Google asks gov’t to fight censorship

By Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON – Once relatively indifferent to government affairs, Google Inc. is seeking help inside the Beltway to fight the rise of Web censorship worldwide.

The online search giant is taking a novel approach to the problem by asking U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers, similar to other hurdles to global commerce, such as tariffs.

Google sees the dramatic increase in government Net censorship, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, as a potential threat to its advertising-driven business model, and wants government officials to consider the issue in economic, rather than just political, terms.

“It’s fair to say that censorship is the No. 1 barrier to trade that we face,” said Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s director of public policy and government affairs. A Google spokesman said Monday that McLaughlin has met with officials from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office several times this year to discuss the issue.

“If censorship regimes create barriers to trade in violation of international trade rules, the USTR would get involved,” USTR spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel said. She added though that human rights issues, such as censorship, typically falls under the purview of the State Department.

While human rights activists are pleased with Google’s efforts to fight censorship, they harshly criticized the company early last year for agreeing to censor its Web site in China, which has the second-largest number of Internet users in the world.

The company defends its actions, saying the Chinese government made it a condition of allowing Chinese users access to Google Web pages. China has an Internet firewall that slows or disrupts Chinese users from accessing foreign uncensored Web sites.

Censorship online has risen dramatically the past five years, belying the hype of the late 1990s, which portrayed the Internet as largely impervious to government interference.

A study released last month by the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of 41 countries surveyed engage in Internet censorship. That’s a dramatic increase from the two or three countries guilty of the practice in 2002, says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, who helped prepare the report.

China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore and Thailand, among others, are increasingly blocking or filtering Web pages, Palfrey says.

Governments “are having more success than the more idealistic of us thought,” acknowledges Danny O’Brien, international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Still, even government filtering isn’t always successful. In a brutal regime like Iran, which filters Web content, there are nearly 100,000 bloggers, making Farsi “one of the most blogged languages in the world,” says Palfrey.

Google’s YouTube has become a common target for thin-skinned rulers. Turkey in March blocked the video-sharing site for two days after a complaint that some clips insulted Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Thailand continues to block YouTube after several videos appeared in April, criticizing the country’s monarch.

Bloggers in Morocco said in late May that they could not access YouTube shortly after videos were posted critical of that nation’s treatment of the people of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco took control of in 1975. A government spokesman blamed a technical glitch.

One likely source for Google’s censorship idea is a paper written two years ago by Timothy Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, who argues that downloading a Web page hosted in another country effectively imports a service.

Drawing on that concept, Google envisions using trade agreements to fight back. The negotiated pacts would include provisions guaranteeing free trade in “information services.” As is true of most trade pacts, the provisions would call for arbitration if there are violations.

The U.S. has a trade agreement with Morocco and began negotiating one with Thailand in 2004, although those talks were suspended early last year after a military coup.

Columbia’s Wu said the trade pact approach is likely to be more effective when governments are guilty of blocking entire Web sites or applications, such as Internet phone-calling, than when they filter specific content.

Under World Trade Organization rules, countries can limit trade for national security or public moral reasons, Wu said, exceptions that authoritarian governments would likely cite when filtering politically sensitive material.

The company’s trade initiative reflects Google’s increasing acceptance of the value of federal lobbying. The company didn’t hire a lobbyist until 2003, according to public filings, but paid the high-powered Washington-based Podesta Group $160,000 last year to work on Internet free-speech, tax and other issues.

Human rights groups say Google’s censorship efforts seem sincere, albeit motivated by bottom-line incentives.

“Free expression is a unique selling point” for a company like Google, O’Brien said. Filtering and censorship “diminishes the value of their product.”

Yet last month at the company’s annual meeting, Google’s board recommended investors vote against a shareholder resolution urging Google to renounce censorship.

The resolution was defeated, although Google is already acting on some of the proposal’s ideas, including working with other technology leaders, such as Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., to develop a set of principles on how companies should respond to censorship and other human rights violations when doing business abroad.

Human rights advocates, academics and corporate social responsibility groups are involved in the project, announced earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Google’s global growth efforts continue. YouTube said Tuesday that it plans to expand into nine other countries, including Brazil, France, Spain and Poland, offering local-language Web sites and highlighting videos of domestic interest.

