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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."
1. Expanded Criminal Penalties Would Send Non-Commercial Infringers to Prison
a) Threatens to Mandate Prison for P2P File-Sharing
Wow. Now, I'm not in the camp of people that says "FREE STUFF FOR EVERYONE, SCREW IP!" and I actually support (reasonable) penalties for the people who get caught (after all, they ARE breaking copyright law, whether they atually cost the company anything or not). This, though, is just crazy. Why should Joe Schmoe, who is sharing a bunch of Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit MP3s, spend time in PRISON for doing so?
It would be understandable if he were making copies of the CDs and selling thousands of them, but it says non-commercial infringers.
Scary.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
"Oh, no. Anything but free trade."
The Free Trade Area of the Americas is about protectionism? That's worse than "fighting for peace".
The "free trade" agreements seem to support incumbent businesses at the expense of innovation, which is the opposite of their intended use.
I'm no free trade nut - I think there's plenty wrong with unfettered free trade - but in the scope of problems it can address, let's use it to address them, and not further protect entrenched ways of doing things.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
b) Article 4.2 Permits Additional Criminal Procedures and Penalties Against Non-Commercial and Non-Willful Infringers c) Articles 4.3 and 4.4 Permit Seizure and Destruction of Property and Assets d) Article 4.6 Permits Criminal Charges Without the Need for a Private Complaint soooo, basically, if middle-class stockbroker Bob Schmoe doesn't know his son is downloading mp3s and warez, the feds can just hop in and seize his comp, and put him away without ever having to hear from some company? Whatever happened to "Stop, thief!".... bleh...
You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect. Miyamoto Musashi
NAFTA threatens environmental protection will FTAA be any better? NAFTA threatens public services will FTAA be any better?
Lower barriers to trade is a good Idea, but the FTA, NAFTA, and FTAA has little to do with trade, and everything to do with making governments subservient to trans-national corporations.
I don't think $10,000 would cut it, anymore. A Congressman would wipe his ass with it and send it back to you for being so cheap.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
bi-lateral trade
agreements between the U.S. and Australia, Singapore, and presumably
anyone else that will sign that pushes the same agenda.
Another word for this is "corruption." Free trade should not come with strings attached.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
For a multilateral trade negotiation, Fast Track is the only reasonable way to go. With 30-some countries at the table, it takes long enough to hammer out an agreement. To then take that back to Congress, and have them haggle over each and every byline, would halt the process in its tracks and give other nations no reason to believe that US negotiators have any authority.
Congress is involved all along the way in the process, don't forget. They have regular contacts with the administration, and as for the "20 hours of debate," that's largely meaningless anyways.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Speaking of outsourcing, the ppl who say 'expand your skill set if you want to stay competitive' always amuse/horrify me. They neglect to realize that they are not the only ones adding to their skill set, the corporations are trying to move as much of their workforce oversees to cheap labor as they can so they too are increasing the skill set of their oversees workers. Right now, a few people coming off the relaitive gold rush of the dot coms have enough cash to continue to constantly retrain themsleves to learn more and more but eventually the corporations with their near infinite resources will out pace them. They will drop our pay and increase our hours making the work of learning new skills almost impossible all the time increasing the training of their oversees people. How long do you think you can continue to increase your skill set until it is either no longer enough to stay competitive or the field reaches the point where your job becuase obselete cause there is no more valuable skills in that area to learn (for example, compiler developement.) A lot of people are contenting themsleves with the opium of job security, that certianly there job won't go overseas - they can always retrain or increase their skill set. It isn't going to go on forever; reality is catching up and this treaty and the scenario you depict may just be the wake up call. Unfortunitly, I also agree that in 10-20 years ppl will be jumping ship but it will be too late. I think the proverbially titanic is already doomed and the only thing is to get the hell off the boat while there are still life boats to be had. For those who are still into free trade, this is your wake up call right here.
Some other minor notes, how long before our international business start getting taken over by all the overseas talent we are cultivating while not doing the same abroad? I'm going to laugh my ass off when all these overpayed ceos start getting canned for ceos that will accept a lot less and who are more in tune with their employees who will be all forieng outsourced workers. People are going on about how we are moving to a service economy. They neglected to tell us those services were all fastfood and Janitor services - service jobs we all seem intent on setting up robots to do. We're screwed. The manufacturing jobs disappeared and we didn't miss them cause they weren't our jobs. Our newly graduated students jobs disappeared and we told them to retrain even though they were in hopelessly in debt that not even bankruptcy will avoid. When your job disappears I hope you remmeber that 'increase you skill set' bullshit. And has anyone ever thought about the section of our economy that jsut isn't capable of doing these great new jobs that have replaced all the lower ones. Not everyone can be a manager. Not everyone can be a doctor. How many people can only handle a manufacturing job and are now forced to do a dead end abysmal pay job since the job sector they used to work for is now in mexico and the jobs that free trade promised them are ones they just can't do? It's nice to say increase your skill set and that free trade is only removing the lower end jobs to allow people to do higher ones, but the fact is that there are a lot of people that just cant do those white collar jobs and are now forced to work at even lower jobs cause there manufacturing ones disappeared. And it is quickly becoming apparent that removing low end jobs doesn't mean that we can all now not waste time with them and instead go on to higher jobs and instead means you will lose your job and no upper levels jobs will open for you. Simply put, free trade means an ever increasing section of our population is becoming unemployeed or underemployeed, our standard of living is dropping, and all those people who swore free trade was going to save us all are now abandoing our country for tax shelters while paying off our politicians and screwing over the public.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy