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Antigua Looks Closer To Legal "Piracy" of US-Copyrighted Works
Mark Gibbs writes "Shiver me timbers: Antigua and Barbuda's 'WTO Remedies Implementation Committee', is said to be recommending the establishment by the Government of Antigua & Barbuda of a statutory body to own, manage and operate the ultimate platform to be created for the monetisation or other exploitation of the suspension of American intellectual property rights authorised earlier this year by the WTO ... Additionally, an announcement regarding the opening of tenders for private sector participation in the operating of the platform should be announced shortly. Arghhh ... matey!" See also this Slashdot post (from 2007) for some background.
if Google would slip them all those books.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The difficulty, of course, is that the US signed a treaty saying it would abide by this sort of ruling. So now what?
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Sounds less like 'piracy', and more like early America, where our forebears had little stake in maintaining the seemingly unjust control of foreign interests, but much interest in creating a large body of works that the public could use to generate culture in this new world.
I'm sure there were a lot of folks an ocean away decrying the 'free ride' those Americans were taking then too - but those resources had some heavy work to do, and it would rightly seem absurd at the to pay several times the cost of production for a 'licensed' book at the end of the day. What parts of culture we were able to 'steal' helped make us diverse and strong - and I don't blame any developing nation for wanting to repeat that, either officially, or unofficially like most nations.
Ryan Fenton
Then Obama is awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize... oh, wait a minute...
said to be recommending the establishment by the Government of Antigua & Barbuda of a statutory body to own, manage and operate the ultimate platform to be created for the monetisation or other exploitation of the suspension of American intellectual property rights authorised
Why does this press release read like an EULA? I mean that is a retarded amount of long words to describe a very simple idea. Why can't they just write it up as "We're bringing back fair use, bitches!"
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
So, to be clear, the United States democractically elected government passed a law, that applies only to United States citizens.
And the law says that US citizens can only use US-based casinos. Sounds like protectionism to me, which violates their WTO commitments.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They're not being overruled. The law in the US is allowed to stand and is completely unaffected by this. Instead, because the US has broken a treaty Antigua no long must abide by US Copyrights, which are considered foreign law to Antigua. It doesn't harm democracy that another country is allowed to govern itself. Why should the US law be preferred to Antigua's?
Yes, because leaving the WTO makes sense. You can hang out with Somalia and Iran! You are why so many people consider America a dick nation. Sign up for international body, ignore its rulings, quit when it isn't just a rubber stamp setup for America.
Go read why this situation came about. Antigua has a good case.
Well, various nations have had trade wars for a long time. Country A exports something to Country B, A gets upset when B uses import bans or tariffs to prop up its domestic industry or simply keep things out, and then A retaliates by limiting imports from B or worse. Eventually the two countries learn to do without, or they resolve their differences, hopefully peacefully, sometimes violently.
What we're seeing now is a system in which trade treaties are becoming massively multilateral, treaties are tangled up together for mutual support, and international bodies are set up to administer them. It's still possible to pursue national interests over international trade, and to engage in trade wars, but it's become a great deal harder by design.
I agree that we need to push for more national sovereignty, so that trade is managed by politically accountable, democratic institutions, rather than potentially dangerous IGOs, but it's probably worth remembering that we pushed as hard for this mess as anyone, and now we're getting a taste of our just desserts.
As for this particular situation of course, it might've happened the same way regardless. Copyrights are strictly national in nature. US copyrights are only good in the US, UK copyrights only in the UK, and so forth. Most works have many separate copyrights attached to them. Treaties between various countries mandate that when a work receives a copyright in one eligible country, all the others grant copyrights for that same work too. Antigua and Barbuda only grant copyrights to US-originating works out of this sort of reciprocity, and can cease to do so as they see fit, including as part of a trade war on unrelated matters, since this might give them some leverage.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Read TFA. It was approved by the WTO because of the USA's probibition of cross-border gambling.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Of course Nobel's Peace prize is awarded to those that employ his
invention -Dynamite- to achieve peace.