In China, where Google is the No. 2 search engine behind the domestically based Baidu.com, the company said in April it will increase its investment as it works to create more content of interest to Chinese users.

The People of Vietnam: Victims of Communism

By Mike Benge
The Washington Times
June 17, 2007

Last Tuesday, June 12, President Bush spoke at the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial that honors the memories of those killed in communist regimes. He said their deaths should remind the American public “evil is real and must be confronted.” Ironically, this Friday, June 22, President Bush will honor the president of a tyrannical communist regime that murdered over a million Vietnamese and ethnic minorities with a White House visit during which he has the opportunity to confront that evil.

President Bush at the Victims of
Communism Memorial Dedication.
    
Recently, dozens of democracy activists, journalists, cyber-dissidents and Christian and other religious leaders were arrested and imprisoned by the Vietnamese communists. Congressional leaders and human-rights groups have charged Hanoi with “unbridled human-rights abuses,” the “worst wave of oppression in 20 years.” Those recently arrested are but a few of the hundreds of political and religious prisoners in Vietnam; some have been tried, while those less visible simply “disappeared.” This mounting crackdown is a deliberate diplomatic slap in the face of the United States.
    
Hanoi brazenly aired on TV the kangaroo court trial of Thaddeus Nguyen Van Father Ly, who was muzzled during the proceedings. In Vietnamese, the colloquial phrase for censorship is “bit mieng” — to cover the mouth. The picture of Father Ly’s muzzling seems a literal enactment of an old cliche. Denied representation, Father Ly was sentenced to eight years imprisonment.
    
Mr. Bush’s endorsement for Hanoi’s admission into the World Trade Organization at last year’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Hanoi, the removal of Vietnam from listed as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), and the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) were all predicated on the Communist Party substantially improving its human-rights record.
    
It should come as no surprise that after the granting of these privileges, the Vietnamese communists continued and intensified their repression.
    
Though Vietnam professes great strides in religious freedom, one must look under the veneer to seek the truth. For example, in 2006, the Vietnamese government claimed that “25 denominations” had received certificates to carry on religious activities, when in fact they were only individual house churches.
    
The price of these certificates is the surrender of religious freedom. The church must submit to the central Bureau of Religious Affairs (CBA) a list of the names and addresses of members, and only those approved by the CBA can attend services. All sermons must be approved by the CBA, and all sermons, including those of minorities, must be given in Vietnamese. Pastors and priests can neither deviate from the approved sermon nor proselytize, and the CBA police monitor all services.
    
Montagnards, Hmong and other Christians, Khmer Krom Monks, members of the Cao Dai faith, and Hoa Hao are still relentlessly persecuted. This is what Hanoi calls religious freedom, and the U.S. administration was naive enough to believe them and removed them from the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list of countries that suppress religious freedom.
    
Recently, the Vietnamese communist regime demanded of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues the cancellation of scheduled films to be screened at the May 22 forum. One film, “Hunted Like Animals,” sponsored by the Hmong-Lao Human Rights Council depicted the genocide against the Hmong, and the other film depicted human-rights abuses against the Khmer Krom by the Vietnamese communists. It should come as no surprise that the United Nations acquiesced to the demands of the repressive Hanoi regime.
    
Reminiscent of the days of slavery in the “Old South,” Montagnards who flee from repression in the Central Highlands are hunted down like wild animals. Vietnam pays bounties to Cambodian police for every Montagnard they catch and turn over to them. Vietnam considers refugees seeking asylum in another country to have violation its national security, punishable by imprisonment for up to 15 years.
    
Recently, three Montagnards were arrested by Cambodian police and charged with “human trafficking” for the so-called crime of aiding other Montagnards to flee the repression in Vietnam via the Montagnards’ “underground railroad.” Although Cambodia does little to stop the trafficking of children for prostitution, the communist regime is prosecuting these Montagnards on Vietnam’s request in hopes it will convince the U.S. it is serious about trafficking. Vietnam pulls the strings of the marionette Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
    
Reports continue from behind the curtain of silence drawn around the Central Highlands of the torture and deaths of Montagnard Christians. During a February trip to Hanoi, Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, told a press conference that the Vietnamese officials assured her that Montagnards can freely travel to the Embassy in Hanoi or the Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City to voice any grievances. 

