This resolution will soon appear in the UN.
It is leading us to make the same mistake as the WTO and other conventions. This will support the opression of third world states with a need for medicine and developement.
Any resolution that grants exclusive rigths must adress these issues.
- Should the people of poorer nations die because they can not afford to pay for immaterial rigths?
- Is it rigth that poor countries should be exploited and have to pay, whatever the patentholder wants, to get access to medication and cures for malnutrition, AIDS, draugth, desalinisation of water e.t.c?
- Should nations that are busy surviving only function as places for cheap production. While countries that afford developement should have their income from immaterial rigths?
- Should immaterial rigths be eternal?
Do NOT vote to pass this resolution!
Send it back to the draftingtable.
The People's Republic of Sacco and Vanzetti
Received: 13 hours ago
Greetings. Normally I wouldn’t be telegramming people about a resolution they’ve endorsed but I think the UCPL, Universal Copyright/Patent Law, resolution needs to be looked at again. I am asking you to reconsider your endorsement of this resolution because it is not enforceable and will have several harmful effects on the economies and societies of the vast majority of UN nations. I’ve made this brief and will appreciate if you take five minutes to hear me out.
To start with, the resolution mandates a single copyright and patent law but doesn’t state which standard will be used. The resolution doesn’t set up how this would be decided, nor does it take into account that the UN is made up of a vast diversity of ideologies, to the point where any single standard will find most nations being forced to comply with a standard they do not agree with. We all think our approach is best, and this is the importance of allowing nations to make these decisions for themselves; forcing one standard onto an entire world will create a lot more trouble than the resolution can fix.
So beyond the resolution being unenforceable by not setting the standard it will enforce, read the last clause of the resolution again:
>>> 4. An additional sub-agency be created to be informed of, and monitor all copyright/patent infringements. Reducing the need for the government to take the time to investigate the actions. A recommended course of action will then be reported, and a court of the nation of the offender make the ruling.<<<
This might sound good but, in action, it too will cause more problems than it fixes. This clause creates a UN agency to investigate copyright infringement thus taking that power out of the hands of your government; again, whose standards will be enforced here? If this resolution passes an outside organization will be telling your courts which laws to enforce; again, countries should be making up their own minds on issues like this.
Finally, this resolution takes a lowest common denominator approach to intellectual property. Most countries recognize a patent as valid for only 10 years or so, more or less depending on specific national laws regarding different patents or copyrights. Once that copyright or patent runs out the information becomes public domain, which means that generic drugs can be made for poor countries and books and music can be reproduced for free. However, if one country extends its copyrights longer than you extend yours you will end up being held to their standard because of how the resolution has copyright infringement cases handled. Do you want other countries telling you how to write your laws? Didn’t think so.
This resolution will not help your economies, copyrights and trade have no real relationship, and it will cost you a significant chunk of your sovereignty when deciding how to deal with intellectual property. I hope you will reconsider your endorsement and prevent this resolution from reaching quorum because it does not state the standard it wants to enforce and it infringes upon your nation’s rights to govern itself.
Reply from Chezrak
I don't really see how having an international IP scheme in NS would be any different to the Berne Convention or the harmonisation of EU IP laws through such means as the CDPA (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act). Most countries have a copyright law that protects the invention rights of the author for 70 years after his or her death, although some countries (eg the US) have a 50 year guarantee which will probably change soon anyway to keep up with the rest of the world. The agency you have highlighted merely informs the government concerned of a breach but doesn't take jurisdiction out of their hands. Conversely, copyrights and trade do have an interlinked relationship as without them much fewer people would bother to invest original skill and labour in creating novel intellectual creations and hence the economy would stagnate. Finally, I do not believe that a NS proposal needs to discuss every possible eventuality and look like a draft bill does in the real world. The CDPA 1988, for example, takes up a full 111 pages in book form and has since Nov 2003 been updated and amended (and thus extended).
New Eriu concurs with Chezrak. Of all the recent proposals that have come to Quorum, this is the most viable and has the fewest critical loopholes.
Plus, a common copyright resolves many problems with trade agreements we currently hold. Therefore, this step seems natura.