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Australia to Vote on Extending IP Laws
femto writes "This coming week, the Australian parliament will be voting on whether to introduce software patents, a version of the DMCA and extensions to copyright. This is all part of chapter 17 of the US-AU Free Trade Agreement. The effects of the DMCA act will be worse than in the U.S., as Australia has narrower fair use provisions than the U.S. It is not too late to urgently write to your Member of Parliament or Senators to oppose the legislation."
I've got to say that as an Australian I do find this rather disturbing, however I'm not surprised... The government currently in office (including a certain slack-lipped little toadie sporting a unibrow) Have been playing to the US's tune for a long time, in alot of different political areas. Hasn't done us any favours with our immediate neighbours by any means.
The US is going around the world and all but threatening economic warfare under the title of Free Trade agreements. Sign our Free trade agreement, pass the laws we demand, or else you might wind up like Ukraine.
Oh, and by the way, Ukraine got slapped with 100% punative duties on US imports. And why exactly did the US impose huge 100% punative duties? Because Ukraine declined to pass a law we demanded. And what law was that? A law making it criminal (jail-time) to manufacture ordinary blank CD's and DVD's unless they had serial numbers burned into them. Disks routinely sold to all sorts of legitimate publishing companies.
You see, we need to fight piracy. Some people are buy ordinary blanks and then record infringing material on them. Fighting Piracy is a very reasonable demand, right? Riiiight... because we all know it's always obviously been CRIMINAL to manufacture blank media without serial numbers burned into them. Like it's always been criminal to do make blank floppy disks... oh wait... no... like blank audio cassettes! Yeah! it's always been illegal to make those without serial numbers! Oh wait... no... Video tapes! Ummm... noo.... actually it's never been criminal to manufacture any sort of blank media without serial numbers serial numbers before.
Can you believe it? Refusing to pass a law imprisoning ordinary media manufacturers? It's almost like refusing to pass a law imprisoning child molesters! It is so obviously criminal, and Ukraine is so obviously harboring pirates (kinda like harboring terrorists), that it is obviously quite reasonable to declare economic warfare and double prices against such an obviously rouge nation.
Not that that is relevant or anything.
Aaaaanyway, back to US Free Trade agreements. Obviously countries are agreeing to US Free Trade treaties because they are all about free trade goodness, and eliminating trade barriers. Yep, these countries are signing US Free Trade treaties because they know what's good for them. Yep, if they don't sign these treaties then the US can't guarantee that, like, something bad wont happen to them. They might have, you know, some sort of trade accident, you know, like Ukriane's accident. We wouldn't wanna see your economy get disrupted. That would be a real shame.
Of course things are a bit different when dealing with places like the EU or China. Places that could give the US a serious black eye for pulling that sort of stunt.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The Oz House of Reps (think Congress) passed enabling laws yesterday (not the agrement itself, which unlike the US will not face a vote in Oz). The Australian Senate will now vote on these enabling laws in mid-August, based on their final report which will come down around then.
Several recent reports from parliamentary reviews which in part cover the Chapter 17 issues about intellectual property:
See also this page for further references.