 She said Montagnards should stay in Vietnam and not seek asylum in Cambodia. Given the Vietnamese communists history of repression and broken promises, how can Mrs. Sauerbrey be naive enough to believe Montagnards suffering persecution would ever to be allowed through the phalanx of Vietnamese police surrounding the U.S. Embassy and Consulate?
    
As predicted, Hanoi has announced the release of a few token high-profile political prisoners in an attempt to smooth the way for the arrival of Vietnam’s President Triet, and in hopes of placating President Bush, the State Department and Congress. Can this administration be gullible enough to fall for yet another charade by the Vietnamese communists?
    
President Bush, keeping faith in the spirit of the Victims of Communism Memorial that “evil is real and must be confronted,” should demand of Vietnam’s president the release of all of the hundreds of political prisoners including those recently arrested and the more than 350 Christian Montagnards that seem to have been forgotten by this administration. 
    
Though assigned to the State Department and not a combatant, Mike Benge was captured and imprisoned by the communist North Vietnamese during the war in Vietnam.  He served time in the infamous Hanoi Hilton and we are proud at Peace and Freedom to call him a friend.

Putin Won’t Relent: Wants to Replace WTO

By ALEX NICHOLSON, AP 

ST.PETERSBURG, Russia – Russian President Vladimir Putin called Sunday for creating an alternative to the World Trade Organization that would favor developing economies and suggested giving a greater role to regional currencies.

Speaking at an economic forum in Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg, Putin lamented that today’s international economic organizations “look archaic, undemocratic and awkward” by protecting the interests mainly of developed economies.

“Today protectionism which the WTO is intended to fight oftentimes comes from developed economies that set up this structure,” Putin told the conference.

“In order to stimulate trade and investment it is worth thinking about creating a regional Eurasian institute on free trade that could take advantage of the positive experience of WTO,” he said. He did not elaborate.

Putin said the stalled Doha round of global trade talks were a sign of the problems with the organization: “Old methods of decision-making at times don’t work.”

The talks have stumbled repeatedly since their inception six years ago in Qatar’s capital, largely because of wrangling between rich and poor countries over eliminating barriers to farm trade.

Putin also said that, currently, global financial markets evolved around “one or two” currencies — an apparent reference to the euro and the dollar — and their fluctuations often have highly negative effects on many countries’ economies and financial reserves.

“There can be only one answer to this challenge — the creation of several world currencies, several financial centers,” he said. Putin suggested Russia could become one of them.

Russia remains the only major economy outside the WTO, the Geneva-based 150-member group, which sets global trade rules.

To join, Russia still needs to reach agreement with its tiny ex-Soviet neighbor Georgia, which protests Russia’s strong ties with its two breakaway provinces.

Russia also is in ongoing WTO talks with the European Union. Although the EU formally backs Russia’s World Trade Organization membership, issues including foreign investors’ access to Russia’s vast energy sector has complicated Moscow’s WTO application.

Russian officials are using the two-day forum to court international capital and talk up the resurgent country, combining ambitious economic projections with promises of an open investment climate.

Thailand stealing out of WTO?

By Christopher C. Horner
May 17, 2007

Membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a very big deal. It offers benefits in the form of market access and trade protections. China lobbied desperately for membership, and Russia actually agreed to the Kyoto Protocol in return for European Union endorsement of their WTO bid.

“One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster,
Therefore, it seems curious to watch Thailand abrogate its own WTO membership. They are doing so by breaking patents, something they are bound to respect under WTO rules.
    
Recently, Thailand has begun openly overriding American patents developed at great expense. Simply put, this is theft. And it is something against which the United States government must act.
    
The U.S. government’s options are many. They include the removal of preferential treatment here of Thai goods, or increasing our tariffs on Thai industries like shrimp and jewel production. In fact, the Louisiana Shrimp Association recently called for an investigation into Thai business practices. These industries are as important to them as protecting American innovation is to us.
    
A WTO member for over a decade, Thailand is the second-largest economy in fast-growing Southeast Asia. Thais have enjoyed average annual growth since World War II of 8 percent. And just last year the U.S. Congress extended to Thailand a handful of additional trade benefits under what is called the Generalized System of Preferences, giving their goods preferred access to our market.
    
Despite its growing wealth and expanded access to American markets, Thailand is not abiding by protections they promised to afford as a WTO member.
    
