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US Blocking Costa Rican Sugar Trade To Force IP Laws
For the last couple of days news has been trickling in about how the US is trying to ram IP laws down Costa Rica's throat by blocking their access to the US sugar market. Techdirt has a good summary of the various commentaries and a related scoop in the Bahamas where the US is also applying IP pressure. "The first is in Costa Rica, which is included in the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Yet like with other free trade agreements that the US has agreed to elsewhere, this one includes draconian intellectual property law requirements. I still cannot understand why intellectual monopoly protectionism — the exact opposite of 'free trade' — gets included in free trade agreements. At least in Costa Rica, a lot of people started protesting these rules, pointing out that it would be harmful for the economy, for education and for healthcare. So the Costa Rican government has not moved forward with such laws. How has the US responded? It's blocking access to the US market of Costa Rican sugar until Costa Rica approves new copyright laws."
What's "IP La"? In Central America, wouldn't it be "La IP" instead?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
We still have corn syrup!
In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.
Cuz increasingly that's all we have left. Especially now that money-printing business has hit the fan.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Makes me want to setup shop on an island to buy sugar from Costa Rica solely for the purpose of reselling it to the US so Costa Rica can maintain their dignity.
And any other resource for that matter... maybe some type of ship exchange like you do with Propane. Hell, I could corner the market on all sugar imports so they won't be able to tell how much of it is Costa Rica sugar...
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I can't think of many countries that don't use tariffs or trade restrictions to promote their own national interests in some way. It may be stupid and benefit no one in the end, but it's still within a nation's rights to take their ball and go home.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
1) you get the sugar
2) you get the power
3) you get the women
No rules have been defined outside of the US it seems.
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
Seeing as how well it worked for Cuba, this could be a win-win!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I was going to say "is that even legal?" but since it's part of their trade agreement I suppose it was to be expected, but that's still pretty low of the US to block access to the sugar market. Pro tip: sell your sugar to to Europe!
US produces IP and wants to protect it.
Sugar being a tangible item is what Costa Rica produces.
You want to trade with the US you should play by US rules. The US want to trade with Costa Rica we play by Costa Rican rules, thus the trade agreement.
I see nothing wrong here.
Why these trade rules aren't being used to enforce environmental agreements and not IP ones is somewhat beyond me.
If your neighbor stole your shit, would sit back and take it like a pussy, Flanders? Yes, you would, but if anybody is doing any stealing around here, it's me.
Homer
That government of the corporations
By the corporations
For the corporations
Shall not perish from the Earth
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Open a online betting place there and sue the us for blocking them us banks under the trade laws.
US pushes around Central American country and gets away with it because we are their biggest market. Gee, that's only been the story of, what, the past 150 years?
... doesn't mean they were wrong.
Congratulations, the West was so focused on preventing communist totalitarians from taking over the world we've let capitalists move in and fill the niche.
The One World Government is here. But it's not a communist state, it's a kleptocracy.
(Hey, but at least we have Avatar and deep fried butter to distract us.)
I can see the fnords!
You misunderstand the meaning of free trade/the free market. It's free as in free for the more advanced economies, but not for the rest. Historically, countries like Europe and America (and others) have strengthened their economies by violating free market principles, and enforcing them on others.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
actually read and thought about the damn agreement before signing it.
Is it just me or if this comes to a standoff the US will lose? I seem to recall a story that US manufacturers of products like Chocolate Bars begging to increase import because they couldn't maintain quota with the amount of sugar available to them (through homeland growers & laws limiting import). So when they try to block Costa Rican import for their arcane laws will they crack when major US corporations come knocking on their door demanding to know where their product is supposed to come from.
This story just shows how the government is run by lobbies who have the government push their agenda. I just hope it goes both ways where those who are effected by the import ban speak just as loud as the media corporations.
It's just the US telling(forcing) another nation to bend to its will. Nothing new.
We should buy their goods without any concern that they are stealing our goods?
"It's not good for our business to actually pay for the American software that lets us do our jobs, but they should pay full price for all of our sugar!"
