Countries That Don't Put In Place Copyright Regimes The US Likes May Be Deemed 'Cybersecurity Concerns'
from the fascinating dept
So called "cybersecurity" and "intellectual property" are two very different issues, but it seems that politicians are realizing that they get further by screaming about "cybersecurity threats" than about "intellectual property infringement." The latest proposed appropriations bill for the State Department includes a role for a "coordinator for cyber issues" -- which is an awful title. However, snuck into the job description is the fact that this person will have to create a "naughty" list of countries who are "cybersecurity concerns." Okay, fair enough. Except, the bill goes on to define what constitutes a cybersecurity concern, noting that if this person determines that there has been a"... pattern of incidents of cybercrime against the United States Government or United States persons, or that disrupt United States electronic commerce or otherwise negatively impact the trade or intellectual property interests of the United States....This seems to suggest that the State Department can now shame entire countries claiming they're a "cybersecurity concern" if the reality is that their copyright enforcement efforts are more lax. With such a broad definition, it seems like just about any country could be blamed if they don't magically somehow stop the "negative impact" of file sharing.
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
Filed Under: cybersecurity, intellectual property, state department
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Finally!
I can't wait...I love reading fantasy novels...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Finally!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I possess copies of all of the zeroes and ones that comprise our most sensitive national secrets.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
You'd need to take the whole disk.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You don't think the willful violation of someone's rights itself is a negative impact? If you trespass on my land, you have wronged me, even if there is no actual damage. I can still recover for the trespass since you violated my rights. It seems you don't value other people's rights--like at all. No wonder the pirates all flock to you in droves. No wonder you don't think there's anything immoral about piracy. You think it's OK to violate other people's property rights. I still chuckle at the thought of you whining the other day about how people don't respect "true" property rights. You're the one who doesn't respect them. Not at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Repeal the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Just because you call it a right doesn't make it a right. Fundamentally, copyright is a limitation on the rights of others rather than a "right" in and of itself. We could have a law passed saying that people on the Internet have a "right" to not experience vexatious little trolls like you and use it to ban you from the Internet, but I think you'd agree that is an infringement on your own rights and little else.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Pre-copyright
-The Odyssey
-Shakespeare
-Michelangelo
-etc
We did pretty well before copyright.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I didn't see you saying anything negative when the government was violating real rights as opposed to the imaginary ones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Copyright is not actually a right, let alone a property right. Copyright is a privilege granted at the whim of the government.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
"I still chuckle at the thought of you whining the other day about how people don't respect "true" property rights."
You think property rights are funny? You don't think they are important, do you? How would you like it if I walked into your house and used your tooth brush to comb my hair? You wouldn't like that would you*? Would you*? Huh*? Huh*?
* Imagine that I am poking you as I say this
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
(You can't be doing this for free, since you are against 'freetards' and, according to you, nobody does anything for free, which only leaves the option of you posting here for money. So, how much do you get?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Your strawman is ridiculous and belies the unsupported nature of your position (otherwise you'd point out actual flaws).
Cheers. Go away now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
False
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Keep in mind though that when we talk about Real Estate we're talking what's called Real property. Not just that but my and your rights are firmly established from more than a thousand years of jurisprudence.
Let's move on to copyright and patent law. Neither were ever intended to establish the rights holder with the same rights that a holder of real property has. In the case of the first copyright act (1709) the major trigger wasn't the alleged "rights" of creators but to prevent publishers from bankrupting themselves by rushing the same titles and authors to market at the same time in order to get the best sales on what were hoped would be best sellers.
All either concepts do is confer a monopoly on copying something, one in text form, the other in terms of physical inventions until they fell into the public domain. And it was a much shorter trip to the public domain then than now in recognition of that privilege and lawmakers who recognized that the less time something was held in a monopoly the better. Neither were ever intended to confer anything near the rights held by owners of real tangible property.
Now. as for the United States wanting to declare my country a security risk if we don't follow every jot, comma, semicolon and period of how people like you in the States interpret copyright, in particular, and patent law fill your boots. We're always high on that fiction called the 301 list.
After that you may want to talk to American and Canadian troops who, for years, served cheek by jowl in Afghanistan about just how much of a risk we are. Then you might want to kill off NORAD and NATO.
All in defense of the fantasy called intellectual "property" "rights". Not that creators and inventors shouldn't be rewarded, they should be. But there is a difference between real tangible property and what's covered by copyright and patent law.
Equating your rights where real tangible property is concerned with what's covered by copyright and patents is a false dichotomy. And a logical fallacy.
Which pretty much covers the duties defined for the "co-coordinator for cyber issues".
You can feel what you want and post what you want but your comparison is still a fallacy and no amount of stamping your feet is going to change that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Would also like to add that in my end of the world, we don't think of people that flies into fits of rage about someone walking on their lawn as "protecting their property," but rather as "complete nut jobs."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I don't think the willful violation of someone's copyright is a negative impact.