Last year the Thai military ousted the country’s prime minister. Shortly after that, the Thai Ministry of Health, an agency fabled for corruption and self-dealing, announced it would issue government-use “compulsory licenses” on three drugs produced by two American companies (and one European producer). In doing so Thailand has moved from its long history of tacitly allowing piracy to actively participating in it.
    
There are a few exemptions allowing compulsory licensing under the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or “TRIPs.” But none of them applies for Thailand.
    
One exemption is upon failure of “efforts to obtain authorization from the right holder on reasonable commercial terms and conditions.” Thailand never bothered with such negotiations. In a government white paper written pre-seizure that telegraphed its intentions, Thailand freely admitted its philosophy of going straight to expropriation to save time. A more damning admission is hard to imagine.
    
Worse, this white paper flaunts a Thai government goal of encouraging other countries to simply seize such property, or threaten to in order to bring patent holders to unfavorable terms. Sure enough, in the wake of Thailand’s seizure Brazil did just that, making it ever more important that the U.S. not allow this to stand as precedent.
    
Unfortunately, one company, Merck & Co., just signaled an appeasement strategy, which will fail as spectacularly in the commercial realm as in the diplomatic. It seems the company felt compelled to take this approach because the U.S. government so far has done nothing to protect American innovation. We can expect more appeasement, and more theft, if the U.S. government continues to sit on its hands.
    
Another exemption for expropriating the work of others is if Thailand faces a national health emergency. Here, the particular stolen property is AIDS drugs. Thailand has a comparatively low rate of AIDS infection at less than 1 percent of its total population. Fellow WTO members have infection rates as high as 20 percent and yet have not resorted to stealing intellectual property.

Further, by spending a mere 3.3 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, far below peer nations and even many poorer ones, Thailand affirms the absence of a health crisis.
    
A final excuse a WTO member may invoke to compulsorily license someone else’s property is “in cases of a non-public, non-commercial use.”
    
But Thailand’s Government Pharmaceutical Office (GPO) is known for selling medical products even to fellow government agencies at prices marked up as high as 1,000 percent. That sounds a lot like commercial use. What’s more, Wanchai Suppajaturas, deputy director of the GPO, said the drug was “good and cheap,” yet admitted a 20 percent drug resistance. This means, sadly, that 2 in 10 HIV-positive Thais is being administered substandard drugs. Hardly good medicine.
    
Investigative journalist Daniel Ten Kate notes in the Asia Sentinel that now the GPO is looking to double its revenues by 2010, revealing a possible true motive for Thailand’s theft: profits.
    
The U.S. government cannot allow countries like Thailand and Brazil to defy WTO law. Such piracy demands an immediate response from Washington, beginning with congressional hearings considering the removal of Thailand’s benefits derived from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), including tariffs on important Thai exports like shrimp and auto parts.
    
    Christopher C. Horner is an attorney in Washington, D.C. who works with numerous free market think tanks in the United States and Europe. 
    

China says U.S. piracy case will harm trade ties

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. complaints to the WTO over commercial piracy in China will “badly damage” cooperation, Vice Premier Wu Yi warned on Tuesday, insisting that China has made great strides in protecting patents and copyrights.

Earlier this month, Washington launched two cases at the World Trade Organization claiming that Beijing was not doing enough to punish illegal copiers of films and music and that its restrictions on entertainment imports violated trade rules.China denounced Washington’s move and Wu, who heads the country’s economic dialogue with Washington, bluntly warned that the complaints would bruise bilateral trade ties.

“The United States Trade Representative, the USTR, has totally ignored the massive strides China has made,” Wu told an intellectual property forum in Beijing.

The U.S. action “flies in the face of the agreement between the two countries’ leaders to propose dialogue as a way of settling disputes,” Wu said, adding that never before had a WTO member simultaneously mounted two cases against another country.

“This will have an utterly negative impact and will inevitably badly damage bilateral intellectual property cooperation,” she said, while also warning it would “harm” cooperation over market access issues.

“The Chinese government is extremely dissatisfied about this, but we will proactively respond according to the related WTO rules and see it through to the end,” Wu added.

‘SPIDEY 3′ ALREADY

Widespread bootlegging of films, music and software in China has long irked Washington, where many officials and lawmakers blame piracy for a portion of the massive U.S. trade deficit.

