On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, over 500 delegates from more than 55 countries are expected to come to DC for the 2nd World Copyright Summit. Yahoo!News reports that one big theme at the Summit will be the threat posed to artists by digital piracy. According to Kathy Garmezy, assistant executive director for government and international affairs of the Directors Guild of America, online piracy has become a bigger problem than counterfeiting. She said that delegates to the summit will be looking to hammer out a united approach to illegal downloading. Garmezy and others also praised the recent passage of “three strikes and you’re out” legislation in France, saying that the United States should take a stand to support France.
Sweden might not be on France’s side, however. According to a Yahoo!Tech article, the country’s Pirate Party, which wants to legalize Internet file-sharing, won a seat in the European Parliament. Unfortunately, while the Pirate Party has attracted a big following among 18-25 year olds with its “fight for your right to file-share” maxim, the party’s politicians have not come up with any proposals on how to reimburse artists for their work or make digital distribution channels economically viable.
As of July 1, all PCs sold in China will have to be shipped with software that blocks access to certain websites. According to the Chinese government, the move will protect youths from having access to “harmful content,” such as pornography – however, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the software will also allow for yet more political censorship. In light of this, it is not surprising that, as the Wall Street Journal points out, the main developer of the blocking software has ties to China’s security ministry and military.
Google may say it doesn’t “do evil,” but the government doesn’t seem to be so sure about that. In the past month alone, government agencies have targeted Google for antitrust review three times. Then there is the private lawsuit alleging that Google tried to kill a business-to-business search engine with predatory pricing. It’s not surprising, therefore, as the Washington Post writes, that former DoJ antitrust lawyer and recent Google hire Dana Wagner has rapidly gained influence at the Mountain View-based company. Wagner, along with public policy spokesman Adam Kovavevich, is trying to convince advertising clients, public officials, reporters and academics that the company doesn’t have a competition law problem. Warner and Kovavevich are claiming that Google holds only a 2.66% share of its total market. The problem is that this claim only works if you believe that the company is not in the search advertising business but rather should be judged by its market share in the much broader category of advertising, which includes newspaper, radio and highway billboards.
Canadian mayors passed a resolution Saturday that would potentially shut out U.S. bidders from city contracts in response to the U.S. administration's "Buy American" policy. The resolution, which according to the Seattle Times is nonbinding, passed 189-175 at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Whistler, British Columbia. Federation president Jean Perrault said the fair trade resolution was developed in reaction to protectionist provisions in President Barack Obama's stimulus bill. While a nonbinding resolution is more a gesture than anything else, it does show what a dangerous path narrow-minded protectionism puts us on.