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.'

Comments

so?

[ekephart]

It's not like the US plays by the rules either. 1. 2.

Has anyone been there recently?

[swagr]

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?

Re:Has anyone been there recently?

[igrek]

I wouldn't reply, but the parent post was moderated as "informative", which is not exactly the case.

Yes, you're right, the country is corrupt, however:

1) Believe me, nobody gets beaten up by cops there just because his passport is Canadian. It's a reasonably safe country for foreigners. Please make yourself a favor and visit Kiev. The city is beautiful, the restaurants are excellent, ukrainian girls are lovely. Plus, _any_ software and music CD is $2 per disk, but you already know this :)

2) $500 is way too much. If you're following custom regulations, you have nothing to fear, at all. Last time I had 10 packs of certain rare medicine on me which they said is too much. I paid $20 and the custom officer was happy to let me through. I just can't imagine what your priest was carrying to pay $500... Machine gun, maybe? :)

Re:former Soviet republic

[TheBracket]

As a former Soviet republic, doesn't the Ukraine have any nuclear weapons that they can use to argue away sanctions?

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.

Re:Democracy's good, unless it's not ours

[Fjord]

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/