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."

Comments

Re:Level playing field

[BitZtream]

Why these trade rules aren't being used to enforce environmental agreements and not IP ones is somewhat beyond me.

Because other than a few attention whores who will do whatever they can to get people to look at them, no one actually gives a fuck about the environment. Kind of like yourself.

Re:Never Fear!!!!

[Gothmolly]

You're not a troll, you're a douche.

Re:"IP La"

[idji]

for some stoopid (=$$$ and power) reason the Americans have decided that corn is the be-all and end-all.

• The food is full of that chemical concoction high fructose corn syrup. Instead of eating a natural food that they could trade from many (nearby) Central American countries they concoct their own with farming subsidies - keeping their neighbors in poverty and servility - and inanely socio-reengineering their own population into believing it is natural.
• Corn is feed to the cows to make beef and hamburgers instead of letting them eat grass.
• "Organic" fuel is produced in a sick attempt to make the whole thing look green/responsible - but is simply unsustainable biosphere destruction. Now what was just a food issue is now horribly entwined in energy politics.

And all of the above are simply theft and rape from nature - and the biggest sufferers are the oceans - who cares about dead zones under the waves.

Stand up you Americans and say no more to this corn-politics. Don't listen to the political energy-security spin wrapped up as patriotism and way-of-life, the big industries selling those million-dollar harvesters and homogenising small-town USA. Pay your carbon abuse, and don't just switch your glaring carbon debts to not so "invisible" nitrogen-dumping or phosphorous-dumping in your seas and waterways.