WTO Approves Suspension of US Copyright in Antigua 225
hydrofix writes "On Thursday TorrentFreak broke the story (verified by BBC) that the government of Antigua and Barbuda, a tiny island nation on the Caribbean, was planning to launch a legal 'pirate' website selling movies, music and software without paying a penny to U.S. copyright holders. Now, the World Trade Organization has given its final approval for the Antigua government to launch the website. The decision follows from long-running trade dispute between the countries, related to online gambling, which was ruled in Antigua's favor in 2005. After the United States refused to compensate, the WTO granted Antigua the right to 'suspend' U.S. copyrights for up to $21 million annually."
From the article: "The Antiguan government further reiterated today that the term 'piracy' doesn’t apply in this situation, as they are fully authorized to suspend U.S. copyrights. It is a legal remedy that was approved by all WTO members, including the United States."
They Cannot Get Something of any Value? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They Cannot Get Something of any Value? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can they violate GPL for American written software?
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For products falling fully under US copyright like VirtualBox: sure. Same for GNU projects.
For a lot of other GPL software a large to a majority of the contributors are from Europe and retain their copyright, and those could sue.
I guess we have a wholly new reason to be against mandatory copyright assignment...
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No one will play this game. The only people looking to violate the GPL for profit are companies that want to resell the code as their own. They will not open the door to the "I bought this in Antigua, so it's mine to distribute as I please" defense due to the ruinous affect this would have when turned back upon them.
So, if you were worried that Windows 9 would be Gnome 3, rest assured, it won't be that good.
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I'm *so* glad I didn't read this with something in my mouth - I'd have sprayed it all over my monitor.
That's deeply ill....
mark, passing it along
Re:They Cannot Get Something of any Value? (Score:4, Informative)
What the hell? They had an opportunity to ask for something valuable and instead asked for all the crap put out by Hollywood? Why not just ask for a few beads on a string?
It's not a case of asking. They're taking what they are owed because the US is refusing to compensate them.
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The trouble here is that the U.S. is refusing to compensate them for money lost on gambling, but the money is lost because Americans can't really gamble online anymore: to the extent that they are able, the U.S. government has effectively banned internet gambling. While this is an incredibly stupid bit of policy -- taking loose money from websites run by American companies you can control and tax and shunting it all to websites run by people you can't tax who don't care about U.S. law -- it's basically an i
Define: "protectionism". (Score:3)
the U.S. government has effectively banned internet gambling...[snip]... it's basically an internal U.S. matter.
No, if the US banned online gambling outright there would not be a problem. The problem is they allow US companies to run gambling sites but will not allow companies from other nations to compete under the same laws (such as paying tax). The other member countries are also obliged to allow US companies to offer gambling in their country under the same regulatory regime as their local companies.
Disadvantaging overseas competition is called "protectionism", it gives domestic companies an "unfair" advantage
Re:They Cannot Get Something of any Value? (Score:5, Insightful)
They had an opportunity to ask for something valuable and instead asked for all the crap put out by Hollywood?
It is actually quite smart. Their goal is to apply pressure on American politicians to abide by trade rules. Hollywood is very politically connected. The studios are big political donors, and they already have lots of lobbyists on K Street. If Hollywood squeals, Washington listens.
RIAA maths (Score:5, Funny)
A limit of $21 million per year? What's that 3, 3 1/2 songs? Best get in there quick if you want to buy this year!
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Well since the companies will charge you the same for a replacement copy as for something new, I guess the value of the copyright itself is about 0. So that's an infinite number of copies.
Re:RIAA maths (Score:5, Interesting)
This could be potentially very exciting in terms of orphaned works and works that are in danger of vanishing. That little nation could become the centre of the world's first truly global data archive.
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$500? You wish!
Copyright statutory damages are in the range of $750 to $30,000 per work (not per infringement), with the lower limit reducible with great difficulty to $200, and the upper limit increasible quite easily to $150,000.
Re:RIAA maths == Hollywood Accounting (Score:4, Funny)
Under Hollywood Accounting rules, this is perfectly acceptable. The US should not complain.
Until the store eventually turns a profit, that $21 Million that Antigua is owed cannot be repaid.
I hope those "fees" won't get too high. I mean, it could take Billions and Billions of dollars in sales in order to eventually turn $21 Million in profit.
Heck, the Star Wars movies from the 1970's still are not profitable!. So poor Antigua may never get the $21 Million that the WTO says it is owed.
