U.S. Puts 12 Nations On Watch For Piracy 429
ColinPL writes with a link to an AP article about a public scolding the US has given China, Russia, and several other nations. Failure to 'sufficiently protect' American copyrights is the cause of the Bush administration's ire, and has resulted in these countries showing up on a 'priority watch list' that could eventually lead to economic sanctions. "In addition to Russia and China, the 10 countries placed on the priority watch list were Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India,
Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela. In elevating Thailand to the priority watch list, the administration said it was concerned by a range of issues including a 'deteriorating protection for patents and copyrights.' Thailand is currently in a dispute with international drug companies including Abbott Laboratories of the United States over the cost of drugs to fight AIDS and other diseases. The Thai government in January issued compulsory licenses allowing the use of much cheaper generic versions of two leading drugs in Thailand."
That told them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That told them! (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
USA (Score:5, Insightful)
You have your own part of the world. Please stay within it's boundaries and spend the saved time READING Wikipedia's article on law. You DO NOT and SHALL NOT ever control other nations laws. You cannot even abide by the very laws you were founded on these days, so why do you expect others to do the same?
Lots of love
Rest of the world.
I wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
What? No Canada? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That told them! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blatant Piracy should be stopped (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless the mafiaa is willing to sell movies and CDs for dirt cheap they should expect piracy. let's see, I make about 70K and am willing to spend 25$ on a movie [if it's really good, otherwise I hover around $10]. These people make $7-10K so how about charge them $3 for the same movie. No? Ok, expect piracy.
And frankly if you stake your financial security on nations where the average income is $200 a month, chances are you should rethink your business plan.
Tom
Thailand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those bastards!
Israel (Score:3, Insightful)
Bush Logic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let's be honest (Score:3, Insightful)
This is very true - however, the Bush administration is notable in their "every other country must do what we say" attitude. Even for the US, their arrogance is astounding. Most past administrations have been rather less willing to spend what little diplomatic advantages they have on matters like this.
I cannot imagine why they think that issuing public orders to China is going to get them anything other than a lot of very pissed off Chinese. This little stunt has probably ensured that China will not be doing anything about copyright complaints from US corporations, just so that the Chinese leaders can show they don't take orders from the US.
Re:That told them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let's be honest (Score:1, Insightful)
And they will car bomb the crap out of us. Works both ways.
I think they forgot sometihng... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blatant Piracy should be stopped (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:USA (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the only law that ever worked: everybody can take a shot.
If USA has mechanisms to pressure other countries, it'll do so. If it has ability to avoid its own laws, it'll do so. It took a shot and succeeded.
Laws are only as strong as the mechanisms built to withstand them. Interests and power always will achieve more.
Yep, sanctions more than likely will not work (Score:4, Insightful)
What is interesting to me is the fact that the whole world (more or less) thinks your products are so pricey that copyright infringement is a better option.
And this little DRM thingy doesn't seem to be working out too well at the moment. Despite the **AAs opinion that DRM is the only way to protect their business product (which is distribution) the entire world (more or less) is telling them that their product is too expensive.
I'd be willing to be that counts as the world talking with one voice? s
Re:Let's be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Bombing the crap out of people always ends up with them doing the best they can to bomb the crap out of you and it's noticeable that all the worldwide military might of the US still hasn't defeated terrorism.
Re:Let's be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
That's odd, because I could have sworn Iraq was a foreign nation with its own sovreign government until a few years ago.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed this absurdity last week when I had to download a pirated version of a CD I had just bought so that I could actually play it in my car.
Utterly absurd and needless to say, the next album I want I will downloading (via illegal sources of course, those legal sources are the worst of all).
Wow - gross generalization AND wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow - now that's a gross over-generalization, and only part of the first sentence is even close to right here...
Going back to front (sort of):
"Nowadays there is no compelling reason to buy things from the copyright holders other than maybe feeling guilty or an affinity for tangible copies."
