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.

Comments

Could be a big boon to the world

[skywire]

if Google would slip them all those books.

Re:Time to shut down the WTO

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Time to shut down the WTO

[dnavid]

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.

Re:Public domain

[NoMaster]

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.

Very true. And not just foreign interests either. Look at the history of the American film industry who, in the space of ~2 years, moved en mass from New York & New Jersey to Hollywood, at least partially to get as far away as possible from Edison and the heavies he sent out to threaten filmmakers & 'confiscate' cameras - all in the name of patents & intellectual property.

Re:Time to shut down the WTO

[locofungus]

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.