Very interesting things happening in Antigua and the US:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21247683
Essentially, the World Trade Organization (WTO) have ruled that the islands have the right to suspend US intellectual property rights. It all stems from a trade dispute in 2003, where the US effectively banned electronic interstate gambling, which in turn damaged Antigua's economy."
This has led to one thing and another, and "...on Monday the WTO's dispute settlement body gave final authorisation for Antigua to sell movies, music, games and software via a store that would be able to ignore US copyright and trademark claims."
I'm not sure what this means for the movement - I'm sure there will be a long and lively discussion - but it's a very interesting turn of events in IP law.
Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992
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Le 2013-01-30 13:12, Richard Symonds a écrit :
Very interesting things happening in Antigua and the US:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21247683
Essentially, the World Trade Organization (WTO) have ruled that the islands have the right to suspend US intellectual property rights. It all stems from a trade dispute in 2003, where the US effectively banned electronic interstate gambling, which in turn damaged Antigua's economy."
This has led to one thing and another, and "...on Monday the WTO's dispute settlement body gave final authorisation for Antigua to sell movies, music, games and software via a store that would be able to ignore US copyright and trademark claims."
Relevant parts on limits are: "It later agreed a compensation packages with other WTO members, but Antigua held out demanding $3.44bn (£2.2bn) of compensation a year. In 2007 the WTO awarded it the right to waive intellectual property rights worth up to the smaller sum of $21m a year. On Monday the WTO's dispute settlement body gave final authorisation for Antigua to sell movies, music, games and software via a store that would be able to ignore US copyright and trademark claim"
I wonder how they will evaluate things.
I'm not sure what this means for the movement - I'm sure there will be a long and lively discussion - but it's a very interesting turn of events in IP law.
Well, on the one hand wikimedia host works in US, on the other hand, how many works/articles hosted by wikimedia whom all authors are US citizens can you find? As I understand it, they can't ignore international copyrights.
I'm not sure what this means for the movement - I'm sure there will be a long and lively discussion - but it's a very interesting turn of events in IP law.
Well, on the one hand wikimedia host works in US, on the other hand, how many works/articles hosted by wikimedia whom all authors are US citizens can you find? As I understand it, they can't ignore international copyrights.
Well, we have this problem that all files we use on Commons have to be free in both the country of origin (typically 70 years since the death of the author) and in the US (typically 95 years since creation if after 1923). This means that many of the things created in the 1920s and the 1930s which would be free or soon-to-be-free in the country of origin are still unfree in the US. In this sense, lifting the limitation that the file should still be free in the US would help. But I guess we are not going to relocate the servers to Antigua anyway.
Cheers Yaroslav
On 30 January 2013 12:12, Richard Symonds richard.symonds@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
Very interesting things happening in Antigua and the US:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21247683
Essentially, the World Trade Organization (WTO) have ruled that the islands have the right to suspend US intellectual property rights. It all stems from a trade dispute in 2003, where the US effectively banned electronic interstate gambling, which in turn damaged Antigua's economy."
This has led to one thing and another, and "...on Monday the WTO's dispute settlement body gave final authorisation for Antigua to sell movies, music, games and software via a store that would be able to ignore US copyright and trademark claims."
I'm not sure what this means for the movement - I'm sure there will be a long and lively discussion - but it's a very interesting turn of events in IP law.
I believe that option has always been on the WTO's list of remedies. It has no way to force sovereign countries to pay anything, so this kind of thing is the only way it can enforce the rules. I'm not sure how many times it has used that particular power.
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