To meet one gross over-generalization with another, you mean besides keeping the copyright holders in business so that they can continue to produce content? There's a basic economic reality you're missing here - producing any product or content takes time and resources, and to continue to do that requires that money is made to pay for the time and resources.
(And, before somebody bites my head off, yes, I know the internet is a cheap means of distribution, and yes, I know the RIAA treats its content creators horribly - I'm talking in the broadest of strokes here. When it comes down to it, any content creator needs to at least eat.)
But, you know what, you're right - we don't need that pesky literature, movies, and music anyway. If shadow puppets were good enough for our ancestors, they're good enough for us!
"ESPECIALLY since the pirated versions often are much better than the retail versions in functionality and portability."
Um, no, not really. Windows Vista is DRM-happy to the point of stupidity, and the RIAA has done everything it can to drive music fans into the hands of file-sharers, but that doesn't mean that the greater utility lies in files on a computer. Actually, in most cases a physical media tends to have better functionality and portability.
Take movies for example - I can go visit my parents in another city and bring a couple of movies along, and the DVDs are quite light, easy to carry, and all I have to do is put them into any DVD player in North America to have them work. No file copying, no waiting for a download to finish, no taking up space on my hard disk - everything is just on the DVD. When it comes to the DRM stupidity we have been seeing, we have to remember that it's the DRM causing the problems, not the physical format itself.
"If anyone realizes that having an economy that is increasingly dependent on "intellectual property" is a bad thing."
This is the one place where you are at least partially correct. But you shouldn't be saying "intellectual property" here - you should be saying "service-based," because that is what is really there. The United States used to have some of the greatest manufacturing power in the world, and now it seems it actually produces very little. But that's a more complicated argument, and not really relevant to this discussion.
Re:Let's be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is, speaking as a European, nobody outside the US gives a damn about US laws. In fact, we find attempts like this to assert themselves legally, to be rather lame and sad. It's just hot air and rhetoric for the voters back home I guess
Anyway, in the highly improbable event that any of these countries paid any attention the the US on piracy and actually stopped it, there's still be many other countries to which pirates could easily and successfully move to. There's also plenty of piracy from within US borders too.
The only way to beat piracy is to include fair use in copyright - assuming copyright needs to exist at all.
The *IAA needs to develop new business models or simply die - those are the only two choices available.
Re:We must protect our only exports! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow - gross generalization AND wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
As long as there is money to be made , the Paris Hiltons and Britney's of the world will continue to produce "content". If they would stop, good riddance.
There was "content producers" long before there were copyrights (think cave men) and I predict there will be "content producers" long after copyrights are void.
Giving Disney Corporation 100+ years of copyright is not necessary for Disney Corporation to produce new content. The only effect is increased profits for Disney Corporation. That is to some the desired effect, but it is easy to envision Disney Corporation would producte more new content if that was the only way to increase profits.
So to conclude: If our goal is to keep content being produced, we should reward the production of *new* content and not rewarding having lots of old content.
Re:USA (Score:3, Insightful)
Nowhere in that constitution does it state the congress has the right to restrict the freedom of citizens of other countries the same way.
That would be similar to Iran demanding that women in the US should wear burkas.
Re:Let's be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
no increase observed in the part the US cares about - the US.
Re:That told them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow - gross generalization AND wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. In my business (writing), most often the copyright holder is the content creator. And there are plenty of patents that are held by the people who created the invention.
2. Before copyright law, there were wealthy patrons. Copyright law serves an important purpose in a free market economy. This is verbatim from another of my posts today:
"Modern copyright serves a number of purposes, a few of which are absolutely vital to content creation (although a lot of people don't understand what copyright is, and would argue against this). In a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants summary (using book terms, since those are what I know best), they are:
"1. Defining the relationship between the author and the publisher.
"2. Defining the relationship between the holder of the publication rights (which are a subset of copyright) and the reader.
