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.'"
Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:5, Insightful)
Great (Score:1, Insightful)
"Train" (Score:4, Insightful)
would train foreign judges
Yeah, all those years of school and working as lawyers in the field couldn't prepare them enough.
Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not?? We westerners have always done this kind of thing to Asia! I want my government to promote our monopolies abroad. I offer you five words: British East India Tea Company.
Re:Its cold here in hell (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the worst possible solution -- being speechless I mean.
Re:When questioned about this plan... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:3, Insightful)
They could at least wait a year or two.
Personally, I'm developing reflex against US citizens (non-intentionaly against people, I know it should be politics only), there's more and more medling to other coutry affairs and last years it is evolving from noticeable to annoying.
Join the EFF now! (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)
E2ST
Re:How to control the world (Score:5, Insightful)
It is exactly these kind of arrogant things that form a magnet for negativity...
Over Paid, Over Sexed, Over Here!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Way to Legislate Special Interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to legislate special interest!
What fuck-asses. I cant wait to see the nepharious two-fisted bullshit these content-holder hitmen are going to try to pull on the rest of the world. Once you get past the sickening reality, it should be downright fucking hilarious. They wont exactly have all that much leverage, they're just some random joe show shows up claiming to be defending some other nations interests. Surreee, we'll listen to you.
The US remains the only place in the world where law enforcement considers 100% enforcement their duty. Less barberic civilization seems to have realized that the purpose of laws is for the general goodwill and fortune of the populous, and laws should be enforced or not enforced as such. Its called humanity you nincompoops.
Its kind of scary to think nations might willingly forfeit the sovereignty of letting someone else come in and demand that they start enforcing their laws better. There's cases of defunct government where such aid is needed, but its pathetic that hte only place the US is going to start leveraging such direct extra-national influence is to the cock-sucking lobbyists that've completely monopolized the entertainment sector. Its even more terrifying to think that any self respecting international body would let agents of a single nation impose this policy.
Little more ire than usual, but whatever. "Sometimes you know, I get so pissed off,"
Myren
Myren
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, now that we've captured Bin Laden, resolved all of the problems from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, finally got out of Iraq and solved our crime and unemployment problems locally, I'm glad to see that our country is putting our over abundance of tax dollars to good use!
[sarcasm]
Re:That's it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:5, Insightful)
A trade relationship only exists (ideally) when both sides benefit. If you think the US is selling products to China, or anywhere else, simply out of the good of their collective hearts, you are sorely mistaken. For every article that leaves a US port, a certain amount of foreign money flows into the US economy. Disrupt this state of events at your own risk.
Re:"Train" (Score:2, Insightful)
The standards of American legal knowledge inherent in our court system are not shared worldwide.
And why should they be? Should every country accept US-centric law as The Way?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Western Civilization.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Radicalism (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't observe anyone's intellectual property (the shortening of my constitutional rights (I'm Non-USA before someone cites the USA's constitution for me)), period. I would like to encourage others to protect their own rights too.
The best thing that could have been done to the patent system is to scrap the whole thing. Those who created it didn't go past modern economy 101, because, well, it was created 200-300 years ago (in a much more applicable form than it is in today, if i may add).
It's one thing that the intellectual property system reduces my right for freedom of speech (why can't i "say" data sequences on the net?), but it is also bad for the economy. It is a forced, artificial restriction much like prohibition was. Society can be interpreted as a continuation of evolution on some level. This means, that societies which made murder a "crime", survived better, for example. As a general rule of thumb, while respecting a few basic things, the less restrictive a society is, the better. Creating artificial restrictions is making a society function less optimal. Applying restrictions on computers, which eventually boil down to mathematics are:
a.) Not precise. (I demand to know the sequence of those base two numbers which you hold the copyright/patent on. If you can't reproduce those numbers, your copyright doesn't stand.)
b.) Because of a.), defining a copyrighted work is ambigous. Since what we define those copyrights on are very precise, creating a relation between the two sets are almost impossible. (Could you point me to the database where i can look up a copyrighted set of base two numbers, please, so that i can verify that i can make sure i don't infringe upon someone's copyright?)
Apart from these natural necessities, even if i were to accept the unfair artificial restriction placed upon me by society, i flatly refuse to accept to believe in the pack of _lies_ copyright and patent holders spread in order to protect their own selfish interests against society as a whole.
The dreaded day when someone copyrighted a mathematical expression happened decades ago, when someone decided that people should pay someone for copying specific binary bits apart from the ISP. There is a huge difference between paying for someone to create the knowledge about a sequence of specific bits (writing source code, translating that into binary executable) and for paying someone for the reversal of the artificial restriction of being denied the right to copy already known binary bits from one storage to another.
The paying for copying part is gravely vague too. What constitutes as copying? Installing an operating system is surely copying? Am i not allowed to copy then or not?
