On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Shanker R Swaminathan wrote: > However, exceptions do exist - RSA for example. However, a period of a > couple of years should be enough- not the ludicrous 20 years + that is > current! IIRC during the 80's a manufacturing company as large as TI made > more from royalties than the stuff they made! Offering a "temporary government granted marketing monopoly" for the purposes of recouping costs (for those things where government funds for the research would not have been less costly in the first place), and the government granting ownership (with all the lack of responsibility now associated with ownership) are two very different things. We have a culture growing (starting in west, but it's definitely there in India now) where we have no problems granting someone "ownership" (and all the big-government protections and thus public costs that entails) but have a problem with granting research money to more cheaply fund the research in the first place. Canada's "Just In time, publicly subsidized Sick Care System" is another example. Rather than having a publicly funded health-care system, we have a Pharmachemical subsidy system where large trans-national patent holders are paid extortion fees for "just in time" care of the already-sick. Many NGO's have calculated that government health budgets would be considerably lower if the money was instead put into patent-free generic-drug and alternative (to pharmachemical) medical research. While the pharmachemical companies get rich, people are dieing the world-over for lack of adequate medical access, often due to "price" (note I don't say "cost" as price and cost outside of free markets have no connection at all). As you can see, I don't consider consider "Linux" to just be an OS, but a hint of an economic model that could solve many problems worldwide. I would extend this thought to suggest (as I have suggested many times here at public policy meetings) that projects funded with public money should not be eligible for private patents (Only "prior art" filings to ensure that nobody can privately patent the information in the future), given there is no "private costs" that need to be payed for via the temporary monopoly. Here in Canada we have publicly funded Universities and government departments that hold patents and collect royalties, something I believe should be understood to be illegal. > In Hindi , there is a saying- "Jiski Lathi uski Bhayis" - loosely > translated- might is right- . The concept of a centrally controlled > supermarket is as good a free market as the East India Company was- ..... And I would say that both are invalid examples of a "free market". It is also not "trade" when the partners involved don't have equal free choice (where free choice is a core component of real free markets). What the East India Company was doing should have been clearly understood as theft, not commerce. This is why we need to be careful when discussing these concepts, given that different people use the same words to mean totally incompatible things. > Grrrr! Had it already in LIG ! :-) Don't read that group as I'm short on time and have more of a connection to Calcutta ;-) Looking forward to my next trip (Hopefully during Puja next time, with more of a chance to visit/party with people my age). --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://russell.flora.org/work/> Back in Ottawa and catching up on Email from after trip to India. Replies to some email may be slow. -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/help/faq_list.html