Intellectual property laws being uniform across a free trade so is REQUIRED for free trade of intellectual property and clearly not 'the exact opposite of free trade.' If laws differed between member nations then one nation would be able to use intellectual property to manufacture their goods which was prohibited by other members thus creating an unfair advantage. This would be most dramatic if the intellectual property was produced in one nation under its laws then used without license by another nation to effectively eliminate the benefits of the intellectual property protects. These protections are for the creators not for the nations (thus not protectionist in the traditional sense). Free trade is to stop nations from creating safe havens for their producers by erecting unfair barriers to trade not to allow anyone to take whatever IP they want and use it as they see fit.
I still cannot understand why intellectual monopoly protectionism -- the exact opposite of "free trade" -- gets included in free trade agreements.
Because the US is trading the right for access to the US physical goods market against acceptance of the US's concept of Intellectual Property.
And that is because Intellectual Property is all the US has going for it nowadays.
And it is "Free" as in Freedom, not as in Free beer. You are free to trade in goods and IP.
How about the USA adopting Costa Rica's IP laws instead. Im betting they couldnt screw it up as bad as we have if they tried. (and Im talking REALLY TRIED)
And the sad thing is that if Costa Rica tells us to go fsck ourselves, while it will hurt Costa Rica's economy, all it will do here is help sell even more High Fructose Corn Syrup and help the corn lobby here.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Stop using it.
When the sugar companies start bitching, the congress critters will whine at obamanator to stop the embargo.
How many of you know, specifically, your elected representatives' views on international trade?
And how many of you plan to claim you did, but really didn't,and had to look it up when I called you on it?
This is just wrong... US its just a Bully... President Chavez is right. Cant wait to see all the stupid replies to my comment.
So, on /. we complain about China because they ignore copyright and patent law on everything, but the it's "let poor Costa Rica be!" when they violate the terms of their treaty and the US doesn't just roll over and ignore it?
I would be more sympathetic if they refused the treaty, and were then being pressured to accept it "or else". But here, they're just opting to comply with the parts of the treaty they like, and completely ignore the parts they don't. I fail to see how this could possibly be spun as a "good thing".
And the article's rant that "Copyright/patents aren't free trade" is just cynical, feigned ignorance as to what copyright/patents fundamentally are... Is this the libertarian version of Fox News or what?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Consider the following: Oscar Arias, current president of Costa Rica and the main politician behind CAFTA, owns the biggest sugar cane plantation in his country (called "Ingenio Taboga").
this move by the US government was well planned since they are directly affecting the business of their "partner" in Costa Rica. US government could easily get away with it.
I like how any program you can imagine is available in Mexico City for $5. I'm sure it is no different in the islands.... This just means more corn syrup for US ! Yea !
The Government of the United States of America is a whore to corporate interests.
I'm a Canadian, and I say send your sugar here and let's get rid of all the US corn-lobbyist-supported b.s. "corn syrop" and other related junk. Real sugar seems to actually be more healthy, and I'd be happy to see more of the real thing available here.
Article I, Section 9. No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another: nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another.
That's it. In contrast CAFTA is 3700 pages long. NAFTA is 2000 pages long. These agreements do not give freedom, they take it away.
Both have a cost to produce, Both are available for sale. Complaining that the US doesn't give Costa Rica the IP for free is the same as complaining that Costa Rica charges the US for sugar. It really is that simple.
The first is in Costa Rica, which is included in the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Yet like with other free trade agreements that the US has agreed to elsewhere, this one includes draconian intellectual property law requirements
You knew that when you signed the treaty.
You knew what was coming when you began offering incentives to Intel, 20% of your exports in 2006. Costa Rica
The big corporation that lives and breathes IP.
You want to sell coffee and bananas. You want what Intel and Glaxo and P&G have to offer.
You make the deal. You live by the deal.
