FTAA Treaty Threatens Innovation

The Importance of writes "IP Justice has published a white paper on the intellectual property aspects of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) treaty, which is an attempt to create a single free trade agreement for the Western Hemisphere. Read the press release. The analysis is pretty devastating. The proposed language of the agreement has a number of serious flaws, including (but certainly not limited to) enhanced criminal penalties, a super-DMCA provision, reduced scope for fair use, and database protection elements. The proposed treaty is supposed to be complete by January 2005 and go into effect December 2005. Now is not too early to let your representatives and others know what a bad idea the intellectual property elements of the treaty are."

Comments

Re:Free Trade

[pmz]

Genuine free trade lifts up the whole world and is the best long-term solution to all of our modern "woes", such as the so-called "war on terrorism," the "war on hunger," the "war on drugs," the "war on poverty," and every other war our politicians invent to wring votes from an ignorant and impressionable constituency.

Highly protectionist policies would only drive the USA into a dark age as it collapses and becomes the laughing stock of the entire planet.

So, what do you want? Jobs now only to have no jobs later, or a small amount of hardship now to guarantee a solid foundation for keeping jobs in the future.

Re:Using an apostrophe doesn't make a word plural.

[joeldg]

oops.. mexicans..

It's not.

[bogie]

Some people resent the fact that the USA isn't run via a "every man for himself doctrine". They believe that if you can't pull yourself up out of whatever you were born into or what circumstance you've come upon then you should just go fuck yourself and go lie in a gutter and die.

The less selfish and more intelligent Americans see the basic need for National Healthcare for every citizen, and also the need to reign in the massively corrupt private healthcare system which has failed us.