New IP Watchlist Ranks Countries On How Well Their Copyright Laws Serve The Public
from the alternative-to-the-special-301 dept
We've written plenty about the absolutely ridiculous Special 301 Report put out each year by the USTR. It's a list that the US uses to name and shame countries that it considers "naughty" when it comes to not passing intellectual property laws that the US likes. Of course, there is no actual methodology behind the list. Basically, various industry groups (i.e., RIAA, MPAA, PHRMA etc.) send in their thoughts about which countries they don't like, and the USTR magically takes their complaints and produces the list. This leads to bizarre things like naming Canada one of the worst of the worst, despite having stricter copyright laws than the US already.Consumers International has decided that there's no reason that the USTR gets to have all the fun, so it's been releasing its own IP Watchlist ranking countries based on how pro- or anti-consumer local IP laws. In other words, Consumer International judges IP laws around the globe based on IP's actual purpose: to benefit the public. The actual report (pdf and embedded below) is a good read.
The US actually does fairly well. We're helped along by the fact that we actually have things like "fair use" in the law. The UK, however, comes in near the bottom. The report also highlights the ridiculousness of pushing stronger enforcement in some of the poorest countries in the world:
Malawi is a politically-troubled, least-developed country where more than half of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day. One would have thought that IP enforcement should take a back seat in such a country, in favour of measures designed to ensure the satisfaction of the population’s basic needs of food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical care.It's worth noting, by the way, that the top three countries on Consumer International's list -- Israel, Indonesia and India -- were also on the USTR's Special 301 "Priority Watch List" as having the worst IP regimes last year. But, as Consumer International shows, they actually have the best IP regimes when it comes to serving the needs of the public. That seems to show just how ridiculous the USTR's Special 301 list really is.
Yet Malawi was one of four poor countries in which Interpol chose to conduct an anti-counterfeiting campaign in 2009, and in which the local police often join IP-holder organisations in conducting copyright raids against local traders. Is this noholds-barred, developed-country model of IP protection and enforcement truly the most appropriate model for countries like Malawi?
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Filed Under: india, indonesia, interpol, israel, malawi, special 301 report, ustr, watchlist
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Just ignore them. They're killimg themselves.
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Next time, I'll drink my first coffee of the day before I post.
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"Of the 30 countries[3] rated in this year's report, none scored higher than an overall 'B' grade."
I guess you could still argue that the USA doesn't deserve its B- though.
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I'm not entirely sure that is correct.
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I fail to see how safe harbor helps the average citizen when the company hosting the data caves in from legal threats, which immediately removes free-speech in a free market sense.
I do understand that the 1st Amend only applies to the government, but in this case, a 3rd party has monopolistic government granted powers, with which it threatens another company to remove another person's free-speech.
So the government has given copyright holder's government backed powers to squash free-speech. I don't see how this isn't a breach of the 1st amendment.
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Indeed. The problem is with the way these protections are enforced rather than the protections themselves (e.g. take down demand from one 3rd party to another, no facility for countermeasure, defence or verification of claim before it's taken down, incentive for service provider to blindly obey rather than challenge). The concept's there in theory, but the current implementation favours the copyright holder rather too much.
"I don't see how this isn't a breach of the 1st amendment."
I'm no legal scholar, so I can only guess. My take on this whole thing is that even if such defences can be hard to mount, at leas they're there in the first place. As many Americans are keen to point out, most other countries don't have free speech codified into law in any way similar to the first amendment. We can argue long and hard about how much free speech is practised in reality, but for the purposes of this study at least some protections are there.
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Not exactly true here Paul. There is plenty of incentive for a service provider to side with their clients, if their clients are in the right. The real issue these days is that most service providers have no idea who their clients are, have no way to communicate to them, and in the end, they have to follow the law because they have no way to know the true legal standing of the material subject to the DMCA notice.
As for the first amendment, Lessig has been grinding that ax for more than a decade, and every time he gets near court with it, the judges generally send him packing. Even though Mike may allude to it from time to time, there is really no legal contradiction between copyright and free speech, any more than there is a contradiction between property rights and the constitution.
You have to basically accept and understand that free speech, no matter how free, is still not unlimited or without restriction, as all rights must stand up to the test of how they affect and influence those rights as applied to others. It's the old "your rights stop at my nose" or the tired but still servicable "FIRE" in the theater example. Your free speech rights are not unlimited and not without restriction. The protections granted are not greater than the rights granted to others.
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The are a great many examples of where DMCA notices have taken down material from people who are well-known to the service provider, so don't try that rubbish, either. The fact is that most companies have a great incentive to obey DMCA notices blindly, because the cost of even questioning the validity of the claim is too high. If there wasn't why do you think the perjury penalty in the DMCA has never been applied (to my knowledge) despite the many, many examples of false takedown notices?
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How so? Even if our laws were perfect in every way, it would still be wrong to push them onto other countries.
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Much of the difference between rich and poor countries falls in the areas of getting "freedom from want". Underlying many of their ills is a lack of respect for the law, a sort of mentality of circumstances dictating the way you do things.
Many of these countries never flourish because they are unable to get over the hump, never able to get thriving real businesses into place. It's where micro-loan groups have often made the difference, helping people get legit and real businesses going even in the poorest of nations.
Is an all out IP struggle good for a poor country? Historically we know the answer is no, because it's often the act of ignoring the rights of others outside of the country that lets them grow more quickly. Yet at the same time, many of the poorest countries stay that way in part due to a lack of respect for the law - from the top to the bottom of the country - thieving dictators and elected officials at one end, and street corner thugs at the other.
There is no perfect answer, but there is never an answer that says "ignore the rule of law". That may be one of the areas that separates the richer from the poorer countries in the world.
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Maybe there is no perfect answer - but the best answer is probably to have simple laws, avoiding complex IP laws, and then keep the laws you do have.
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You can argue that there are international laws, but from the state of things today those are really more of suggestions.
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Ah got it
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well... they did say that ignorance is bliss...guess my government's ignorance finally brought something good for our citizens.
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Oh, can't afford NOT to distribute to them, because it would hurt your bottom line?...then stop this legal wrangling.
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