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U.S. Announces Global Intellectual Property Plan
Angry_Admin writes "ZDNet is running a story about how the U.S. has announced new plans to expand its crackdown on intellectual-property infringement overseas. From the article:'One program would place intellectual property experts on the ground in regions where infringement is considered a concern. There they would work with overseas U.S. businesses and native government officials to advocate improved intellectual-property rights protection, according to a department fact sheet. Another program, called the Global Intellectual Property Rights Academy, would train foreign judges, enforcement officials and other stakeholders in international intellectual property obligations and best practices.'"
Hmm, this sounds more like a world domination plan. So the US-government and US-businesses have agreed that all intellectual-property shall be theirs, and their agents ("... train foreign judges") will do the field administration to assure US interests secured. Why is the US so convinced of it's own legal system. Why should it work for the rest of the world?
-- Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, iuva.
Yeah, all those years of school and working as lawyers in the field couldn't prepare them enough.
They have to be "retrained" to start taking money from the "right" people.
Good idea, but as it stands China would put the squeeze on us.
'Intellectual Property' is nothing more than a big American fantasy invented to compensate for the fact that they don't make anything anymore except ultra-high-tech death machines and recycled entertainment products.
And frankly, killing can be done, when needed, with the tried-and-true low-tech methods and the recycled entertainment product can all be easily copied by anyone with a $100 PC.
IP is what you use to try and convince people that you are still relevant in the world when you don't make anything anymore, your people are buffoons living on borrowed money from everyone, and you still have enough hydrogen bombs to make it awkward for anyone to point out the obvious fact that you are nowhere near as important as you were fifty years ago.
So all this effort to metamorphize a concept like 'intellectual property' into the legal equivalent of actual physical items that have intrinsic value is bound to fail internationally. In more ways than one, people just aren't going to buy it. They'll give you lots of lip service, sign your treaties, stay in expensive hotels for endless international conferences (as long as you pick up the tab), and then, just ignore whatever it was that you were getting so upset about.
The Americans thought they were so smart by trashing their industrial base, shipping all of their manufacturing jobs overseas, and laying off (or never hiring in the first place) all the people that comprised the only real asset that they ever had...smart people willing to come to termperate North America from all over the world in order to get away from the assholes that were making it impossible to make a good life in the old country. Now the Americans have fucked up their physical country, their economy, their good name, and their middle class.
So what's left? Intellectual Property! And just what exactly is that? One more illiterate, psychopathic 'rapper'? One more $100,000,000 buddy-cop movie?
Grow up, fools!
Ummm, Japan, the EU, Australia, Russia, Canada, etc ... will be more than happy to export machinery and machine parts, integrated circuit, or soybeans if we don't. The US is China's 3rd largest trade partner after Japan and the EU, we don't have much pull to spare over there that somebody wouldn't be more than happy to take off our hands.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
And everybody gets cheaper goods in return. What's the difference to the American economy if money goes to some rich guy in China as opposed to some rich guy/company in the US?
Because the US pays for those goods with US dollars. A rich guy in China can't spend US dollars on goods where he lives, so those dollars need to get sold. In the end those dollars need to make their way back to US because they can only really buy goods in the US. Normally the money gets back to the US when it is used to buy US goods, and that's how the global economy works. The problem is that if the US is spending more US dollars on imports than it is buying back via exports then there are a lot of excess US dollars floating around out there. What good are those extra US dollars exactly? Well they are good for buying US goods, but there are more dollars piling up than there is value of US goods to buy. This tends to cause depreciation of the US dollar on global markets: people are less keen to buy US dollars because, having already bought all the US goods they want, they really aren't worth anything. As the US dollar depreciates it costs more and more in US dollars to buy foreign goods. That, in turn, promotes inflation in the US. If it gets bad enough total chaos ensues and you end up like Argentina with rampant run away inflation and total economic meltdown.
There are of course, many other factors involved, and many reasons why such economic chaos is quite avoidable, but fundamentally you simply can't keep sending all your money to China via a trade deficit, it just won't work.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
We can't stop a rag-tag band of thugs from high-jacking our planes. We're helpless as kittens for two weeks dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane. We can do nothing to generate energy but burn more dead dinosaurs. But rest assured that if you try to hide in a hole in the Antarctic ice and play 1 $14.99 CD illegally on your Linux box, our Goon Squad will be all over you like ants on a donut.
ACK. Fuck Karma for now:
"Look, W. I voted for you not once, but twice!"
You sir, are an idiot. And probably asshole too.
How the hell yould you do this? I mean even a donkey knows not to eat a thornbush if he still has thorns in his mouth from the last time...
You can't enforce US law in china.
Why not?? We westerners have always done this kind of thing to Asia!
Another word needs to be added, opium. Because the British imported so much tea they had a serious trade deficit so to even out the imbalance they imported into China opium, thus started the Opium Wars. The Chinese emperor tried to stop the opium and when he did the British sent in troops and they roundly defeated the Chinese and forced the emperor to allow opium. Therefore the saying that the queen was a drug dealer was correct. At the same tyme Britain also forced the lease of Hong Kong.
FalconShould there be a Law?