[LINK] Proposal for International Law Enforcement

[Craig Sanders]

On Sun, Dec 07, 2008 at 12:12:52PM +1100, Stephen Wilson wrote:
> Craig Sanders wrote:
> > it's legal there, so the US should mind their own business.
> 
> That's not a sound argument.  Sweat shops are also legal in some 
> countries, but other countries feel it right to intervene and seek local 
> law reform.  

there's a difference between seeking law reform and having an
international "police"/stormtrooper force with the right (or just the
might) to go in, arrest, extradite, try, and/or sentence "criminals" in
a jurisdiction where the "crime" is not actually illegal.

BTW, the might makes right part is significant. i doubt if china has
anything to worry about. even americans wouldn't dare conducting such
activities on chinese territory. smaller, less powerful nations -
including australia - should be worried, though.

> I am not arguing the merits of copyright enforcement, merely pointing
> out that you cannot argue point blank that the legality of an action
> in one jurisdiction kills the right of other jurisdictions to seek
> change.

i never argued that at all. seeking change is fine. and so is telling
foreign agents/lobbyists/diplomates to bugger off and mind their own
business.

what i actually argued was that agents of particular jurisdictions have
no right to enforce their own laws based on actions or omissions in
other jurisdictions.

> > was Khomeini's fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie (for
> > a book written and published in england) legitimate? his book would
> > have been a crime in Iran, even though it was legal in the UK.
>
> This 'argument' cuts both ways.  In the case of the fatwa, one
> response was that it should not have been legal in Iran!  So once
> again, the example doesn't help us understand what the *legal* issues
> are in establishing a uniform international approach to copyright
> laws.

well, yes, it shouldn't have been. but it was. Iranians would say that
what they consider to be blasphemy against Mohammed shouldn't be legal
in the US or Australia. but it is.

i'm less interested in the *legal* issues than i am in the *ethical*
issues. i oppose "harmonisation" of international copyright laws with
the copyright-lobbyists' extremist wishlist interpretations of US
copyright law because it is an infringement of human rights.  Not as bad
an infringement as fatwas ordering murder for exercising the right to
free speech, but an infringement nonetheless.


> Some people bemoan an ideological agenda where vested commercial 
> interests are thought to be wielding influence on lawmakers.  Quite 

well, of course. who wouldn't? we've had a few decades of that,
particularly the last decade. we know where that's taken us and where
it's leading us.

> possibly.  But I suspect that the same people have their own          
> ideological agenda in which copyright principles are arbitrarily      
> rejected outright, and jurisdictions that don't enforce copyright are 
> seen to be champions of some sort, where the west should butt out.    

and some believe that copyrights and patents are an artificial monopoly
that can be made to sound, in theory, like a quite reasonable tradeoff
against the *natural* human right to use and share information freely
but, in practice, turns out to be a bad bargain that has almost exactly
the opposite effect to what is claimed. i.e. it doesn't stimulate or
encourage further intellectual endeavour, it stifles it.

i'd even go further than that and say that the bargain may even have
made some kind of sense in previous ages without easy and cheap (or
effectively free) distribution of creative works and inventions where
what was being controlled was who got to profit from the dissemination,
rather than individuals' rights to use and share information.

but then, that was *before* the numerous unjustifiable extensions of
both the extent and duration of copyrights and patents.  the "bargain"
has got steadily worse over time.


> You might find that the Chinese are not in fact champions of a utopian
> anti-intellectual property philosophy.  Rather, they just haven't got
> around to legislating as yet.

i never claimed they were. they're not even remotely close to champions
of any sort. and china doesn't reject copyright, anyway, they have their
own agenda that they're playing out.

i just think that chinese law is for the chinese to decide, not the
americans. same as australian (or british or american etc) law is for
australia (britain/america/etc) to decide, not iran or china.

and i think that even though i very much disapprove of many of the laws
in china.  and iran.  (and america and australia too, for that matter).


and i also happen to think that national law is subordinate to basic
human rights, such as freedom of expression, freedom of association,
freedom of (and from) religion, and the right to due process. these
are the only things that should trump national or regional (and even
international) laws.

and yes, i do know that the world is far from perfect, and that many
countries (including iran and china) have little regard for human rights
and certainly don't believe that human rights supercede their laws.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>