a decline in the number of innovative medicines getting to the market, it says.

In other words, contrary to the popular myth, patents are actually being used to hold back innovation in the healthcare market.

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And, Of Course, UK ID Card Database Abused

from the and-so-it-goes dept

It's been pointed out time and time again, that if a government (or a corporation) puts together a big database of information on people, that database will be abused. It's just what happens. Yet, with the UK gov't looking to store (or have ISPs store for it) all sorts of info, it's worth noting that its current ID card database was apparently being abused to look up info on celebrities. Yes, the people doing the snooping were apparently caught and fired, but it still highlights that these sorts of databases are never really private, and someone with access will always try to use them for purposes beyond what was intended.

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Less Than A Third Of Australia's Censor List Actually About Underage Images

from the moral-panic-for-censorship dept

For years and years and years, the Australian government has been looking to come up with a rationale for censoring the internet. The most recent plan has gone through some hiccups with mass protests. But, of course, the gov't has continued to push on, claiming that such a censored blacklist is important to stop child porn. Except... a few months back, the censored list was leaked, and a review of the list now shows that less than 32% of the sites were actually about child porn (via Michael Scott).

This is one of the (many) reasons why such secret blacklists are always a bad idea. Given the opportunity to censor content, it's too tempting not to expand the list with general stuff the censors "don't like" rather than the actual intended purpose of the list. And that, of course, is why gov'ts always insist that such lists should be secret rather than publicly reviewable. Of course, it's worth noting that as part of the admission that the list has such a small percentage of what was supposed to make up the entire list, the Australian government says that it's having the police look into the leak of the list. Why? The only thing the leak exposed was how the gov't was lying to the public. That shouldn't be illegal. That should be welcomed whistle-blowing of gov't abuse.

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It's The Misuse Of Trademarks That's A Problem...

from the not-the-idea-itself dept

While lots of lawyers like to dump trademark law into the same category as patents and copyright as "intellectual property," it's somewhat misleading. They come from entirely separate parts of the law and the purpose of trademark is entirely different than patents or copyright. Patents and copyright is to create incentives to create. Trademark is designed as consumer protection. Lumping them together, unfortunately, has made companies look to treat trademark law more like patents and copyright, and that's been a problem. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, this has resulted in an extension of trademark law beyond its original intentions (specifically the whole concept of "dilution" which is a relatively recent addition to trademark law).

Of course, it's also true on the flipside, that criticism of trademark is coming from the same folks who criticize copyright and patent law. The latest, as sent in by many of you, is an interesting piece in PC World suggesting that the open source community should be just as angry about trademark law as they are about patents and copyrights. I'm not sure that's true. While I do agree they should be angry about the misuse of trademark law, and any attempt to make it more like copyright or patents, the fundamental nature of trademark law (to avoid consumer confusion and potential harm from that confusion) still makes sense. The problem is when people falsely believe that trademark law allows you total exclusion, rather than only in cases likely to cause confusion. So, let's absolutely fight against the abuse of trademark law... but it's not necessary to throw out its initial intended purpose.

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No Surprise Here: NSA Abused Surveillance Powers

from the but-of-course-they-did dept

This will comes as little surprise to most people, but it turns out that the NSA has been abusing its surveillance powers, collecting significantly more information than they are allowed to by Congress. Of course, we got a hint of this last year when an NSA whistleblower revealed how the NSA regularly tracked information it wasn't supposed to be tracking. And, of course, we've yet to see a secretive gov't program yet that hasn't been abused in some way. National Security Letters? FBI abused it. Warrantless wiretapping? Abused. So we should certainly be questioning why the administration is claiming that there shouldn't be oversight over any such programs, when history has shown that they have been, and will continue to be, abused.

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Google Provides Numbers On Just How Often DMCA Takedown Process Is Abused

from the quite-frequently,-it-appears dept

Some entertainment industry lawyers have been going around lately, pitching a fable that the DMCA isn't really that bad, since bogus takedown notices are somewhat rare. However, some new evidence from Google suggests quite a different story. Reader Slackr points us to some news about Google filing a comment on New Zealand's proposed new copyright law that would kick file sharers offline based on accusations rather than convictions. While New Zealand has agreed to hold off putting the law into place, while it hopes to work out a compromise, the government is accepting submissions from interested parties. While it's interesting alone that Google is participating in the process, even more interesting is what it has to say about its experience with DMCA takedown notices:

In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.

