Salon | Letters to the editor

SALON | Feb. 12, 1999

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_______________ALIENS BLEW UP MY GARBAGE DUMP BY ANDREW LEONARD (02/03/99)

I starve for intelligent critique of the digital realm. As such, I generally enjoy Andrew Leonard's column. But his gushing review of SimCity 3000 troubled me. I haven't played the new version yet, but if it's anything like SimCity 2000, though I sympathize with Leonard's thrills, I felt a little more distance was in order.
His mention of Reagonesque supply-side theories barely scratches the surface. Environmental message notwithstanding, SimCity is prefaced on assumptions about power, democracy and urbanism that are extremely reactionary, if not downright totalitarian. As mayor, czar and senator-for-life you are scarcely accountable to the teeming masses. With a point and click you are able to cut down housing to build your highways, able to put that incinerator anywhere you damn well please. The SimCitizens are little more than insects crawling through your exquisite maze. They have no say in the process, their collective voice reduced to cheers or boos when taxes are raised or lowered. Perhaps they riot because they have no other means of participation.
How crowded are the schools? What will welfare recipients do with their kids when forced by the city into minimum-wage jobs? And when the minimum wage does not meet the poverty line? What about services for the elderly? Or people with HIV? And in the absence of such services, where will we put the dead? As for the mayor of New York City, these concerns are scarcely part of the game.
Granted, it's a blast to play. I'll admit I've invested quite a few days building bridges and watching them burn. Nonetheless I imagine that taking models like SimCity at face value leads one to assume that there really is no sense in city councils, ballot initiatives or turning out the vote. It is the belief among progressives that it is possible to actually change the rules of the game.
-- John Emerson

_______________PACT WITH THE CEO BY JAMES C. LUH (02/08/99)

James C. Luh's article on university technology licensing was overall pretty good and touched on some of the key issues. But his facts were so way off that it made me question the whole piece. For example, he claims universities netted $293 million from 9,306 patent licenses in 1997, citing the Association of University Technology Managers 1997 annual survey. But if you go to AUTM's own Web site, you'll see that the real figure is actually $611 million in net income earned from 15,328 university-owned patent licenses.
This is a big discrepancy. Plus, he fails -- on the positive side -- to discuss some of the additional benefits of university licensing. Like 2,214 new startup companies formed from university research since 1980, 333 of them in 1997 alone. Not to mention almost $29 billion in U.S. economic activity supporting a whopping 246,000 jobs resulting from university license activity. I could go on.
Luh also doesn't go far enough in discussing the potential downside of university entrepreneurship. Think Terminator Seeds, Monsanto's new sterile seed strategy that would end third world farmers' ability to use the seeds from this year's crops to plant next year's crops, thus forcing them to keep coming back to Monsanto.
Now I'm not clear on any university involvement with this particular Terminator technology. But it's precisely the sort of thing that easily could come up as universities become ever more entrepreneurial. In the case of Terminator seeds, Monsanto's business strategy is brilliant. But for any university (or ethical human) to be involved in such a project would be akin to making money from biological warfare.
Another example of the dangers of university licensing is what third world countries call "bio-piracy": U.S. companies patenting things like Thai jasmine rice ("jasmati" rice it's called), which could effectively steal the natural historic product of a country and prevent its own citizens from using it (without payment, of course). In 1995, two University of Mississippi Medical Center researchers patented the Indian spice tumeric to heal wounds. Luckily, the Indian government filed a protest with the U.S. patent office and presented enough "prior-art" -- including an ancient Sanskrit text describing the use of tumeric to treat wounds -- to show that the patent was not novel at all. So it was revoked. But this sort of thing is going on all the time at universities. Better controls are needed.
-- David Kline

_______________NEITHER A BORROWER ... BY CRAIG OFFMAN (02/05/99)

This may be just a coincidence, but I have some trouble with Craig Offman reporting that Tom Stoppard et al. plagiarized "No Bed for Bacon" without acknowledging that this revelation had previously been published in the film industry press (Sight & Sound, February 1999 issue, Philip Kemp's review). The pot and the kettle?
-- David Hodgson
Editor's note: We didn't mention the Sight & Sound article because we didn't know about it. The story was inspired by a Salon reader's e-mail complaint that we received in December, and the reporting was pursued in January. Apparently, several fans of "No Bed for Bacon" launched an informal campaign to encourage the media to cover the story and contacted several publications.
SALON | Feb. 15, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| MAIL ROOM DISPATCH ...

