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Congress Creates Copyright Cops
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Not satisfied with pitiful potential penalties of $150,000 for infringing upon a $0.99 song, Congress is proposing new copyright cops in the "'PRO IP' Act of 2007, specifically the creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). They also feel that the authorities need the authority to seize any computers used for infringement and to send copyright cops abroad to help other countries enforce US laws. MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, 'films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year,' though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion."
What ever happened to state sovereignty?
If you are British don't forget that our arse-licking government has made an "agreement" where the USA can extradite anyone without showing they have a case, even for crimes committed in the UK. See here and here for details. So if a record company thinks you might have have duplicated a disk, or videoed someone singing happy birthday you could be whisked of to the states just like that.
Pffft. Lots of luck with government enforcement, especially when just about everyone is doing it. Don't they get it?
Besides, I'll bet the federal courts strike this law down as being unconstitutional.
My blog
The worst thing about this from my perspective is that the US has a record of refusing to follow any foriegn laws and not allowing their own officials to be extradited to other countries if they break local laws in the course of their work.
This mean that these copyright cops will have the ability to go into a foriegn country, stomp all over the local legal system and then escape back to the US before they can be forced to account for their actions. These are not the actions of a country that wants to earn the respect of the world community.
This will not help the US cause in the long run as it will just cause even greater resentment in the countries on the receiving end of such treatment.
The obvious example is the pirate bay. If they really want to close the pirate bay they need to convince Sweden to pass tighter copyright laws, not go in and bust it illegally like they did. The problem now is that after that stunt it has made it much harder for them to convince the swedish people that such a change in law is neccessary. It has also made many european politicians scared on enacting said laws for fear of being accused of being a lapdog of a deeply unpopular president (Bush).
Maybe some of this situation will change when he leaves office but at the moment no other politician wants to appear to cosy with someone who has made some very questionable decisions and is going to be out of office soon anyway.
If the US really wants to try and encourage europe to adopt their laws, a much better start would be make some sort of concession to the european community. A good start would be allowing US troops to be prosecuted by a european criminal court for crimes they commit in Europe. We are not really that bad in Europe, we are also democratic nations who have very similar outlooks in a great many ways. If the US trusted us a little more that would most likely be reciprocated.
I dont read
Well, no, actually we all joined the WTO, which was then subverted to implement neo-imperialist rule on the globe in the name of the Great American Public. We are all very grateful, by the way, we had a real shortage of laws - thank god for the EUCD and other international laws "inspired by" the need to not get blockaded from world trade by the U.S.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
UN membership doesn't constitute a total loss of sovereignty for any country, primarily because the enforcement powers available; levying sanctions or making war against the violator of a resolution are available to any nation at any time anyway, with or without justification, more importantly you don't have to be a member of the UN to be sanctioned / invaded.
NATO is more interesting, but as I understand it individual countries supply forces to NATO on an ongoing or as required basis, as opposed to NATO commanders simply choosing and using NATO members troops at will.
In any case I would suggest that sovereignty can only be lost if a country enters an agreement it cannot later unilaterally remove itself from, I would suggest that the individual states of the USA have lost much of their sovereignty but not all (they can still leave?) and EU member states are reducing their own sovereignty but are no where near having lost it. A loss of sovereignty can really only come about by losing a war and being put in a position where you no longer hold any powers of ther region that was your country.
War on government?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
So even staying at home won't make you safe
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Uuuuh, right Wally.
So, let's see, some multibillionaire shitbag in Hollywood wants the US .gov to send agents overseas to persecute people in other countries for dealing with objects according to their own local laws and customs.
And this isn't imperialist fascism?
JH Kunstler noted that when local architecture of the commons is reduced to cartoon houses in the burbs and megamalls, you no longer have places worth caring about. Who ever wept at the demolition of a WalMart? Ad when you get enough places in one country that are not worth caring about, you end up with a nation not worth defending.
There's another kind of architecture, and its the architecture of the mind, and it's called "Media". And when enough of it is such crap that no one cares about it, and it is seen as more of a utility than a creation, then it ceases to be a culture worth defending.
With preposterous laws like this, the USA is working very hard at becoming a nation no longer worth defending. People will simply "Walk Away" from this catastrophe of a country, or, as William S Burroughs put it:
"(Thank you America) for being the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams."
RS
If you have ANY SENSE at all, you will get out of the USA as soon as possible. The second wave of mortgage failures will come in March. Once the USA sinks, things will get tough, and legislation like the above will become commonplace, even under a Democratic Administration.
Run. Now. And when you get out, you will see what the rest of the world sees: Those people are fucking crazy.
HW
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
More broadly, the entire idea of state sovereignty (i.e. enumerated powers) has been emasculated. The federal government has the powers it says it has. In the good old days, they used to use the Interstate Commerce Clause to justify Federal intervention in matters Constitutionally delegated to the states; now, they rarely even bother.