back to article WTO ruling emboldens pirates of the Caribbean

Antigua and Barbuda, the small Caribbean nation perhaps best-known as the birthplace of cricketer Sir Vivian Richards, has won concessions from the World Trade Organisation that will allow it to suspend some of its intellectual property obligations. The island nation has arrived in this position after fighting against the USA’ …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Go A & B, stick it to the yanquis

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      >stick it to the yanquis

      Guess where their only internet connections goes to and who owns the link.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: >stick it to the yanquis

        I don't need to guess. I know.

        There is more than one Internet connection to Antigua, and while some of the routes go to the USA, not all do. And I know for certain that the USA does not own the infrastructure on these pipes.

      2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        Re: >stick it to the yanquis

        Yes, but severing any such link deliberately, would be no doubt unlawful and probably in breach of several international treaties.

        It's nice to see Uncle Sam being told to stop bullying the other countries for a change, whatever my personal beliefs about internet gambling sites (i.e. a very good thing for the owners and a very bad thing for the users), they have eseentially been told that if they don't uphold their side of a treaty, the other party can happily disregard their side, until Uncle S comes to his senses again.

        1. Evan Essence

          Re: >stick it to the yanquis

          severing any such link deliberately, would be no doubt unlawful and probably in breach of several international treaties.

          The Yanquis have no respect for international law when it works against them, so that wouldn't stop them.

    2. hplasm
      Pirate

      Yarr!

      Why not!

  2. STrRedWolf
    Mushroom

    If this goes through, this means:

    Pirate Bay, bullet-proof hosting services, and even Mega will land mirrors on their networks.

    Internet connectivity gets upgraded ASAP.

    The media companies start bribing heavily enough to cause military action.

    A&B get nuked.

    World War 3.

    I'd move to Germany but they're even worse than the US.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why nuke

      Just de-peer them. Or to be more exact send two suits with dark glasses to their ISP provider asking "politely" to de-peer them or be on the receiving end of RICO + DMCA + whatever else USA can come up with to protect the monopoly of their state lotteries and other forms of legalized gambling.

      Do not underestimate the power of the lobbies in this area. This includes A, B and other Caribean countries lobbies too. They have been highly successful in financing the right voices in the right places so that the hugely disproportional sanctions against Cuba are still in place. As long as Cuba is not trading with the US its cittizenship and economy is not "corrupted" and it stays "red". As long as it stays red, all the gambling and tourism goes elsewhere in the Caribean. Win, win. At the expense of the Cubans but c'est la vie.

      1. g e

        Re: Why nuke

        Cut the cable, you mean.

        Shame I'm not on a percentage for saving money...

  3. JaitcH
    FAIL

    The USA is dithering on its response to that claim.

    Joe Biden is potentially running for president and this means he needs money.

    He is already in the pocket of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), so undoubtedly there will be conditional agreements for support being discussed.

    As for cutting communications inks to Antigua and Barbuda, the US will likely run into the ITU who don't really agree to that sort of thing. Cuba's connections for years were routed through a sea cable to Miami where most everyone could get connected to Cuba.

    Smart Canadians set up 'Call Cuba' businesses whereby American could call into Canada and get connected to Cuba, beating the stupid ban.

    Cuba is also linked to South American networks through cables and can always fall back on satellite links.

    Up yours, USA.

    1. Knoydart
      Pirate

      Re: The USA is dithering on its response to that claim.

      Indeed Cuba and that other bastion of comradeship Venezuela recently fired up a new sub sea fibre.

      South America bandwidth galore for Castro & the chosen few.

      S&C for pirates of the Caribbean of course

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The real pirates ...

    ... are those who coercively attempt to apply their domestic laws extra-territorially. Fuck that, and the horse it rode in on; they have nobody and nothing to blame but themselves and their own insanely egotistical overreaching ambition to dominate the entire world.

    1. g e
      Pirate

      Re: The real pirates ...

      Technically they might be privateers ;o)

      Do you think they fly a Team America flag?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The real pirates ...

      As an American, I find the constant screams of "You want to run the world!" somewhat bizarre; if those who yell about it so loudly lived here, they'd be aware that the US would generally prefer to not be involved with anybody else whatsoever. Isolationism is more a fault of ours than imperialism.

      Of course, if we are imperialists, don't get too high on your horses, Britain - we learned from the best.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The real pirates ...

        > Of course, if we are imperialists, don't get too high on your horses, Britain - we learned from the best.

        Sadly, I rather fear that the US has merely *copied* from the best, not *learned*. If you had learned from our mistakes (or stupidity, or arrogance) then your foreign policy would look quite different.

  5. The Nazz

    Let's hope they price the "goods" appropriately.

    After reading recently that Antigua and Barbuda can take this action until they have "recovered" the value of $3bn or so, let's hope that they price the "IP goods" at a reasonable rate.

    Hmmmm, let's say $0.00001 per track and $0.00010 per film. That should take them a while.

    Good ole WTO i say.

    1. g e
      Holmes

      Re: Let's hope they price the "goods" appropriately.

      A copy of one Britney Spears tune 'shared' is roughly equal to that.

      Let's hope they use Antigua's metrics instead of the MAFIAA's when calculating, which if they're clever will be very small :o)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Let's hope they price the "goods" appropriately.

      If they play it cleverly they can get quite a lot out of this, even though they can only run the site (if they choose to) to reclaim the £21M owed.

      So. My logic would be this. The site(s) would be prone to DDoS attacks (from certain bodies) and potentially even physical attacks. therefore the infrastructure should be sufficiently complex and secure to protect against this (and equally expensive). There will be lots of DMCA requests and so they will need a lot of personnel to manually trawl through these (along with lots of expensive lawyers). As such they can demonstrate (using Hollywood finiancial methods) that even though they are charging $1 per HD movie, the actual profits (when all the costs of the extra security, etc have been accounted for) is 0.01$ per movie, and hence they will only shut down the site after 4.2 billion downloads - which could take a long time. During that time the US are effectively paying to employ all the personnel required to operate the service (possibly the same people who lost their jobs originally due to the gambling issue).

      Sounds like a plan.

      What will probably happen (if the hollywood movie industry has any sense) is that they, hollywood et al, club together to pay the $21M and then add this into their current 'hollywood finance' equations to show that they need pay even less tax (if that is possible).

      1. CmdrX3

        The DMCA requests should be easy enough

        Just filter them to go directly to deleted files. As copyright is suspended by international law, it's would be a perfectly legal site and DMCA, quite apart from being an American law (although they deem otherwise) is not relevant. They may need to be careful though and ensure only US copyrights are ignored as any other countries copyrights remain valid and in force.

  6. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    Just got in a fresh supply of popcorn.

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