Australian Man Can't Get Parts Because His Super Generic Name Is On A US Terrorist Watchlist

from the check-his-locker dept

Let me let you into the helmet for a moment. Given all the nonsense surrounding the various United States alphabet agencies and their various watchlists, I've grown thankful that I have a fairly uncommon name. Between the potential for antagonistic abuse by scorned lovers, the opportunity for clerical errors to result in life-changing refusals of admittance to the United States, and the general crap-show that is the no fly list, it's somewhat nice to have a rather unique identifier. It almost cancels out the mispronunciations, lacking nicknames like "Geigner-counter", and seriously non-stop questions about what life is like running the Treasury Department. Almost.

But stories like this one offered by reader Richard really cement my gratitude for my evil-sounding German surname. I could, as this story goes, have an incredibly generic name and live in a foreign country and find myself having to wade through all kinds of red tape just to get a few electronics parts. This is the story of David Jones and his quest to get a couple of parts from a local distributor in Australia.

Through the website I ordered some local in-stock parts from the Element 14 warehouse in Sydney, for pickup at the trade counter. Usually they are very efficient and have the parts ready for collection before I have time to drive there. But this day I gave them a few hours extra. When I got there my parts weren't ready and it took them a bit of time to figure out that my order had been placed “on hold”.

But they enquired further with someone else and the word came back that it wasn't the parts that had been flagged, it was my NAME that was flagged. And they said it was a US government watch list of some description. I was stunned, and it seemed like they didn't quite understand why I was so shocked at this. Because, you know, the whole world has to just sit by and let the US government dictate everything at will.

Flagging David Jones? What could go wrong? I hear he has a really terrifying locker and was part of a terrible Beatles knock-off band a couple of decades ago. On the other hand, harassing foreign citizens with common names out of an over-abundance of name-recognizing caution is probably going to make everyone look foolish, on top of all the work it certainly must create. On top of that, the helpful employees of Element 14 were confident they could just work around the flag to begin with. So the efforts aren't just silly, they're futile on top of it. Oh, US government, don't ever change.

Not that Mr. Jones was as amused as I, of course.

So let's see if I have this straight – An Australian subsidiary, owned by a UK parent company, listed on the UK stock exchange, has an ordering system that automatically matches generic names against some US Government watch list, and flags those orders and puts them on hold, for parts that are already stocked in Australia, are likely not made in the US, and likely have come from the main UK warehouse. Call me stupid, but something doesn’t seem right with that…

No, Mr. Jones, we don't think you're stupid. We think you're cunning, an evil mastermind terrorist from Australia, because we've seen so many of those. Or maybe it's one of the other bazillion David Jones' plotting around the world. You can't expect us to know. It's not like we're reading everyone's emails or something...

Filed Under: australia, david jones, watchlist

Switzerland Questions Crazy Hollywood Claims About File Sharing... Ends Up On Congressional Watchlist

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Last December, we wrote about a report put out by the Swiss executive branch noting that, based on their research, it appeared that unauthorized file sharing was not a big deal, showing that consumers were still spending just as much on entertainment, and that much of it was going directly to artists, rather than to middlemen. In other words, it was a market shift, not a big law enforcement problem. At the time, we wondered if Switzerland had just bought itself a place on the USTR's "Special 301 list" that the administration uses each year to shame countries that Hollywood doesn't like.

That list doesn't come out for a bit, but there's another, similar list, put out by the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus (yeah) that has added Switzerland to its "bad countries" list along with China, Russia and Ukraine. Italy also joined Switzerland as a "first-timer" on the list -- despite rulings that required ISPs to block access to various file sharing sites. The issue in Italy? I'd guess that a story we had earlier this year has something to do with it. After some political fighting, the government there basically decided to just stop regulating copyright issues online. There's also an upcoming fight about new copyright proposals coming in Italy, and this seems like a preemptive strike for some of Hollywood's favorite Congressional Reps and Senators to pressure Italy into approving bad laws that Hollywood likes.

Meanwhile, both Spain and Canada -- who passed legislation very much at the behest of American interests -- were removed from the evil part of the list and switched to "in transition." The message is not particularly subtle: do not, at any cost, question Hollywood's planned copyright laws, or the US government will shame you as a haven for pirates, no matter how bogus that claim really is. Hopefully governments in Switzerland and Italy resist such obvious lobbying on behalf of special interests and pay attention to reality in those markets.

Filed Under: congress, congressional anti-piracy caucus, copyright, italy, switzerland, watchlist

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.

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?

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.

Filed Under: india, indonesia, interpol, israel, malawi, special 301 report, ustr, watchlist