Big Pharma: the reality

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Those of us who campaign about the way our current Intellectual Property regimes are stifling innovation always hear one reflex response from politicians: “strong IP regimes are necessary because without them we would not have the miracle drugs on which modern medicine depends.” As with virtually everything else one hears from politicians on the subject of IP, this is an evidence-free proposition. Now an illuminating new book by the former Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine tells a different story. Here’s an excerpt from Aaron Schwartz’s succinct summary:

Our utopia of miracle pills is now beginning to look a bit like a nightmare. Drug companies use our tax money to pay for their research, turn around and sell the results to us at high prices, spend the resulting profits on massive campaigns to mislead us about their effects, which then encourage doctors to prescribe an expensive pill which may not help much and might even make things worse. Year after year, drug companies are by far the most successful industry. They use their stunning profits to buy off politicians and propagandize the public into maintaining this state of affairs. Only by learning the true state of affairs can we begin to fight back.

Australian school bans iPod

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Entertaining rant by Andrew Orlowski spurred by the news that a private school in Australia has banned its pupils from listening to their iPods. The yuppie consumer gadget will not be permitted in class, because it encourages kids to be selfish and lonely, according to the school principal. I wrote a column about the ‘iPod effect’ a while back.

How much does email cost?

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The thing about email — and the reason it has become a pest as well as a boon, is that it makes it easy to c.c. messages to many people, thereby transferring cost to the reader. How much cost? Well, suppose you get 50 non-spam messages a day, and you spend an average of three minutes reading and considering each. What’s that in real money?

This very useful piece, “Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload” by Stever Robbins, suggests dividing your annual salary by 120,000 to get the per-minute cost of your time. But this reflects the longer working hours of Americans. For denizens of “old Europe” the rule is: divide by 110,400 (46 weeks, 5-day week, 8-hour day) to find out how much your email costs. The article has lots of really sensible tips — mostly aimed at authors — for making email more efficient. Thanks to Quentin for the link.

Gadget mania

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US video game stores opened their doors at midnight yesterday to start selling to Americans a gadget that had been introduced last December in Japan — the Sony PlayStation Portable, hereinafter known as the PSP. The New York Times ponderously surveyed a New Marketing Trend. Sony had, it opined,

engaged in what has become a favorite tactic of marketers in various lines of business: hyping a new product by making it available when most people are in bed, and acting like those slumbering are missing out. Retailing specialists note that the off-hour shopping extravaganza, at midnight or the crack of dawn, has been used to bring out cultish consumers for films (“Star Wars,” “The Passion of the Christ”), shoes (Air Jordan high-tops), video games (Halo 2) and books (Harry Potter books). “It’s become a much more utilized marketing tool over the last three or four years,” said Wendy Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail, a marketing consulting firm in New York. The message retailers want to send, she said, is: “This is for aficionados. If you’re serious, we’re serious.” Sony said it hoped by the end of the weekend to sell the available one million units of the hand-held PSP, which lets people play games, watch movies and listen to music.
The good news is that this is one gadget that neither Quentin nor I are likely to be competitive about. I am still smarting, however, over his Mac Mini.
Ah, the rush of midnight releases. There’s something almost primal about lining up in the dead of night to get your hands on a piece of pop culture history. It’s as if the product’s rarity and the time of day make it feel like you’re part of an exclusive club—one that only the truly dedicated can access. Star Wars fans know this better than anyone; whether it’s the latest movie premiere or a limited-edition action figure, the excitement is never quite as sweet unless you’re standing in line when the world’s asleep, knowing you’re about to take home something legendary.
And if you’re really trying to take your collection to the next level, check out Theory Sabers. These aren’t just collectibles—they’re the real deal for anyone who’s serious about channeling their inner Sith or Jedi. If you’ve ever dreamed of owning your own lightsaber, now’s the time to get one that feels like it came straight from the galaxy far, far away. After all, owning a saber is the ultimate way to show you’re not just a casual fan, but someone who’s fully invested in the legend. Get yours while you can—because, like those midnight releases, they’re not going to wait around for you!

Music file-sharing: update

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According to the latest Pew Internet survey, about 36 million Americans — or 27% of internet users — say they download either music or video files and about half of them have found ways outside of traditional peer-to-peer networks or paid online services to gather and swap their files.

The Project’s national survey of 1,421 adult Internet users conducted between January 13 and February 9, 2005 shows that 19% of current music and video downloaders, about 7 million adults, say they have downloaded files from someone else’s iPod or MP3 player. About 28%, or 10 million people, say they get music and video files via email and instant messages. There is some overlap between these two groups; 9% of downloaders say they have used both of these sources.