Google's point is that these types of laws are widely abused, and setting up such a system where punishment is handed out without any real due process is going to lead to an awful lot of mistakes. But, these stats are worth discussing just for what they say about the DMCA itself, and that myth that the process is rarely abused. From the numbers Google has seen, it's quite clear that the DMCA isn't just abused, it's regularly abused in ways that are both anti-competitive and chilling.

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No Surprise Here: Telco Employees Access Obama's Phone Records

from the but-of-course dept

We've pointed out plenty of times in the past, that any time there's a database of info out there, the data is almost certain to be abused. The latest example? Employees at Verizon Wireless improperly accessed Barack Obama's phone records to see who he was calling and who was calling him. The access was just for his regular phone used for voice communications -- not his Blackberry. Also, the employees had no access to his voicemail or anything -- just calling records. At least Verizon Wireless came out and admitted this, rather than covering it up, but it's yet another reminder, that data will be abused.

And, of course, Obama isn't the only one facing such an issue. Reader lavi d writes in to point out that eighteen background checks were conducted in Ohio by gov't employees on Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber. Eight of those background checks were done for no legitimate reason, including one at the request of the director of Ohio's Department of Job and Family Services (who has now been suspended). We had mentioned three such cases earlier, but even more have since come to light.

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Government Misusing Trademark Law To Stop Biker Gang

from the abuse-of-trademark dept

We've seen all sorts of abuses of trademark law over the years, but this one may be the most bizarre (by far). Slashdot points us to a government crackdown on a California-based motorcycle gang called the Mongols. Sixty members in seven states were arrested for a variety of crimes including murder, robbery, racketeering, extortion, money laundering, gun trafficking and drug dealing. Basically, it's a takedown on organized crime.

However, what's really odd is that the government is also asking the court to hand over the Mongol's trademarks. Apparently, the group trademarked the name and insignia. If the court grants the request, police say they'd be able to automatically stop anyone they see wearing a Mongol patch and simply take the jacket away from them on the spot. While I'm sure the police would love that authority, this is clearly not what trademark law was intended to do, and would be a pretty big stretch for how trademark law could be used. It would set a dangerous precedent as well in simply handing over trademarks to the government. While I have no doubt that this motorcycle gang was likely involved in plenty of illegal and dangerous activities, that doesn't mean it's okay to abuse trademark law in dealing with them.

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NSA Abused Wiretap Rights: Intercepted, Shared Private Calls Of Americans

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Now that Congress has totally capitulated and allowed the administration's warrantless wiretapping program to go on without question, it should surprise no one that leaks are coming out highlighting how the program is regularly abused to spy on everyday Americans who are calling North America from the Middle East. In fact, two separate "intercept operators" have apparently come forward separately, and talked about listening in on perfectly innocent calls between two Americans -- exactly the scenario that the government insisted never happened. Specifically, General Hayden stated that conversations between Americans were not being intercepted: "It's not for the heck of it. We are narrowly focused and drilled on protecting the nation against al Qaeda and those organizations who are affiliated with it."

However, according to the operators, it appears to be very much for the heck of it. Not only were calls between Americans listened to and recorded on a regular basis, the "good parts" (i.e., phone sex) were sent around to other operators to listen to as well. One of the operators said that on a regular basis messages would be sent around with messages like: "Hey, check this out. There's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out." Of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone. When you give someone the power to spy on calls with absolutely no oversight, it's going to get abused. It's just that simple.

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Big Law Firm, Jones Day, Abusing Trademark Law To Stop Website From Reporting Public Info

from the abuse-of-power dept

We've seen all sorts of cases of companies abusing trademark law over the years, but this latest one may be the most questionable -- and tragically, it may actually work. It involves a site, BlockShopper that's basically a blog tracking publicly available info on real estate sales in certain neighborhoods around the country. It recently had two posts about associates at the big law firm, Jones Day, buying property in Chicago, listing out the details, including the fact that the lawyers worked at Jones Day with their photos. Jones Day has sued the website for trademark infringement. This seems highly questionable on a number of fronts.

