less free world than you would think

[Joeri Sebrechts <joeri@sebrechts.net>]

Hello,

I stumbled onto your thefreeworld.net site, and noticed that you rank 
australia and the european union among the free world. This is a faulty 
concept. Both of these regions have passed laws like the DMCA which will 
come into power soon (check out the EUCD, for the european alternative). 
The problem is that the dmca is not really where it starts, it starts at 
the world trade organisation and the world intellectual property 
organisation.

When negotiations were made by the WTO and WIPO member countries 
regarding world trade of intellectual property a few years ago it was 
deemed that all countries that wanted to trade intellectual property 
with western countries needed to enforce a DMCA-like law. So, 
eventually, either WIPO will change its rules (unlikely), or the DMCA 
will spread virally across the globe (which is happening as I type 
this). It's a typical way of bending arms: either you adopt a crooked 
law, or your copyrighted works are not recognized in the western world, 
the only place where they are worth anything. This is also why the 
way-too-long copyright standard of life of the author plus 55 years is 
being accepted all over the globe as the norm by now; WIPO dictates it. 
Who was behind the formation of this devil's pact is something I'm still 
unclear about, since the WTO and WIPO are undemocratic institutions 
which give away little public information, and are rarely documented by 
the popular press, but my guess is the US government was lobbied by big 
business into making it a requirement, and the EU, as always, played the 
lapdog. And once those two are on board for something regarding trade, 
the other countries in the world have no choice.

International politics is a sad thing. The more you learn about it, the 
fouler the taste in your mouth becomes.

The positive note to remember is that the power of the US created the 
DMCA, so it can also erase it. Add to that the absolute randomness by 
which US lawmaking works, and who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe 
the trade agreements will get renegotiated (the Asian and African 
countries are pushing for that as we speak anyway).

Have a nice day,
Joeri Sebrechts