NationStates Jolt Archive

Why?

1. It creates more bureaucracy and unnecessary organizations just to benefit the "individual rights" of the most greedy people.
2. It won't make a real difference on copyrights but it will make every nation waste time and resources on this
3. It imposes laws that go against each nation's government freedoms, especially it is an imperialist way of controlling Anarchist nations, it goes and imposes pro-capitalist laws on non-capitalist nations.
4. The "additional sub-agency" which "monitors infringements" is suspicious. Will it really work for people's interests? Will it benefit big corporations? Do you really want such an agency to control laws when it should be up to each nations government? Think about it.

And vote AGAINST before it's too late.

Voting Ends: Mon Jan 26 2004


i suppose... :?:

I voted yes

to give a posible example of how this Law will work:

A company in a neighbouring country informs your government that it succesfully has filed for copyright on your Nation's National Anthem; they expect a royalty for every time your Anthem is played, on schools, at sport-stadiums etc.

Off course this could only be a mistake, this copyright shouldn't have been assigned based on some 'prior art' (which is a patent-right-term, not copyright-law).
At least i hope so, there is no copyright-law defined in this proposal, not even the least, like something that Copyright is essentially the right the author/creator of a work holds (in which case we wouldn't need an agency to 'assign' copyrights)

Then the only possible road you country can take is to go to the 'Copyright-agency' itself, for within this Law, they are given th right to also check on their own actions.
Your country will have to tell the agency they have made an error, now they can decide on how to act on your request, will they admit their error ?....

Isn't there any form of other institution to check the actions of the Copyright/Patent-office? NO.

this 'agency' will in one day be the nw spider into the web of all economic trade, be it international, or even national trade.
all products bought and sold will be under control of this agency that will decide if there are patents or copyrights infringement by any transactions within UN-nations.

is dat 'Free Trade'?
no, I call it UN-Government-Controlled Trade

This resolution sounds like a way to ban file sharing programs. Now it can be an international crime to download a song for free onto your computer. Maybe the UN International criminal court will start prosecuting 12 year old girls like the music industry does.

I agree vote NO for the current resoluation.

It also infringes on the rights of nations.

It makes it easier for companies to dominate.

There are more then enough reasons so vote no.

Steven Zeke
UN Representive
Socialist Union of Kerla

This copyright law, while it sounds nice on paper, will accomplish nothing more than creating a moneypit of unnecessary beauracracy.

Not only does it infringe on the rights of each nation to protect their own interests, enforcing the laws will be impossible- When you consider the number of nations that are not participating in the United Nations, All infringers would need to do is set up an Internet site or a corporation in one of the non-UN nations.

The United Nations cannot police the entire world, and this law will only serve to hurt our great nations and benefit those who hold no affiliation with us.

In the end, all of that money spent on this unnecessary, unsuccessful government agency would have been better spent on police, health care, security or education, or any other vastly more worthy endeavor.

Please Vote NO on this Resolution!

:The most Concerned Holy Republic of Dalichae

As members of this post have declared, the introduction of a massive, so-called "comprehensive" international copywrite scheme is nothing short of dictatorial. The Lone Star Republic formally opposes this proposition. A brief outline of our grievances can be found in a new post: "Oppostion to a UN-Dictated Copywrite Laws". We apologize for the duplicity in oppositions posts, but this is a proposition we believe cannot be allowed to pass.

Why I'm against it: hegemony by the most powerful does not make it right, nor make it work.

First of all, I don't think such a law will do much for trade -- if the proposal had set out some stipulations or criteria then I could better judge this, but overall I think the originator's reasoning is pretty naive, to link copyright law with better trade. How do they figure that?

in my OOC life, I have a friend who works for a NGO (non-government organization) that has observer status at the UN. She attended a conference on copyright a couple years ago, and her statement about human resources was extraordinary. The U.S. showed up at the conference with 200-300 lawyers, plus support staff. Clearly they were prepared to take on the issue and make their points known. This demonstration of human resources was in huge contrast to most of the developing nations, who on average sent _one_ representative each -- the person was sometimes a Minister from that country who also had a law background, if indeed they did, and some were that country's Minister of Justice. In other words, in most countries in the world, they do not currently have the human resources to either develop, defend or enforce any kind of copyright law. This leaves the vision of the richest countries, who, if their vision prevails, will reap the most benefit -- although such laws would be virtually unenforceable, thus fairly pointless.

I don't want a world where the countries with the most lawyers 'wins' the right to form the laws of what should be a global issue -- who gets to decide what is fair?

As our world's richest countries are in actuality sending small armies of their corporate and intellectual property legal elite in order to impose their way, I don't think it would be much different in NationStates if the proposal at stake is passed. The issue is complex, and cannot have a simplistic answer -- some order must be imposed, but not decreed. And so I don't think much of this UN proposal.
That is my reasoning.

salutations,

Freelander

(cross-posted elsewhere in this forum and on the Monkey Island regional board)