How does this affect copyleft? (Score:4, Interesting)
The GPL and friends rely on copyright to function correctly. Can I get someone in Antigua to send me a copy of Linux (or whatever) unencumbered by the GPL for me to start a proprietary fork?
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Re:How does this affect copyleft? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ruling doesn't suspend everyone's obligations with regard to the copyrights involved, just Antigua's - while the copy sent to you may be unencmbered by a license, that doesn't mean you gain any rights to redistribution.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Unless they are Antiguan...
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Isn't that the focus of a current case before the SCOTUS? A guy was buying books overseas and reselling them here. The general feeling was that SCOTUS was going to side on the 'first sale' side of the debate (ie, the reseller).
With that being the case, I don't see how Antiqua wouldn't be able to reproduce a book, sell it, and have it be a legal copy regardless of where it was transported later.
Re:How does this affect copyleft? (Score:4, Informative)
Can I get someone in Antigua to send me a copy of Linux (or whatever) unencumbered by the GPL for me to start a proprietary fork?
Unlikely. Linux has contributions from around the world, and the copyright on those certainly has not been suspended.
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Given the nature of the modern global conglomerate, this may already be the case. Once you bother to look at the situation, you may find that there are fewer American parent companies to take advantage of here.
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Linux isn't American. The WTO didn't rule you could override the copyrights of non-Americans, and at least one major copyright holder is Finnish. At least one other is Welsh.
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and at least one major copyright holder is Finnish.
Not anymore. Linus became an American citizen in 2010.
Karma is a.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what happens when you try to strong arm countries and, then, when the ruling goes against you, you ignore it.
B&A is going to make $21 million really fast. The question is who sets the prices....
Re:Karma is a.... (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the summary even mentions the US, as part of the WTO, approved the ruling.
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Note that the summary even mentions the US, as part of the WTO, approved the ruling.
Wrong. The summary says that the US approved an agreement that allows rulings like this under certain circumstances.
The US no more approved this ruling than the Senator from Arizona approved immigration reform -- which they just did contingent on securing the southern border. In neither case will they ever agree that the agreed-to condition has ever been satisfied.
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Re:How long before the USA decides to __ Antigua? (Score:2)
I'll reply to you since you're one of the first Non-AC posters to say this.
I agree they'll let this article sit a week so everyone can make their nice "clickbait ad revenue", then the reply/result will come which will pulverize this whole story into the ground. There is *no way* a cute little country-lette like Antigua can create themselves Napster 3.0. US is gonna pick their figurative dignity up and throw it in a dumpster.
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Bully tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bully tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
I think its also a cautionary tale about these world governing bodies and making treaties. Our earliest founders warned us about getting into international entanglements. This is clear example of how these things don't always come out as planned. We might be strong arming China one week, but might have some rulings like these go against our interests another, and it makes us look like real ass hats when we try and argue these international bodies should be abide by one moment and than ignore them the next.
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Hahahaha!
I don't think you know much about Adams, Washington, or Jefferson. Just like the politicians of today, they had lots of pretty speeches promoting freedom, democracy, freedom from foreign entanglements, and everything else good and great, but what they actually did was far, far from that. And man, you t
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Well, I've read a few books and I know those guys would get their hands dirty, same as always. I don't subscribe to the ancestor worship that makes the founders (small "f") of the republic out to be saints. But if you look at the results of what they did, I think the word "integrity" still fits.
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I don't want to give them no credit, but it was certainly near-miraculous the US survived and ended up as well-off as we did in many ways in spite of them.
Things like the Alien and Sedition Acts, imprisoning your media critics, pretty much everything involving Native Americans, and so on and so forth, had very little to do with integrity.
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I, for one, expect more integrity from a government formed by the likes of John Adams, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. It appears I'm in the minority, and realpolitik is the order of the day.
You mean the slave owners that thought that only white male landowners should be able to vote?
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Bully tactic blowback sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
I think its also a cautionary tale about these world governing bodies and making treaties. Our earliest founders warned us about getting into international entanglements. This is clear example of how these things don't always come out as planned. We might be strong arming China one week, but might have some rulings like these go against our interests another, and it makes us look like real ass hats when we try and argue these international bodies should be abide by one moment and than ignore them the next.
Yeah, it sucks when you must follow rules you agreed to, especially hwne you intended to use thoe rules to strong-arm others.
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And that's kind of the problem, the US wants to have their cake and eat it too.
