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Antigua May Be Allowed To Violate US Copyrights
Skleed refers us to the NYTimes for an article on the high-stakes case the US is losing before the World Trade Organization. So far the US has lost an initial hearing and two appeals on its policies regarding Antiguan offshore gambling sites. Now the lawyer pressing the case has asked for a rarely invoked, but codified, recourse under WTO rules: letting Antiguans copy and distribute American music, movies, and software. The game may be to get Hollywood and Microsoft, et al., to pressure Washington to cut a deal. But their influence may not be sufficient to move lawmakers on the question of online gambling. From the article: "But not complying with the decision presents big problems of its own for Washington. That's because Mr. Mendel, who is claiming $3.4 billion in damages on behalf of Antigua, has asked the trade organization to grant a rare form of compensation if the American government refuses to accept the ruling: permission for Antiguans to violate intellectual property laws by allowing them to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products, among others."
Intellegence indicates WMD hidden in Antequa. Marines sent to investigate.
So I assume the US banned gambling in other countries via the net because the govt wasn't getting a piece? Is that the bottom line? Or is there another reason?
Hey Pirate Bay! You just got your island!
Fry: "What do we care? We live in the United States."
Leela: "The United States is part of the world."
Fry: "Wow, I have been gone a long time."
Thankfully, that is a transcript from the future, and America is not yet part of this "world" of which the UN speaks of
Then you didn't finish the article, including the fact that Ecuador was, at one point, granted just this sort of relief. Ecuador chose not to exercise their right to ignore US intellectual property claims, and instead used it as leverage in trade negotiations.
It's not that simple.
Online gambling has been banned in the US for years by the same laws that made it illegal to wager over the phone. So there were never any domestic online gambling companies, because the US would just arrest the people running them for violating existing law.
But, the US couldn't get at people who ran online gambling companies outside the country, and while the US could have technically prosecuted individual gamblers for gambling online, that would hardly be practical. So instead, the US recently made it illegal for US banks and credit card companies to process payments to online gambling companies, effectively preventing US citizens from gambling online since it's now much harder to get your money to the gambling site.
The trick here is that the law only applies to certain kinds of online gambling, specifically, the kind of online gambling common in casinos, as it was mainly the casinos pushing for this legislation (under the guise of 'gambling is evil!'). So, the US had a situation in which certain domestic companies could engage in gambling as a trade, but certain international companies could not - and that's the basis of the WTO dispute.
The US actually has a very similar construct with regard to free trade amongst the 50 US states - it isn't legal for any state to have laws which favor domestic commerce over commerce from parties in other states. For example, in a recent ruling, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that banned companies from directly shipping alcoholic beverages to customers from out of state while allowing domestic producers to do so. Supreme Court said you had to either ban all mail-order alcohol sales or none.
And that's what the WTO is saying. The US is free to ban gambling, so long as they ban ALL gambling, not just gambling done by companies outside the country. And the US would be free to tax gambling, so long as it taxes ALL gambling. So the problem isn't that the US isn't getting a piece - they could allow gambling and tax it and get a piece. The problem is that because of the existing ban on online wagering that pit US casinos against non-US online gaming sites, the US companies were losing business to the non-US companies, so the US banned gambling at the non-US companies, which is exactly the kind of practice the free trade pacts and the WTO are supposed to prevent.
paintball
First, no one is talking about (or they shouldn't be if they are) a blank check to violate copyrights. They would be allowed to violate copyrights of a value equivalent to the estimated value of the loss created by the United States' alleged improper behavior. If that loss is estimated to be $3bn, they could be given permission to violate $3bn in copyrights.
The more important question is why does Antigua respect American copyrights at all? Well, because they gain from respecting them. It's part of free and fair trade. You aren't just allowed to take something from someone. Along the same lines, you aren't allowed to bar someone from importing goods or providing services to your citizens unless they is a defendable reason - such as an authentic health and safety standard.
The WTO is the body that makes sure everyone plays by the rules. It is a voluntary association and people can leave it - and then make whatever laws they want. So, Antigua can leave the WTO and violate copyrights as much as they want - the problem is that WTO countries then can't/won't trade with them and so they loose a lot more than they would gain.
In this case, the United States would have to prove that online gambling is sufficiently worse and different from traditional gambling (which is legal in the US) - a reason why traditional gambling doesn't pose a threat to their population, but that online gambling does. Antigua needs to prove that the US regulations on online gambling don't actually protect the American people, but are rather meant to give American companies the advantage over Antiguan companies.
This isn't some weird global government looking to get rid of sovereignty. This is about using logic to determine when rules are meant to be discriminatory based on national origin and when something is a genuine health or safety standard. The US can make the argument that online gambling becomes too accessible and is therefore a much greater danger than traditional gambling. Antigua can argue that it's the same thing that happens at casinos. A court will decide which arguments hold weight based on evidence.
It would be amazing. Science and culture would flourish like mad. The creation of art would explode, with new forms appearing at a never before seen rate. Businesses would boom with all the new opportunities. We can only hope this becomes our future one day...
The U.S. banned international online gambling because of pressure (read: bribes) from the big domestic casinos.
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Why does misinformation like this keep getting modded up as informative? It happens every time the online gambling issue comes up on Slashdot.
The American Gaming Association, the industry group representing those big domestic casinos, opposed legislation banning online gambling. See:
http://www.pokernews.com/news/2006/5/american-gam
http://www.americangaming.org/hillupdate/reports_
They want legalization and regulation, so they can get a piece of the pie. They're currently supporting legislation requiring a "study" of online gambling, as a preliminary to repealing the ban.
Right now online gambling is a booming international industry, but American companies can't reap any of the profits, despite what should be a very strong competitive position with their strong brands. The potential gain of locking in American gamblers to land-based casinos is negligible by comparison.
They made it into a "moral issue," but that's just bullshit that they can sell to a few Evangelical hicks.
That's not the cover story - it's the whole story. Banning online gambling has been a plank of the Republican Party platform since at least 2004:
http://www.gop.com/media/2004platform.pdf (see page 57)
The most recent anti-online-gambling law, the Unlawful Online Gambling Enforcement Act, was railroaded through the Senate (as a last-minute amendment to a must-pass bill) by Bill Frist. Bill Frist, at the time, was a hopeful for the Republican presidential nomination, and as such needed to shore up support among the moral conservative types.