It's good to know who has the power in this "demo"cracy
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Thanks Obama
its a direct, unavoidable consequence of the rise of the internet
ip laws only make sense when they are a gentleman's agreement among a handful of publishers. they are completely unenforceable when every teenager in his basement is a publisher to anyone else at zero cost, for anything you want
the wise thing for costa rica to do is simply agree to whatever the usa demands ip law wise. and then its business as usual. which is: everything is available with no ip restrictions to anyone remotely familiar with a computer console
enforcement is impossible, even for the usa within its own borders, so who fucking cares what the lawyers and bureaucrats and corporations say? they've already been routed around
i'm not saying you shouldn't get upset at the arrogance and the audacity of the american demands, i'm saying a bully making demands without any actual ability to follow through on his threats is nothing you have to pay any respect to
you simply pay the asshole lip service, put a big smile on your face, say "yes" to whatever the asshole wants, and then its business as usual, which is: ip laws mean nothing. all of the posturing and threats and demands mean nothing. there's NO ENFORCEMENT POSSIBLE
let all the corporate lawyers, midlevel bureaucrats amd other pointless yammering meat popsicles create all the ip laws and agreements they want
WHO FUCKING CARES. they can't enforce any of it. its the internet age. this is not vhs copy machines in a warehouse or cd duplicators in the closet. you can't shut down the internet
people: stop getting upset at these retards trying to enforce laws from a previous technological era and just igore them and their petty demands without any muscle behind them. they can't stop technological change. they are defunct, they just don't know it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So heres an idea, give up everything that you have in your life that you have because of a direct result of doing this to other countries, then get back to me.
I much rather talk to someone on their high horse AFTER the legs have been cut off.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So does this mean the limited time availability for me to buy Mountain Dew Throwback just got even more limited?
both work to keep the current people in power. What choice does a voter have when your only allowed to choose from two parties? Oh sure, there is this supposed freedom to elect whom you want but when politicians and their supporters from the two parties are allowed to determine who can vote for whom and who can be on tv and who can say what and when they can say what part of free choice do we still have?
Its like giving the guy on death the choice between the noose and the gun, technically he can choose but the end result is the same.
Remember, just as with public schools, all those Congressmen are bad except mine.
apathy, my post :P No matter what we want to do we don't have the choice
jealousy, some people won life's lottery and that's not fair. (or have more stuff, etc)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I would prefer the policy, the USA is blocking all imports, for the hell of it.
This is my sig.
. Historically, countries like Europe and America (and others) have strengthened their economies by violating free market principles, and enforcing them on others.
By what? Asking for a middle class?
This is my sig.
Open up a whole new trade in sugar smuggling? I hope so just for the comedic benefit.
Same as why we didn't import ethanol to ease the $5 a gallon gasoline crisis a couple of summers ago.
You make it sounds like a bad thing...
Shouldn't the generator of the original story (Adam Williams/TicoTimes.net) be slashdotted directly? Wouldn't giving the originator credit for their story be correct? Does the original author deserve the AdSense revenue for writing something interesting? Isn't this a bit ironic for a story on IP?
What ever happened to just invading a country? Oh, how I miss those sweet, sweet days. Now its all agreements, and getting along. Dont those guys remember Grenada? How dare we employ signed agreements. Please Obama, cant we invite just one tiny country more? Oz
Eliminating sugar would solve a bunch of the US's health problems.
You certainly fulfilled the qualifications of "stupid reply". Well done.
There are way, way to many one-sided stories out there just waiting for the naive to eat them up.
The U.S. is bleeding jobs and money. The economy almost crashed 2 years ago. Nearly every retail item purchased in America is not American made. Even non-manufacturing jobs are flying overseas as fast as possible.
Kiss my ass with this free-trade garbage and tell all sides of the story.
I write this as the great "Satan" America spends hundreds of millions of dollars helping Haiti after they were devastated by an earthquake. Kind of like we did after the tsunami in 2004.
Man we are such greedy, evil bastards here in America. I know me personally, I sent my money to Haiti for power and greed or so I can suppress someone.
You simpleton whiners living in your parents basements better pray to the god of skinny punks that you never see a world without America. You would last about a week.