"Of these two, the first is by far the most important, and the one that gets the least amount of press. What it basically provides is a legal framework that allows an author like myself to submit a manuscript to a publisher without having to worry about that publisher taking my manuscript, attaching another name to it, and publishing it behind my back. It also keeps me from worrying about some other publisher getting their hands on a copy of my book and publishing it. So, I can create and deal with publishers in a way that doesn't shaft me. Without this protection, any content creator is likely screwed over the moment they show it to anybody.
"(This was an issue less than 50 years ago in the United States - J.R.R. Tolkien had to make a major revision to the Lord of the Rings in order to regain his copyright in the United States after a pirate edition was published by a major publisher.)"
Re:Let's be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
If bin Laden's goal is to, by terrorist attacks, cause material damage to the USA, he doesn't have to attack us. The USA has an autoimmune disorder of the first degree -- we're doing more damage to ourselves than bin Laden could ever dream of doing.
Re:That told them! (Score:4, Insightful)
At the same time, China has numerous other buyers. Europe, Australia, other countries in Asia, including S. Korea and Japan. Japan and Korea still make their own electronics, but a lot of their other goods are manufactured in China. I believe even their car companies have plants there...
Re:That told them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Piracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let's be honest (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That told them! (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as an example, you can walk into any major bus station in Israel and find a store that sells exclusively copied CDs and DVDs. It will take the police months to close them down, and take their inventory away, but in that time they've made so much money they can afford to lose their inventory, and they just re-open after a waiting periode.
It is worse in Egypt (where I've visited) as the police there don't even make the token attempt at closing them.
I'm told by friends that it is SIGNIFICANTLY worse in places like China or Thailand. The proof one friend offered was a box of hundreds of CDs and Data DVDs that he bought for less than $10, not knowing what specifically was on the disks. There was a lot of usless crap on them, but a lot of cool stuff too. All in English, all obviously pirated.
Anyway, I'm going to assume that the UK is closer to Canada than the middle-or-far East in terms of it's level of piracy.
Re:Facts - MAFIAA skews Dem big-time (Score:3, Insightful)
So basically, what you are saying is that Republicans are cheaper to bribe? </facetious>
Quit trying to make this a "my team is better than yours" issue. Halivar was saying that both Republicans and Democrats are corrupt, and he was right.
You're just paraphrasing "I know I'll get modded down for this but...", except doing it in an insulting manner. You know, you could have posted the same information without the insults, so why do it?
Re:Wow - gross generalization AND wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no problem with a service based economy. Most of the world is changing from a production based to a service based one, and most people are happy with that.
The problem is when you want to sell the same, easily replicated product by a large margin and expect everybody to be nice and buy it from you.
Re:That told them! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That told them! (Score:4, Insightful)
adjust for inflation.
Re:Let's be honest (Score:1, Insightful)
Tell me - when Clinton launched missiles into Baghdad, what was the reason? Was it that the cease fire was being violated? Did that note move the U.S. into a state of war with Iraq?
Re:Let's be honest (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That told them! (Score:3, Insightful)
the US also makes an effort to hunt suppliers (the pirates or the hosts of the supplied goods). If the US started fining everyone they caught pirating anything, they might be able to put a curb on it, but just like drugs and prostitution, if they go after the supply and not the demand, it won't have much long term effect. As much as I hate to say it and as much as I loathe the RIAA and MPAA for cracking down on file sharers (and other reasons - esp. the RIAA), doing so probably curbs more illegal file sharing than shutting down file sharing sites.
I know a guy that got busted by the FBI for piracy (well, technically for operating a pirate BBS) and that put some serious fear in me and curbed my piracy, even though it probably shouldn't have - I was a peon in the whole scheme of things and I learned years later that the FBI botched the arrest, botched collecting evidence, and failed to identify or arrest any other key member. I think he got off with confiscated hardware and community service. Still, even with minimal punishment, fear is a powerful tool - probably better at enforcing the law than actually arresting people breaking those laws.