They insist on free trade, but then they want to be sure to have an advantage. They want keep their own farm subsidies, but penalize anybody else who does it. They want other countries to open up their markets
Re:Wait, What? (Score:5, Informative)
If I recall correctly, this was something to do with horse racing in Kentucky (or was that another case?) where the Kentucky state government was attempting to protect gambling revenue by barring online casinos. There was a bit about suspending their domain names as well, a lot of judicial overreach on that one.
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Except gambling is illegal in the US.
Or rather, the US is not some sort of Soviet style hegemony.
Saying that gambling is legal in the US is much like saying it's legal in Europe or Africa. People tend to forget that the "States" part of "The United States" actually are distinct political entities.
In some regards they are even more independent than the members of the EU (ironically enough).
If the feds tried to impose upon the States what Bonn wants to impose upon Spain or Greece, there would be another civil
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There are only three states in which gambling is illegal, iirc. And it's clearly interstate or international commerce, so congress could step in and legalize or ban it (or particular practices, games, etc) if it wanted to. It would not cause a civil war.
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Eh?
You are quite wrong in what you state.
First, Bonn hasn't been the seat of German federal government for over a decade. Second, Germany imposes nothing upon Spain or Greece, they just enumerate conditions for credits way below the market price. Both Spain and Greece are free to declare bankruptcy and leave the union. They most certainly don't want that.
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The point is, that the US has a de facto monopoly on international money transfers, since almost all sites need VISA and MasterCard as payment processors. The US has abused its power by going after e.g. Russian sites trading with European customers, by simply shutting them down at VISA and MasterCard. That's what's wrong with the system: the US has a stranglehold on the international money flow, even between countries that are not doing b
Sign me up! (Score:2)
$0.01/year for a subscription to a BitTorrent tracker with seeding from Antiguan servers. Might as well make that $27m go as far as possible.
WTO is Full of.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Btw I don't like copywright but this is just wrong
Re:WTO is Full of.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's absolutely how it should be.
The U.S wont respect the agreements, then Antigua doesn't have to either. Just like any other trade sanction being used around the world - you go for where it hurts to make the big guy play ball.
Re:WTO is Full of.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The WTO is not looking at is a one business though they are looking at as economies. Its not like they have an army to go pacify a nation state that is not following the rules it agreed to abide by. This type of action is the only way they have to apply pressure. It make perfect sense to me; piss off an industry with a powerful domestic lobby and hope they lean on their government to fix the situation and yesterday.
Personally I hope the outcome is that our government does a re-think on being part of the WTO in the first place; that would be the best outcome for us citizens. That naturally is a pipe dream. We should negotiate trade agreements individually on a nation by nation basis (there is only about 400 after all our government is already BIG enough to read everyone e-mail so that should not be an issue). As to places like Antigua doing things like this or China for that matter well we either consider infringement on what we feel is our property a serious enough matter that its an act of war or we don't. I would seriously hope the answer to that is we don't but its a democracy let the people decided not some international body.
Re:WTO is Full of.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We should negotiate trade agreements individually on a nation by nation basis (there is only about 400 after all our government is already BIG enough to read everyone e-mail so that should not be an issue).
You know what then will happen? All the other nations will form a common body for the sake of negotiations with the U.S., and the U.S. will be forced to sign the same treaty with everyone. You get the WTO again, but without the leverage of being a member.
Re:WTO is Full of.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope the outcome is that our government does a re-think on being part of the WTO in the first place
Careful for what you wish for; the outcomes might not be what you expect. For example, it would also mean that the rest of the world would feel no need at all to enforce copyrights held under US law, including on a lot of Free Software, or at least not until the negotiation of a whole new set of bipartite treaties.
I wonder whether it would be legal now (if not necessarily moral) for an Antiguan citizen to do derivative works of software where the copyright holder is the FSF and change the license to a different one (e.g., a BSD variant)...
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I wonder whether it would be legal now (if not necessarily moral) for an Antiguan citizen to do derivative works of software where the copyright holder is the FSF and change the license to a different one (e.g., a BSD variant)...
Sure, but so what? It would only be "valid" in Antigua. As soon as it's 'exported' (uploaded) back to the mainland it will still be recognized as blatant copyright infringement.
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A lot free software is written collaboratively. That means that the copyright is held not by one individual, but by multiple ones. And the thing about free software is that the individuals holding the copyright may not be in the U.S. Hence a violation of free software copyrights would be a potential violation of that other country's copyright laws.
