☞ Sunday Positives

  • Welcome and surprising intervention by the US government saying that natural things like genes should not be patentable. Expecting a huge backlash from the biotech industry who will make no attempt to argue the moral case but will scream about unfair loss of earnings (even though the earnings themselves are unfairly gained).
  • I don’t know how long it will be this way (probably not long) but a fan favour this album is available as a digital download for any price you name (including zero). I’d be interested to see the statistics of how many pay what.

2 Responses

  1. It has been 10 years since the human genome was sequenced. Why haven’t all the promised tests and therapies materialized? The reason is the high cost of identifying genes, and working out what they do. Without the patent, what incentive will industry have for doing this basic research? Isn’t that exactly the moral reason for patents in the first place, to provide such an incentive? Perhaps it is the “one size fits all” aspect of patents that is the problem. Perhaps it would help if we had several classes of patents with different terms, and make them non-renewable.

  2. Great news from the US government!

    As for the album, Radiohead did something similar with “in rainbows”, and Coldplay also released a live that way, this of course only to name few big names, as artists all over the world have done this since ever… it’s a nice tendency that is really welcomed!

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