Leigh Beadon 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 13 May, 2021 @ 12:25pm

    Re: Re: Re: Hindsight 20/20

    It just doesn’t seem fair to me Does it seem fair to you that rich countries representing a small fraction of the world's population have also acquired and administered the majority of the world's vaccines, while several countries have still not received a single dose and many more will not see meaningful vaccination levels until 2022 or even 2023? Please, speak to that issue before you start shedding tears about what's fair to multibillion dollar pharma giants. The governments of the world could have taken they risks, dumped money into research then given the blueprints to the vaccine for everyone to use. But instead they forced all the risks onto a private company then swoop in to try to gain all the rewards without paying for it. You describe it as if this was a sudden decision. The system of globally-enforced private pharma patents has been steadily developing for a couple decades, largely pushed by the pharma companies themselves. COVID is laying bare the mess we've gotten ourselves into - and no, getting out of it won't be easy, but now is the time to start. And you are also ignoring the fact that governments have poured lots of money into research. Then they sell the results to a private pharma company for a pittance, and that company goes on to make millions. That's been going on since long before COVID. And of course there is the case of the Oxford vaccine - the development of which was around 97% publicly funded - which was supposed to be released openly until Bill Gates and others stepped in and pressured them into partnering exclusively with AstraZeneca.

  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 13 May, 2021 @ 11:40am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I'm not saying the man's a genius. But if you look at his term so far - both before and during the pandemic - he has proven quite capable at accomplishing many aspects of his party's traditional agenda, e.g. on environmental conservation, development rules, rental property rules, and more. He and his government only seem to become "incompetent" when it comes to public health and pandemic relief measures that might place some burden on big businesses and big landowners while benefiting the Ontario public at large.

  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 13 May, 2021 @ 10:38am

    Re: Re: 'Mine, mine!'

    Canada had to hedge its bets and pre-order many doses from many suppliers. Yep - it's a good example of why vaccine distribution based on individually negotiated bilateral deals between countries and private companies with patent monopolies is a terrible, inequitable way of dealing with a global pandemic.

  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 13 May, 2021 @ 10:34am

    Re: Hindsight 20/20

    Will the pharma companies spend the money to try to rush vaccine developments for future pandemics if they are just going to have to hand over their patents (profit) once the research is done? So you're saying pharma companies will hold everyone on the globe hostage, and are willing to stop pursuing life-saving medicines and let millions die if they aren't promised monopoly profits? Okay... Sounds like an excellent argument for ending the privatization of medical research and pharmaceuticals entirely, and making it a matter of public concern, especially since a great deal of the primary research is publicly funded to begin with. Obviously the situation you describe is extremely dangerous (and evil) and cannot be allowed to continue.

  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 13 May, 2021 @ 10:31am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I'm all for strict regulations of pharmaceutical patents but ending them is short-sighted. We are talking about waiving them using the mechanism built into the TRIPS agreement for exactly that purpose under exactly these circumstances.

  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 13 May, 2021 @ 09:27am

    Re: Re: Re:

    I think you're giving him too much moral credit. His sole interest is protecting his own political future: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/protect-the-king-why-ontario-premier-doug-ford-has-taken-the-back-seat-1.5425619

  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 12 May, 2021 @ 09:02pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    There’s a global shortage of some vaccine materials Let's tackle that in a cooperative global fashion with the sole goal of equitably saving as many lives as possible and ending the pandemic, globally, as quickly as possible. Let's remove patent monopolies for private pharma companies from the equation entirely. Vaccine supply issues aren’t caused by patents That's what patent-holders claim, yes. Experts who don't have a vested interest in defending patents tend to disagree.

  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 12 May, 2021 @ 07:19pm

    Re:

    I'm not interested in leaving control of quality and safety up to private pharma giants negotiating confidential contracts - that's something that should be under democratic control. Nor do I believe the multibillion dollar companies that stand to profit massively from these patents when they say "we need them to protect your safety, that's all, we swear!" (while simultaneously talking to their investors about how much they plan to cash in over the years to come) And the "undermining trust" argument doesn't mean much to the countries that are suffering from huge vaccine shortages and won't see meaningful vaccination levels for years.

