U.S. Announces Global Intellectual Property Plan 292
Angry_Admin writes "ZDNet is running a story about how the U.S. has announced new plans to expand its crackdown on intellectual-property infringement overseas. From the article:'One program would place intellectual property experts on the ground in regions where infringement is considered a concern. There they would work with overseas U.S. businesses and native government officials to advocate improved intellectual-property rights protection, according to a department fact sheet. Another program, called the Global Intellectual Property Rights Academy, would train foreign judges, enforcement officials and other stakeholders in international intellectual property obligations and best practices.'"
How to control the world (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Train" (Score:3, Informative)
They have to be "retrained" to start taking money from the "right" people.
Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:2, Informative)
IP is a big American fantasy (Score:4, Informative)
And frankly, killing can be done, when needed, with the tried-and-true low-tech methods and the recycled entertainment product can all be easily copied by anyone with a $100 PC.
IP is what you use to try and convince people that you are still relevant in the world when you don't make anything anymore, your people are buffoons living on borrowed money from everyone, and you still have enough hydrogen bombs to make it awkward for anyone to point out the obvious fact that you are nowhere near as important as you were fifty years ago.
So all this effort to metamorphize a concept like 'intellectual property' into the legal equivalent of actual physical items that have intrinsic value is bound to fail internationally. In more ways than one, people just aren't going to buy it. They'll give you lots of lip service, sign your treaties, stay in expensive hotels for endless international conferences (as long as you pick up the tab), and then, just ignore whatever it was that you were getting so upset about.
The Americans thought they were so smart by trashing their industrial base, shipping all of their manufacturing jobs overseas, and laying off (or never hiring in the first place) all the people that comprised the only real asset that they ever had...smart people willing to come to termperate North America from all over the world in order to get away from the assholes that were making it impossible to make a good life in the old country. Now the Americans have fucked up their physical country, their economy, their good name, and their middle class.
So what's left? Intellectual Property! And just what exactly is that? One more illiterate, psychopathic 'rapper'? One more $100,000,000 buddy-cop movie?
Grow up, fools!
Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:3, Informative)
Because the US pays for those goods with US dollars. A rich guy in China can't spend US dollars on goods where he lives, so those dollars need to get sold. In the end those dollars need to make their way back to US because they can only really buy goods in the US. Normally the money gets back to the US when it is used to buy US goods, and that's how the global economy works. The problem is that if the US is spending more US dollars on imports than it is buying back via exports then there are a lot of excess US dollars floating around out there. What good are those extra US dollars exactly? Well they are good for buying US goods, but there are more dollars piling up than there is value of US goods to buy. This tends to cause depreciation of the US dollar on global markets: people are less keen to buy US dollars because, having already bought all the US goods they want, they really aren't worth anything. As the US dollar depreciates it costs more and more in US dollars to buy foreign goods. That, in turn, promotes inflation in the US. If it gets bad enough total chaos ensues and you end up like Argentina with rampant run away inflation and total economic meltdown.
There are of course, many other factors involved, and many reasons why such economic chaos is quite avoidable, but fundamentally you simply can't keep sending all your money to China via a trade deficit, it just won't work.
Jedidiah.
Ahhh, the irony... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is ridiculous! (Score:1, Informative)
"Look, W. I voted for you not once, but twice!"
You sir, are an idiot. And probably asshole too.
How the hell yould you do this? I mean even a donkey knows not to eat a thornbush if he still has thorns in his mouth from the last time...
British East India Tea Company (Score:5, Informative)
You can't enforce US law in china.
Why not?? We westerners have always done this kind of thing to Asia!
Another word needs to be added, opium. Because the British imported so much tea they had a serious trade deficit so to even out the imbalance they imported into China opium [oldnewspublishing.com], thus started the Opium Wars [harvard.edu]. The Chinese emperor tried to stop the opium and when he did the British sent in troops and they roundly defeated the Chinese and forced the emperor to allow opium. Therefore the saying that the queen was a drug dealer was correct. At the same tyme Britain also forced the lease of Hong Kong.
Falcon