WIPO 'not flexible enough'
By OUT-LAW.COM
Published Friday 26th October 2007 08:56 GMT
The European Commission wants to create a new layer of intellectual property protections because it says existing structures such as WIPO are not flexible enough.
The commission is seeking EU member states' permission to negotiate new trade agreements with a list of specific countries, including the US, Japan, Korea, Mexico, and New Zealand. The aim of the agreements will be the enforcement of intellectual property rights and combating piracy.
The commission wants to create the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which will create "high-level international framework that strengthens the global enforcement of intellectual property rights and helps in the fight to protect consumers from the health and safety risks associated with many counterfeit products".
The permission of the EU member states is needed before such agreements can be negotiated, and the commission is now formally seeking that permission.
The activity envisaged by the plan is more usually undertaken by trade bodies such as the World Trade Organisation, the G8 group of industrialised nations, and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). A commission statement, though, said that it felt it needed more room to manoeuvre than those bodies provided.
"We feel that the approach of a free-standing agreement gives us the most flexibility to pursue this project among interested countries," said a statement. "We fully support the important work of the G8, WTO, and WIPO, all of which touch on intellectual property rights enforcement. The membership and priorities of those organisations simply are not the most conducive to this kind of path breaking project."
The proposal of the new body highlights the worries of some economies about the piracy threat posed by countries without similar traditions of intellectual property rights enforcement.
"The EU is consistently pushing countries like China to enforce anti-counterfeiting legislation and to toughen the legal penalties for intellectual property theft," said the commission statement. "Closer coordination on international benchmarks can reinforce this pressure."
ACTA is designed to create a common approach between member nations in relation to the punishment of counterfeiting and piracy. It may also plan to change the law in some member countries. One of its aims is listed as "creating a strong modern legal framework which reflects the changing nature of intellectual property theft in the global economy".
The commission said the creation of the new body was necessary to deal with new threats. It said 130 million fake products were seized at EU borders, an increase of 40 per cent on the previous year. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said trade in fake goods represented two per cent of world trade. It said physical trade in counterfeit goods was worth $200bn a year.
OUT-LAW.COM is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.
Let's just say that I don't like the sound of this. It's not sinister in and of itself, but we all know who the most ardent supporters of this sort of thing are and how they would love to put he squeeze on everyone. This new body, if done competently, would be a good thing, but I'm not optimistic about that.
Also, the value of the counterfeit goods part at the end of the article is not necessarily reliable, as those numbers may have been conjured out of thin air on a guess. There was something to that effect in the comments section of the article on the Register main site.
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Edi wrote:
Also, the value of the counterfeit goods part at the end of the article is not necessarily reliable, as those numbers may have been conjured out of thin air on a guess. There was something to that effect in the comments section of the article on the Register main site.
The $200bn figure does seem suspicious. Unless they're taking into account every single piece of counterfeit merchandise and not just IP theft, but even then it still seems unrealistically inflated.
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Edi wrote:
Also, the value of the counterfeit goods part at the end of the article is not necessarily reliable, as those numbers may have been conjured out of thin air on a guess. There was something to that effect in the comments section of the article on the Register main site.
The $200bn figure does seem suspicious. Unless they're taking into account every single piece of counterfeit merchandise and not just IP theft, but even then it still seems unrealistically inflated.
I'm not sure about this specific estimate, but most 'estimates' of software piracy losses count a 13 year old who's running a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop on his parent's computer as a 'lost sale'.
In other words, while there are indeed lost sales due to piracy, the estimates provided by some industry trade groups are wildly overinflated.
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Glocksman wrote:
I'm not sure about this specific estimate, but most 'estimates' of software piracy losses count a 13 year old who's running a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop on his parent's computer as a 'lost sale'.
I'm not so sure that should really be counted though. Most of the people who buy graphics editing suites are professionals that can afford it, so it's not as if your typical end user is generally Adobe's target when packages cost anywhere from $500 to $1,500. If someone actually can afford Adobe's suites and uses them for what they're intended (commercial-level work) they're not going to pirate them.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
Which is what Glocksman is saying. If you count all the people who would have never bought a product (do to cost, price vs benefit, etc.) but are willing to pirate it, you get those unlikely high figures. When only commercial piracy is counted (illegal pressing of extra media in legit plants, in complete illegitimate plants or even your friendly neighbourhood pirate), a number that does undervalue the estimate somewhat, but is much more based in reality rather then fantasy, the cited number goes down hard - I believe even an order of a magnitude.
As far as the initiative goes - if it focuses exclusively on commercial pirating and other IP violations it could be a good thing - mentioning China leads me to hope that this is the case. The Commision has shown itself to be reasonably intelligent when dealing with IT and IP until now, at least more then most regulatory bodies, so I do have some hope that this will actually target the commercial pirates and not the guy downloading a song of the 'net, but then again it could also be more bullshit sponsored by big, in this case, European, media companies (Vivendi and Atari/Infogrames come to mind).
Glocksman wrote:I'm not sure about this specific estimate, but most 'estimates' of software piracy losses count a 13 year old who's running a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop on his parent's computer as a 'lost sale'.
Really, that's a gained sale, since if said 13-year-old wasn't able to pirate Photoshop they would've just downloaded The Gimp or bought some cheaper competing product, rather than paying full-price for Photoshop. If that happened, they'd be more familiar with that other product so that when they're in a position where they're no longer able to continue using pirated software (i.e. they're using it in a business environment) they're more likely to continue to use that competitor instead of finally buying Photoshop as they likely would've done if they'd been using it since childhood.
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Drooling Iguana wrote:Really, that's a gained sale, since if said 13-year-old wasn't able to pirate Photoshop they would've just downloaded The Gimp or bought some cheaper competing product, rather than paying full-price for Photoshop. If that happened, they'd be more familiar with that other product so that when they're in a position where they're no longer able to continue using pirated software (i.e. they're using it in a business environment) they're more likely to continue to use that competitor instead of finally buying Photoshop as they likely would've done if they'd been using it since childhood.
This is long-term thinking. Modern business suck at long term thinking (to be fair, this is partly due to being in thrall to fucknut stock market analysts). Far better to sue everyone in sight, make everyone hate your company but get 25% more profits next quarter, rather than worry about market share three to five years in the future.
