Is this really so bad? (Score 2, Interesting)

Being an Australian resident and being particularly keen on seeing a developing Australian industry I have three questions I would like to ask:

1. Does developing IPRs instantly disallow you from support of the Open source community? My personal and selfish hope is that I can get stinking rich out of developing protected IP and then harness that power for good - using the wealth for open source development, similar to other social investments
2. What are all the poor Americans doing in their own country - is it really so bad in the US?
3. My natural reaction after reading this is that it should strengthen the resolve of Australian industry to re-balance the IPR scales, or should we just roll-over?