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WIPO Broadcast Treaty Creates New Legal Rights for Broadcasters
An anonymous reader writes "WIPO (The World Intellectual Property Organization) created by the UN is now creating a new copyright for 'broadcast transmissions' giving broadcasters ownership of the content that they broadcast (even if the program being broadcast is in the public domain). IP Justice has created a Top 10 List of
reasons to reject this proposal and has published a detailed report that dissects the proposal from a civil liberties and freedom of expression point
of view." See our previous story for more information.
You know --- this statement is really, really scary. This is the classic example of why other countries find the US so damned frightening.
International law is just that. International law. The US Constitution is just that: the US constitution. It is completely irrelevant off American soil. It's just a bunch of words that some people in some country way over there think is important. It's not important to me. I doubt you would think the Magna Carta was important, either, but it's the fundamental basis of our government.
What do you think law is? It's not some divine order handed down by the gods. It's a bunch of people getting together and saying, these are the rules to which we agree to abide. No more. All the US constitution is is a set of principles that the US as a whole thinks is a good idea to base its laws on.
But likewise, once you've said that you'll agree to those rules, you don't get to pick and choose which rules you want to comply with. I can't drive down the wrong side of the road; explaining when I get pulled over that I've decided that that particular law doesn't apply to me just doesn't wash. I have to coexist with the other drivers; the price for being allowed to use the road is that I have to follow the rules.
You want to trade with other countries? You need to follow the rules. All the rules. That's the price you pay. If you don't like them, try to get them changed, but if you just turn up your nose and say doesn't-apply-to-me, you'll really piss off the people you trade with. It makes you unpredictable, and by the definition of your own president, a rogue state. Piss them off too much and eventually they'll stop trading with you.
Of course, international law is a very fuzzy thing, and it only applies when crossing borders. Originally it only governed the way countries related to each other, and didn't apply to anything that happened inside those borders. These days, there's so much international trade on the purely informational level that having, say, 20 year copyright in one country and 100 in another just makes a headache for everyone involved. Some laws have to be applied inside a country too, and that's what organisations like the WIPO's for, to sort out that kind of thing. I don't agree with how they do it but what they do is important.
It makes matters even more complicated that there is no international law enforcement body. This makes it feasible for individual countries to push the limits of what their neighbours will allow; breaking international law to such a degree that it gives the country in question an advantage, but not so much that it's worth the hassle for its neighbours to intervene. This is dangerous because it's horribly destabilising.
But, to get back to the original point, I find it highly unnerving that the country that claims to be the world's foremost democracy holds democratic ideals in such low regard. If the majority of countries decides one thing, why does the US so often do the exact opposite? I get the impression sometimes that a lot of the population of the US doesn't believe that anything outside its borders really matters. I find it very symptomatic that American presidents since I can remember hardly ever use the world people. They always say Americans instead.