Underscoring the problem, DVDs claiming to contain the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie “Spider-Man 3″ are already on sale on Beijing streets, almost two weeks before it officially hits the screens in the United States.

On Monday, China sought to demonstrate its determination to stop commercial piracy by releasing an intellectual property action plan.

It will draft and implement 14 laws on intellectual property rights and usage, and issue explanations and guiding policies for handling IP violation cases, according to a notice.

Wu defended China’s record of combating piracy, pointing out that 988 people were arrested for IP infringement last year and that courts heard 6,441 IP cases.

“Over the last few years, the amount of manpower and work that China has put into protecting intellectual property rights and the results that have been achieved, have been unprecedented,” she said.

“Every year we have nationwide events to protect intellectual property and we have always kept up the pressure on the pirates. The effects of this clean-up get better every year.”

However, Wu admitted a lot of work lay ahead.

“At the moment, China’s burden is heavy and the road is long, with relatively little of its own intellectual property, weak competitiveness, continuous piracy disputes and a prominence of fake products,” she said.

“It’s cheap to pirate goods, but expensive to protect copyright … and society as a whole does not know enough about the problem,” Wu added.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley)

China bristles at WTO case but to take subsidy steps

By Jason Subler and Eadie Chen

BEIJING (Reuters) – New U.S. complaints about China to the World Trade Organization could harm trade relations, China said on Wednesday, but at the same time Beijing signaled further cuts in export subsidies that have also angered Washington.

The flurry of comments followed two separate U.S. complaints to the WTO on Tuesday over intellectual property rights (IPR) and market access for films, music and other media.

Washington said it wanted China to respect the obligations it made when it joined the WTO in 2001, but Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Wang Xinpei said the complaints would “seriously undermine” trade relations between the two countries.

The official China Daily said the U.S. decision “clearly shows that protectionism is rising in the world’s No. 1 economy.”

But separate comments by another Chinese trade official suggested that, despite the tough talk, Beijing was moving to respond to another complaint that the United States brought before the WTO earlier in the year.

Wang Shouwen, head of the commerce ministry’s foreign trade department, was cited by the China Business News as saying Beijing would make it a priority this year to scrap export subsidies that violate WTO rules.

Washington filed a complaint with the trade body in February over nine such Chinese subsidy programs, saying they unfairly harmed U.S. companies and workers.

Then, at the end of March, the U.S. administration imposed countervailing duties on imports of coated paper from China, a policy reversal that analysts said could spark a flood of cases.

Wang of the ministry’s foreign trade department said the overhaul to subsidies would be part of Beijing’s efforts to shift policy away from actively encouraging exports to being more neutral towards them.

China would also review other subsidies that could be legally challenged, he said, without giving a specific timetable.

NO TRADE WAR

Qing Wang, an economist with Bank of America in Hong Kong, said Beijing’s mixed response reflected that, while it was frustrated at the U.S. move, it understood that it needed to make some changes to its trade regime, for its own good.

“Although China gave a strong statement, in practice I think they are being pragmatic,” Wang said.

“I don’t think this will evolve into a major trade war between the two countries. I think what we see now is just two countries playing this rhetoric at that level, but at the same time China is trying to resolve the issue.”

Last month, Beijing announced it was eliminating one of the subsidies the United States had challenged in its WTO complaint, a program for offering discount loans to big exporters. Washington welcomed the move.

Wang, the ministry spokesman, said China would push ahead with steps to bring its trade into better balance.

He added that recent cuts to export tax rebates for some products would help rein in the trade surplus, which doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier to $46.4 billion. But he stressed that change could not happen quickly.

“Every policy requires a process of implementation, so it takes time to show an impact. But from a long-term perspective, I’m sure it will have a very effective impact on the trend of a growing surplus,” Wang said.

Beijing cut or scrapped the rebates on a number of products late last year. The finance ministry said on Tuesday it would lower or cancel them for most steel products from April 15, and many analysts expect more such moves soon.

(Additional reporting by Zhou Xin)

Thailand May Accept Donated AIDS/HIV Treatment Drugs

By GRANT PECK, Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand – Thai health officials said Tuesday that the government would consider an offer by U.S. drug maker Abbott Laboratories to supply Thailand and other countries with its AIDS-fighting drugs at a discounted price.

