The US Trade Representative has released its Special 301 Report again, the document the US government uses to mafia poor countries (and Canada) into enacting stricter IP laws. “Perhaps the most shameful inclusion in this year’s report are a series of countries whose primarily fault is being poor. […] Moreover, with repeated complaints against countries seeking to ensure adequate access to medicines for their citizens or access to books in schools, this year’s report hits a new low. It demonstrates the failure of the enforcement agenda and stands as an embarrassment for one of the world’s richest countries to prioritize its IP rights over human and economic rights in the developing world.” Infuriating. And people wonder why I consider the current IP legislation and lobby entirely unethical and strictly evil.
won’t have to worry about us much longer if, his Royal Highness King Harper gets his way, we’ll be exactly like the States, in every way.
Breaks my heart.
I’m from Argentina and it’s a honor to be in the priority watch list. Coincidentially, we are the largest media IP exporter to the rest Latin America, and algo export to Europe and even Israel. We produce TV series and content that is consumed all over the place (not my taste but that is offtopic). We compete with the US media in such regions. India is, also coincidentially, in a very similar position.
Police does operatives against pirates pretty often here, but it would really cost a fortune to erradicate piracy and web sites that promote piracy here (taringa or cuevana) are a grey area to the law because they don’t host the infringing content themselves.
In short, even if stricter laws are passed, there is not a chance in hell that the government will invest that kind of money into erradicating piracy as it would be extremely costly, even if we are not really “poor” as Thom suggests.
The rest of Latin America is in a much worse situation but not even on the priority watch list so my guess is that countries that export content (compete), are not poor and have high piracy are more prone to be there.
Edited 2012-05-01 21:42 UTC
Of note: I meant the “poor countries (and Canada)” as a joke. I realise there are several other countries on the list who are anything but poor.
Nice save there.
Well, that would explain why you guys are on the list…
You will not read stupider articles on the internet from smarter people than ones that deal with intellectual property.
On one side you have people essentially arguing for laws that guarantee them profit for a work practically indefinite time period. On the other hand you have idiots that allow their dislike for these laws to drive them stupid. This article is by the latter. There is no given reason why some countries appear on the watch list. The author jumps from that point, to the assumption that countries are explicitly on the watch list due to the GDP per capita of the country, instead of you know, rates of piracy.
Besides that it is factually incorrect. There are only 10 countries on the list (out of 40) that have a per capita GDP below $5000 US, which puts them in the bottom 50% of all countries:
Ukraine
Paraguay
Indonesia
Guatemala
Egypt
Philippines
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Pakistan
Tajikistan
The other 30 countries are all in the top 50%. If their goal was to make a list of poor countries they did a rotten job.
It also ignores the fact that the US gives all of these countries significant foreign aid. The idea that the US is prioritizing our IP rights over the financial plight of these countries could not be further from the truth.
US Financial Aid for the 10 poorest countries on the list in millions of dollars US (2010):
Uzbekistan 30
Paraguay 36
Vietnam 106
Guatemala 159
Philippines 208
Ukraine 287
Indonesia 312
Tajikistan 379
Egypt 397
Pakistan 1,939.6
An no, Pakistan is not a typo. Pakistan is in fact the 2nd largest recipient of money from the US, only trailing Afghanistan. For most of these countries, US foreign aid represents between 1% and 3% of the countries GDP.
Anyone who reads what I write on here knows I am no fan of the approach that the US takes towards intellectual property… But this article is rubbish – facts simply don’t back it up.
Since these countries continues to be poor I can’t help but wonder if you couldn’t do a better job with distributing this aid. It sure doesn’t seem to do much for the actually poor. Maybe it goes to financing all the luxury condos that are inexplicably shooting up like mushrooms here (I live in Manila).
I think I agree. Me, living in Davao.
[quote]It also ignores the fact that the US gives all of these countries significant foreign aid. The idea that the US is prioritizing our IP rights over the financial plight of these countries could not be further from the truth.
US Financial Aid for the 10 poorest countries on the list in millions of dollars US (2010):
Uzbekistan 30
Paraguay 36
Vietnam 106
Guatemala 159
Philippines 208
Ukraine 287
Indonesia 312
Tajikistan 379
Egypt 397
Pakistan 1,939.6
[/quote]
30 million? That is what you call significant?
