Your most cantankerous article? Dan, you're such a nice guy. Read Christopher Hitchens for an example of cantankerous.

Michael,

I've been at small conference with Hitchens -- the man manages to generate his own personal cantankerous ecosystem wherever her goes.

I'm nice, huh? F@$k you, Totten, you m$%&@r-f%&*?ing piece of s#?t.

OK, I take it back. Damn, I am nice!!

Beyond simply mucking up the once-clear mandate of the WTO, TRIPS also falls into the same trap that proponents of adding labor and environmental regulations to trade agreements do: they neglect the historical role of lax rules in allowing the developed world to, well, develop.

Selective (and sometimes virtually non-existent) copyright enforcement allowed the young US publishing industry to flourish by copying British titles and translating French ones. Sure, the Europeans didn't like it, but that didn't stop us. In a world where intellectual property extends far beyond the original maps, charts, and book, this effect is even more profound.

It's componded by the fact that (unlike the early US) the countries that TRIPS applies to often don't even have a good handle on real and personal property laws, much less the tools to battle illegal copying.

It's an unrealistic (and chauvinistic) viewpoint that demands modern Western respect for IP, the environment, and worker's rights when we originally solidified our own prosperity by our flauntin of those rules.