Here is an idea for a movie plot:

The plot: A medical lab in a poor country produces medicines in violation of patent law. This has a devastating effect on the wealthy shareholders of the big pharmaceutical industry. It is also bad for the American trade deficit. The movie must show that the benefit of saving lives is nothing compared to the loss of the shareholders. The movie must also show that the patients that buy the “pirate” medicines to save their lives are also thiefs because they should know that the medicines are “illegal”, just like kids that download music must know that the songs are “pirated”.

Some background thoughts:

1. The American trade deficit that is published is fictitious because it is based on the importation and exportation of manufactured goods only. The trade figures do no account for IP, financial services, and other overseas profits.

2. Millions of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans die because the medicines they need are patented and because they are patented they are not available at a low prices precisely because the patents give the “discoverer” a monopoly on the production of the medicines.

3. While patented medicines may be called “creation and innovation” they are just discoveries of natural phenomena made by the ones with the most money in the wealthy countries. The money comes from government taxes, tax breaks and the excess money paid by consumers of medicine.

4. The race to discover what nature created is an unfair race to begin with. The ones with the money (and the education that is paid with the money), are way in front when the race starts and always win. As a result the “winners” wind up patenting monopolizing the medical benefits of nature.

5. A medicine that costs $.01 (1 cent) to manufacture winds up costing one dollar to the American consumer. That’s right, the cost is multiplied a hundred times. While politicians try to show that they are concerned about the cost of health of retired and uninsured patients, they are not really interested in the costs to manufacture the medicines r to control the costs to the consumer. Why? That is the subject, i hope, of another, forthcoming movie by Michael Moore.

6. The shareholders never create or innovate anything. They pay others to do that, with profit money, of course. The whole idea is to take money out, not in.

Yes, they take code from many other places. It is funny that they are the most visible “software manufacturer” part of comically named organizations like the “Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft” who also has some of the largest infringement claims against them. When they do a raid their ex-customer may have damages in the thousands, but when Microsoft is found guilty it tends to be in the millions or billions. Who are the real “pirates”?

Microsoft may own/control that specific OS and office suite http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/code-is-law-speedgeek.html , but what percentage of it they actually wrote it is another question that is constantly being debated in the courts

The control is extreme and well underway, with the changes to the copyright act to be tabled soon in Canada (US DMCA type stuff) being part of this. Anyone still running BSA/CAAST software MUST read the TCPA FAQ http://www.againsttcpa.com/tcpa-faq-en.html Are they people really choosing to give up control (and thus an important part of ownership) of their otherwise “personal” computer and communications devices (home entertainment, etc), or are they simply misinformed?

As to “anything but Microsoft”, they are just the most successful company with the “software manufacturing” methodology for the production, distribution and funding of software. There is nothing special about them within that methodology other than their success, and switching to another “software manufacturing” operating system doesn’t accomplish anything. People should be critical/skeptical of hybrid systems like MacOS-X which is part-Free/Libre and Open Source Software (Darwin – http://apple.com/darwin/ ) and part “software manufacturing” which can implement the same remote-control that Microsoft is promoting. Some of the discussions about Apples move to Intel chips relates to possible TCPA issues.

If I do the movie, I will call it the “The biggest music theft and mystery in history”. It will be about how the music of my father was massively stolen in plain sight by music publishers and how a federal judge saw nothing wrong when it came time for sentencing for damages, awarding us a grand total of $21,000 of which not a single cent has been paid a year after the sentence.

The only problem we are broke and cannot afford to buy a cheap camera or make the movie. We are broke because of the theft, which has caused that we earn no royalties (the royalties were stolen too) and which forced us to incurr in huge legal bills, over $250,000 so far, o claim our music ownership rights. After all, the music is among the greatest written by a single composer in the 20th. century. This is real drama. Certainly no one can beat this story, Microsot will agree, to show how the theft of intellectual property hurts economically.

But there is more. Many record compnies, including RIIA members Sony and Sonolux have made and sold many records using my father’s songs without any licence and without ever paying any royalties to us. First the RIIA members made the recordings without licenses and then, after selling millions of records. they went on to one of the publisher thiefs, got licenses from them and then paid them, while refusing to pay us, the owners. The courts have already confirmed we are the owners. This is real dramatic.

As I write this, a thought came into me. Microsoft does nor really want this kind of story, where memebers of of the big publisher and recording associations are the thiefs. They want the thiefs to be kids and others that know nothing about copyright laws and downloaded songs.

We, so much for a good story.

Anyway, anyone interested in the story, not available as a movie yet, can read it here: http://www.gvenegas.com

Rafael Venegas

the thifsthat download.

Pirates of Silicon Valley

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/

This is something that is very possible. I would definitely be afraid to use Windows on any computer that connects to the Internet. Time to switch to other operating systems such as MacOS, BSD, Linux, Solaris, or anything else that is not sold by Micro$oft. Let’s tell Billy Boy that we do not appreciate him going after fileswappers. VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET!