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.'"

Comments

How to control the world

[wlvdc]

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?

IP is a big American fantasy

[Simonetta]

'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!

Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries?

[molarmass192]

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.

British East India Tea Company

[falconwolf]

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.

Falcon