Google Pushes Back Against US Copyright Treaty

Hugh Pickens writes "Internet companies led by Google joined groups representing Web users to challenge the Bush administration's bid to toughen international enforcement against copyright pirates. The companies said the US courts and Congress are still working out the correct balance between protecting copyrights and the free exchange of information on the Web and a treaty could be counterproductive. 'There's this assumption that what is good for Disney is what's good for America, but that's an oversimplification,' said Jonathan Band, an intellectual property lawyer representing libraries and high-tech companies. 'There's also what's good for Yahoo and Google.' The US, Japan, Canada and other nations said last year that they would begin negotiations on an agreement aimed at cracking down on counterfeiting of such goods as watches and pharmaceuticals, and the piracy of copyrighted materials, such as software and music recordings. A leaked draft of the deal showed that the treaty could force Internet service providers to cooperate with copyright holders."

Comments

Re:Symmetric password is test

[morgan_greywolf]

Copyright 2008 morgan_greywolf. All rights reserved.

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Re:Many countries have happily ignored...

[cliffski]

wtf?
So you want to abandon this new thing people call the internet and go back to manufacturing steel girders?

Anything that can be encoded digitally can be copied. because of this, strong IP law is needed to encourage people to actually produce this stuff. If you make all digitally encoded goods worthless, then everyone has to roll up their sleeves and go work in a factory, whilst hoping some other schmucks still make digital goods for us to swipe.

I've done a manual job 8 hours a day for shit money in shit conditions. I've also worked in a nice air conditioned office.

The office is better.