Taking a cue from the practice of region encoding of DVDs, hardware manufacturers in US have started making their products only usable in the country of their production.

H-P has quietly begun implementing “region coding” for its highly lucrative print cartridges for some of its newest printers sold in Europe. Try putting a printer cartridge bought in the U.S. into a new H-P printer configured to use cartridges purchased in Europe and it won’t work. Software in the printer determines the origin of the ink cartridge and whether it will accept it.

The company introduced region-coding on several printers in the summer so it won’t have to keep altering prices to keep pace with currency movements, says Kim Holm, vice president for H-P’s supplies business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. H-P eventually plans to introduce the concept across its entire line of inkjet printers, he adds.

This comes at a time when the sliding dollar has meant that H-P ink cartridges sold in Europe are becoming much more expensive than equivalent ones in the U.S.

Link to article

With Monsanto now having a presence in India, articles like these are an eye opener. This Wired magazine article talks about how the firm has been prosecuting farmers around US, for engaging in “unlawful” activities such as saving seeds from one season to sow in the next season – an age old farming practice. The company calls it “technological piracy”, and has employed steps similar to the movies, record and software industry’s “anti-piracy” drives. Piracy hotlines are in place, so that farmers can tell on each other, raids are done regularly, etc.

Since 1997, Monsanto has filed similar lawsuits 90 times in 25 states against 147 farmers and 39 agriculture companies.

The reason behind all this is a clause in Monsanto’s seed selling contract. In this a farmer is supposed to buy seeds from Monsanto every season, and the farmer has to give the undertaking that he cannot use his own produce for sowing in subsequent seasons. Apart from these, farmers also pay an annual premium as a technology fee. The article talks about Soy farmers paying $6.50 an acre each year.

I wonder how much of these tactics are known by the public in India, now that these MNCs (Multi National Crooks) are in India? There already have been violent protests against Monsanto in India a couple of years back.

And yes, this is the same company which has recently obtained an illegal patent on Indian wheat. On 27 January 2004, Greenpeace filed legal opposition against Monsanto’s controversial patent on a wheat strain that the agro-science multinational claims to have invented for baking purpose.

According to Greenpeace, wheat with these specific baking characteristics was originally developed in India and has been cultivated, bred and processed for bread (chapati) by Indian farmers for years. The patent that Monsanto now holds means it has the monopoly on the farming, breeding and processing of this type of wheat. The patent (EP445929) was granted on May 21, 2003.

“Our investigations show that the examiners at the EU patents Office knew that the wheat involved is cultivated entirely normally and that it is not an invention. Monsanto employed all kinds of tricks and deception to conceal this fact, though the truth is amply clear on proper examination. This case shows again that only a clear prohibition of patents on plants and seeds can stop the ongoing abuse of modern patent law.” Said Christoph Then, patent expert of Greenpeace German office from Munich.

Update: There is an interesting discussion regarding this at this India-GII thread.

This had to happen one day. After AIDS infections in the country has reached alarming levels, Brazil health organizations have found the monopolistic pricing of Multinational drug companies, impossible to sustain. Therefore the country has taken the position that they have to break patents to lift the country out of misery.

India has recently introduced product patents which is going into effect from Jan 1 2005. The immediate repurcussion of this is going to felt in a few months (till existing stocks are cleared) as medicine costs countrywide are going to zoom up. According to this article:

Oxfam give a range of examples of the staggering differences in price between patented and generic drugs. Zantac, used to treat gastric ulcers, costs between 15 and 50 times more in the US and Europe than its generic version made in India. When WTO rules are applied in India, drug prices could rise by an average of 250 percent as a result of patenting.

The article quoted above sums things up very nicely.

The laws of the capitalist market are incompatible with a defence of the universal right to health care and the enjoyment of the benefits of medical science by the mass of the world’s population.

Did you know that:

Every day, 30,000 people in the developing world die from treatable diseases – many because they can’t afford the medicines that could keep them alive!

The present patent system is ridiculous. Why is it that regardless of the scope and type of an invention, a flat monopoly for 20 years given to the inventor? The decision to set 20 years as a patent duration would definitely have been based on what is acceptable profit by the inventor. It would be interesting to know the logic of determining that.

Think about it, the present patent policy is saying “it is ok for people to die of AIDS for the next 20 years, because we have to let this so-and-so company to earn X amount of money in that duration.“. Taking the case of Zinetac and AIDS, isnt it obvious that one can live with indigestion for 20 years, but not AIDS? How can patents for both these medicines be set for the same duration – twenty goddam years!!!

People of my generation would remember comics in our chidhood days which were mostly Amar Chitra Katha, Tintin and Asterix.

Well, it seems that the Ramayana comics (known by the term “graphic novels” these days) from the Amar Chitra Katha series is available as an exhibition on this site.

Good for me. Flipping through the pages refreshed my memory a lot, apart from spreading over a wave of nostalgia. (By the way, why does it seem that the king Dasharatha was a bit of a tender nature? – poor guy keeps fainting or dizzy time and again till his death!)

(Thanks to Boing Boing for the link)

It is interesting to see how the lives of people in USA are increasingly being taken over by corporates.

Here is how Verizon forces/lobbies/oils the Pennsylvania Senate into passing a bill which makes it unlawful for municipalities or any government institutions to offer telecommunications services which competes against them. Quoting from the article:

The Pennsylvania Senate passed House Bill 30 which prohibits municipalities from delivering telecommunications services for compensation if it competes with private enterprise.

[...]

It’s not that I think munis should be offering these types of services, rather I believe they should have the option of doing so, especially where there is a duopoly (one cable and one DSL operator).

[...]

In essence it says that we, the people, through our duly elected representatives, have to ask Verizon (or any other private telecoms provider) for permission to set up an alternative network. Doesn’t anyone find this appalling? Once upon a time, it was the other way around – private companies had to ask our elected officials for permission to dig streets, set up electric poles, build roads, etc.

A record company which takes its fingers out of some of the jars, and offers its albums under a Creative Commons licence!

Positron! Records also has a kickass official statement on this matter, saying:

Positron! Records is pleased to announce that our artists now have the option of releasing their works under Creative Commons licenses.

Unlike those who suffer from what we like to call “major label retardation,” we here at Positron! have never believed it was bad thing for our supporters to share our music with their friends. The Creative Commons licenses we use legally allow you to share songs from these records on peer-to-peer networks. In addition, you can sample portions of these songs for use in your own compositions, whether they are mash-ups for your friends, or a commercial release. The only caveat is that the resulting work must be released under the same license. It is our way of both thumbing our nose at the ridiculous state of copyright law in this country, and letting you, our customer and supporter, know that you are not a criminal, but a trusted ally in the war against corporate stupidity.

Great! Here is a company whose reason for existence is to trade in patents. They don’t implement any of it, they just keep filing or buying ‘em and selling ‘em. They say that the firm was founded to invest in innovation and invention.

Lessig also writes:

In 1991, according to The Patent Wars by Fred Warshofsky, Bill Gates said this about software patents:

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. The solution . . . is patent exchanges . . . and patenting as much as we can. . . . A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.

So basically the idea is, set up a nice oligopoly, which holds just enough basic patents to prevent newer firms to enter the field without positioning them as slaves in the new upcoming Patent Economy. When will the rest of the world wake up to this?