World trade Organization legalizes piracy for Antigua
 

this is almost funny

basically becaue the US is thumbing their nose at the WTO (regarding gambling), the WTO is giving antigua the right to ignore the Berne convention

amazing no one has commented on this yet

Nice... big slap in the face.

i was pleased when i read the news

er, im not like pro piracy or anything but i mean i was pleased to see the WTO actually do something to fuck with the US

yup,totally................:2 cents:

Who cares what the WTO says.

Everyone is too buzy trying to register porntorrents.ag

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

so is hosting available in Antigua?

holy fucking shit

I'm also happy. If only the UN could have prevented the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and other more serious violations of international law.

The US = credibility on the international scene lost forever. When a US diplomat opens his mouth, it's like listening to Soviets. Lies, lies and lies.

A .ag domain costs $250 wtf?

Fine. I will stay there in April, 2008!

:2 cents:

piratebay.ag

Antigua is a pretty island, but where the fuck is the US?

Yeah, because the UN is really credible. :1orglaugh

Why .......

You live in Florida and you like seeing the US fucked with. Why are you fucking here then?

wasn't antigua basically founded by pirates way back in the day?

For the Dendrochronologists among us. :)

not to nitpick but invasion of iraq was legally justified by saddam violating the terms of surrender from the first gulf war. If it had not been france could have demanded and gotten george bush tried for war crimes.

If you want a better example of the US flaunting the law the dispute over soft lumber with Canada, they lost ever step of the way and still refused to pay the full penalty.

The canadian government caved on the demand and let them off the hook because the US threatened sanctions.

should be interesting to see if antiqua replaced the gambling hosting with pirate hosting to recover their losses.

well considering the berne convention (the legal agreement that recognizes copyrights registered in one country to be valid in another )was negotiated thru WTO. And they are basically revoking the US right to this agreement it would represent a very strong motion to dismiss arguement against any suit brought by a US copyright holder.

Put your servers up in antiqua and you can basically say :321GFY to the MPAA.

Damn... it is funny gideongallery :winkwink::1orglaugh

And... have to say it is, ironically, totally justified and stemming from an action which started around 10 years ago and where the US has still failed to perform.

It's even more absurd that the admin are now trying to sqeeze out of the issue by changing the goalposts and now proposing to rewrite gaming laws and not have them included in trade agreements with the WTO. Basically it's a scenario where a country will not keep follow the spirit of a treaty it signed and wants to behave like a spoilt brat - basically, no cred.

If you take that behavior a step further - why would an offending country seek WTO intervention in it's trading relationships with other countries? Example - China.

Someone needs to get the clue that "cherry picking" parts of treaties you like and ignoring others was never part of the deal :1orglaugh

My new tube site is almost ready to go, guess where it's located. :)

It looks like they are getting back to their roots.

Antigua thinks making itself a criminal haven will be good for business?

:1orglaugh

Oh well, it's just another caribbean island to cross off my list for vacations.

:pimp

You got that twisted and wrong as usual DH - the 'criminal' element stems from the admin and not from anyone else :thumbsup

I know things are backward, but does it take longer than ten years to comply with a treaty?? :1orglaugh

What antigua is doing is generating extra income for themselves which will make their infrastructure better while the bulk of the pirates/criminals will probably never actually step fott in that country....

100% accurate :thumbsup

Know the island well and have biz there - and also know a number of the parties involved in the gaming/WTO dispute. They have tolerated a fair amount of abuse since... around 1997 onwards and have invested amounts of funds into reaching a settlement and obviously have no intention of giving up on this.

These people have been totally above board, transparent and have been guided by serious legal representation. One scenario in the early days involved the production of glossy laminated brochures with pics of their corp officers, their experience and a policy statement etc. The US then used to try and target these individuals - ironic *lol*

Sure, there is a vested interest at govt level in continuing this action since gaming brings considerable revenue to the island. It is basically an offshore jurisdiction performing the usual corp formations, banking and financial services etc. and, least from my :2 cents: - a nice place to live and very few restrictions or red tape.



PS You are right - what happens to 'criminals' is they are escorted to the airport and thrown off the island with very little warning :winkwink:

it is far worse than ignoring the spirit of the treaty but the letter of the law
the ajudication provision is defined to setup a third party court system to handle trade disputes amoung members. The US basically said we don't like the ruling we agreed to abide by so we are taking our ball and going home.

Well WTO is saying if you don't want to live up to your responsibilities then we are taking away all the benefits (berne convention).

well now we can all sue Australia for blocking porn, if they go ahead with it!!!

Sure.. it's exactly that GG.

Have followed this dispute for years - after initial hearings at the start and highlighting the specific claims of abuse, the "perp" claimed they had since changed and were complying with the terms of the treaty. Unfortunately, this was totally untrue and Antigua, Canada, the UK and several other countries then again pushed the issue in front of the WTO. A further ruling was made against the US and time was given to perform, and again - this never happened. Then the process was repeated - yet again *lol.

Basically it has been a series of hearings, rulings, reasonable time periods allowed to comply with the treaty/convention and this has ultimately failed. There are no rational "excuses" left to present to the WTO to justify the prohibition of trade "because we don't like it". The Berne Convention never was a pick-and-choose-the-good-bits scenario :)

Sure, there are ultimate consequences of playing your own ball-game and ignoring ratified treaties and no reason to expect the international community to jump up and defend US interests if the US can't even abide by the treaty itself.

It's like appearing before a judge and claiming you don't like the law you agreed to, so we'll just ignore it and continue our criminal ways :winkwink:

Pretty amazing precedent

a few daisy cutters and the problem solved lol

Pirates weren't always outlaws; a lot of them worked for their governments. It's tradition.

i don't get it how does cricket solve this problem.

Copyright infringement/piracy costs the U.S. economy $58.0 billion in total output and costs American workers 373,375 jobs*

I wonder how Hollywood feels about this?


*These figures taken from Institute for Policy Innovation.

the problem is that "piracy" as defined by the IPI includes a lot of fair use (like downloading a tv show you paid for but misplaced/missed)

defendfairuse.org

The report is available here.

basically give the mpaa/etc the level of protection they want and you sacrifice 2.2 trillion dollars in currently legal income to gain 58 billion.

You put 11 million people out of work to save 373,375.

I hope this helps you understand why i am such a strong supporter of fair use :thumbsup