Posts by Sacha
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Ah but it's a familiar screwing..
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We will not rest until New Zealand has as many public holidays as Spain
And siestas?
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Quite. And Key is over there early, negotiating away.
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Hardly an expert on medicines policy but I recall reading that some ACTA drafts try to classify generic phamaceuticals as forbidden counterfeits, thus providing another avenue to force buying of only the more expensive (and profitable) branded drugs.
In broader terms the pharma industry detests NZ's centralised Pharmac drug-purchasing agency because it interferes with their profit maximisation. It has been suggested elsewhere (sorry no refs for now) that any 'Free' Trade Agreement with the USA will demand Pharmac's scalp, and it seems some of our current government are dead keen to hand it to them beforehand without any negotiation, in much the same way as we're kowtowing about whales and climate change. For daddy's approval.
Others who know more should be able to shed light, and I'm very open to correction if I have anything substantively wrong.
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There's a value in shared statutory holidays.
I agree - just not *all* the current ones.
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The Wellington Declaration is a beautiful, clear piece of writing, and I recommend it to anyone here who cares about our online future. It's really that important.
ACTA is designed to undermine previously negotiated intellectual property agreements. It has big implications for New Zealand with our current government desperate to suck up to the United States whose old media industries are behind this subversion of international fair practice to prop up their ailing business models. Pharmac is dead as a dodo if this agreement goes through unchanged. All our fledgling creative and knowledge industries that provide the jobs of the future will be threatened.
That's why the Declaration's first principle is that things other than the original purpose of ACTA - large scale commercial copying of physical products like fake handbags - should be excluded from it. Failing that, the points Russell summarises above are offered as improvements.
Please ask your friends and colleagues (including those beyond these shores) to read and sign the Declaration now, before negotiations start tomorrow morning. It's not a long read and a rare opportunity to shape our future.
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So you're saying it's up there with "may interfere with our navigation systems"?
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Matariki makes lots of sense to me, and I think it would pick up quite a following even voluntarily
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The software politics around all this are fascinating.
Reckon - and check this ranty piece about how the business of location-based services will play out.
But the odds-on favorite here by far is Facebook. With 400M+ users, an already very active userbase, and users' growing familiarity with FB Connect on off-platform sites, they are the easy pick front-runner. Maybe they buy somebody, maybe they don't. Maybe they buy *several* somebodies. But you can bet yer sweet ass the road to the LBS playoffs sure as hell goes thru 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA.
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Didn't they use the boss at gitmo?