So, to be clear, the United States democractically elected government passed a law, that applies only to United States citizens. A bunch of foreign bankers have decided that they don't like that law, and so they are overruling it.
I'm sure Slashdot will be thrilled with any decision that hurts intellectual property enforcement, but try to look at what's going on here. It is really, really bad for democracy when elected officials can be overruled by overseas bankers. The United States is right to refuse to comply with the ruling, and should do everything in its power to resist. Our democracy ain't exactly working great, but it's better than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats ruling by decree from overseas.
Just to be clear, the only reason American copyright law has any power at all outside of the United States is because of treaty. If you believe the US government can pass any law they want so long as it only affects its citizens, then Antigua can also pass a law that only affects its citizens that allow them to copy any media they want that originates from the US and resell it for whatever they want without compensation to the original creator. So what's the problem?
The only problem is if you think Antigua should be compelled to honor international law that honors US copyright law, but the US should not be compelled to honor international law in return.
This was a post by another Slashdotter that I saved. Didn't write down who it was though. My bad.
.. oh dear. We're sociopaths, but we're not uncivilized, are we?
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
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.
The Senate votes to modify or repeal it, and the President signs off. Same with any time the US does anything with a treaty.
Well, treaties are weird under US law. It could be that, it could require the involvement of the entire Congress (especially if there is enabling legislation), or it might even be something that the President can do unilaterally. Of course, it's probably a political question, so there wouldn't be a bright line rule.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
They probably don't have a fiber connection either to the country.
They are on the Eastern Caribbean Fiber System, and the Global Caribbean Network, which is also a fiber submarine cable.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The Senate votes to modify or repeal it, and the President signs off. Same with any time the US does anything with a treaty.
That doesn't solve anything, because even if the US withdraws from the WTO, they cannot prevent Antigua from suspending US copyright within its borders. As I point out above, the WTO is the only thing that makes US copyright law valid anywhere outside the US in the first place. Withdraw from the WTO, and who's going to enforce US copyright law outside the US? Why would any country enforce US copyright law when the US acts to ignore international law in this area.
I suspect that media creation is an area where the US has a huge trade surplus. In a world where the US ignores everyone else's intellectual property law and everyone else ignores US intellectual property law, everyone else wins and the US loses. The US needs the rest of the world to play ball far, far more than everyone else needs the US to do so. This is a fact I think most sovereignty-nuts fail to understand: the US probably exports more of its laws than it imports others. In a world where the US decided not to subject itself to any international law, its own interests would be the ones most impacted.
Exactly what Antigua is saying. There's earnings to be made by violating US copyrights.
Don't like it? National sovereignty; too bad.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
So we aren't allowed to have any laws that might negatively impact the earnings of another nation? I'd prefer to have national sovereignty, thanks.
Sure we are. There's nothing requiring us to honor our international trade agreements. We can break 'em if we like. However, that means that other countries don't have to honor their sides of the bargains either... hence the WTO suspending US copyrights for Antigua and Barbuda. We ignore our obligations and damage them, so they can ignore their obligations to us.
No loss of sovereignty, just a consequence of what essentially boils down to international breach of contract.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Both should respect each others property and businesses and laws
Guess who sets out those principles of international respect for property, businesses etc? The same WTO that you want shut down.
The US agreed in 1995 to abide by the WTO's principles and rules. If they no longer want to, they're free to withdraw, but they can't expect other nations to respect the rules if they won't.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Are you familiar with the phrase "proportionality"?
Yep, and I think if anything the WTO has been too gentle with the US. Our violation of our agreements has cost Antiqua and Barbudos ~$1B per year, and the WTO has only authorized them to make $21M per year from ignoring their agreement to honor our copyrights.
It's not as though the US seriously harmed Antigua by banning online gambling.
