South Korea's 'Free Trade' Agreement Looks To Restrict All Kinds Of P2P, User-Generated Content Sites As Well
from the not-all-free-trade-is-free-trade dept
Remember the "free trade" agreement the US and South Korea were signing that, rather than promoting free trade, seemed to promote intellectual monopolies by extending draconian intellectual property laws to South Korea? Over at Against Monopoly they're discussing some of the other clauses in the agreement that include a promise from South Korea that it will help shut down any internet site that permits the unauthorized reproduction, distribution or transmission of copyrighted works. It isn't too surprising that the US government would push for such a law, given its active involvement in trying to take down the websites of foreign companies like The Pirate Bay and AllofMP3.com. However, it does seem a bit ridiculous to suggest that South Korea needs to force any site that permits such things to shut down. The list of sites that permit the unauthorized reproduction, distribution and transmission of copyrighted works is quite long and includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and many others. In fact, the internet itself allows for the unauthorized reproduction, distribution and transmission of copyrighted works -- so perhaps we should just have the US government ask South Korea to turn off the internet. Unfortunately, as is noted at Against Monopoly, you can now expect to see similar clauses appear in lots of other "free trade" agreements that have little to do with free trade and everything to do with protecting American content businesses.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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What happens?
IP law is of course already obsolete in so many ways. If we choose to keep clinging to a broken idea it may very well spell the death of the United States ability to innovate in the future. The world is simply getting to big to give any one person or corporation ownership of something vague as an idea or concept.
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Re: What happens?
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Re: Re: What happens?
Wow, that would be a sad commentary if it were to become true.
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Both Ways?
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The user who said about the schemes is right. Everything is going towards such outcome. Sad but true. The idea is to ''force in'' countries in such ''deals''
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