What the U.S. is doing is perfectly reasonable. The products that the U.S. makes (intellectual property) can easily be copied by third parties. Sugar cannot. So it is only fair to maket them agree not to steal our product before we buy theirs. I think that is perfectly reasonable.
All the anger I see on this thread is more directed at the concept of IP protection itself, rather than this particular move. And while you may disagree with the terms of some of the protections (for example, I think copyright is too long), you have to admit that most people won't create scientific inventions, or even creative works, if they know they can't get paid for it. It sucks, but that's human nature.
A lot of people have argued that forcing IP laws on developing countries is evil, but what we are actually doing is forcing them to update their economy before they want to; you can't have a modern advanced economy without IP laws (and if you think China is a modern economy, I'm not arguing with you).
Is that the current state of EYEPEE is that it has become so abused and manipulated so as to become an actual detriment to society and therefor in major need of complete failure and then rebuilding. The manipulators and abusers are not honest people interested in fairness and what is universally right.
If you're the US, then you just ignore the WTO rulings and bring more suits against other countries for not abiding by the rules. Consider Canadian soft woods and Antigua online betting. Both complaints against the US were ruled in the complaining countries favor, and the US has ignored the ruling and in the case of Online gambling stepped up the legal and rhetoric responses to the complaints.
I think the main reason that the US would directly interfere with Costa Rica is that they know they're not going to get any satisfaction from the WTO until they come in line with the existing rulings against them.
Do it my way or I'll bash in your brains.
for NO GAIN OF OUR OWN (this includes both Iraq (the supposed "bad war") and Afghanistan (the supposed "good war" that people are now having second thoughts about). Your cluelessness on what constitutes a "good country" and a "bad country" is truly epic.
Germany and Japan were only built up as counterweights to the influence of Russia and China. South Korea was a counterweight to China. Vietnam, since the intelligence community at the time was so hilariously inept, was also a counterweight to the threat of communist China. (The Vietnamese have been fighting the Chinese for centuries). Iraq and Afghanistan are strategically important, due to their geography and their natural resources. If Iraq didn't have oil, we wouldn't care what Saddam was doing. And if Saddam had continued to play by the rules, we would have let him continue to murder and kill for decades more. This is why we sit and watch Rwanda and Darfur with detached interest.
This is beyond the fact that the "nation" of Iraq as it is today is a figment of British imagination, purposefully drawn to create a state that is both rich in natural resources and completely divided internally, so it will be dependent on foreign powers. Just as it is beyond the fact that Saudi Arabia has a human rights record just as bad as Iran, it's an Islamic monarchy that doesn't allow non-Muslims to testify in court, or anyone to even pretend to vote, but it receives no criticism because it is - for now - a faithful lapdog.
I doubt you know that we invaded and occupied Haiti, Nicaragua, the Philippines, with tens of thousands of Marines. Or that we sponsored murderous thugs throughout Central and South America, if those thugs provided profit opportunities for American businesses. This is how it begins - a trade war. If it continues, watch the men in charge unleash the media on the "leftist" government in Costa Rica.
Your statement also ignored the fact that these people have a right to choose their own destiny, since they are sovereign nations. Unless you'd like someone to invade America and choose our political system for us, I think you should reconsider your position and it's consequences.
Your understanding of history is truly pathetic. If it wasn't, however, it would be tough to convince me you were an American. I hope for your sake you never receive what you have wished upon others.
Neither hypocrisy or self-righteousness have anything to do with being right or wrong.
What is your point? That you don't like his tone?
China holds too many cards such that politicians don't have the balls to clamp down. Same reason we let individual banks grow too big instead of splitting them up, resulting in "too big to fail".
Table-ized A.I.
You all claim you need your guns to protect you from a corrupt government. Now you have a corrupt government and still you do nothing.
Hum, Let me see if I can understand this ...So we can stop Sugar coming from Latin America but not Meth and other illicit narcotics? Go figure? The Latin American Sugar Lobby must have less money than the Cartel Lobby.
