
Antigua could hit U.S. with copyright-free downloads - stevo_perisic
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/25/us-usa-antigua-copyright-idUSBRE90O0YR20130125
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AnthonyMouse
I don't see how this would actually work. If you set up a pirate website in
Antigua, congratulations, good luck competing with the million other ones that
already exist. How does it hurt the U.S. in any significant way to go from a
million to a million and one?

On top of that, it's not like the U.S. is going to sit around and allow it.
Expect payment processors to be pressured not to process payments for the
service, goods like t-shirts to be seized at the border if you actually try to
export them into the U.S. or U.S. friendly nations, etc. They're already
ignoring the WTO for the questionable purpose of prohibiting online gambling,
you don't think they would do it for this too?

In other words, now you can set up a pirate website in Antigua... under pretty
much the same conditions as you can anywhere else.

~~~
Xylakant
The difference is that it's not a pirate website. It's WTO sanctioned, thus a
legal offer. This would make things harder to shut down, since it's hard to
argue that it should be shut down because it's a pirate site.

~~~
zokier
WTO sanctioning wouldn't prevent MPAA, or even the US government labeling it
as a pirate website. US probably could ban importing IP from Antigua, thus
making downloading stuff from there as illegal as conventional pirating.

~~~
Xylakant
Sure. However, we in Europe care little about what the mpaa says and German
judges tend to be independent from the US government as well. I'd love to get
legal and timely access to high hd content and would be more than happy to
shell out some bucks. Europe has a financial crisis, but there's still a
market here.

~~~
tsotha
>However, we in Europe care little about what the mpaa says and German judges
tend to be independent from the US government as well.

They don't need to win over the German government. If the US Congress passes a
law to the effect of "No US bank can do business with a bank that does
business in Antigua" even European banks will stay clear.

I'm American and I would love to see a major country stand up to the US when
it comes to this crazy patent and copyright stuff. But there are a lot of
financial levers, and export-driven countries like Germany, Japan, and China
are particularly vulnerable.

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grecy
It's interesting to see Antigua's reaction to America ignoring the WTO. I
think America is on shaky ground here, as many countries are getting sick of
America overstepping their boundaries.

In theory, every country aligned with the WTO should back Antigua on this. In
reality, America will threaten trade sanctions against them too, so it will be
a question of who has big enough balls to stand up to the world's bully. Let's
hope we can get a critical mass going.

~~~
ajross
What boundaries exactly got overstepped? It's a legal collision. US law says
no online gambling. Antigua law says "Gambling is great, we welcome US
consumers!". US tries to enforce its law via sanctions (I think). WTO law says
you can't do that and awards Antigua $21M US in "equivalent sanctions" or
somesuch (i.e. it's not a cash award).

Yawn. I mean, I think the US law here is dumb, but it's the law. I think the
enforcement was clumsy, and it was rebuked. But this sort of nonsense happens
all the time in international law. Must _every_ trade dispute involving the US
become some kind of para-nationalist rant against the "world's bully?". Can't
it just be a dumb law like the literally thousands of other dumb laws?

~~~
ahallock
> I think the US law here is dumb, but it's the law.

It is what it is, huh? 'It's the law' is a dose of propaganda so you don't
feel bad about being forced to do something stupid.

A legal collision sounds so polite. To me, this resembles gang behavior.
People want to gamble, so fuck the State. Statists are the hypocrites who let
you buy lottery tickets at every corner store.

