Could The Special 301 Report Be Useful? Proposed Law Would Broaden It To Condemn Internet Censorship
from the that-would-be-nice dept
For years, we've highlighted the USTR's silly "Special 301" report, in which it lists out "naughty" countries who aren't doing enough to meet Hollywood and the Pharma industry's definitions of what intellectual property laws should look like. This is based on no real methodology, other than that each year, the big industry associations submit filings to the USTR on which countries they don't like, and the USTR basically compiles them, and puts out a list of the "bad" countries. It's so ridiculous that Canada -- whose copyright law has been much more limiting than US law in many ways, but still gets put on the naughty list every year for not (until now) imposing digital locks provisions -- has an official policy not to recognize the legitimacy of the Special 301 report.That said, as long as the USTR is putting together a list of "naughty" countries, why not make it actually a useful list? Senate Finance Committee boss Max Baucus has introduced a bill to normalize trade relations with Russia -- which has been a key concern of the committee for a while. Buried in the plan is something interesting:
In addition, the proposal amends section 182 of the Trade Act of 1974 by requiring that the report under section 182 include a description of laws, policies, or practices of the Russian Federation that deny fair and equitable treatment to U.S. digital trade.This may not seem like much, but it could be a big deal. Section 182 of the Trade Act is also known as 19 USC § 2242, which basically sets up the Special 301 report.
So, basically, this little tidbit could shift the Special 301 report so that it doesn't just identify countries who Hollywood and Big Pharma don't like, but will also check to see if Russia is "denying fair and equitable treatment to US digital trade." What does that mean? Well, you may have noticed (as we did) that Russia just approved a new internet censorship bill, which certainly could deny "fair and equitable treatment" to certain digital goods.
Right now, it looks like (for unclear reasons) this provision is just limited to Russia, but if that works, it's not difficult to see it expanded globally. Wouldn't it be interesting if the USTR was actually forced to make the Special 301 report useful, by not just having it focus on intellectual property issues, but also on whether or not a country was censoring the internet and blocking useful internet services?
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Filed Under: free speech, internet censorship, max baucus, senate finance committee, special 301, ustr
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I've a feeling many of us will have this similar thought.
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Double-escaped HTML entity
Should be § and it looks like you have §. If your CMS is PHP, the htmlentities() function has had a flag to prevent "double escaping" (as above) since 5.2.3. HTH :)
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Re: Double-escaped HTML entity
First was &-sect; and second was &-amp;sect; (without dashes).
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What would be left for debate is if the US would place itself above or below China in the list ;)
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Re: Re: Re: H Abe!
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Question answered...
Unclear? Perhaps you haven't noticed yet, but Congress is generally somewhere between 15-30 years behind the general public it "serves" (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!) on EVERYTHING.
Thus, Russia is still the number one foreign rival (Just ask Mitt Romney), Movie/Music CDs MUST be protected (Just ask Barack Obama), and gay people are icky (Just ask an unfortunately large number of...well...everyone in government).
Meanwhile, the general public knows our rival is China and Pakistan, movies and music can be made to magically appear on all kinds of shit, and if gay people want to get married most of the public couldn't care less.
I swear, our government is one of those "who is walking who, the dog or the owner" questions....
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The problem is that EVERYONE would be on the list except the US, which would be serene in its own Goldilocks Zone.
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Re: Question answered...
“Russian nuclear forces, 2012”, by Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norrism Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
“Chinese nuclear forces, 2011” by Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
“Pakistan's nuclear forces, 2011” by Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris,Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
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With two rather notorious exceptions, nuclear weapons have always been a defensive weapon ensuring the minimalization of war, not an offensive threat....
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Russia is still the tops. Crème de la crème. Number one, baby, all the way. Number one.
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But isn't it interesting, DH, how those same clueless congresspeople can suddenly serve the interests of their real bosses, the corporations and lobbyists, in an immediate and attentive manner when it's their interests pitted against the public's.
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Way to show your ass, you idiot. Even on a tech blog you racist cock-sandwiches have to rear your un-intellectual heads, eh?
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Re: Re: Re: Question answered...
LIFE, “Nevada Ghosts: Rare Pictures of an A-Bomb Test”
Article with 22 photos. First photo is from the May 16, 1955 issue of LIFE magazine, and was originally captioned:
Second photo also from May 16, 1955 issue:
Some of the other photos were previously unpublished. The text accompanying the LIFE “Nevada Ghosts” photospread points out, “The test was not especially noteworthy.”
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