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WTO Approves Suspension of US Copyright in Antigua
hydrofix writes "On Thursday TorrentFreak broke the story (verified by BBC) that the government of Antigua and Barbuda, a tiny island nation on the Caribbean, was planning to launch a legal 'pirate' website selling movies, music and software without paying a penny to U.S. copyright holders. Now, the World Trade Organization has given its final approval for the Antigua government to launch the website. The decision follows from long-running trade dispute between the countries, related to online gambling, which was ruled in Antigua's favor in 2005. After the United States refused to compensate, the WTO granted Antigua the right to 'suspend' U.S. copyrights for up to $21 million annually."
From the article: "The Antiguan government further reiterated today that the term 'piracy' doesn’t apply in this situation, as they are fully authorized to suspend U.S. copyrights. It is a legal remedy that was approved by all WTO members, including the United States."
This is what happens when you try to strong arm countries and, then, when the ruling goes against you, you ignore it.
B&A is going to make $21 million really fast. The question is who sets the prices....
Btw I don't like copywright but this is just wrong
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Lets see if they use a domain registrar that has US roots/ties and then the DHS will seize the domain name of the site(s).
The ruling doesn't suspend everyone's obligations with regard to the copyrights involved, just Antigua's - while the copy sent to you may be unencmbered by a license, that doesn't mean you gain any rights to redistribution.
But seizing money would chase away future business. This way they can get their money from people that they don't care if they offend.
Except those casino operators are the very things they want to operate in their country. So seizing assets from them would likely cause more long term harm (by causing casino operators to move somewhere that doesn't have a history for seizing casino assets).
I think its also a cautionary tale about these world governing bodies and making treaties. Our earliest founders warned us about getting into international entanglements. This is clear example of how these things don't always come out as planned. We might be strong arming China one week, but might have some rulings like these go against our interests another, and it makes us look like real ass hats when we try and argue these international bodies should be abide by one moment and than ignore them the next.
Yeah, it sucks when you must follow rules you agreed to, especially hwne you intended to use thoe rules to strong-arm others.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Affected US companies just need to create foreign subsidiaries and then assign their copyrights over to those subsidiaries. Problem solved. Heck, some of these companies probably already hold their IP offshore.
They had an opportunity to ask for something valuable and instead asked for all the crap put out by Hollywood?
It is actually quite smart. Their goal is to apply pressure on American politicians to abide by trade rules. Hollywood is very politically connected. The studios are big political donors, and they already have lots of lobbyists on K Street. If Hollywood squeals, Washington listens.
The trouble here is that the U.S. is refusing to compensate them for money lost on gambling, but the money is lost because Americans can't really gamble online anymore: to the extent that they are able, the U.S. government has effectively banned internet gambling. While this is an incredibly stupid bit of policy -- taking loose money from websites run by American companies you can control and tax and shunting it all to websites run by people you can't tax who don't care about U.S. law -- it's basically an internal U.S. matter.
Of course, it's not like the trade organizations haven't been used to destroy perfectly legitimate laws before... just try getting a carcinogenic gasoline additive banned in North America these days. But that doesn't make it reasonable. It just points out how questionable the underpinnings of the entire enterprise are.
Also, I'm a little curious whether the $21 Million will be metered according to the "iTunes price" ($1 per song, or 21 million songs) or the "Jammie Thomas price" ($2,250 per song, or 9333 songs), or some token amount lie a penny a file (2.1 billion movies, songs, and texts sold). If the Antigua government just decides to give stock away, rather than seeking full compensation, does it ever have to stop? How do you set a price on something that is "temporarily free... until the total number of temporarily free things totals $21 million"? I'm sure there's a tighter definition in the legalese somewhere, but it's not immediately clear from the articles what it is.
Then there's the real-world political implications of poking a very large bear. The U.S. tends to be very "hands off" when it comes to helping other countries with their trade problems (cigarette smuggling into Canada comes to mind). At the same time, the RIAA and MPAA are not known for their temperance. When some "rogue hacker" in no way associated with the U.S. government or one of these groups (no, really, we swear) manages to get some version of Flame on the Antigua servers, it's going to get very messy very quickly.
This is kind of like the judge in a libel trial saying it's okay to resolve the matter with a duel to the death. It will end badly for pretty much everyone involved.