They'd have to start dragging people out of their beds at night without due process and sending them to forced labor camps for us to respond with violence. Corrupt officials should be impeached or voted out of office in election, not shot. What you suggest is barbaric.
For the thousandth time, it's clearly "Your Rights" Online, not Your "Rights Online".
Or, if you prefer, think of it with a comma - Your Rights, Online.
Every non-Internet story has comments like yours; you'd think after a few hundreds stories like this you'd figure it out ;)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that. But I do think we should be more responsible in letting people know the truth. I do think - in all fairness - you should correctly inform consumers of what they are consuming. If it said on the label that your video card was manufactured in a near forced labor camp in China that had multiple citations by human rights groups, I'll bet less people would buy it.
Similarly, since Fox News only broadcasts news for 9 hours a day, it should be called Fox Political Network There should be a warning before each show that the talking heads are not journalists, just entertainers. Slap the warning on any show on any network that doesn't claim journalistic integrity. I bet much of middle America would be surprised that the Daily Show and Fox and Friends have the same amount of credibility.
If they don't like the deal, then they shouldn't take it (and I wouldn't blame them either). They could take their really cheap sugar and make it a value added more lucrative product by turning it into ethanol fuel, like Brazil does, for instance. Or repurpose the extra sugar cane fields into another valuable food crop, rice maybe? Probably any number of good crops can be grown in that sort of soil.
I don't think Costa Rica has much of anything for a domestic oil supply, it's all imported, so making their own fuel makes more economic sense for them long range, plus adds to national energy independence, which in today's world is a big security issue. Every time you add an additional value added layer to a raw resource..well, that's why they call it "value added". The good stuff distilled from sugar cane squeezings you drink or sell, it is rum, all the other, in the tank.
Then maybe they wouldn't need the US market all that much and could just ignore it.
And it works both ways, as a farmer I am tuned to the security issues of both food and fuel, I think it is *perfectly* acceptable and understandable why any nation would want to maintain a core minimum amount of both food and fuel produced domestically, even if temporarily it might be cheaper on some global market. Heck, look at Japan, they go way out of their way to make sure they have *some* intact farming..they want to at all times be able to feed themselves and not be held hostage for such a critical necessity. Ya it costs them a *lot* more, but it is food insurance. And you really can't put a price on that insurance until some theoretical time when if you didn't have it, all of a sudden your imports stop and..well, that would suck. You'd figure out it was worth it..after the fact. Too late then.
And frankly, if you look at some of the nations that run huge monoculture farms to supply the US or Europe (or now it will be China using African farmland and some of the richer oil exporting mideast nations doing the same), they do so at the expense of the bulk of their own people, instead of growing a variety of food *first*, to feed their own people first as a national priority, they fixate on this external trade large crop, usually run by some local fatcats/cartels, that go to those foreign markets. Makes these fatcats rich, while their own people go hungrier than they should.
Malawi in Africa figured this out, crops for export *as the priority* was bankrupting them and leaving their people to starve all the time. A few people were getting rich there, everyone else.... They switched to "feed the nation first" as their ag policy, including government subsidies and so on, and now they are doing much better. Both their domestic food supply got better, and now they can export more again, just by shifting priorities and working smarter with what they have.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200907020548.html
Well, you seem to be on your high horse permanatley
asshole.
It's all the encompassing clauses. Things like "3 strikes" laws that assume guilt before innocence, and companies like the RIAA that have a sue-first-and-ask-questions-later attitude.
Things like corporations being sued and giving out gift certificates (to buy more of their products) in response, then suing private individuals for more than they could earn in a lifetime.
So yeah, if there were some intelligent way address copyright violations, I'd be for it. As it is it allows private corporations and those with megabucks to f*** over the regular citizenry, and I for one am very glad to see Costa Rica listens to the people and is willing to fight against it.
You is just rigth. Nobody wants the ridiculous DMCA on your contry, this aberration is only for the US good. Off course the US needs DMCA on the whole planet, thus this embargo. Costa Rica can simply kick off US and sell your sugar to another country, the world are plenty of sugar markets.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
You make the U.S. Government sound like Microsoft... That's just mean...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Maybe China has need for some sweets?
