Taiwan Rejects US Copyright Extension Demands

An anonymous reader writes "Taiwan has rejected the US's demand to extend copyrights from 50 years to 70 years. Here's the news article on the Mercury News."

Comments

ROC's copyright was only 10 years long

[Andy Tai]

In 1995 or 1996 due to US pressure copyright protection was extended from 10 to 50 years.

Now the US wants 70 years.

Damage... Yes...

[Flamerule]

Washington, Taiwan's main trading partner and arms supplier, has said the island's failure to protect intellectual property rights is causing hundreds of million dollars damage annually to U.S. recorded music, software and motion picture industries.

Oh, that's great! So the slump in music industry revenue is due to Taiwan's copyright protection lasting 50 years, instead of 70 like the US... I suppose the RIAA can stop lobbying Congress to lock down all our computers now, and focus instead on squeezing those last few hundred million dollars out of Taiwan.

What's that you say? The movie industry is enjoying record profits? How is this possible, when in addition to Taiwan's criminal 50-year copyright protection, Jack Valenti assures me that 50 TB of pirated movies in DivX flows through the Internet each day?

Right....

Just like Australia

[dmoynihan]

another country that's sticking to Life+50 (or, why you can download 1984 and The Great Gatsby from a legit server).

Way to go, Taiwan!

I want to extend copyright even further

[JohnsonWax]

I'd like to see copyright extended to 2,500 years, and it should be retroactive like the previous laws. That way I can copyright the Bible and *really* rake in the bucks.

Disney thinks so small sometimes...

Re:Further reading

[x136]

This is a real bad example even though I agree with Lessig. The Grimm Bothers didn't invent or created the stories as such. They collected and wrote up old German folk tales and made them available so they could be read and cherished.

That's exactly the point. They took something in the public domain and remade it, and when that entered the public domain, Disney remade it. Except that now, Disney's remade versions aren't passing into the public domain to allow the next generation of interpretation.

Re:Odd Move

[lingqi]

besides; US has already backed out / backstabbed taiwan on the PRC thing.

a few moons back the taiwanese president got carried away when vid-conferencing with some activists in the states and was (caught on tape) saything stuff like "yeah you know taiwan is really its own country from the start"...

china got pissed and issued statements about "taiwan is disrupting the stability of the straits". taiwan't stock market dropped like 20% the following monday, and the taiwan president's office apologized profusely - along the lines of "yeah he didn't know what he was saying at the time / he does not represent our ideals / he was on acid" etc... all the mean while, the US basically said: "hey listen, if you piss off china and they come after you, you (as in taiwan) are on your own, and don't expect jack shit from us."

which is, really, kinda sad. granted US has a good reason for this: china is a BIG market and there are tons of US money poured there(*1). point being: (1) I think after the US realized that the communist(*2) government are not impeding the free-trade capitalism taking root, they stopped being so rough on it; and to sacrifice a 386B "country" to a 4.5T market (with unbelieveable potential to grow)? yeah, of course. (2) it's kinda sad that the US would go and abandon one of its storgest (as in, most faithful) allies / followers / groupies for $$, as I personally believe this is what it boiled down to; but hey... this is capitalism -- and a wise man (don't flame me now ;^) -- the guy's name is Lenin) said that (a version of it, anyway) "a capitalist would sell the roap to hang another capitalist if it meant making money..." ha! this should go down in the history books as the perfect example.

note(*1): China is the second most economically powerful country in the world, you know -- no joke -- not japan, not taiwan, not germany; (US GDP: 9.963T; China GDP: 4.5T; Japan (3rd) GDP: 3.15T; taiwan is at a measly 386B -- all figures are 2000 estimates from maps.com atlas

note (*2) communist / communism is a misnomer since they (PRC) don't even call *themselves* communists! the first thing they teach in school's policital science classes is that perfect communism is unachieveable (i went through the class) so the (PRC) settles on socialism instead...