  • On the post: Canada Still Won't Commit To Supporting A Pandemic Patent Waiver

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 12 May, 2021 @ 04:28pm

    Re:

    lol yeah sure, trying to help his business donors and trying to show his face in public as little as possible

  • On the post: Minister Behind Canada's Social Media Bill Now Says It Will Regulate User Generated Content

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 10 May, 2021 @ 11:16am

    Re:

    Thanks, just saw this as the post was going out. Have added an update at the top, and going to dig a bit more into his latest comments (they are still super unclear)

  • On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: April 11th – 17th

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2021 @ 06:17pm

    Re:

    Oh whoops - that second one is a broken link causing some of the text to drop out. Fixing (and the typo too) thanks!

  • On the post: Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Fish Magic

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2021 @ 11:49am

    Re: bad link

    whoops, thanks!

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 21 Feb, 2021 @ 06:48pm

    Re:

    Occurred to me too as a huge Pratchett fan myself - but in truth I suspect it's one of those jokes many people have made independently before and since

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 16 Feb, 2021 @ 01:01pm

    Re:

    I do think this is a good breakdown especially for the kinds of issues we discuss around here - though at the same time, I increasingly think it's best to avoid getting bogged down in semantics. There are situations in which I'd use a different definition of censorship, for a different kind of conversation, or at least in which I wouldn't object to other people doing so. I was thinking the other day about the example of a company that produces family-friendly edits of movies. That's content moderation in your breakdown, which is what I'd usually call it to. But to be fair, the person there who goes through the audio to bleep/dub bad language probably literally has "Censor" in their job title, and the job they do has been referred to as "censorship" longer than I've been alive. That is of course largely irrelevant to the kind of thing we're discussing here - but I raise it as an example of how, yeah, the argument some put forth that we are trying to override a very basic and accepted dictionary definition by insisting that lots of things "aren't censorship" can indeed carry some weight in some contexts. It's a word that can be used in different ways. (None of that excuses the people who actively try to use it in a manipulatively vague way, or who shout "censorship!" as a one-word argument against perfectly reasonable acts of content moderation)

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 15 Feb, 2021 @ 12:55pm

    Re:

    I think it's perfectly fine if someone wants to use the word "censorship" in the broad dictionary verb sense of any act, by anyone, of removing content that they for any reason consider objectionable. You are right, that IS the most basic definition. But here's the thing: if that's the meaning of the word we're using, then "censorship" is not even slightly remarkable. It happens every day, in a million different contexts, most of which are completely unobjectionable - from a comedy club kicking out a drunk heckler, to a daytime news broadcast blurring out footage of a naked person, to a parent telling their child not to say a bad word. And so if that's the meaning we're using, simply calling something "censorship" is not by itself a particularly compelling condemnation or objection. And so when someone complains about "censorship" with the very clear implication that they mean it is obviously, automatically objectionable and perhaps even illegal, what they are necessarily implying is that they do not mean the broadly generic dictionary definition of it as a verb, the thing that happens every day all the time - they must be thinking of a more specific cultural/political definition of the concept of "censorship" as a presumed evil that must be fought in every incarnation.

  • On the post: Gaming Like It's 1925: Check Out The Early Bird Entries In Our Public Domain Game Jam

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 31 Jan, 2021 @ 11:38am

    Re: Re: more games

    That one is from the creator of The 24th Kandinsky, winner of last year's best analog game prize - it's sure to be great!

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 24 Jan, 2021 @ 08:52pm

    Re:

    whoops my bad! fixed

  • On the post: Gaming Like It's 1925: Last Week To Join The Public Domain Game Jam!

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2021 @ 10:33pm

    Re: Claiming responsibility.

    Aha, it was you, thanks! We noticed that someone had been making those recommendations in people's itch comments - much appreciated

  • On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2021 @ 10:20am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Depends on how you're defining 'conservative'

    Jordan Peterson, despite all his polemics about the evils of "compelled speech", once threatened to sue a writer and magazine unless they published an apology to him - i.e. he openly and unashamedly attempted to compel speech from someone using the threat of government intervention. He's not a "classical liberal" he's just a deluded and deeply troubled hypocrite.

  • On the post: Gaming Like It's 1925: Get Ready For The Next Public Domain Game Jam

    Leigh Beadon ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2020 @ 08:44am

    Re: I would love...

    Oh I'm sure we'll get more than a few Gatsby entries! Can't wait to see what people come up with

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