Paul Alan Levy from Public Citizen describes what an incredible abuse of trademark law this is:

According to Jones Day, linking to its web site dilutes its trademark and creates a likelihood of confusion. But that is preposterous. The link is in connection with a comment on Jones Day; when a trademark is used to comment on the trademark holder, the use reinforces the association with the trademark holder, rather than blurring it, and besides use for commentary is expressly protected as fair use under the Lanham Act as amended in 2006. Moreover, nobody could visit the BlockShopper web site and think that it is sponsored by or affiliated with Jones Day, even if they follow the links from BlockShopper's mention of Jones Day associates to Jones Day's own web site. That is what web sites do � they link to other web sites (that's what makes it a "World Wide Web").

Indeed, throughout the first paragraph above, I used Jones Day's name (because I am writing about that firm) and linked to Jones Day's web site and elsewhere. Is Public Citizen equally liable for trademark infringement and dilution? If Jones Day is right here, it is hard to see how the Web could survive.

As Levy notes, based on Jones Day's argument, anyone who writes about the law firm may be liable for trademark infringement, but that's ridiculous. Tragically, it sounds like the judge in the case is ignoring all of this. The judge not only agreed to a temporary restraining order against BlockShopper, but also told the site's owner:

"Do you know, young man, how much money it's going to cost you to defend yourselves against Jones Day?"

Apparently, actually being on the right side of the law is meaningless.

And before people bring up questions of copyright or privacy, Jones Day isn't suing over either of those -- and this is all publicly available information, so it's difficult to see what the privacy claim is. Right now, it just looks like a case of a big law firm bullying the owner of a website because he's done something the firm doesn't like -- and the judge is helping the firm out.

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We Should Be More Worried About Our ISPs Than Google When It Comes To Abuse

from the pay-attention dept

With the government gearing up to potentially go after Google for antitrust violations, we're seeing all sorts of press coverage of stories about how Google may be abusing its position, from supposedly hurting companies to potentially having too much insight into your web surfing activities. And, no one's gloating over this turn of events more than some of the broadband providers, who often find themselves at odds with Google over issues such as net neutrality, patent reform and other issues. Yet, as some new research is suggesting, it's odd that there's so much of a spotlight focused on Google, when those same ISPs are a much bigger privacy threat. They have a lot more visibility into our online activities, a lot more control over what users do, and (unlike Google) it's a lot more difficult to route around them. Plus, many have shown that they have no problems selling your private data -- sometimes without letting you know. So, why is all the attention focused on Google? If it's abusing our privacy, then it's easy to switch to a competitor. Broadband ISPs, on the other hand, have a lot more control and visibility -- and a much tighter grip on customers, usually with fewer competitive options. Yet, the government rolls over backwards to let these ISPs do what they want, while it prepares an antitrust lawsuit against Google?

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Yeah, Your IT Guy Is Probably Reading Your Email

from the just-because-you're-paranoid,-it-doesn't-mean-they're-not-out-to-get-you dept

You probably suspected it, but there's a decent chance that someone in your IT department may be snooping on at least someone in your company -- and they don't seem to mind admitting it. It's not overwhelming, but about one in three IT folks admits to snooping using admin passwords to access information they're not supposed to look at. Given that there are probably plenty who won't admit it, there's a pretty good chance that the actual percentages are higher.

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Not Just The Government Who Abuses Access To Confidential Records

from the databases-of-confidential-info-get-abused,-period dept

Last month, we wrote that whenever a government entity puts together a large database of private, confidential data, it will get abused. In all honesty, we never should have limited that to just the "government." News reports are coming out about a case in Wisconsin where apparently employees at the state's largest energy company regularly snooped through private records to find out all sorts of information on all different kinds of people. Among the information accessed by employees: "credit and banking information, payment histories, address and phone numbers, and Social Security numbers." And, for what purposes? "Examples included a woman that often perused information on an ex-boyfriend, a woman who searched for the address of her child's father, and a part-time landlord who investigated prospective tenants. Another worker leaked information on a mayoral candidate's habit of paying heating bills late, possibly affecting the election." Once again, at this point, you probably should just assume that you have no privacy whatsoever -- but you should be wary any time someone tells you that the database they've put together is somehow secure and safe from privacy violations.

