Well done, RIAA tells Brazil
p2p news / p2pnet: There’ll be singing and dancing in the streets of Brazil.
The Big Four record labels’ RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and entertainment cartel faux trade unit, the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance), have given the country a pat on the back for a good job well done, almost.
The RIAA amnd IIPA, “fully endorse” the “termination” of an American US GSP investigation into the country, says the RIAA.
GSP is short for Generalized System of Preferences, created to promote economic growth in the developing world, and provide preferential duty-free entry for more than 4,650 products from 144 designated beneficiary countries and territories, explains the US Trade Representative office.
The Big Four, Warner Music, Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal and EMI have, with the help of the movie and software industries, been able to elevate common-garden counterfeit activities to the level of major crime and they routinely use the USTR as a stick with which to beat countries which don’t satisfactorily act against ‘pirates,’ as they’ve dubbed criminals who copy CDs and DVDs.
With that in mind, the RIAA and IIPA, “filed a petition with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in 2000 requesting the initiation of a Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) investigation into Brazil’s failure to provide adequate and effective protection as required by the GSP statute,” the two say.
Now, although Brazil’s efforts, “have not yet had a significant impact on the Brazilian marketplace,” the two Big Four-owned outfits, “nonetheless fully endorse the termination of the GSP investigation”.
At the same time, “we extend our deep gratitude to Ambassador Portman and the entire U.S. Administration for their actions in defense of U.S. intellectual property rights,” they state.
“We would be in a very different place were it not for years of dedication and vision from the U.S. government.”
Truer words were never spoken.
January 17th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Menchirosos todos, muita falsa.
January 17th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
“have not yet had a significant impact on the Brazilian marketplace,”
hmmm, could it be that it’s not the problem? Maybe the overpriced product is?
January 17th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
What I do not understand is why people don’t boycott music for a month. Listen to the radio; listen to Internet radio; go out and listen to live music. Most younger people consider music to be as vital as food or air and make absurd claims such as “I cannot live without new music.” And they do this while expressing abhorrence for rights-trampling governments and corporations who use sweatshop labour (okay, a lot of kids don’t care about this one; as long as they have their fashion items).
Anand Mani
January 18th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
I do agree, I rarely purchase cd’s at all.
Having said I agree there is a but here. It should be an organized boycott. If we do not banned together and state we are boycotting and why, then the *iaa and it’s subsidiaries around the world will just blame the decrease on file sharing and use it as an opportunity to push it’s agenda.
January 19th, 2006 at 5:23 am
The problem is indeed overpricing. I have at one time a friend from Brazil. He stated that the biggest problem for US music sales there were the import taxes. When combined with the price of the product, what typically sells here at $20 there cost $45 bucks in equivalent money. While this is not an accurate presentation of the difference in exchange rates nor cost of product, it does demonstrate why the counterfits are doing so well. Because of counterfits and the internet, almost no one that isn’t exceptionally rich is buying in that country due to costs. He made mention that the Brazilian equivalents of indies were doing well and not because of counterfit items but because in the effort to spur local industry of music the import levy was set in place. Those costs also are reflected in the purchase of such products as software such as XP.
It was stated by him that it was common for those people there that could afford a computer, to obtain their OS by the builder of the computer they bought. In otherwords it was commonplace for those builders to give unlicensed copies with the machine as part of the deal of purchase. Simply the annual income for most Brazilians was low enough that the additional cost of software was an expense that would and did stop some from actually buying computers to begin with. That the cost was unduly high for the value of the product because of these import fees that were attached to all non-native products.
February 14th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
Linux distros are getting to the point where they are as user friendly and well supported as any m$ product. Plus, almost any other software you get from m$ (office, outlook, ect.) is available as open source (open office, thunderbird, firefox, etc.). The simple truth is that had it not been for piracy, m$ would have lost the less affluent markets years ago, probably having something to do with them selling sub-standard software for $200-$300. In any case, Ill be switching to SUSE soon, especially since the next windows is slated to have built-in content protection(no more ripping cds to ipods, because that doesn’t get microsoft any money).