Up Is Down, Night Is Day, US Pretends Protectionist, Anti-Free Trade Agreements Are 'Historic Free Trade' Treaties

from the booooooooogus dept

For some time now, we've been noting that the US keeps trying to force countries around the globe to put in place protectionist policies that protect American monopolies, and hilariously pretending these are "free trade" agreements. And today is no different. The White House is tooting its own horn for signing three new anti-free trade agreements today, with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, pretending that these are free trade agreements. The reality, of course, is that they are protectionist plans that will do more harm than good to US interests.

While the White House leaves this part out of its patting itself on the back, these agreements all export the worst of US copyright law to these other countries, forcing them to put in place laws that are against their own best interests, and which serve only to falsely prop up the entertainment industry's bad business model. This is why the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce are cheering it on so strongly.

And, of course, this is just the beginning. The Treasury Department put out its own blog post celebrating the anti-free trade agreements as well, in which they ominously warn that things are going to get worse, as they "build on" these agreements to get the dreadful Trans-Pacific Partnership signed. As you may recall, the TPP has become the way that the US Trade Rep plans to sneak in everything that it failed to get in ACTA... and it's being even more secretive about TPP than it was about ACTA. It's nothing but a government handout to Hollywood. This is not "historic" and it's not about "free trade." It's about protectionist anti-free trade policies that will do long term harm to US innovation and economic interests. What a disaster.

Filed Under: colombia, copyright, free trade, obama administration, panama, south korea, trade agreements, ustr

EU Follows US Steps, Signs 'Free Trade' Agreement With Korea That's All About IP Protectionism

from the that-bill-isn't-what-it-says-it-is dept

It always seems amusing to us when various trade officials include stronger copyright and patent laws in so-called "free trade agreements." By their very nature, copyrights and patents are monopolies. They're protectionist policies and the very antithesis of true free trade. Yet, for a variety of reasons (i.e., lobbyist demands), it's now becoming quite standard for officials to put stronger protectionist patent and copyright rules into the misnamed "free trade agreements." The gold standard here, of course, was the one that the US and South Korea signed a few years ago, that forced Korea to massively ratchet up its copyright laws, leading to dangerous precedents, including fears that certain advertisements could get you in trouble for copyright infringement. Of course, the US-SK FTA was also the basis for ACTA, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the EU has now signed a similar "free trade agreement" with South Korea, and EU officials are hyping up how it involves stricter patent and copyright requirements. They also note how they followed the lead of ACTA in keeping all the details entirely secret from the public (though you can probably assume that industry representatives were able to read it) until it was already signed. The new transparency at work.

Filed Under: europe, free trade, intellectual property, south korea

Australia Realizes That Including Intellectual Property In Trade Agreements Makes No Sense

from the but-what-about-acta dept

Michael Geist notes that the Australian Government's Productivity Commission (which is apparently an independent research and advisory arm) is suggesting that the government no longer agree to include intellectual property issues in trade agreements -- and specifically focuses on the lack of evidence that such intellectual property agreements benefit Australia economically. It suggests that such agreements should only be allowed "after an economic assessment of the impacts, including on consumers, in Australia and partner countries." In other words, it looks like at least some in Australia are realizing that "faith-based" intellectual property policy-making is a bad idea. In fact, the report notes that most of these agreements appear to benefit a few US companies, but do little to help Australia.

The Commission is not convinced, however, that the approach adopted by Australia in relation to IP in trade agreements has always been in the best interests of either Australia or (most of) its trading partners. Among other things, there does not appear to have been any economic analysis of the specific provisions in AUSFTA undertaken prior to the finalisation of negotiations, nor incorporated in the government’s supporting documentation to the parliament. As noted above, the AUSFTA changes to copyright imposed net costs on Australia, and extending these changes to other countries would be expected to impose net costs on them, principally to the benefit of third parties.

What third parties? That's obvious:

"most of the benefits to IP rights holders from measures to promote adherence to existing rules in partner countries can be expected to accrue to third parties, such as rights holders in the United States."

Of course, Australia is one of the countries involved in ACTA -- which has no such economic analysis. Any chance at all that the Australian government actually listens to the Productivity Commission and requires an economic analysis first? I wouldn't bet on it.

Filed Under: australia, free trade, intellectual property, trade agreements

The Real Cost Of Copyright Extension In Korea: $170 Million

from the ouch dept

Earlier this year, we pointed out how ridiculous it was that the US was forcing South Korea to extend the length of copyright in the name of free trade agreements. After all, copyright is the opposite of free trade -- it's about monopoly protectionism, and that's very costly. Now we actually have an idea of just how costly. William Patry writes about the history of copyright extension, highlighting how it's really just a game of leapfrog, where Big Copyright holders use the differences in copyright law to continually extend it out further and further -- completely going against the purpose of copyright law. However, the real key to Patry's writeup is to point to a report from South Korea talking about just how much damage copyright extension is doing to local publishers. That's quite a statement, since copyright extension supporters always talk about how it's designed to help publishers. Not so. Publishers are complaining that the new rules will limit how many books they can publish, and the government is being forced to hand over approximately $170 million to keep the publishers happy. So, for all the talk of how copyright extension is necessary to protect the publishing industry, in South Korea, it seems to be costing taxpayers at least $170 million -- while making sure that fewer books are published. How is that possibly aligned with the stated purpose of copyright to encourage more content creation?

Filed Under: copyright, copyright extension, free trade, korea

Antigua Seriously Pushing For WTO Approval To Distribute Free Music And Movies

from the well,-look-at-that... dept

Since 2003, we've been following the saga of Antigua's fight against the US in the World Trade Organization. Basically, Antigua argued that the US's ban on online gambling violated the free trade agreement the two countries had signed -- as it blocked online gambling sites based in Antigua (of which there are a bunch). Since then, the case has been fun to watch if only for how the US has responded to it. The WTO ruled in favor of Antigua at which point the US basically ignored the WTO, despite the WTO occasionally making angry noises. Then, there was the time that the US went so far as to declare that the WTO had reversed that original ruling on appeal... but the details showed that the US was making up that claim and the WTO was still supporting Antigua. Earlier this year, after the WTO started stomping its feet again, the US responded by saying it was simply (unilaterally) going to change its free trade agreement with Antigua, so that online gambling wasn't included. Obviously, Antigua finds that solution quite troublesome.

Back in early 2006, however, a few people began buzzing about an idea that Antigua could use to force the US to pay attention: become an WTO-backed ignorer of US copyright law. Since the US knew it could effectively ignore Antigua over online gambling, the idea was that Antigua should simply say that if the US won't support its free trade agreement, then it would start ignoring US copyright laws, and would then (with WTO-backing, mind you) allow modern versions of all sorts of copyright-violating services to prosper. We didn't think that Antigua would seriously go in this direction, but as a new NY Times article makes clear it's exactly what Antigua is now pushing for. Of course, the real hope is that in doing so, the Big Copyright players will force the US government to back down on the gambling issue. However, it might be a lot more interesting to see what would happen if Antigua really did become the protected legal home of more modern versions of (the old) Napster, my.mp3.com, the Pirate Bay, Allofmp3.com and others. Of course, as reader OKVol points out to us, the real irony here is that in potentially ignoring copyright monopolies, Antigua may be getting closer to real free trade than in living up to the terms of the free trade agreement between the two countries.

Filed Under: antigua, copyrights, free trade, gambling, online gambling, world trade
Companies: wto