p2pnet news | Politics:- “America could be on the verge of yet another war with a foreign nation which has displeased the corporate barons who rule the country,” p2pnet posted last December, going on:

“Antigua is in the West Indies and the main island in Antigua and Barbuda. It’s also called Wadadli, which translates roughly into ‘our own’.”

Not only but also, “its prosperity is also due in part to the popularity of online gambling,” we said.

“The World Trade Organization has granted the Caribbean nation of Antigua the right to pirate American goods and services like films and music until the U.S. government either permits Americans to gamble over foreign-based sites or eliminates its own exceptions for remote betting on horse and dog racing, including over the Internet,” said maths on Music2.0.

“It is a rather bizarre situation that seems to expose the duplicity exhibited by the US, which does not waste any opportunities to evangelize and impose its holier-than-thou moral views on gambling and music, film and software piracy upon other countries often for the purposes of simply aiming to protect its own trade interests spurred on by powerful internal US lobby groups.”

Now Antigua could abrogate intellectual property treaties with the US by the end of March, “and authorize wholesale copying of American movies, music and other ’soft targets’ if the Bush administration fails to respond to proposals for settling a trade dispute between the two counties,”declares Mark E. Mendel, the lawyer representing the Caribbean island nation.

‘Dangerous precedent’

Hollywood’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association) has been, “closely following the case with tremendous concern, an org official said, fearing that the copying could be extensively damaging and that – worse – a dangerous precedent could be set for other small countries angry at U.S. trade policy,” continues Variety.

“It is not our preferred option to punish the MPAA or others for the U.S. government’s intransigence, but the U.S. has refused to negotiate fairly,” states Mendel in the story, which also has US trade spokesman Sean Spicer saying the World Trade Organization ruled last year that Antigua was entitled to $21 million in damages because of its dispute with the US over online gambling.

Antigua, “has not received WTO approval to procure its damages via reproducing and selling domestically U.S.-copyrighted goods and materials,” Spicer says, according to Variety.

But, “They continually engage in disinformation,” says Mendel. “The reality is, yes, we have to go before WTO and request their authorization for IP sanctions against the U.S., but we can do that at any time and the WTO will agree. That is 100% guaranteed.”

Antigua wants MPAA, RIAA and Microsoft, “orgs that depend on IP protection,” to pressure the Bush administration into negotiating a “preferred” settlement, which would allow Internet gambling between Antigua and the US, says Variety, adding Mendel, “insisted the threat was neither idle nor empty”.

The giant from the north

The US and Costa Rica were also involved in an online gaming dispute.

In this case, the US agreed a compensation package, “after The White House breached of World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations involving online gambling,” says igamingbusiness.com, adding:

“The Costa Rican daily newspaper [Tico Times] stated that the trade dispute began when the US enacted laws designed to target online gambling, forcing the Central American nation to take the giant from the north to arbitration before the WTO.

“Under a WTO agreement on services, any country blocking access to one of a range of markets must provide compensation to the affected countries.

“As compensation for cutting off Costa Rican access to online gambling customers in America, the US has agreed to offer greater access to other service markets including research and development, storage, technical testing and analysis.

“This is almost identical to the deal previously worked out between the US and Canada, Japan and the European Union over the same issue.”

Slashdot it!

Also See:
p2pnet – Coming US versus Antigua war?, December 26, 2007
online gambling – Antigua vs America: Big 4 music wars, December 26, 2007
Music2.0 – WTO Legalizes Music Piracy in Antigua, December 23, 2007
Variety – Antigua threatens to allow piracy, March 18, 2008
igamingbusiness.com – US Agrees Costa Rica Settlement, March 18, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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