Archived - Manning, K.

I've been working with networked, online, database systems since I received my B.Sc. double major in Physics and Computing Science in 1977. I used modems back in the early 1970s, when 110 bits per second was considered High Speed, compared to 70 bps.

In the mid 1990s the results of my DB adminstration work were visible to everyone in British Columbia, when a BC Pharmanet Name Search problem which had generated non stop complaints and negative news coverage for over a year vanished, based on advice I had provided after a few hours of analysis. National Level DB2 experts had given up on the problem, despite it showing up at every Pharmacy in the province.

Extraordinary claims of financial harm and damage require extraordinary proof.

Some of the claims made by proponents of increasing copyright protection and surveillance to unprecedented, draconian levels have been shown to be false.

Once impeached a source should be disregarded.

The Conference Board of Canada affair, where lobbyist propaganda copied word for word was misrepresented as the work of independent researchers, is just the visible portion of this iceberg of unfounded claims.

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.71.html#subj17

We've seem artificial telecommunication monopolies in Cable and Cellular telephone result in Canadian consumers paying some of the highest costs in the world for those services.

Since Brian Mulroney sold out Canadians by abandoning Compulsory Licensing we have seem prescriptions become the most expensive part of Canadian Health Care bill, but have not seen any benefit in terms on increased spending on research in Canada, or in major new drugs.

That lesson should be studied thoroughly and used as a classic example of why claims of a dire need for increased Intellectual Property Protection should be viewed with extreme skepticism.

Pharmacos are in the top rank by economic sector profitability and spend more on executive salaries and advertising than on research. What research they do is now focused on finding the next Viagra or cialis, not on finding new antibiotics to replace the once which have become useless through inappropriate use, such as selling them by freight train car load to be indiscriminately mixed in with animal feed. The money generated by increased pharmaceutical IP protection goes more to salaries and advertising than to research, in or out of Canada.

Copyright and Patent legislation was introduced to encourage the generation of things to read, and to encourage useful inventions. There is no reliable evidence that either result is not being achieved with current legislation.

The proposals boil down to a wish dream to put in place a system which could charge Canadians ridiculous fees for a system which pipes pay per use data one way and money from consumers the other way, much like Pharmaco attempts to rip off sick people by trying to patent natural medicines which have been known and used for millenia.

It's not broken, stop paying attention to folks who want to "Fix" it so that they can charge fees which are greatly in excess of the cost of production, and in excess of the amount paid to the creative people who produced the material.

In "Hard Drive" William Gates III's negotiation strategy with an independent software developer is described as flattering them, suggesting that it couldn't have taken them much time to develop, and multiplying that by a "reasonable" salary for the "not much time" they spent creating the product.

Analysis of cost of creation, who should benefit, and by how much works both ways.

In regards to the unreliability of representations made by Intellectual Property holder, note that the judge in the recent i4i litigation the lead lawyer for Microsoft was sanctioned because he persistently argued that patent holders should not always be allowed to seek money damages, despite repeated corrections from the Judge. See http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/081109msftop.pdf in particular page 43.

That despite Microsoft having amassed a large collection of patents which were not actually put to any use, in any software or hardware product.

It is ironic that a Patent System conceived to promote the availability of useful inventions is now being used to prevent them from ever being used, because they could be more useful than older products already in the market.

Microsoft appears to have no trouble arguing that obtaining patents, but not using them is bad, while obtaining patents which Microsoft chooses not to use.

The truth is simply not in anything proponents of changing copyright legislation have to say.