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
The US doesn't actually buy any sugar to speak of anyway. Prohibitive import tariffs on sugar, to placate the corn lobby, is longstanding policy.
The world price of sugar has increased 300% in the last year, to $US 50/kg, unless you live in the US ... then it's $US 75/kg. Which just happens to be both the world and US domestic price of corn-derived sugars.
This worked really well on Cuba, didn't it?
> The only way to generate money from IP is to use governments to create and enforce laws
That's because IP isn't actually property. If it were, it would be naturally scarce and you could buy and sell it without government regulations, just like you can with all real property (including land). You're probably going to tell me all about how the government has a legitimate role in protecting property rights (as if that made IP into property).
But no government currently recognizes my air rights. I have claimed as my property every molecule of gas in Earth's gravity well. Only those I allow to should be permitted to breathe. But infringers like you are trampling all over my rights, just because no government is willing to defend them. It's a travesty, I say! You lot owe me some $948,382,184,382,100.00 in lost royalties.
Please remit payment before continuing the argument, infringer.
I've lived in Costa Rica. Pura Vida!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Costa_Rica
I've eaten sugar directly from the cane. Don't swallow the fiber.
Most of what Costa Rica exports are bananas, pineapples, coffee and microprocessors.
Tourism brings more money to Costa Rica than b-p-c combined.
While there, the teens I knew were all trying to get jobs with HP, Intel, Oracle, etc. or to work in an call center.
The Tico Times hasn't reported this story, that I've seen. This is the closest story http://www.ticotimes.net/businessarchive/2010_01/011510.htm That story did say that sugar export profits rose over 77% due to CAFTA although almost all other exports are down 30+% due to global economic conditions. Interesting.
Why is the US using sugar instead of a bigger product for Costa Rica, like coffee or bananas?
I'll tell you why, there's a controlling elite in Costa Rica that has managed the country for a few years already, and the head of this elite is the current President and his brother, Oscar and Rodrigo Arias, which in turn own the biggest sugar cane fields in the country. So the attack is directly to their pockets and so they move all their influence to enforce the IP law, that includes stupid rules as that every restaurant or public place will have to pay royalty to the RIAA equivalent in our country if they play the radio to keep their customers entertained!
The worst case is that the oposition in our country is not well organized nor has the intellectual strength to fight this kind of laws, plus the elite has majority in congress, so the IP laws have some resistance, but they have not been approved because congress is to darn slow to do anything, so we'll get them eventually.
From the original article that spurned all of this anti-U.S. tirade "Arguedas said another issue stalling passage of the 14th amendment is the fact that legislators are looking to pass a law that is more extensive than the requirements of the agreement." So, after all of this, it's the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly that's the evil guy and there are 322 (and counting) posts from people that never read the 300 word original article (including me until just now).
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the US should go light on third-world countries. Yes, the intellectual property produced in this country benefits them (in this case, with cheap entertainment, textbooks, and pharmaceuticals). No, Costa Rica is not paying us back for those benefits. It's basically a free-ride for them. However, it doesn't actually cost us anything directly. It just costs companies a little bit of potential profit - which is small anyway, since Costa Rica is a poor country. So, I'm of the opinion that the US should just lighten up on them and consider the benefits of our intellectual property to be part of a third-world development program.
However, I do want to point out the bad logic going on in the summary and many of the comments. If everyone is allowed to freely share intellectual property, it means that the creator cannot recoup (in money) some of the benefits they've created for the world. The end result is that no one makes any significant effort to produce new intellectual property. Afterall, do you want to spend millions of dollars creating a product that creates a lot of value for the world (perhaps tens of millions of dollars worth of benefit), but the lack of intellectual property laws means that you immediately go bankrupt because you can't even pay-back your development costs?
