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Ukraine Tries to Avoid U.S. Trade Restrictions
GMFTatsujin writes: "In response to the threat of US trade sanctions, the Ukraine parliament hastily passed an anti-piracy bill aimed at reducing the bootlegged CD problem. I especially liked this quote from this Wired article: '"We are deeply disappointed that Ukraine has not passed an effective law and instead is rushing through an ineffective law," said Eric Schwartz, vice president and special counsel of the International Intellectual Property Alliance." This is a follow-up to our story of two weeks ago about Ukraine not complying with U.S. demands for 'an optical media licensing regime.'
It's not like the US plays by the rules either. 1. 2.
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All the nukes (at least officially) were negotiated successfully back to the custody of the Russian Federation.
If that had not happened, US would probably have bought them.
I'm of Ukrainian decent, and I have friends and family that have been there recently.
A friend had to pay off cops to avoid getting beaten up because his Canadian passport wasn't in Ukrainian. A priest I know was stopped right off the plane at customs and had to pay $500 to get through.
The country is corrupt and falling appart. Who is going to enforce this law?
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The Ukraine signed onto the Berne Copyright Convention in 1995. It is under that treaty that they are obligated to pass 'DMCA-style' legislation to protect copyrighted works.
Have you visited International Intellectual Property Alliance? This is scary shit. This is no international organisation, this is a organisation created by likes of RIAA, MPAA, IDSA, BSA and AAP, all very much concerned about 'piracy' and 'copyright infringement'. Just 2 examples from their milestone page:
In 1984, the U.S. copyright industries pressed the Congress to make ineffective IPR protection an "unfair trade practice" under Section 301 of the U.S. trade law. Congress made this and other similar changes which marked the first time IPR protection was made part of the U.S. trade agenda.
At the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, a new chapter on intellectual property rights, the TRIPS Agreement, was included for the first time ever in a global trade instrument.
Just yesterday the US government tried to remove the FCC from the decision process with respect to mega media corp mergers. Why?
:)
1) giant media companies need FCC approval prior to mergers.
2) The FCC tends to be very critical of such moves.
3) The only remaining regulation is the DOJ and any mega media company can own that as long as the president gets some nice toys for being good.
Was this on TV? No. Why? What mega media company would cover their own dirt? *think* Maybe the problem is already showing
It was on NPR though. Dirty politics at its best. I wonder which elected people put a stop to it.
They served their country well. Even while on recess.
If anyone has a link to the details please share it. I just heard it while driving around town.
For people of Russian descent (I am one), the concept of purchasing music and software hasn't existed for some time. The RIAA's idea that recorded music can be controlled is the result of obedient Americans (and possibly Western Europeans).
In the Soviet Union, we always used to copy all types of recordings onto tape. This is still done by Russian immigrants in the US (and by many others, I'm sure). The RIAA thinks that because CDs are better, people would never copy them onto tapes. Well, the small loss of quality is negligible compared to having a chance to listen to the music in the first place.
I visited St.Petersburg, Russia recently. The underground walks that lead to the subway stations are lined with kiosks selling all sorts of magazines, medicine, etc, but mostly CDs. There must be tens of thousands of CDs in total at any single station. These kiosks are 100% legal.
The CDs? Collections of every type of software imaginable, collections of music (such as every song ever released by U2 on one CD), etc. They go for a few dollars apiece (*30 for rubles). Most Russians can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on software or hundreds of dollars on music. Thus the pirate CD industry for them fulfills an essential market.
Furthermore, these CDs then get imported into the US where they fulfill the same exact market. There aren't too many people who can afford to spend $20 on a CD for every singer they want to listen to.
Are they wrong to do this? I personally would say that the artists and software companies benefit, since for them this is free publicity. It is the companies' own fault that they charge unreasonable prices for their products that these people could never afford to pay anyway.
No, they don't. When the Ukraine seceded from the USSR, this was the #1 question from the rest of the world - and the US in particular. Initially, the Ukrainians thought that becoming a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty would mean that they agreed not to proliferate the sizeable nuclear arsenal situated on their soil; negotiation with the US (often quite heated - one of my professors at SMSU was involved in it and liked to talk about it at length!) and Russia left Russia the sole power in charge of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.
That's not to say that they might have kept one or two warheads lying around, but if they have any, it is a relatively trivial number - and probably of the tactical variety, primarily intended to maintain their independence from Russia.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
As are most Ukrainian laws, as the level of corruption there is insane.
No, they are more concerned with murdering journalists and lining their pockets with bribes from those running the CD piracy industry.
They're imposing a tarrif on exports, not denying imports.
Most Ukrainians cant afford many imported goods to begin with since their so expensive compared to the local economy. Many grow their own vegetables in their gardens, they dont import them from Europe.
-- Ryan Watkins vamp@vamp.org http://www.vamp.org/
This doesn't follow, as $3 in Ukraine is quite high. From Central Europe Review:
I'm not surprised that Ukrainians don't want to spend almost half their daily salary on a CD. And remember, those are just the ones with steady jobs (also a rarity in .ua).
FreeBSD - the power to serve.
From the second link in the orginal article:
There is a similar tracking requirement imposed on CD recorders (by
the patent licenses issued by Philips). It requires that each CD
burner record on the CD the serial number of the recorder, so that
every burned CD-R can be traced back to which individual CD-burner
recorded it.
These schemes are described here:
http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/sid/
-no broken link
As a person who lives at Ukraine I can confirm - US does not lose anything because of pirates here. Majority of the people here is so poor so even buying $3 CD is expensive for them. So even If here would not be pirates, US music firms woulnd not sell more CDs here than they are doing now.
Now a bit of math, just to compare: middle level salary at US(monthly), let it be around $3.000. one CD costs $15 - $20, so it turns into 150-200 CD per month that you can buy. Now Ukrainian case - $60/month and $3 per CD (prirate) = 20 CD per month. Hope now it's clear why it's completely impossible to make "copyright'd" business here - will be almost no sales/profits.
-- Vlad