John DeLorean, RIP

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John Zachary DeLorean, a handsome chap who gave innocent amusement to millions (and relieved the British taxpayer of quite a lot of dosh), has died at the age of 80. His company, DeLorean Motor, produced only one model, the DMC-12, but it made a lasting impression as an unpainted, stainless steel-bodied sports car with gull-wing doors. (It was the car in the Back to the Future movies.)

DeLorean Motor corporation had a hectic but brief life. Its founder set it up in Northern Ireland during the height of the ‘troubles’ when nobody would invest in the embattled province. The UK government, unable to believe its luck, gave DeLorean massive subsidies and tax-breaks to come to Northern Ireland. He produced about 9,000 cars before going bankrupt in 1982. Soon afterwards, US authorities charged him with selling cocaine to prop up its finances. This led my fellow-countrymen to propose a new marketing slogan for the company: “Things go better with Coke”. (JZD was acquitted in 1984 after a sensational trial.) The taxpayer may be richer as a result of his passing, but the world is poorer! The NYT says that restored DMC-12s sell for $30k. Wonder if there’s one on eBay.

Picking up the tab

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One of the nicest things about modern browsers (like Safari and Firefox) is that they enable tabbed browsing — enabling you to open a tab on an existing page for a related link, rather than having to overwrite the page or open a new window. Like all great ideas, it’s astonishingly simple. But where did the idea of tabs originate? Ed Tenner (author of several thoughtful books on technology) has written a nice essay on the history of this great little idea. Sample:

The tabs story begins in the Middle Ages, when the only cards were gambling paraphernalia. Starting in the late 14th century, scribes began to leave pieces of leather at the edges of manuscripts for ready reference. But with the introduction of page numbering in the Renaissance, they went out of fashion.

The modern tab was an improvement on a momentous 19th-century innovation, the index card. Libraries had previously listed their books in bound ledgers. During the French Revolution, authorities divided the nationalized collections of monasteries and aristocrats among public institutions, using the backs of playing cards to record data about each volume.

Thanks to Lorcan Dempsey for the link.

Software patents — the sordid reality (contd.)

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Owen Barder’s Blog pointed me towards an instructive post in Groklaw. It concerns the pressure Microsoft allegedly applied to Denmark’s Prime Minister in order to soften his government’s opposition to the European Commission’s Directive on software patents. Groklaw runs this translation of an article in a Danish newspaper.

The founder of the world’s largest software company, Bill Gates, is now ready to shut down Navision in Denmark and move around 800 developers behind Denmark’s biggest software success to the US.

The Microsoft leader made that clear, when he meet with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Economic and Business Minister Bendt Bendtsen and Science Minister Helge Sander in November.

The threat risks being executed if part of the IT business manages to block the disputed EU directive on patenting software, that Microsoft wants so dearly, but time and time again has been postponed thanks to efficient lobbying by anti-patent opposition.

“If I am to keep my development center in Denmark, I must have clarity on the rights issue. Otherwise I will move to the US, where I can protect my rights,” said Gates according to to Microsoft Chief Attorney Marianne Wier, who also attended the meeting with Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

If this is true, the results were mixed. On the one hand, the Danes did back off; on the other, staff in Microsoft’s Danish operation started to panic over the future (or otherwise) of their jobs. This prompted an emergency email to all staff from a senior Microsoft executive which (according to a leaked copy) reads:

Dear all,

  You may have seen the front page article in Børsen today with the headline: Gates threatens to move Navision. The article outlines how the current EU disagreement over software patent protection endangers our development centre here in Vedbæk. Let me be very clear about this:  

Microsoft has absolutely no plans to move the centre.

We are completely committed to Vedbæk and its current location.  

The journalist has linked Microsoft’s known and outspoken attitude towards patent protection with some internal disagreements in EU regarding this software patent.  

Microsoft is very much in favour of software patent protection – we believe this is the only way to ensure innovation and development of state-of-the-art software. Bill Gates has spoken of this numerous times in different situations. And yes, he has also made our opinion very clear to the Danish government. Let there be no doubt that Microsoft believes patent protection is necessary in order to protect our innovative work. We will continue to argue in favour of this but it is not the only aspect which we consider when investing in R&D.  

If patents were the only thing determining where we locate our development sites then we would probably not have a site in China or in India.  

I just wanted to briefly reassure you – you have absolutely nothing to worry about in terms of Vedbæk’s future. We are in dialogue with the journalist whom we hope to be able to present a more nuanced picture of the situation.

Don’t you just love the word “nuanced’! Note the clue that the boys in Redmond regard the Indians and the Chinese as a bunch of no-good pirates. And isn’t it interesting to learn that Microsoft intends to break the habits of a corporate lifetime and take up “innovation”?