Slashdot Mirror
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.'
This law, or any law the Ukraine makes on CD piracy, is a law on paper only. The gov't is more concerned with supplying food and utilities to their people than whether the RIAA is going to receive their profits. To place trade sanctions on a country because they're harboring terrorists or committing genocide is one thing, to deny a country supplies because they might sell the CD's they burn is absurd.
It's not like the US plays by the rules either. 1. 2.
sig
I'm deeply offended at this. The U.S. government is punishing an entire nation for the actions of it's democratically elected government. It's not like there's a group of radicals forcing the Ukrainian people to pirate CD's...the decision to not follow US demands was made consciously and rationally by that country's ruling bodies.
The U.S. just happened to decide that our laws are better than their laws....and forced them to follow ours.
"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."
Of course we need to restrict the Ukraine, otherwise the Red team will be able to connect its European horde with its ten-army piece in the Ural Mountains!
"We are deeply disappointed that Ukraine has not passed an effective law and instead is rushing through an ineffective law,"
What motivation does the Ukranian goverment have to implement, and assign funds to appropriate the policing of such a bill? There has to be some motivation here. Do you really think that Pakistani President Musharraf wants to help America out of the goodness of his heart? No! While I do commend his help, he really does this so that he gets financial aid and lifted sanctions.
So I ask again, why should Ukraine support this? It gives its poor citizens cheap goods so that they can buy other necessities (food, vodka). Not that it's right, just that people don't necessarily care. Such questions must be addressed, and I'd be interested to know how the Slashdot communities' theories are in how to motivate countries like Ukraine, China, etc (where pirating is rampant) to put a halt to it?
... "Why do they hate us so much?"
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charlton heston is more of a man than yo
So does the US impose sanctions on every nation that refuses to dance to the RIAA/MPAA's tune? At what point does this become counter-productive for a country that's also currently trying to keep an anti-terror coalition together?
The fact is that the US has a lot of balls trying to impose these restrictions overseas when in fact they cant even do a good job of copyright enforcement at home. Why? Because Americans know it's a bullshit property right, and don't have one bit of guilt about copying freely. How many millions of illegal coppies did napster propigate? I bet you anything that it wasn't the Ukrane doing all those downloads.
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 US gov't isn't the backbone of this whole manipulation, it's the RIAA (and the international IP association). the US gov't is just doing it's usual job by taking lots of money from the lobby. someone's gotta snag those mo-fo's into some quake action and show 'um what fraggin is all about.
"Ukraine has launched 5 nuclear missiles towards the United States as a response to the sanctions"
Software Pirates, look what you've done!
Hats off to the Ukrainian deputies who rejected the idea of requiring a licence to press CDs. I'm sure the US Congress would not show as much backbone.
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E_NOSIG
I have a bunch of friends and relatives back in Russia and my father actively travels to Russia and the Ukraine for business... even 3-4 years ago when Bill Gates asked Russia to stop selling pirated copies of Windows 9x/NT.. Russia couldn't really do anything about it, except order a military tank to drive over a bunch of pirated CDs they collected, to destroy it... an interesting, yet ineffective solution
friends and relatives in Russia still tell me that when they go to flea markets, people still sell pirated software at a ridiculously low price... this goes for audio CDs as well and even hardware...
so in conclusion, if Russia claimed to have "stopped" people from selling pirated software, is Ukraine going to approach the same matter? just do a thing or 2 about the whole situation then tell the US... "ok we're done, now lift the sanctions please"
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
"But the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, which represents the international recording industry, said Ukraine had missed its "last opportunity to avoid ... U.S. trade sanctions.""
Seems kind of strange that a London based recording industry group that I have never even heard of here in the US appears to be bandying around the threats of United States trade sanctions.
Between them and the RIAA and MPAA it's like the freakin' Brotherhood of Evil or something........
You know, I've always been kinda sketched out about those anti-WTO anti-globalization protestors who tear up cities everytime a trade meeting is held. They claim that these globalizing organizations just make the poorer countries and peoples even poorer and more destitute, and all to serve the selfish interests of a few powerful Western corporations. I wasn't sure how much I believed that, I was kind of undecided about the issue, but it doesn't get much more cut and dry than this.
We have a starving nation and people who are the poorest of the poor. And we are imposing trade sanctions (where trade sanctions are starting to seem inhumane even against the likes of Fidel Castro's and Saddam Hussein's regimes) against these people. And for what? To protect the interests of Western intellectual property companies? It's hard to imagine that these sanctions won't fail to cause at least one more starvation death among the poor masses that live in the Ukraine, and it really does seem like what the anti-globalization people have been saying all along is coming true. Apparently Western corporate profits really are more important than 3rd world lives to those who are currently in power.
Apparently Western corporate profits really are more important than 3rd world lives to those who are currently in power.
This is exactly the ethos our government has been subscribing to, openly since the Reagan era of the 1980's and perhaps much longer than that.
It isn't just "third world" lives, either. American profits are deemed much more important than American lives (e.g. Mansanto deliberately polluting an American town's groundwater as recently as a few short years ago, killing many people, maiming many more, and not a single board member, employee, or shareholder will ever see the inside of a jail cell).