I agree with you that this isn't limited to the US, but the US wields pretty
heavy influence and repercussions for disobedience.

~~~
tedunangst
If people want to gamble, they should vote for representatives that will
repeal the gambling ban.

------
ynniv
Antigua: come for the beaches, leave with a truecrypt image of every book
worth reading, every song worth hearing, and every movie worth watching.

------
thechut
This is a really interesting idea. Every file sharing site in the world
setting up their servers in Antigua could potentially be a huge boost to their
economy.

However, I bet the US will come to some resolution with them at the minute to
prevent this from happening. This article is probably more of a bargaining
chip than an actual plan.

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_delirium
Here's yesterday's discussion of a different article on the same move, fwiw:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112748>

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zokier
Antigua could also become the next Cuba.

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adventured
They're going to suddenly discover al-Qaeda operating in Antigua.

------
OldSchool
Please please, a tropical paradise that's beyond the reach of even just patent
trolls. Sign me up.

------
mdasen
The article is very sensationalist. WTO penalties are meant to be a
proportional penalty, not some sort of carte-blanche.

The sensationalist aspect here is the idea that Antigua might set a far below-
market price on intellectual property items. Ah, we'll charge
$0.000000000000000000000000000001 per song/movie! Functionally unlimited songs
and movies for $1! They'll have to negotiate since we now have a legal way for
people go get nearly-free, unlimited American content! Except that the world
doesn't work that way.

If the United States did something wrong and Antigua was awarded $21M worth of
American IP as retaliation, then they should get in the ballpark of $21M. I'm
sure no one in the US government is buying the "we can set any price we want
and become a legal pirate haven if you don't give us what we want" argument.
No one at the WTO would either. It makes a great story - especially since many
of us hate the way that content industries in the US act. But the reality is
that the WTO's decision is meant to be a proportional penalty to the wrong
that has been done, not some vindictive nonsense.

I mean, sometimes countries would rather pay than change their laws - not
because they're trying to be mean, but because they just have different values
or fears. For example, let's say that Germany thinks that beer has to be made
with German hops. There's nothing wrong with American hops. They're perfectly
safe. Maybe they taste like crap, but snobbery isn't a valid reason to exclude
a product. But maybe the Germans would rather pay. It happens. Further, let's
say that Koreans are afraid that fans that don't auto-shutoff after 30 minutes
will suck the air out of a room and kill people. Science doesn't back that up,
it's not a valid health and safety issue, and if they want to exclude these
non-auto-shutoff fans, they need to pay. Where this happens in the real world
are on the edges where science is often murky. Is Pesticide A ok? Is additive
B safe? Similarly, it happens with things like gambling where the US wants to
regulate it and doesn't feel it can exert authority over foreign-companies
(even if it sets regulations for them).

None of this is meant to give anyone carte-blanche to force issues. It's meant
to keep things equal. Well, if you're going to favour your domestic industries
and harm ours by $x, we get to favour our domestic industries and harm your's
by the same $x plus maybe some reasonable penalty amount (I don't actually
know about penalty amounts) - with "x" being determined by the WTO.

Antigua had been arguing to the WTO that the US harmed it in the billions. The
WTO awarded them $21M. It sounds more like, "we're going to try to find a
loophole because they mostly disagreed with us" than it does legitimate.
Really, it sounds like the type of negotiation posturing that no one buys.

EDIT: I think the important thing to think about here is how you would want
things settled in other cases - a consistant standard of practice - and not
just in terms of nations. A lot of us here disliked Apple's harsh stand
against Android. We don't mind proportional responses, many of us don't mind
paying for quality products or components at a fair price. Likewise, we tend
to dislike the "they made a tiny infraction! burn everything that is their's!"
disproportionate response. Here we have "the US blocked Antiguan gambling
sites in a discriminatory manner". The response shouldn't be, "destroy the
entire American IP industry until they submit!"

And it's important to note that these standards should (ideally) be applied
equally. If we don't wish disproportionate responses against Actor A, we
shouldn't wish it against Actor B. The world might be less interesting in such
a stable system, but I think we all benefit. We benefit when small wrongs are
treated as small wrongs. We suffer when random wrongs carry random penalties.

~~~
ynniv
_The sensationalist aspect here is the idea that Antigua might set a far
below-market price on intellectual property items_

What's the price of something that has no incremental cost? We've been trained
to think it's ~ $15, but there's no real basis for that.

~~~
gameshot911
>What's the price of something that has no incremental cost?

Whatever the market is willing to pay.

~~~
_delirium
Absent a government-granted temporary monopoly, the market would be willing to
pay very little. So it ends up a bit circular when debating government IP
policies.

~~~
majormajor
The "people who download the most also purchase the most" stories that pop up
every six months or so disagree. Even many of the people with the most
awareness of the fact that they could get stuff for free are willing to pay
the current market rates for a lot of it. It's been almost 14 years since
Napster. A decade since suprnova and widespread availability of torrents for
movies and TV shows. And yet the floor still hasn't fallen out of market
prices. Things are changing in the creation and distribution world, but I see
little indication that some substantial part of the population has decided
that we're paying content creators too much, and that a song, show, movie,
book, or game is only worth very little.