Claims that "intellectual monopoly protectionism is 'the exact opposite of 'free trade'" is absurd. Besides, I thought most Slashdotters were against the idea of selling pirated material. The statement that "intellectual monopoly protectionism is 'the exact opposite of 'free trade'" suggests that everyone should be able to copy and sell all IP. This means that companies like Walmart or Amazon.com should somehow be allowed to print up copies of books, movies, software, etc - and pay nothing to anybody. Apparently, that's the very definition of "free trade" at Slashdot, as absurd as that sounds.
Here's an easy fix that will shutdown a large part of another economic import from South America that makes both parties very, very rich. Since, I think South American countries feel they are probably getting screwed by the US government, they should start an embargo themselves and stop Cocaine exports to the US. Yes, coke is highly illegal to begin with in the US, but the drug trade is a significant economic contributor, a lot more I would think than IP and sugar combined.
South American countries are diversifying their exports cutting deals with China and the EU. Mexico and Central America are still in US hands commercially speaking, but the US is doing everything they can to push them into China's arms.
Why do my posts keep getting deleted on slashdot???
Why this is even a headline these days is absolutely beyond me.
Exactly the same thing was done to Australia a couple of years ago, we are now bound by American Copyright laws in return for some not-100%-royally-screwing-australia "free trade" agreements.
The irony of the thing is that America was founded on "no taxation without representation" and now they want to shove their laws down my throat but without *also* giving me the rights/priviledges of "being an american".
Welcome to the modern methods of empire-building.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I'm not certain whether I should be called a language loonie, a logic loonie or a political radical but here goes my rant: Free trade means free of all laws, all rules, all taxes, all regulations. The blithering about free markets and capitalism is a right wing conspiracy in and of itself. No nation, not even a tribe of primitives, has ever tried free trade for even one solitary moment. The notion of free trade compares to pregnancy. One absolutely is or is not pregnant. There are no stages or shades of grey.
By letting people absorb the false facts about free trade it becomes easy to further manipulate their lives. Obviously it follows as the night the day that if free trade has never existed then nothing really is known about free trade at all. It is false theoretical dribble designed to enslave under educated populations.
I cringe in horror at the supposedly logical, supposedly educated types who spout off about free trade.
While Michael Geist states that they are and that the US is deliberately blocking exports
a technollama article that Geist cited does not seem to have the same opinion. They were not able to confirm a connection between the issues and in fact found information to the contrary.
For reference, the ticotimes.net article simply stated
but as the technollama article indicates, no one else has said this and it could not be confirmed.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
There was an active anti-TLC (CAFTA in Spanish) movement in San Jose, Costa Rica when I was there in 2008, you can see some evidence of their work here:
http://www.bylandandsea.org:8080/05.31.2008/BLaS%20-%205081.jpg
http://www.bylandandsea.org:8080/05.31.2008/BLaS%20-%205089.jpg
http://www.bylandandsea.org:8080/05.31.2008/BLaS%20-%205107.jpg
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yeah, that country Europe, they're all fucking 'tards, man, they talk like fags, and their shit's all fucked up
Since you brought up Aspartame....
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/Aspartame-Adverse-Reactions-1993.htm
This has been well known in psychiatric social workers circles for many years (I have had two relatives working in the field). The first year "Tab" with Aspartame came out, and was picked up by a population that typically has body image problems in the first place, ad so immediately grab onto "diet anything", there was about a 70% increase in psychiatric intakes by the local County Mental Health as it (effectively) blocked the action of most Lithium medications in Schizophrenics who had previously been doing fine on their medication levels. Some people they took off the diet drinks, and others, they had to adjust the medications upward to compensate for it.
-- Terry
You're right. The US obviously is only in there to decide policy for others, not be bound by policy itself. Seems like you can have your cake and eat it too, after all.
We're working on it. Ten years from now we'll be indistinguishable from the US.
Why any country would bother signing any agreement with the US any more is way beyond me.
It's because the people who get to decide this have the same friends.
Don't cave on me...Costa Rica!
vodka is made from potatos, rum is made from sugar. you'd have to trade.