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Antigua May Be Allowed To Violate US Copyrights
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Aug 23, 2007 01:09 PM
from the wagging-the-dog dept.
from the wagging-the-dog dept.
Skleed refers us to the NYTimes for an article on the high-stakes case the US is losing before the World Trade Organization. So far the US has lost an initial hearing and two appeals on its policies regarding Antiguan offshore gambling sites. Now the lawyer pressing the case has asked for a rarely invoked, but codified, recourse under WTO rules: letting Antiguans copy and distribute American music, movies, and software. The game may be to get Hollywood and Microsoft, et al., to pressure Washington to cut a deal. But their influence may not be sufficient to move lawmakers on the question of online gambling. From the article: "But not complying with the decision presents big problems of its own for Washington. That's because Mr. Mendel, who is claiming $3.4 billion in damages on behalf of Antigua, has asked the trade organization to grant a rare form of compensation if the American government refuses to accept the ruling: permission for Antiguans to violate intellectual property laws by allowing them to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products, among others."
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Stony Stevenson writes with the news that the World Trade Organization is seeking billions of dollars in compensation from the United States from their ban on internet gambling. The view of the WTO is that the US has reneged on commitments to the organization. "The disputed concessions arise from Antigua's victory earlier this year when the WTO ruled that the US violated its treaty obligations by excluding online Antiguan gaming operators, while allowing domestic operators to offer various forms of online gaming. Instead of complying with the ruling, the Bush administration withdrew the sizeable gambling industry from its free trade commitments. As a result, all 151 WTO members are considering seeking compensation for the withdrawal equal to the size of the entire US land-based and online gaming market, estimated at nearly US$100 billion."
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In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:5, Funny)
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I am confussed (Score:5, Insightful)
Backstory (Score:5, Informative)
They made it into a "moral issue," but that's just bullshit that they can sell to a few Evangelical hicks. The real issue was that the casinos felt that international companies were cutting into their business, so they had Congress close it down. It was pretty straightforward protectionism; online betting with U.S.-based B&M casinos (including internet off-track betting on horses, internet purchase of lottery tickets, etc.) is OK, but international ones are not.
The WTO saw this for what it is, and is basically saying, 'either you let everyone compete, or you shut it all down.' So this puts the U.S. in the position of either letting international casinos into the U.S. market, or shutting down all internet gambling (including aforementioned web-based off-track-betting, lottery tickets, sports books, etc.). The casinos -- particularly the Vegas ones -- wouldn't like that much either.
So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I have to give the Antiguans -- and most of all, their lawyer [iht.com] (who is from Texas) -- credit. It takes some brass ones to go eye-to-eye with the USG, even when they're doing something that's so transparently corrupt. I hope they can pull it off.
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Re:Backstory (Score:5, Informative)
Why does misinformation like this keep getting modded up as informative? It happens every time the online gambling issue comes up on Slashdot.
The American Gaming Association, the industry group representing those big domestic casinos, opposed legislation banning online gambling. See:
http://www.pokernews.com/news/2006/5/american-gam
http://www.americangaming.org/hillupdate/reports_
They want legalization and regulation, so they can get a piece of the pie. They're currently supporting legislation requiring a "study" of online gambling, as a preliminary to repealing the ban.
Right now online gambling is a booming international industry, but American companies can't reap any of the profits, despite what should be a very strong competitive position with their strong brands. The potential gain of locking in American gamblers to land-based casinos is negligible by comparison.
They made it into a "moral issue," but that's just bullshit that they can sell to a few Evangelical hicks.
That's not the cover story - it's the whole story. Banning online gambling has been a plank of the Republican Party platform since at least 2004:
http://www.gop.com/media/2004platform.pdf [gop.com] (see page 57)
The most recent anti-online-gambling law, the Unlawful Online Gambling Enforcement Act, was railroaded through the Senate (as a last-minute amendment to a must-pass bill) by Bill Frist. Bill Frist, at the time, was a hopeful for the Republican presidential nomination, and as such needed to shore up support among the moral conservative types.
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Re:I am confussed (Score:5, Insightful)
Las Vegas was the Fort Knox and money printing machine for the mob in the US in the 1950's. The guys at the top had some brains and understood they had to play reasonably fair with the suckers or they wouldn't come back and the suckers had to have a "good time" while they were there. This put limits on what could and could not be done.
I don't see any limits when you move it online. How do you know if you are being cheated? You wouldn't. You get to hear from people praising their big wins. And believe me, there is plenty of money going around so people can win big. The difference between a 98% payout and a 95% payout is incredible. Bring that down to 50% and you have something that wouldn't be legit in the US but would bring in billions.
Why couldn't it be 50%? Online it certainly could and nobody would be looking at the annual reports from a site run from either some small Carribean country or Russia.
I do not see how it could be regulated. With the current grab-all-you-can philosophy in the US players would flock to sites offering the opportunity to win big. And you would have TV ads running with extremely happy big winners. Even if such ads were illegal on TV, you would have them on YouTube.
Sorry, I just see it as a new and better way to part dollars from suckers at a faster pace.
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Re:I am confussed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Another reason. (Score:5, Informative)
Online gambling has been banned in the US for years by the same laws that made it illegal to wager over the phone. So there were never any domestic online gambling companies, because the US would just arrest the people running them for violating existing law.