We made a conscious choice as a society to subscribe to a system which values wealth above everything else, and rewards greed above every other character trait. Worse, we've decided corporations are to be treated as people, with all of their rights and none of their responsibilities, exacerbating an already poor cultural choice.
Is it really any surprise at all that the natural consiquence of such a system, based upon such a skewed ethical premise, is that Corporate Profits are considered to be vastly more important the human lives?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Nope, the moment read that, I envisioned some sort of RIAA nazi germany.
:)
Lackey:"gutentag! Ze pitiful ukranians vill fall before us now!"
Adolf Spears:"Excellent. Vill zey get avay vith pirating our CDs? NEIN!"
Lackey:"Heil Spears! Heil Spears!"
Just a humorous fantasy. It'd be best if you simply ignored it.
It's been a long time.
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
In 1775 another country was trying to impose its laws in the interest of an oligarchy of corporations monopolizing luxury items.
Has the US passed a law that effectively reduces CD bootlegging?
Sure, they have the laws, but everyone and their brother seems to be pumping out MP3 based cd's these days.
~ now you know
> The 9/11 bombers hated us for reasons that we have no way of alterring... unless one considers it acceptable for us to give up our equal treatment of women, our freedom to NOT be religious, and yes, even our indulgences in Hollywood entertainment and other things that affluence brings.
You've either spent too much time listening to recent rhetoric, or not enough time boning up on history. The U.S. being rich or not being a Muslim nation has very little to do with what happened on September 11th. For the most part, Osama bin Laden hates the U.S. for three reasons, in no particular order:
1.) We're closely allied with Israel.
2.) We've had a military presence in Saudi Arabia (his homeland and what he considers Muslim holy land) for decades.
3.) After training and equipping him and his assistants in 1980-1983 so they could fend off the Russian invasion, we pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving the Muhajadin (sp?) (which became the Taliban) poorly equipped to fight a civil war with the other Afghan factions that lasted to the present day (they were still fighting the Northern Alliance when the attacks occurred).
If you think that our affluence and our non-Muslimism is such a factor, you're not paying attention. It's easy to say that they hate us because they're jealous or because they're simply religious zealots, but it's wrong, and such myopia only serves to prevent us from considering how we can really change things in the world.
Virg
I agree that Russia falls in the free world, but do we? There is a travel advisory on the US for Russian computer specialists.
Totalitarian economies are rarely very strong... a "League of Evil Nations" with Iraq, mainland China, North Korea, Libya, and other pariahs would be brutal but not very powerful.
I can totally see how you thought I meant a "league of evil nations." I meant somthing more like a progressivly growing aliance specificly designed to exclude us based on our law anbd practice. If the US becomes to much of a bully, wouldn't it be simpler for say the EU to just ignore us in it's dealings with Russia. It's just a few pen strokes away.
The next big war will be over Intellectual property. As manufacturing costs become neglegable, designs, plans, art, bulk raw materials and land will the only things worth anything. When the entire economy revolves around Ip law and IP law is corrupt, fudalism prevails and "free" countries like Russia might just square off with us on our Human rights abuses.
IP is not a bad idea, but the monoplies it produces must be much more limited. There is way to much disparity, and the gap is growing, quickly.
Software patents look a little scarrier now don't they.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Microsoft doesn't have to use guns (if it were legal and they could spin the PR, I think they might...) to ruin someone's business all they have to do is threaten to do so.
No.
HTH
On October 30, the last Ukrainian ICBM silo for rockets called RS-22 here or SS-24 in the West and located near Pervomaisk in Mykolayiv oblast was destroyed. In so doing, Ukraine has fully met its commitments to the world community envisaged by the Lisbon Protocol to the SALT- 1 treaty. Under the protocol, Ukraine signed on the SALT-1 treaty and also, now as a non- nuclear state, joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
P.S. Why do people deliberately evince their ignorance of current events in the pursuit of karma? Is a Google search really that hard?
FreeBSD - the power to serve.
Minor nitpick: we're not dumb enough to go to war over something as stupid as IP. We'll first invent some flimsy excuse and then demonize the other country's leaders, THEN we'll go to war.
What do you want to fight over? George Bush Sr.'s oil well's in Kuwait just got taken over or the evil Saddam Hussein is invading poor tiny Kuwait? Noriega isn't following CIA orders like a good puppet dictator or American sailors were brutally murdered by evil Panamanian forces?
We'll believe whatever the TV tells us, as long as they're telling us that the other side is TRULY evil.
[o]_O
Free Trade between nations is a fairly recent thing (and a good idea, but that's another issue). The U.S. is telling Ukraine that unless Ukraine behaves in the modern manner (not pirating intellectual property), the U.S. will not allow Ukrain to make some of its export wihout or with low tarriff, but instead must pay tarriffs (as has been traditionally required). That's it.
That tariffs hurt the receiving country more then the shipping country, or at least more than is collected, is another economics issue entirely
hawk