Modern communications require freedom of information. On communications i mean digital communication which is starting to gain strength lately, and will hopefully cleanse the world of this medieval copyright nonsense.
Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:2, Insightful)
Then shouldn't we have won by now?
Re:Its cold here in hell (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know that it would be necessarily better living in another country, but man, I think it all the same... It reminds me of that Far Side comic where the two guys are fishing and there's a mushroom cloud in the distance. One of them says to the other "I'll tell you what this means, Norm, no size restrictions and screw the limit!"
Re:"Train" (Score:5, Insightful)
For the record, law school trains you very, very little to actually be an attorney, and not at all to be a judge. Lawyering skills are almost entirely acquired on the job. When attorneys and judges "grow up" professional in a corrupt legal system, all the training in the world isn't going to convince them to enforce law consistantly. "
Do you have ANYTHING to back this up apart from your gut feeling? While you could certainly mention quite a lot of nations whom quite possibly have worse laws in some ways than the USA, let me raise two objections:
1. The laws and the system of law is different in a lot of countries than in the USA. DIFFERENT, not worse. I would think it is highly probable, that a judge knows his/her country's laws better than 99% of judges from an another country.
2. The Northern European democracies also belong into the many other countries, and i would think that being the most stable democracies in the world, if anybody, they could lecture about what it means to practice law.
"By international standards, American courts are a model of principle and fairness, as amazing as that may seem."
Forgive me my gut feeling, but i somehow very much doubt that in the light of recent court decisions in the USA like when some judges said it's OK for the government to detain people for crimes which didn't stand up to a trial for an indefinate amount of time.
That's actually an issue with the Supremes (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an issue with the Supremes - and the appointment and confirmation process - right now.
Some of the "Consititution is a Living Document" crowd - who want to bend the protections into any convenient shape so they can be conveniently ignored - DO want the Supremes to "consider foreign law" when they make their decisions.
The problem is: that's ILLEGAL. The US government has ONLY the power granted it by the Constitution, and the whole POINT of the Supreme Court (in the current operation of the country) is to hold it to those limits. All US law derives from the Constitution. Giving foreign law ANY input into the decision-making at the judicial level risks breaking the single defense of citizens' rights (short of violent anti-government action.) Then you get to knuckle under or fight a war, probably lose, and end up broke and exhausted even if you DO win.
Foreign law properly gets incorporated through legislation to fulfill treaty obligations. Then the judiciary determines whether the chosen implementation is within the government's limits and sends it back for a rehack if not. Citizens and lawyers only have to deal with the law of the US.
In the absense of adherence to that set of limits the President can do anything he pleases and the Congress can pass any law they can get the President to enforce. Tyranny with a capital-T.
The Supreme Court puts the brakes on that by knocking down laws, regulations, and executive excesses when they exceed the constitutional bounds. (It keeps working over a significant time because the main source of their power is knocking down improper laws - and being seen as reasonably consistent and true to the meaning of the constitution when doing so.)
But recently a supreme court justice mentioned foreign law in a decision - in a way that makes it appear that it influenced that decision. Now whether new appointees are going to stick to the constitution or "legislate from the bench" by ad-libbing and/or giving foreign law some standing above portions of the Constitution itself is a big issue.
Re:"Train" (Score:3, Insightful)
* How to discreetly obtain brown paper bags full of cash from record companies.
* How one might use their position to obtain larger brown paper bags.
* How to use, ahem, "contributions" to improve your lifestyle without being detected.
* How to overcome areas such as "legislation" and "due process" to punish intellectual property violaters.
Re:When did USA become (Score:4, Insightful)
Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:
we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
If it sounds like a bunch of nutbars running the organisation, take a look at their founders and board of directors. I'm sure you'll find some familiar names.
Re:That's it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm. How can we gouge other countries? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Chinese gov't isn't willing to enforce the preservation of US intellectual property rights, then the US ought not have to export machinery and machine parts, integrated circuits, or soybeans to them -- oh wait -- that's much of the raw materials needed by their entire economy.
One BIG problem with that, China is the biggest financier of US dept. Try to squeeze China and all they have to do is refuse to buy any more US Teasury notes, then watch as interest rates rise to the stratosphere. Bush is already selling future generations into slavery, this would only make it worse.
FalconRe:This is ridiculous! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Western Civilization.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Importantly, most - actually probably all - civilizations have borrowed from each other, improved on culture, knowledge, etc etc and at some stage passed it back.
Anyway, as a first generation Westerner (there's another weird concept for ya), I prefer what I'm comfortable with. I'd prefer to improve Western society, with all its ills, than swap it for a cultural framework that in offers liberties where we have strictures and strictures where we have liberties, etc.
Re: GPL proves you wrong (Score:3, Insightful)