Yes, they can pull the pieces of code written by U.S. contributors only and redistribute that. But to be honest, I don't think that's worth the effort. There are
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The WTO is not looking at is a one business though they are looking at as economies. Its not like they have an army to go pacify a nation state that is not following the rules it agreed to abide by.
Cue US military invasion of Antigua in 3 . . . 2 . . .
Re:WTO is Full of.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how it always works. Restricting it to the same business won't work because usually there isn't a significant "same business".
You put a tariff on importing their televisions, so they put a tariff on importing your wheat.
The WTO was supposed to put a stop to that, but of course the only real enforcement mechanism it has is that very thing. "Hey the rules say you can't do that. Since you won't stop we'll let the other guy do this other thing that is also supposed to be against the rules".
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Well the US government discriminated against one business in favor of another. I guess they can now tax the casinos some more and use that money to compensate the copyright holders.
Re:WTO is Full of.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, nobody forces you to sign those agreements. But if you want to get into the game, better play by the rules. So much for all the talk of free trade in the US.
Re:WTO is Full of.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So basically one business is being unfairly discriminated against by a government being protectionist. So the WTO says ok in that case you can rip off this completely separate business. WTF are they smoking?
This is nothing new. Google "chicken tax" – back in 1963, there was a trade war between the US and various European nations over tariffs they put on imported chicken. In retaliation, the US put a 25% tariff on several unrelated goods – including, most importantly, light trucks. Even though the original issues were resolved long ago, the 25% tariff on fully-assembled light trucks remains, which means that foreign manufacturers usually either build their truck plants inside the US or import the trucks in "complete knock down" form and assemble them in the US.
Anyway, remember that copyright is purely a legal construct – it's not part of customary international law, it's just a deal that the governments agreed to. If there were no treaties in the first place, Antigua would be perfectly within their rights to say that they would not have any copyright or patent laws at all.
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Even though the original issues were resolved long ago, the 25% tariff on fully-assembled light trucks remains, which means that foreign manufacturers usually either build their truck plants inside the US or import the trucks in "complete knock down" form and assemble them in the US.
Or import "passenger vehicles" that coincidentally look just like light trucks with some easily removable extra seats bolted on.
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Welcome to the world. Tit-for-tat trade taxes have been the default norm since well, forever. The thing is, you always target the other country's biggest export. For the US, it's culture (the technical definition - books, movies, music, etc., and not whether or not the US material is "cultured"). Basical
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WTO about nation-states, not businesses (Score:3)
Like pretty much all of international law (except the fairly narrow domain of international criminal law regarding war crimes and crimes against humanity as embodied in various ad hoc war crimes tribunals and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court), the entities at issue in the WTO are nati
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Btw I don't like copywright but this is just wrong
Complain to the US, they broke the rules first.
You see, this is how a legal and punishment system actually works. If I break your arm, the punishment will be a fine and/or jail time - neither of which have anything to do with broken arms. My wallet didn't do anything to you and neither did my bank account.
Same thing on the country level. The punishment is not identical to the crime. It's been like that in civilized societies ever since we grew old enough to realize that "an eye for an eye", even though it m
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
But seizing money would chase away future business. This way they can get their money from people that they don't care if they offend.
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
Except those casino operators are the very things they want to operate in their country. So seizing assets from them would likely cause more long term harm (by causing casino operators to move somewhere that doesn't have a history for seizing casino assets).
Domain seizures ahead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets see if they use a domain registrar that has US roots/ties and then the DHS will seize the domain name of the site(s).
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I honestly believe that if that occurs the US would lose the root DNS servers for good. Which is not a horrible thing IMO.
Re:Domain seizures ahead? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know that is tough one. Nobody can really force us to give up control of the root zones and the last time it was tried it was pretty unpopular.
I really doubt our government would be inclined to yield control over an incident like this. For lots of technical reasons you could not very will mix root servers in your hints; if those root servers have a different idea of truth. You would get instability and chaos.
If some international group or other country stand up its own root servers you will have chaos as well. Which DNS do you use? What domain registrations are valid where. What happens when I try to mail someone in another country does it go to the person I am expecting or someone else who happens to have the same domain on my DNS?
We'd have to go back to bang paths.
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I don't know who it hurts more but its certain everyone would suffer. The grandparent is not considering all the possible complexities. What about digital certificates for example. Who can get a certificate for Amazon.com? The owner of it in the USA DNS zone, the owner in the EU/Global DNS zone, only someone who controls it both? What if you can't get your name in the other zone for political reasons, or because someone already has it? Are you able to get a certificate from a CA anyone actually trusts
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nah, they'll use good ol fashioned drone strikes.
