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ACTA will kill people
THE UK Pirate Party has issued a call to arms to the internet industry, asking it to come together to defeat the draconian Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) before that starts killing people.
"Criticism of ACTA has often focused on the harm it will do to the Internet, but that doesn't address one of the most important issues that ACTA presents: the fact that it will kill sick people in developing countries by denying them access to affordable generic drugs - whilst doing nothing to address the issue of unsafe counterfeit medications," said Phil Hunt, the UK Pirate Party's foreign policy spokesman.
"Medecins sans Frontieres have been expressing their concerns ever since the very first drafts of the treaty were leaked, and they have reiterated their concerns at the latest draft, saying that it will have 'fatal consequences on access to medecines'."
Many of the anti-ACTA arguments have been about its impact on civil liberties, a concern that has had some impact on regulators and governments, but the issue of medicine is just as important, according to the party.
"Despite the exclusion of patents from key sections of the treaty, border seizures of generic drugs on trademark grounds would still multiply under ACTA, and excessive punishments will act as a deterrent to the production and trade in generic medicine," Hunt added.
"This should be more than enough to force governments and unions to rethink their stance on ACTA. It is time that the international community came together to deal with intellectual property openly and transparently, taking full account of the impact on developing states, innovation and civil liberties across the globe. We cannot sacrifice human lives to the interests of the rich world's IP monopolists."
This week the European Commission signalled its discomfort with ACTA and forwarded the responsibility for ruling on it to the European Court of Justice. Meanwhile, countries that earlier had been expected to ratify it have been falling like dominos in the wake of widespread public protests throughout Europe. µ
Tags: Security
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"Some countries are rich enough to have enough left over to not have the poorest stave or die of curable diseases".
Maybe, yet those things continue to happen in the richest of countries - e.g. the USA, where 30 million people - 1 in 10 of the population - cannot afford medical insurance and are thus liable to suffer or die for lack of treatment.
"Nancy" writes about how people in rich countries pursuing their chosen careers should be rewarded with monopolies that effectively ruin the lives of poor people who can barely make ends meet, let alone afford education and decent healthcare, whose "careers" involve doing any work they can find, work that is frequently exhausting and exploitative.
"Nancy" then justifies controlling the lifestyles of the more unfortunate people on the planet by claiming that they don't apparently deserve the same rights as human beings as those in the rich nations whose wealth and status was built from leaving the rest of the planet in the mess that it is in, or in many cases creating that mess in the first place.
MSF are completely correct: they see the pain of the world's poor every single day and they see how it could be relieved. "Nancy", however, is just a despicable apologist for the continued exploitation of human beings who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a lifestyle where "working as hard as the rest of us" presumably means working up a contempt for human life that is not only abhorrent, but also not acceptable in any civilised human society.
"Nancy" is a disgraceful coward. If hers is the voice of ACTA, its hateful agenda (and other manipulative corporate favouritism) must be stopped.
You really sound like someone on high heels thinking you deserve better treatment than another person suffering. I truly hope noone of your close ones are suffering and aid is denied - that would change your tune. Im willing to BET, contrary to your logic, that these very people you mentioned, who study and work half their lives on these "pills"... they most likely don't do it for the prospect of money! They do it to help people, save LIVES and help better the world! They are employers and I seriously, seriously doubt that they also get royalties. All the money goes into pockets of already overly rich pharmaceutical companies. They are greedy and powerful as it is - and they want more(what else is new), willing to gamble with lives. ACTA is corruption!
Scientists and technicians in the civilized world spend their entire childhood and youth studying, then work long hours for years, and finally when they invent a pill that cures something, they should be rewarded. Instead, somebody makes a generic pill and gives it to all these freeloaders from uncivilized countries. For one thing, it's unfair, because it robs the people who did the work of their results. For another, it discourages research, so eventually we'll have no more cures for diseases and we'll all die. Third, it encourages theft and laziness and begging for handouts, so we'll get even more of those. Fourth, the planet is already overpopulated, so keeping these inferior people around and healthy and letting them multiply even more makes the problem worse. It's time to stop giving foreign aid to all these losers. Let them work as hard as the rest of us if they want to live like the rest of us.
As long as they continue to fine and jail pirates, it's all good. Any treay that increases the conviction rate is great.
The moneyed end of town vs the rest.
Some countries are rich enough to have enough left over to not have the poorest stave or die of curable diseases.
Other are not so lucky.
I'm particularly thinking of those that died of the combination of hungry, poor health care and cold in Russia (and the other ex-USSR nations), during their cold turkey transition to capitalism during the early '90s. The result, Putin.
actanga naman yan
Like many other ignorant trolls who come face to face with factual arguments....you respond with baseless polarizing straw-man argument(s).
Creating a law that criminalizes everyone for the actions of pirates which make up less than 1% of the population, is much like you, incredibly ignorant.
ACTA or a similar treaty will get passed and more pirates will go to jail and pay large fines.
Have a nice day.