Abbott earlier Tuesday announced that after consulting with the U.N.’s World Health Organization, it had decided to offer its drug Kaletra, also known as lopinavir, and Aluvia, also known as ritonavir, at a reduced price in the developing world.”The company today offered to lower its price for its AIDS drug Kaletra from 5,938 baht ($181) per patient per month to 3,488.20 baht ($107) per patient per month which could end up being cheaper than its generic version,” Dr. Siriwat Tiptaradol, secretary-general of Thailand’s

Food and Drug Administration, was quoted saying in a news release from his agency.The offer appeared to be a breakthrough in ending a dispute between Thailand and Abbott over the high price of Kaletra.

Thailand earlier this year announced it was breaking the patent on Kaletra so it could provide cheaper generic versions of the drug to those in need.

Abbott responded by declaring it would not introduce any new drugs in Thailand because it failed to honor its intellectual property rights.

Thailand’s position drew much criticism from the local and foreign business community, while Abbott’s action drew a firestorm of protest from health activists.

Siriwat said that Illinois-based Abbott’s stance is that it wants to see a balance between the honoring of patents and public access to its medicine.

Siriwat added that the FDA will forward the offer to the Public Health Ministry for further deliberation.

The ministry in January issued so-called “compulsory licenses” allowing the use of much cheaper generic versions of Kaletra, as well as the blood thinner Plavix, marketed by France’s Sanofi-Aventis SA and U.S. drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

According to  World Trade Organization agreements on intellectual property, a government may issue a compulsory license in case of a national public health emergency. Such action has been taken by several countries, most notably Brazil and India, especially for AIDS medicines.

A news release from Abbott said the company will offer its AIDS drugs to NGOs and governments of more than 40 low and low-middle income countries at a price of $1,000 per patient per year.

“This price is lower than any generic price available in the world today for this medicine and is approximately 55 percent less than the average current price for these countries,” it said, adding that Thailand is one of the countries being offered the discount.

“Abbott did not say that they wanted us to revoke the compulsory license. There was no condition. They were just here to offer the price reduction so that people can have access to their medicines,” Dr. Suchart Chongprasert, another Thai FDA official, told The Associated Press.

“We want to thank the company for their understanding of our position and the offer that they made which will benefit Thai patients,” he said.

Abbott’s statement said the company was acting “to further increase access and address the debate around pricing of  HIV medicines: by increasing affordability while preserving the system that enables the discovery of new medicines.”

Thailand business climate still uncertain

Potential drug patent changes among concerns

David Armstrong
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, March 29, 2007

Thailand remains a challenging place to do business six months after an Army coup deposed the previous government, and foreign investment faces a possible slowdown, the U.S. ambassador to Thailand, Ralph Boyce, said in San Francisco this week.

Boyce said the military junta that runs the country on an interim basis has backed off from proposals to impose strict capital controls on foreign investors. But the unelected government stirred up controversy by proposing caps on foreign ownership of Thai companies and saying it would strip key drugs of their patent protection and give away generic versions.

Affected would be efavirenz, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s HIV treatment drug, which is marketed as Sustiva, and clopidogrel, a drug marketed as Plavix by Bristol-Myers and Aventis SA to treat heart conditions.

Thailand’s health ministry said it will make generic versions of the drugs to distribute to people too poor to pay for the branded versions.

“Thailand did it without any consultation,” Boyce said. “There is this notion that the drug companies are evil.”

Thailand’s move, known as “compulsory licensing,” is legal under World Trade Organization rules in medical emergencies, but is controversial and opposed by drug firms.

Boyce described the move on prescription drugs as one of several steps that have roiled investor confidence in the junta, which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September. Capital controls, announced but not implemented, was another.

Despite its political instability, Thailand — with a well-regarded workforce, fairly low costs, good infrastructure and a location in the heart of fast-growing Southeast Asia — remains attractive to multinational businesses.

Boyce, who stopped in San Francisco on Tuesday to address a meeting called by the California-Asia Business Council and San Francisco firm Lombard Investments, said Ford Motor Co. has decided to build a $1 billion manufacturing plant in Thailand.

