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Responding to US Gambling Law, Antigua Set To Launch "Pirate" Site
An anonymous reader writes "The Government of Antigua is planning to launch a website selling movies, music and software, without paying U.S. copyright holders. The Caribbean island is taking the unprecedented step because the United States refuses to lift a trade 'blockade' preventing the island from offering Internet gambling services, despite several WTO decisions in Antigua's favor. The country now hopes to recoup some of the lost income through a WTO approved 'warez' site."
The United States can't really stop Antigua from running a gambling website.
They can however forbid US payment processors from processing online gambling payments. If that is how they're stopping Antigua now, I can't imagine this warez site will be different. Do you think US payment processors will handle these payments?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Are they going to be charging for these downloads? Or are they going to be making their money through ads, the way MegaUpload did?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
As far as foreign policy goes? Israel. Duh. They might be acting upset that Obama would dare suggest it's even possible that what they're doing could be wrong, but they still know the US and Obama are more pro-Israel than most of the world, and certainly anyone nearby.
As far as the country itself? I'm guessing there are a few countries smart enough to realize that our trade policy isn't the best way to define a whole country.
Want an analogy? American alcohol companies get pissed they're not allowed to sell to Shariah-law nations, so the US decides to just steal their shit until they capitulate. Commodore Perry type shit. That's what this is. It's bad for everybody.
No, the analogy is flawed because US sites do online gambling. The analogy is if the US blocked all Toyotas from being sold because it would help GM make more money faster, while GM was still able to make all they wanted. Toyota/Japan complains it violates a treaty, and the US tells them "yes it does, go fuck yourself" and Japan wins the lawsuit in international court. The US fails to abide by their treaty they signed and ratified, so the international body agrees to waive other terms of the treaty that were binding on Japan.
This isn't about them being wronged, it's about them not respecting the sovereignty of another nation. They cannot dictate our laws, regardless of if those laws are dumb.
So, if the rest of the world doesn't respect US copyrights, but instead writes their own independent laws, we should invade them and kill them for not giving us the profit we feel we are due?
Learn to love Alaska
The prime minister, ambassador, king, el presidente.......whatever you call him to his face, is still a politician in his country of origin and very likely to represent the sentiment of his populace when describing his sentiment for yours. And by the by, there's the answer to your foreign policy question of the demi-decade, "Why do we continue to support Israel, at the expense of relations with every Arabian Middle Eastern Nation?" Because if there was a fight at the bar we all go to, we could be quite certain the Israelis and Brits would get beat up with us (and maybe even the Canadians and the Aussies). After that it gets pretty thin. Whether or not we kick Israel to the curb, no Muslim nation is really in our Alliance for a coon's age.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
They're doing it flagrantly because it's explicitly tit-for-tat. It's their way of pointedly asking "Do we have rules or not?"
Let's say you and I are sociopathic assholes, so whereas most people might have some kind of implicit social contract, and a sense of how people should act decently to one another, we're jerks and write up and agree to some formal rules. Among these rules are things like "Neither party will ever hit the other in the head with a hammer and then steal their wallet while the victim is incapacitated." Call that the WIPO rule.
We have another rule too. It's "Neither party will ever vandalize the other's car." Call that the WTO rule.
Then I go and vandalize your car, totally in violation of the rules. I don't deny it, either. Instead, I explain I had good reasons to do it. "I really wanted to vandalize your car, and it looked so vulnerable. I just couldn't help it!" but whether I had a good reason or not, you claim I broke our agreement. You might not feel all that hurt about the car, but breaking the agreement .. oh dear. We're sociopaths, but we're not uncivilized, are we?
After my amazing explanation for why I did it, you ask me: "Are you going to do it again?" and I answer "Yeah, probably. Your car still does look pretty vandalizable, and I really like vandalizing cars." You answer "What about our agreement?" and I just shrug. You ask, "Are our agreements important?" and I shrug again!!
You go see our mutual acquaintances, perhaps some people with whom I also have some agreements. They're a little concerned to hear I value our agreements so little. Will their cars be next? They think it over and say, "Yeah, Sloppy broke his agreement to not vandalize your car. You should get even."
So you do. You hit me in the head with a hammer and I wake up without a wallet. You do it openly, too. Our acquaintances nod with approval, even though you're breaking the agreement now. I ask, "How can you do that?!?"
You explain: if I think the rules are so important, and I have such a problem with being hit with hammers, THEN MAYBE I SHOULD STOP FUCKING AROUND WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S CARS.
I don't know what I'll do. I still really do like vandalizing cars. I'd like to vandalize your car again, and that other dude with whom I have a no-vandalize agreement. But I'm not sure I like this hammers development. OTOH, I don't know, maybe it's worth it. The hammers hurt and I don't like losing my wallet all the time, but the cars! Oh, the cars! That's so much fun.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The US government can ban all travel by US citizens to Antigua. They can make it a criminal offense for an american citizen to spend money or provide money to the nation. They can bar all US financial groups from doing business with the island.
Enacting any of these measures would immediately halt all US tourism in Antigua. This tourism is 90+% of the economy. I'm sure the WTO would allow Antigua to retaliate with equal sanctions to almost no effect to the US but the complete destruction of the Antiguan economy.
They are playing with fire and anyone that suggests it's a good idea is a moron. But make no mistake, the lawyer that convinced them to take this path has already extracted his pound of flesh in the form of millions of dollars. In the end it will end just like the Sanford affair, an american will make off with millions of dollars of Antiguan money and the average Antigua citizen will suffer.
As a Canadian, I like the connection we have to Australia through being in the Commonwealth, and never saw why so many of you guys got bent out of shape over what is really just a figurehead...
Agreed. As a fellow Canadian, I don't see the point in introducing a political element (in the form of elections) for a figurehead head of state. It seems to me that Canada, for one, has a value-for-money arrangement: Although the Governor General's office uses millions of dollars, for functionaries, upkeep of grounds, security, etc., the GG himself gets only a modest salary -- it was around $120,000 the last I recall. In addition, we get to have a monarch on the cheap: the UK provides housing, upkeep, perks, etc., while we only have to provide security (and room and board, I guess) when one of the family drops by on an official visit -- which is not often. For this comparatively small sum, Canada gets a hardworking, apolitical individual, backed by serious constitutional legal minds for those infrequent times when use of real power is called for (i.e. on the advice of the prime minister, deciding whether to prorogue parliament or call an election.)
For similar reasons, Canada's judiciary is appointed, not elected: these guys are doing serious jobs which require them to be apolitical.