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

Wed, May 30th 2007 6:41am — Mike Masnick

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.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

8 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

GoblinJuice, 30 May 2007 @ 8:24am

Free Trade doesn't exist, yet.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 30 May 2007 @ 9:31am

i think the US is confusing FREE TRADE with TRADE FREE.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
reed, 30 May 2007 @ 1:32pm

What happens?
What happens in 50 years from now when India and China will be doing most of the inventing. Will we recognize all their IP? Sounds like IP laws could very well backfire on the US in the future if we continue to pursue free trade (Should be called monopoly trade lol).

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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 30 May 2007 @ 2:56pm

Re: What happens?
What happens in 50 years from now when India and China will be doing most of the inventing. Will we recognize all their IP?
The plan is for most of their IP to actually belong to US corporations through various licensing schemes. They do the work, US collects the money.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 30 May 2007 @ 3:00pm

Both Ways?
Will this agreement also allow South Korea to demand that the US shut internet sites down? If so, I imagine the Thai govt. would like to have one of these "agreements" with the US too.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
reed, 30 May 2007 @ 8:24pm

Re: Re: What happens?
"The plan is for most of their IP to actually belong to US corporations through various licensing schemes. They do the work, US collects the money."

Wow, that would be a sad commentary if it were to become true.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 May 2009 @ 4:14pm

what's with the people putting the stupid advertisements? Who cares about it. This is a completely different topic.

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''
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Oct 2010 @ 5:12am

Re: Re: What happens?
If they are not wiped out by the competition which is very unlikely since American corporations don't know how to compete.
[ link to this | view in thread ]