You clearly didn't RTFA.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
As I figure, there are enough lobbyists that something will happen here. So who's lobbies are larger, the US gambling industry, or the US media industry? Or will they join forces rattling sabers and try force? This will turn out to be an interesting piece of politics.
The Slashdotter was Sloppy.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
They are saying "repeal this law we don't like, or else we'll inflict as much damage as we possibly can on your economy". That's bad. If they want to play that game, we need to respond in kind.
The US already responded in kind. The US is blocking Antigua businesses from exporting to the US, so Antigua (by the treaty the US signed), is lawful in ignoring US law on Antigua soil. The only one trying to force anything on anyone else is the US.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm too tired and drunk to remember or look up where I read this, but;
the US didn't recognize other country's IP until it became one of the countries that could profit from IP. IP isn't some universal law inherent to humanity, it's a social construct that's good for "advanced" countries. When the US didn't fit that category, they were happy to use Europe's inventions with no compensation.
Now, I'm not saying that IP is totally bad or useless, but there's no moral or legal reason why Antigua shouldn't go this route.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
Right now the members of Congress could not agree that the earth is round, the sky is blue, and the sun is the center of the solar system.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I didn't know Antigua was in the US Supreme Court's jurisdiction. What a small world.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
They wouldn't have to leave the WTO, just remove yourself from the treaty then sign and ratify it again with a signing statement that negates the problem.
The problem is that the US is not government by one federal government. The states have sovereign authority in these matters and the US federal government has no power to act over top of them. Simply put, a signing statement to this effect should have been there to begin with. Someone obviously didn't understand the consequences, the WTO court doesn't understand the US political jurisdiction, so it simply needs fixed.
The GDP of las vegas.. Is almost 100 billion a year. (http://www.mybudget360.com/gambling-economy-nevada-casinos-state-budget-revenues/ )
So yes. They could MORE THAN double their GDP by allowing americans to gamble there. Much more. Potentially several hundred % more.
And thats just one city that allows gambling. The US has a couple of those.
Antigua got the shaft. And the WTO noticed and agreed.
Gambling is a $133 billion dollar industry, according to IBIS. Most of it concentrated in North America. I wouldn't be surprised the law is causing some sort of economic effect. I could see online companies using Antigua for a tax haven if the law didn't exist. It not hard to picture.
IANA's administration isn't limited to the USA. It handles IP assignment for all of the regional registries world wide. Granted its enforcement mechanism is limited to "we all agreed to play nice so lets do that" but if a deallocation by IANA/ARIN was picked up by enough networks it would make finding Antigua from any place in the world quite difficult especially if the networks carrying traffic [b]to[/b] Antigua drop it from their routing tables. Such a scenario is extremely unlikely though; Antigua has had this option on the table for years and haven't acted on it out of fear of reprisal.
who lobbied for it? antiguan governments and corporations(gambling corps).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The political structure inside the US isn't the WTO's problem. The WTO only deals with the US government. If the US federal government wasn't capable of enforcing its own adherence to the treaty it shouldn't have signed it in the first place.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Aren't treaties the law of the land? They are equal to the Constitution, so far as coverage of the states is concerned. Functionally, they are amendments to the Constitution. Thus, they are not subject to the internal fighting you assert. They were deliberately set up that way to get around the dilemma you assert.
Learn to love Alaska
Alas, Antigua is a nobody little country that we can fucking crush just like we crushed Cuba. So there goes your risible little fantasy.
Remind me again why you colonials had your little rebellion.
A bunch of foreign bankers have decided that they don't like that law, and so they are overruling it.
No, they are just not following it... but why would they? It only applies to US citizens.
Not exactly. He was a person interpreting Torah and with a definite Jewish origin. Not to call him a Jew means to have a rather crazy interpretation of what a Jew means.
what actually should have followed was trade embargo on usa.
however, usa can't embargo antigua over this. without risking wto falling apart totally.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"Not if he believes in himself as the son of god as that would convert him to a christian wouldn't it?"