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DMCA Misuse: Trying To Take Down A Negative Movie Review

from the this-again? dept

All too often, we're seeing the DMCA abused by people who aren't using it to takedown copyright infringing materials, but to shut down sites they don't like. The latest example involves some filmmakers and a movie review site. The review certainly was not particularly positive, leading to a rather random series of complaints and threats against its author. While we won't get into the claims of libel and defamation, which go into an entirely separate arena, the fact is that the filmmakers are using the DMCA to try to get the site taken down completely, bringing up all sorts of claims in the DMCA notice. It's difficult to see how a review of a movie can infringe on the copyrights of that movie unless it was showing the movie itself (which does not appear to be the case). It's worth pointing out that a DMCA takedown notice is only supposed to be for copyright infringing material, so including charges of libel and defamation in the takedown seem rather unnecessary. Even more amusingly, though, the takedown notice includes a bunch of random charges that aren't actually illegal, such as: "linking to other websites without any authorization to do so." In fact, the whole thing is so over-the-top, you have to wonder if it's simply part of an attempt to use the Streisand Effect to drum up some publicity for the movie.

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If You Declare Your Content Is In The Public Domain, Can You Still Issue DMCA Takedown Notices?

from the just-wondering dept

The same guy who is fighting Uri Geller over bogus DMCA takedown notices may now need to be fighting the "Creation Science Evangelism Ministries," which has apparently forced a video off YouTube via a DMCA takedown notice. The video, not surprisingly, is critical of the group, but almost certainly does not violate the group's copyrights. The one really interesting thing here, is that the head of the ministry has apparently declared that all of the group's content is in the public domain -- which raises the question of whether or not you can still issue a DMCA takedown notice on content you've declared to be in the public domain?

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Science Fiction Writers Group Latest To Abuse DMCA

from the nice-work-there dept

The DMCA gets abused all the time to take down content that shouldn't be taken down. Sometimes it's abused by people who just don't like content and want it gone, or sometimes it's because organizations are way too aggressive in trying to police copyrights, and have no qualms about pulling down all sorts of content as collateral damage. The problem, of course, with this kind of collateral damage is that it's illegal. The DMCA makes it quite clear that if you're sending a takedown notice on specific content, you are assuring the court that you either are the copyright holder or have the right to represent the copyright holder in such issues. All too often, that's not actually the case. The latest example is amazing in how far one person can go. Apparently a director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America searched on document storage and sharing site Scribd for the words Asimov and Silverberg to try to take down any of the uploaded content written by either Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. Of course, lots of content may mention either author and not be infringing at all. Unfortunately, the guy at the SFFWA didn't appear to care and sent takedown notices for all such content, causing all sorts of legitimate content to be taken down. Among the content taken down was a bibliography of good science fiction works for kids and a book that was under Creative Commons license with the encouragement to have it passed around. It still is amusing that those who claim they want to protect copyright law seem to do so much abusing of it.

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RIAA Backs Down Slightly After Being Countersued For Trying To Shame Man Into Settling

from the yet-again dept

If you hadn't noticed by now, the RIAA will go to great lengths to get people they accuse of file sharing to "settle" a case before it ever goes to court -- especially when the evidence they have is especially flimsy. However, with the threat of much bigger fines as a possibility, many people feel compelled to simply pay up and move on. Luckily, some people fight back -- and the RIAA almost always ends up backing down when the facts are presented. The latest such case takes place in Tennessee, as pointed out by Ray Beckerman. A soldier was accused of unauthorized file sharing for six songs, but in the evidence filed with the court, the RIAA lawyers included screenshots showing 4,600 files from the guy's computer including pornographic content. The guy claims that this clearly has nothing to do with the case, but is a situation where the RIAA is abusing a copyright infringement claim to try to shame the guy into settling. He still insists he's innocent and that lots of other people had access to his computer at the time the charges refer to. After countersuing over this issue, the RIAA has now backed down from listing the 4,600 files and is now only showing 367 sound recordings that it believes are infringing. Rather than admitting that it was abusing the lawsuit to pressure the guy into settling (and this change is due to the countersuit), the RIAA's lawyers claim they've made this change as a "professional courtesy." How nice of them.

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