Boyce’s comment seemed to confirm reports published last month that Ford — despite losing billions of dollars — was considering opening a major plant somewhere in Southeast Asia. Ford, which has made pickup trucks in Thailand for export since the mid-1990s, is opening contract talks with the United Auto Workers in North America.

Ford did not respond to questions about the reported Thailand plant.

Boyce also said advanced negotiations to craft a bilateral U.S.-Thailand free trade agreement have been put on hold.

“We went through several rounds of negotiations,” said Boyce, who has been Washington’s man in Bangkok for two years. The pact’s opponents, he said, “put together emotional demonstrations and said free trade with the U.S. was antithetical to Thai interests.”

Boyce demurred. “In the history of the world, no small country has ever not benefited from a free-trade deal with the United States.”

U.S. business leaders warn that Thailand’s decision to strip pharmaceuticals of patent protection could slow the inflow of foreign capital. Americans had $7.7 billion of investments in Thailand in 2005, according to the U.S. trade representative’s office.

“Investors look at potential destinations and judge how well intellectual property is protected when they decide to put capital in those countries,” Daniel Christman, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in Bangkok last week. “The vast majority of companies surveyed by us have expressed serious concerns about the future investment climate in Thailand.”

E-mail David Armstrong at davidarmstrong@sfchronicle.com

China Urges Patience from West as it Fights Patent, Trademark, Copyright Piracy

BEIJING (Reuters) – China urged patience from the developed world on Tuesday as it seeks to stop infringements of patents, copyrights and other intellectual property.

State Councilor Chen Zhili told a forum on intellectual property China was committed to strengthening intellectual property protections, but also urged wealthy countries to share more technology and show more understanding.

“When many key technologies are in the hands of developed countries, the development of developing countries faces unprecedented pressures,” she said.

China took over 570,000 patent applications from domestic and foreign sources in 2006, an increase of one fifth on the previous year, as the government pushes a campaign to foster homegrown innovation, Chen said.

Washington blames China’s many counterfeiters of films, music, software, medicines and machines for billions of dollars in foregone sales and has urged Beijing to toughen up anti-piracy prosecutions.

U.S. trade officials have threatened to lodge a complaint about the piracy before the World Trade Organization (WTO).

A coalition of U.S. movie, software, music and book industry groups recently estimated its companies had lost $2.2 billion in potential business in China in 2006 due to piracy.

Thomas Donohue, president of the  U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an umbrella organization of business interests, said flagging a WTO complaint could help press China to focus on the issue.

Donohue said the sheer scale of China’s economic growth made grappling with piracy there a challenge.

“The problem gets somewhat worse only because of the massive expansion of the economy,” he told a news conference in Beijing on Monday.

Vietnam govt steps up witch-hunt against peace campaigners

The Lawyer Website 

The Vietnamese government has launched one of the most severe crackdowns on peaceful dissidents in 20 years, campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims.

It has included the arrest of two of Vietnam’s few practising human rights lawyers earlier this month (March), both of whom have been charged with carrying out propaganda against the government under Article 88 of the Penal Code. If convicted they face sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

Nguyen Van Dai, who helped found the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights last year, was arrested on 6 March 2007. Le Thi Cong Nhan, a human rights champion who has served as spokesperson for the Vietnam Progression Party, one of several opposition parties created last year, was arrested on the same day.

Opposition parties remain banned by Vietnam’s one-party communist state.

HRW deputy director for Asia Sophie Richardson said: “These are peaceful dissidents. They’ve simply advocated for rights guaranteed both by Vietnam’s constitution and its international obligations under human rights treaties.”

More than 1,000 other people have also been imprisoned, including human rights campaigners, trade union leaders, Buddhist monks and more that 350 Protestants.

HRW argues that the Vietnamese state was emboldened to launch the crackdown by winning international recognition after joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit.

In a 26 February 2007 article, the Communist Party of Vietnam’s daily newspaper Nhan Dan (The People) announced that the government had “smashed” the “extremists’ sabotage scheme”.

The article underscored the government’s confidence following the Apec meeting, saying: “Vietnam’s prestige has been lifted to new heights following the events of becoming an official member of the WTO [and] the successful organisation of the 14th Apec Meeting.”

HRW’s Richardson said: “Despite the official rhetoric, the Vietnamese government can’t really pretend to be working towards a just society when it continues to persecute those who simply advocate for basic human rights.”