He did not. He was _voted_ son of god 300 years after his death, he was a simple prophet until that.
The republicans of those days prevented many of the opponents of that vote to reach the poll.
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land"
Between some idiot on the Internet, and the Constitution, I'll trust the Constitution. Treaties are the Supreme Law of the Land. A treaty must be approved by a super-majority of the Senate, and, as the Senate represents the states themselves, not the people in those states, is binding on the states which the Senators represent. The Founding Fathers were smarter than you. Treaties require the support of the same proportion of state representation as an Amendment. It is, functionally, an Amendment to the Constitution.
Learn to love Alaska
It doesn't matter that the US's internal laws trump its treaty obligations as far as the US is concerned.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned that's the US's problem and it's up to them to deal with it.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the US agreed to be bound by WTO agreements. It's violating those agreements and so, as a result, the financial harm that Antigua is suffering is to be compensated by allowing Antigua to violate some of the other conditions Antigua agreed to as part of the WTO.
The US can opt out of the WTO, nobody can stop them, but then Antigua doesn't need to get the WTO agreement to sell US copyrights because the WTO will no longer care about it. The US won't be in violation of WTO agreements because it's not part of the WTO treaty. Antigua won't be violating WTO agreements because the US is not part of the WTO.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Lol, you seem convinced that by signing a treaty we signed away our rights to legislate within our borders. We didn't, I promise you.
Of course you didn't. What you did sign away was the right, except in certain restricted conditions, to treat foreign companies differently to domestic ones.
You can ban gambling, you can ban alcohol, hell, you can ban guns if you want to, the rest of the world thinks you ought to.
What you can't do is say "only American companies can sell guns to Americans"
Do countries try to push the boundaries, you bet, there are and have been numerous complaints to the WTO about the way China restricts foreign access to its internal markets. But China at least has the nonce to make it a borderline difficult case to prove.
The US is engaged in blatant protectionism - and the WTO doesn't allow protectionism.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Why shouldn't they? It is a logical progression and just because you do not want to gamble online does not mean that there is not a market for it. They have a right to fill that market. As for allowing the people to download, why not? It is also a logical progression into a market that for some strange reason the people that should be running it have chosen to run down. I cannot understand why more countries do not allow their people more freedom. You talk about greed but you are selective in where you see it. Things that should have quite reasonably have gone out of copyright have, through lobbies in the US government, been kept copyright and you see that as OK and see anyone that sees differently as bad... You are narrow minded. It is only through US corruption that the concept of "piracy" has been created. That corruption should end.
Yeah, I know you will start with all the claptrap about poor starving artists but they are not the ones that benefit from the twisted market that the new guilds have created. Just like the guilds of the middle ages, the concept of "intellectual property" will fail.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
The Queen of Denmark walks to the shops to buy flowers most days and if you ask her security gut why, he says "Why not?"
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Arghhh ... matey!
Unless the pirate in question is dying (and trying to scrawl a message on a cave), it's just "Arr."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's interesting that the WTO set the limit on how much profit they can make, not how much they can cost the US in lost sales. Antigua could set up a BitTorrent based all-you-can-download service for say $1/year, with an profit level of say 4%, and make up their $21m in profit by getting 500m subscribers.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The US war of independence was fought over Corporate taxes. The big multinational corporations didn't want to pay taxes so they had a war.
Because people with less to lose than to gain wanted to throw off the yoke of their own oppressive government, and create from scratch a more perfect union. It's in the Declaration of Independence for a more thorough refresher.
You seem to think this is a David vs goliath scenario with obvious parallels. Given military funding, it is so much more unbalanced than the revolution was, so crushing is entirely possible.
Yet the other nations in the world would really freak out if we fought Antigua over $21 million that we could have prevented, so there is no gain in starting something. Antigua would have to start it, and they won't. So your reference is completely nonsensical.