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Stop Being Poor: U.S. Piracy Watch List Hits a New Low With 2012 Report
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Trade Representative released its annual Special 301 Report yesterday, unsurprisingly including Canada on the Priority Watch list. While inclusion on the list is designed to generate embarrassment on target countries, Michael Geist explains why this year's report should elicit outrage. Not only is the report lacking in objective analysis, it targets some of the world's poorest countries with no evidence of legal inadequacies and picks fights with any country that dare adopt a contrary view on intellectual property issues."
Canada should be embarrassed. I mean, they have some of the best privacy laws of any country.
On a related note, as an American, could I borrow some?
You're right, CDs are crappy. That's why I always bring a live band with me when I drive to and from work.
What you're seeing here really is more of a disconnect between the Government and the people it is suppose to represent. The american government at this point is pretty much entirely owned by various corporations and private interests that don't represent the thoughts and will of the american people.
I'm pretty fed up with it and I want things to change but I really don't see what I can do, the FBI is busy trying to turn people into terrorists who are unhappy with the way the government is representing them. It doesn't matter if I vote for the right or left any politician I vote for is owned by someone, and most if not all the third party candidates are dubious or likely to be subverted the moment they become any more than 'third party' and or get seen as a threat to the status quo.
The point is that when people are listening to CDs or MP3s, they're not JUST listening to them. They're cleaning, playing video games, exercising, driving, or any one of a multitude of activities which don't require 100% of your ears. Hell, I've listened to music while working at a call center before. 99% of situations in which people would have music are not situations in which live music is applicable.
tl;dr: You trollin'.
From where I sit, this has been one of the greatest disappointments even staunch supporters like me have with Obama: his administration's continued support for the content industry at the expense of people in America and around the world.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I live in Asia. Our entertainment is going out with people and socializing.
That sounds too much like socialism for the US.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Well, while you're ignoring it, the politicians will be citing it for why we more and tougher IP legislation, both at home and abroad.
You may ignore it if you wish, but do so at your peril. This report is a window into the minds of the politicians and bureaucrats who run our country and think they run the world. We ought to be using this to our advantage, to stir up pushback from other countries and put the bastards on the defensive. They're trying to bully the rest of the world into paying up--the only way to deal with a bully is to stand up for yourself and fight back.
we tried to conquer your worthless country twice before, but you finally gave us an excuse for a third time
This is the best part:
Which basically means the people writing this report are well known shills, who are predisposed to write something which is in favor of what the content industry wants.
Glad to see these guys being told to bugger off if they don't have any facts. Far too much of American policy is dictated by lobbyists.
Constantly listening to the content industry in the US bleating that Canada is a horrible evil country of people who violate copyrights gets tedious.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The US has declared wars on drugs, terrorism, copyright violations, crackers, and a whole host of other things.
In doing so they've declared "war" on pretty much every nation in the world, including the very ones that they claim are friends and allies.
So what can we conclude?
The US is Enemy #1 to the world.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Claiming one country should forgo their culture because you said yours is better is not a very good argument. Maybe some people dont want to go out and prefer to stay home and listen to music, is there is something wrong with that? while i am not bashing your culture, i think its great if you have more community based entertainment...but USA is different for a variety of reasons and it would be easier to change the record companys then it would be to change an entire culture.
Its funny, most the time its Americans are being accused of the very same thing your doing.
I don't think we (as canadians) should be outraged. That's the wrong approach to this. We should be celebrating the fact that we have better rules than the americans.
Imagine some politicians came out with a report about how awful it is that blacks can vote in this long list of countries, or how abhorrent is is that women could vote in some places, or how some countries *still* haven't enacted prohibition, or how terrible it must be for people living in those countries that have government healthcare. If you on one of those lists you don't get outraged, you can use it as proof positive that your system is working, and those idiots that wrote the report are living in the wrong century. Which, as with this report, they are.
There's no point in trying to complain that some of their metrics are wrong or unfairly target the wrong groups. The whole concept is basically inverted, squabbling about the details gives the false impression that it can somehow be corrected with some tweaking of specifics.
Nice sentiment, but you go too easy on the concept of copyright. Paraphrased from No Safe Harbor:
Copyright was first conceived by Bloody Mary of England in 1557 as a means of censorship to persecute non-Catholics and political dissenters. It was her idea to give the printing monopoly to the London printers' guild and have anyone else caught with a printing press hanged by the state. After the proletariat took over Parliament, copyright was abolished in 1695. The publishers managed to twist the notion of copyright and get it reinstated in 1701 by saying that authors will "own" their works, even though only guild printers would have the right to print them and so the authors were still at their mercy.
The notion that copyright could exist for the sake of anything other than publishers' profits did not even exist until the drafting of the United States Constitution, where it was a compromise after a heated debate. Jefferson argued that copyright shouldn't exist at all, and only took that position when a compromise was necessary. As a result, the Constitution states that copyright is to be used for the good of society, conspicuously (but not conspicuously enough, apparently) omitting the interests of *both* authors and publishers. This is the moral equivalent of saying "You are allowed to hit people only if it makes them feel better." Apart from a few masochists out there, by the letter of the law the right may exist but should *never* be exercised. We all know how well that turned out.
So the entire concept of copyright is a reheated censorship scheme inherited from one of the most infamous dictators in history. Why anyone still thinks it's a good idea is a testament to the power of money, propaganda and groupthink.
| What you're seeing here really is more of a disconnect between the Government and the people it is suppose to represent
Umm, you and I aren't the American people. We' don't have the money. We don't count. Real American people number less than 1 million, out of the 300 million inhabitants of America. The rest of us live in 'Murica, are a nuisance to real Americans, and are expendable.