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A splice of mice: Mickey isn't the only mouse trying to wriggle out of the clutches of the masters of code. [Animation World Network].
Canada last week refused to grant a patent for a genetically modified mouse.
Unlike the US, EU and Japan, Canada denies that Harvard's scientistsinvented anything when they manipulated mouse genes. Its Supreme Courtsays the university doesn't deserve a patent - at least not until thepoliticians have had a chance to think the ethics of biotech over. [National Post].
As with Mickey, business concerns slam into public concerns here.
It doesn't make much business sense for patented genes to be freelyaccessible. After all, you don't want your rivals rummaging throughyour research work.
This isn't just a standard big business line. As biotech develops,smaller firms, entrepreneurial boffins often, universities even, areentering the market as niche developers. Like artists, writers,coders and other intellectual property creators, they want tosafeguard their work so they can be properly rewarded.
Fine, but when it comes to biotech, sole ownership of this kind ofinformation isn't in the public interest. Charging foraccess is likely to discourage research. Ideas develop most rapidly,most fruitfully through free exchanges of information. And it goes against common sense, moral sense, for private groups to have monopolies over such fundamental knowledge.
Think eugenics here. Think perfect blue-eyed, blond-haired babies. Think the Boys from Brazil.
Scientists as scientists tend to agree that science should be open to all, should be opensource. According to Michael Morgan, formerly executive director ofresearch at the Wellcome Trust, research and competition were enhancedwhen the results of the Human Genome Project were immediately madepublic - for free - over the Internet. [Globe and Mail].
Businessargues, however, that open source can sit alongside proprietary code.An academic institution, like Harvard, can apply its expertise tobecome a business and generate wealth for the good of its staff andstudents, for the greater good.
Perhaps. But GM mice, unlike Mickey or Windows XP, scamper through thereal world. Clicking through standard intellectual property argumentswhen faced with invention at such a fundamental level, at a time when the news is one long brave new nightmare, isn't enough.
Corporations are exercising property rights over their biotechcreations. How morally right is this? To enclose a creature's geneticcode? To turn such fundamental information, the stuff oflife, into something that can be bought and sold?
Like much else in life, as the public debate over patenting lifesplutters on in parliaments and in the media, the business of businesshappens quietly in the background. The corporations are shaping thebiotech agenda. In universities even.
Canada's politicians may ponder long and hard. They won't be able toignore the pressure from corporate lobbyists. Canada has to play thesame free trade rules as the rest of the world. Patent law there, aseverywhere else, will be reinvented for the 21st Century.
Meanwhile, challenging the idea of minting money out of minting life isleft to the scientists. The Canadian decision came the day after thepublication of the draft complete mouse genome. Scientists from 27institutions in six countries took part in the £87m Mouse GenomeSequencing Consortium. [Independent].
The consortium is in the public sector. All its data is in the public domain.
Real or cartoon, mice or men, code of all sorts will cheer loudly.
No joke: Lawyers acting on behalf of Dow Chemicals have shut down the Dow Toxic spoof site set up to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the Bhopal gas accident.
Verio, the site's ISP, received a note from Dow's lawyers citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Verio pulled the plug late Wednesday evening.
The Yes Men, the politico pranksters behind the site, say they wish Dow would put as much energy into cleaning up the mess in Bhopal as it's spent on closing down their site.
'It's really funny, but also really awful how Dow. . . and Verio can just put sooooo much energy and creativity into making sure this little image problem gets minimized, whereas they can't possibly be bothered to do something about the basic problem they're faced with: DEAD PEOPLE. SICK PEOPLE. TOXIC MESS.'[Yes Men].
The Dow Toxic site is still being mirrored at:
bhopal.doesntexist.com
dow.is.dreaming.org
dow-chemical.va.com.auIt's not only Dow that doesn't get the joke. The Yes Men's spoof sites specialise in stretching free trade logic until it reaches breaking point. But, mistaken for the real WTO, they regularly get invitations to give speeches at business conferences.
Even when they turn up and deliver their extreme trade-uber-alles message, the Yes Men don't always get rumbled.
The US civil war was a bad idea because the market would eventually have cleaned up slavery; Gandhi's ideal of village self-sufficiency was an inefficient protectionist measure; the Italian siesta is an unfair barrier to trade; Hitler's economic model had a lot going for it. . .
Mike Yes Man explains: 'The idea is that at some stage among your audience there’ll be some moment of realisation.
'Trouble is, there isn’t always. That’s what we’re realising – how much crap people will take if it comes from a person in a suit representing something official like the WTO.'[Ecologist].
Soft touch: The gap betweenbusiness rhetoric and reality is causing problems at the Institute forPublic Policy Research (IPPR).
The 'left-leaning'thinktank's latestreport, based on a survey of 500 UK company directors, finds thatwhile there's plenty of business chatter about the importance ofcorporate social responsibility (CSR), most companies fail toimplement effective social or environmental policies.
This hasn't gone down too well at the Institute of Directors (IoD)which commissioned the report.
The IoD disagrees with the IPPR's interpretation of the results so muchthat it's published its own summary. Unlike the IPPR, it regards theresults as another opportunity for yet another CSR good news story.
Ella Joseph, who wrote the IPPR report, told Newsnight's StephanieFlanders yesterday:
'I was really surprised by the IoD'sresponse. We'd be the first to praise, promote, endorse positivecompany behaviour and we're absolutely delighted by some of thefindings around workforce policy.
'However we do think that where companies say they have a policy butdon't actually evaluate whether that policy is effective, we need tochange that situation.'[BBCNewsnight].
It sounds as though the IPPR is tired of greenwash: corporate PRdesigned to pre-empt any broad critique of business practice.
Pushing for 'soft' regulation,it wants CSR company audits standardised and published widely to allinterested parties - workers, consumers, the community andshareholders. [Observer].
Meanwhile, the government sticks to the voluntary approach. Business -Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Tyco, ArthurAndersen, Martha Stewart, Enron - gets to decide its own code ofconduct.
Moving pictures: Withoutcopyright term extensions, old films wouldn't get distributed, arguesthe entertainment industry. 'Indiscriminateexploitation' by public domain copyists would reduce the flow ofcash to Big Media and hence the motivation Big Media needs to 'publish' films. [