"It seems you don't value other people's rights--like at all."
Actual, real, physical property rights are absolutely respected by Techdirt and it's readers. Imaginary property rights, not so much.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Besides, the way copyright is abused, it's like I do something on my own land next to yours, and you try taking me to court for 'intruding' on you and 'wronging' you, just because you can see it.
And by the way, the rest of the world doesn't have the extreme American religion of 'property rights', so we don't give a flying pig's ear about your imaginary wrongs. Just like we laugh at the murderous gun laws you fight so hard to keep.
Hah, you might as well sue us for not wanting guns!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thomas link for H.R. 6018
H.R. 6018 Bill Summary and Status
H.R.6018
Latest Title: Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2013
Sponsor: Rep Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana [FL-18] (introduced 6/26/2012) Cosponsors (None)
Latest Major Action: 6/27/2012 House committee/subcommittee actions. Status: Ordered to be Reported by Voice Vote.
(Thomas has a web front-end to a rather archaic system: As a result, persistent urls have an obscure syntax. With a little help, they're easy enough to construct, but you can't just copy and paste.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I'd like my state to break off from the U.S., buy up the states around it, and start our own country.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
P.S. - When the heck did Techdirt switch to moderating all anonymous comments??
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
It's about protecting legacy players with established lobbies who are threatened because reproduction of media has been rendered trivial by digital technology.
These laws bugger US business in favour of said legacy players (protectionist policies lead to inefficient market lead to getting clobbered by unencumbered outside/underground suppliers).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The US should be making friends instead of bullying other countries.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
That's what Ron Paul and others like him have been saying for years...
But of course, the media LOVES to give Romney more attention, even though he's a total shill and moron.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Hmm...
Well, at least 16 years.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I don't think it's so slow.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
http://youtu.be/88XP4fAyV6o
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
The irony is that the IP extremism is costing the USA more than it's helping anything. So are the fantasies entertained around intellectual "property" such as the notion that it's a "right" and not a privilege extended to people in exchange for broadening knowledge, technology and education. What the extremists don't get is that the more extreme they become the more society at large questions extending those privileges to them and the less the society at large questions whether it is getting its end of the bargain or not. And the more society at large comes to the conclusion that it isn't.
In the meantime emerging economies such as China, Russia, Brazil and India don't worry their heads all that much about things like that. They'll take what they think they need in exactly the same way the United States did "back in the day" when it was a new country.
When the USA doesn't benefit from it's discoveries, inventions and writings as much as it ought to the skid downwards becomes faster and less controllable.
It will be a sad day when it happens. The country that housed the most true innovations of the last couple of centuries stops being the primary source and market for those innovations we will have lost something very valuable.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
They should be trying to win through a superior supply of products and services, not a doomed-to-fail legislative lock in.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Instead of "anti-copyright efforts" I think you mean "copyright enforcement efforts" or similar.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Old news...
Canada has been on the list forever. Some speculate that the list was one of the prime movers of copyright reform in this country.
While this might be an oversimplification, there's no doubt that it played a role in the policy direction of the Conservative Party of Canada in it's drafting of bill C-11 which will be passed any week now.
Hum haw...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Old news...
I doubt anything in C-11 will change out position on the 301 list as it has almost as much to do with reality as John Carter of Mars does. And it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been or many feared it would be.
Will it get us off the list? Nahhh. we have a permanent place there, I suspect. Who needs ISOHunt when there's all these bridges and highways that run across the border!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
link
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6456/125/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
probably a list most countries want to be on
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Economics
this is the primary purpose behind their (MAFIAA) leverage on politics and influence over other countries. sadly, Hollywood is the main source of the world's entertainment, legitimate or otherwise. it is going to take another 10-20 years before other countries can readily compete with the savvy of Hollywood.
mark my words, or bookmark this post, because in our lifetime's you will see attacks on encryption such as VPNs, it will be listed as a means with which to circumvent totalitarianism being inflicted on the world. the statement will come from politicians very, very soon... 'if you are using a VPN, you must have something to hide, and therefore a terrorist/paedophile/murderer (insert current popular fear fanaticism here).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It's called regulatory capture, corruption, and hypocritical actions. In this present modern day age, the US has changed from it's self-perceived role of world police man to world corruption enforcer.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Money talks
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
After all, you could make an argument that by forcing people to use file sharing sites and get around those draconian laws without getting caught they're helping to train more cyber attackers, or something stupid like that. It's no more stupider then the logic the pro-copyright crowd would use to go after weak IP countries.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
U.S. also on the "cybersecurity concerns" list
I assume they're considering copyright infringement "cybercrime". And obviously plenty of copyright infringement goes on in the U.S. against U.S. persons that presumably "disrupt United States electronic commerce". So it would appear that the United States is a "cybersecurity concern".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That's great!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I predict that before long there will be a war over this, as in an actual military armed conflict with people being shot and bombed. Over movies and music.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]