But, the US couldn't get at people who ran online gambling companies outside the country, and while the US could have technically prosecuted individual gamblers for gambling online, that would hardly be practical. So instead, the US recently made it illegal for US banks and credit card companies to process payments to online gambling companies, effectively preventing US citizens from gambling online since it's now much harder to get your money to the gambling site.
The trick here is that the law only applies to certain kinds of online gambling, specifically, the kind of online gambling common in casinos, as it was mainly the casinos pushing for this legislation (under the guise of 'gambling is evil!'). So, the US had a situation in which certain domestic companies could engage in gambling as a trade, but certain international companies could not - and that's the basis of the WTO dispute.
The US actually has a very similar construct with regard to free trade amongst the 50 US states - it isn't legal for any state to have laws which favor domestic commerce over commerce from parties in other states. For example, in a recent ruling, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that banned companies from directly shipping alcoholic beverages to customers from out of state while allowing domestic producers to do so. Supreme Court said you had to either ban all mail-order alcohol sales or none.
And that's what the WTO is saying. The US is free to ban gambling, so long as they ban ALL gambling, not just gambling done by companies outside the country. And the US would be free to tax gambling, so long as it taxes ALL gambling. So the problem isn't that the US isn't getting a piece - they could allow gambling and tax it and get a piece. The problem is that because of the existing ban on online wagering that pit US casinos against non-US online gaming sites, the US companies were losing business to the non-US companies, so the US banned gambling at the non-US companies, which is exactly the kind of practice the free trade pacts and the WTO are supposed to prevent.
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Re:I am confussed (Score:5, Interesting)
It was widely expected to fail, but then Bill Frist tacked it onto a port security bill.
Looking at his lifetime donors [opensecrets.org], it doesn't appear to have been for a traditional special interest group. Instead, I think it was just a failing congressman, trying to appeal to the fascist evangelicals, who wish to legislate their morality on the rest of us.
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Oh hell yes (Score:5, Funny)
And we care...why? (Score:5, Funny)
Leela: "The United States is part of the world."
Fry: "Wow, I have been gone a long time."
Thankfully, that is a transcript from the future, and America is not yet part of this "world" of which the UN speaks of
The WTO and Health and Safety Standards (Score:5, Informative)
The more important question is why does Antigua respect American copyrights at all? Well, because they gain from respecting them. It's part of free and fair trade. You aren't just allowed to take something from someone. Along the same lines, you aren't allowed to bar someone from importing goods or providing services to your citizens unless they is a defendable reason - such as an authentic health and safety standard.
The WTO is the body that makes sure everyone plays by the rules. It is a voluntary association and people can leave it - and then make whatever laws they want. So, Antigua can leave the WTO and violate copyrights as much as they want - the problem is that WTO countries then can't/won't trade with them and so they loose a lot more than they would gain.
In this case, the United States would have to prove that online gambling is sufficiently worse and different from traditional gambling (which is legal in the US) - a reason why traditional gambling doesn't pose a threat to their population, but that online gambling does. Antigua needs to prove that the US regulations on online gambling don't actually protect the American people, but are rather meant to give American companies the advantage over Antiguan companies.
This isn't some weird global government looking to get rid of sovereignty. This is about using logic to determine when rules are meant to be discriminatory based on national origin and when something is a genuine health or safety standard. The US can make the argument that online gambling becomes too accessible and is therefore a much greater danger than traditional gambling. Antigua can argue that it's the same thing that happens at casinos. A court will decide which arguments hold weight based on evidence.
Re:The WTO and Health and Safety Standards (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Allowed? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Allowed? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Allowed? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Allowed? (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding. It might be amusing to watch anti-war Hollywood suddenly discover that, while war is always wrong, a "narrow" use of the US military is sometimes necessary for the greater good.
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Re:Allowed? (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, all those Al Queda terrorists that are using off-shore gambling in Antigua to launder their death money might provide the Whitehouse Junta plenty of ammo to freeze Antigua's assets that are in or pass through US banking.
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Re:Allowed? (Score:5, Funny)
My god, man, we're talking about pirates here! High seas battles, raped women and children, missing gold, plunder at the bottom of the sea, "arg matey" and worse!
Those cretins are almost as bad as terrorists.
Unless you want to have your next sailing trip interrupted by these cannon-toting freaks, you'd better support a war!
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Re:Allowed? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Allowed? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:May Be Allowed? I think not... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:WTO wont grant it. Antigua will capitulate. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:A Beautiful Thing Coming (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:A Beautiful Thing Coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, I would argue (am arguing) that the drive to create is separate from the drive for money. There would still be artists if creating art was punishable by death, it has nothing to do with making money.
The connection between creating art and becoming rich and famous was propagated by the middle men who looked at artists and said, "You know, I could really make a killing by distributing this." That is capitalism.
Now that we are in the "Digital Age" and distribution can be widespread and done by anyone, the middle-men are threatened and are reacting, sometimes by adapting to the new technology [baen.com], sometimes by suing everyone in sight [blogspot.com].
The ideal solution would be to find a way to reward artists, without restricting the distribution of art. That is the goal, remember? [njit.edu]
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