[A2k] techdirt: Just how out of touch is the copyright lobby?

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Just How Out Of Touch Is The Copyright Lobby?
from the try-that-again? dept
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070220/114245.shtml

One of the worst tricks of the entertainment industry to get the laws
pushed even further in its own favor is to pull out the
"international treaties" card. The industry uses this claim to say
that various international treaties require that the laws over
intellectual property be equivalent in different countries -- and, of
course, they always mean bringing them to the level of the most
draconian laws, rather than moving them more in favor of things like
fair use. The really sneaky part in this is that each time these
different laws are written in different countries, they're not
exactly the same. In fact, parts of them may be even more draconian
-- which again gives the entertainment industry an opening to whine
that other countries need to change their laws to match those other
laws. It's a game of leapfrog that the industry has used repeatedly.
However, it looks like some folks may finally be calling them on
these issues. Following the latest report from an entertainment
industry lobbying group that calls out a bunch of countries for laws
that are too lax on copyright, Michael Geist has explained why it's
the industry, not these countries, that are out of touch and out of
date. In fact, what becomes very clear is that most of the complaints
aren't (as the industry claims) to bring foreign laws in line with US
laws, but to make them even more in favor of the entertainment
industry beyond what US law requires (sometimes way beyond). At some
point, will politicians wake up and realize these types of laws
aren't for the general good, but simply to protect the failing
business policies of a single industry?

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Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org,
www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology
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