A transcript of Eben Moglen's Harvard speech has been published at Groklaw. A few quotes:
"Patent law in the 21st century is a collection of evil nuisances."
"Patents are about politics. I thought that the pharmaceuticals companies did my side a favor by buying us 12 trillion dollars in free publicity in the last half decade by teaching every literate twelve year old on earth that "intellectual property" means people dying of preventable diseases because the drugs are too expensive because patents cover them."
"Our society is a much less aware one on that subject. For those of us who live here, the task of getting to the standard set for us by our colleagues in Europe this past summer is the first and most important challenge. We must make our Congressmen understand that patent law is not an administrative law subject to be decided in the PTO, but a political subject to be decided by our legislators. We may have to restore actual democracy to the House of Representatives in the United States in order to make that possible, and there are many other aspects to the challenge involved."
Good luck with the task of restoring actual democracy. That seems to be rather difficult.
Slashdot discussion here.
Update: Rainer Langenhan points to this Greplaw story on Moglen's presentation.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at February 28, 2004 11:33 AM | TrackBack