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The US has some Hurricanes [wikipedia.org]?
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The US doesn't have to "own" the hurricane.
They can just sit back and let nature do it's thing and then ignore Antigua afterwards.
Is it legal to buy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Whilst it may be legal for them to sell $21million worth of copyright content, is it legal to import that content, be it via download or otherwise?
This is the whole grey market import thing ...
As to "what makes up $21million", that depends on their sticker prices, not court payments.
They're allowed to sell $21million worth of material, so at $20/movie (for example), that's 1,000,000 movies.
Or at $2/song, that's ~10,000,000 iTunes tracks.
Presumably the MPAA/RIAA could garner up a few people and spend $21million "overnight", sacrificing 1 day of sales to mean that the other 364 days of the year would not be free of copyright. But that's tin foil hat stuff and requires that the long term gain be more than the short term loss and for the *AA to recognise that.
Re:Is it legal to buy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Import legality won't really be a big issue, because Antigua would be able to determine the import laws. The United States could limit exports, but the United States has already agreed to this plan on the WTO side, and the US has enough enemies that may be willing to act as intermediaries. For the paltry sum of $21 million/year, I doubt anyone will really be able to effectively stop this.
However, note that the $21 million isn't necessarily sales, but rather copyright license fees (or at least that's what I suspect, because none of TFAs are clear on the matter). If the normal fee to the MPAA/RIAA were ten cents per item, Antigua could sell 210 million copies annually. That's a pretty reasonable amount, and does exactly what it's supposed to do: boost Antigua's economy at the United States' expense.
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Presumably the MPAA/RIAA could garner up a few people and spend $21million "overnight", sacrificing 1 day of sales to mean that the other 364 days of the year would not be free of copyright. But that's tin foil hat stuff and requires that the long term gain be more than the short term loss and for the *AA to recognise that.
Or the MPAA/RIAA could just make a phone call, arrange for a wire transfer and be done with it without elaborate and expensive subterfuge. In the bigger picture, $21 million is insignificant.
$21 million annually (Score:2)
Is that calculated on the basis of MPAA dollars or some currency that is worth something? Like Australian dollars?
dupe (Score:2)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/01/24/2110217/responding-to-us-gambling-law-antigua-set-to-launch-pirate-site [slashdot.org]
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Not really, no. The old article [torrentfreak.com] was from the 24th, stating that this was probably going to happen, and the new one [torrentfreak.com] is from the 28th, stating that yes, this is actually going to happen as the WTO has approved it. There's a big difference between a small country saying they will take US copyrights at whim and the WTO saying they are allowed to.
Now introducing... (Score:2)
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Lets be honest (Score:3)
US approved the suspension? (Score:2)
Curiously, do we have a case of our arms fighting against our feet here? Seems if we are going to be anal about the first thing that started this whole mess, we'd also be anal about our punishment and fight it kicking and screaming.
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Oh, that makes more sense, then.
Out of print (Score:3, Interesting)
Come on Antigua (Score:3)
You have a long history of "piracy". Embrace it...
What Antigua SHOULD DO (Score:2)
They are limited to $21 million dollars. So what they should do is offer EVERY song and movie for streaming. And for a pretty basic annual fee (say $100/year or less). But in order to purchase the streaming agreement, you must come to Antigua to subscribe. No online sale..
So the idea is to increase tourism. Come to our little island, have a vacation, and get the world's cheapest streaming service. But only available for purchase IN Antigua.
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No. Never mind the streaming. Print physical copies of stuff. Then sell those with the rest of the trinkets all of those islands try to sell you.
Wives can go to the jewelry shops and husbands can go to the Antiguan version of Virgin Megastore.
Easy work-around (Score:4, Insightful)
Affected US companies just need to create foreign subsidiaries and then assign their copyrights over to those subsidiaries. Problem solved. Heck, some of these companies probably already hold their IP offshore.
Tell Dayton (Score:3)
Mark Dayton (Governor of MN) and Democrats in the State House are talking about extending State Sales Tax to i8nclude Digital Downloads.
I don't think they are going to get much revenue if people in MN just download the digital content from Antigua
Empire State building... (Score:2)
State sponsored Theft by Exemption. Legal worldwide!
Question: Does that make it an Empire?
Simple question (Score:2)
And I assume - just like Grenada - more medals will again be given out than were on D-Day.
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Unfortunately they misheard "suspend copyright" as "suspsend common sense" and thought it was a great idea.
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