I hope you realize that is about 10 cent per person in the US. If you think that donating 10 cent is significant than I hope you are proud of how well you are sharing the wealth!
Even the countries that are receiving 300 million are only receiving 1 dollar per US person. Thanks for sharing
It’s not like average Americans can do anything to fix that. The bureaucracy / red tape is staggering, and it’s clear that %0.0001 of people get to call the shots (usually in secret, they don’t like asking for permission). I’m trying not to be cynical, but when as much as 20% of GDP goes towards military / defense, it’s hard not to be confused. I would indeed rather such money went towards helping people rather than building “yet another” stealth bomber or whatever useless dreck. (But who knows, maybe not all defense is useless, maybe “accidentally” it actually helps someone somewhere. Hopefully.)
Too many times USA´s “charity” resembles more of an investment, many of those countries surely don´t have too much to be thankful to the US.
Edited 2012-05-02 21:00 UTC
I didn’t say it was charity… Its financial aid. Much of it is explicitly asked for the the recipient country, some of it is even loans and/or debt forgiveness. I excluded military aid because for the most part I feel military aid benefits our strategic interests more than the recipients – if I had included that the numbers would have been far higher for a few of these countries (Pakistan, Egypt, etc.)
My only point was that the US does offer financial aid to these countries regardless of policy disagreements when it comes to intellectual property.
Also, I realize this is a touchy subject… Financial Aid is given to the government of these countries. While there are often strings attached to direct the use of the funds, governments can get quite “creative” with how they report these things. It is often misspent – there is little the US can actually do about it unfortunately…
Edited 2012-05-02 22:08 UTC
I really do think the supposedly most powerful nation on earth has what it takes to put the required pressure on these governments. If you wanted to, that is.
An important word for the US Government to know, and that it ends at the border.
So? Who cares about “US piracy watch list”? I didn’t even know it even existed before today. I suspect most of the world including the US didn’t know about it either. I believe it is pretty safe to continue to ignore it until it get any kind of relevance.
IMHO the US Piracy Watch List is much like the US ‘No fly list’.
i.e. Full of innacurate and obsolete data.
Oh well, that’s me banned from going to the US in future.
It is used as an excuse to pressure governments into passing laws that favour USA IP holders, not only related to entertainment but also to medical levels and more.
This pressure is leveraged “sanctioning” countries by means of over-taxing commercial imports from “offending” countries or altering commercial treats and that sort of methods.
So, “who cares about the 301 watchlist?”: the 301 watchlist victims who see their Sovereignty abused by the USA to fit USA´s interests.
With this rise in piracy, this means that global warming will soon be stopped in its tracks.
All hail His Noodliness.
Ramen.
Does anyone else notice there is a strong anti-American sentiment in this site these days? This is getting annoying. Really annoying. I never comment, just read the articles. I wonder sometimes why I come back, considering I what I originally came to this site for no longer exists.
Did you notice how more and more American actions are having an effect on those of us who don’t have a say about your laws?
Vote those arseholes out and all will be forgiven. Half of the American population won’t do anything about it at all, so we have a right to complain increasingly.
Unfortunately, a country that can’t fix its own healthcare while it’s not even a problem in other developed countries probably can’t fix other problems it has. Such countries tend to export their problems.
No, I haven’t. The US foreign policy has always been of a global pretense since WWII.
Screw you. Don’t insult me. I am only one vote of many.
Health care is an individual responsibility. I am disabled. I don’t go around looking for people to take care of my health care. I don’t have insurance, I pay for EVERYTHING. What are you talking about specifically in regards to exporting problems??
Global presence, not pretense.
That because when the EU or one of its member countries does something bad, then the blame lies solely with the evil greedy politicians. But when the US does something bad, then every individual member of the population deserves the blame (and somehow has a direct responsibility for fixing the problem).
It makes perfect sense, if you (don’t) think about it.
What makes perfect sense is that Americans tend to have a comprehension problem about who is being attacked. In context, most “anti-American” statements are “anti-Congress” statements.