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	- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - page 2 of 2
_______________ALIENS BLEW UP MY GARBAGE DUMP BY ANDREW LEONARD (02/03/99)
	I starve for intelligent critique of the digital realm. As such, I generally enjoy Andrew Leonard's column. But his gushing review of SimCity 3000 troubled me. I haven't played the new version yet, but if it's anything like SimCity 2000, though I sympathize with Leonard's thrills, I felt a little more distance was in order. His mention of Reagonesque supply-side theories barely scratches the surface. Environmental message notwithstanding, SimCity is prefaced on assumptions about power, democracy and urbanism that are extremely reactionary, if not downright totalitarian. As mayor, czar and senator-for-life you are scarcely accountable to the teeming masses. With a point and click you are able to cut down housing to build your highways, able to put that incinerator anywhere you damn well please. The SimCitizens are little more than insects crawling through your exquisite maze. They have no say in the process, their collective voice reduced to cheers or boos when taxes are raised or lowered. Perhaps they riot because they have no other means of participation. How crowded are the schools? What will welfare recipients do with their kids when forced by the city into minimum-wage jobs? And when the minimum wage does not meet the poverty line? What about services for the elderly? Or people with HIV? And in the absence of such services, where will we put the dead? As for the mayor of New York City, these concerns are scarcely part of the game. Granted, it's a blast to play. I'll admit I've invested quite a few days building bridges and watching them burn. Nonetheless I imagine that taking models like SimCity at face value leads one to assume that there really is no sense in city councils, ballot initiatives or turning out the vote. It is the belief among progressives that it is possible to actually change the rules of the game. -- John Emerson
_______________PACT WITH THE CEO BY JAMES C. LUH (02/08/99)
	James C. Luh's article on university technology licensing was overall pretty good and touched on some of the key issues. But his facts were so way off that it made me question the whole piece. For example, he claims universities netted $293 million from 9,306 patent licenses in 1997, citing the Association of University Technology Managers 1997 annual survey. But if you go to AUTM's own Web site, you'll see that the real figure is actually $611 million in net income earned from 15,328 university-owned patent licenses. This is a big discrepancy. Plus, he fails -- on the positive side -- to discuss some of the additional benefits of university licensing. Like 2,214 new startup companies formed from university research since 1980, 333 of them in 1997 alone. Not to mention almost $29 billion in U.S. economic activity supporting a whopping 246,000 jobs resulting from university license activity. I could go on. Luh also doesn't go far enough in discussing the potential downside of university entrepreneurship. Think Terminator Seeds, Monsanto's new sterile seed strategy that would end third world farmers' ability to use the seeds from this year's crops to plant next year's crops, thus forcing them to keep coming back to Monsanto. Now I'm not clear on any university involvement with this particular Terminator technology. But it's precisely the sort of thing that easily could come up as universities become ever more entrepreneurial. In the case of Terminator seeds, Monsanto's business strategy is brilliant. But for any university (or ethical human) to be involved in such a project would be akin to making money from biological warfare. Another example of the dangers of university licensing is what third world countries call "bio-piracy": U.S. companies patenting things like Thai jasmine rice ("jasmati" rice it's called), which could effectively steal the natural historic product of a country and prevent its own citizens from using it (without payment, of course). In 1995, two University of Mississippi Medical Center researchers patented the Indian spice tumeric to heal wounds. Luckily, the Indian government filed a protest with the U.S. patent office and presented enough "prior-art" -- including an ancient Sanskrit text describing the use of tumeric to treat wounds -- to show that the patent was not novel at all. So it was revoked. But this sort of thing is going on all the time at universities. Better controls are needed. -- David Kline
_______________NEITHER A BORROWER ... BY CRAIG OFFMAN (02/05/99)
	This may be just a coincidence, but I have some trouble with Craig Offman reporting that Tom Stoppard et al. plagiarized "No Bed for Bacon" without acknowledging that this revelation had previously been published in the film industry press (Sight & Sound, February 1999 issue, Philip Kemp's review). The pot and the kettle? -- David Hodgson Editor's note: We didn't mention the Sight & Sound article because we didn't know about it. The story was inspired by a Salon reader's e-mail complaint that we received in December, and the reporting was pursued in January. Apparently, several fans of "No Bed for Bacon" launched an informal campaign to encourage the media to cover the story and contacted several publications. SALON \| Feb. 15, 1999