The Edward Teach Factor

Edward Teach was also known as Blackbeard the Pirate. He sailed the Caribbean water in his ship Queen Ann’s Revenge robbing American and other shipping. The scene is set for another Caribbean pirating run. The Antigua-Barbuda bazaar may soon (relative) be offering you a copy of Windows Vista or your favorite new flick at a huge discount.The one putative action the World Trade Organization (WTO) can give the country is a release from copyright protection. Software, DVDs and CDs could all be then sold at a discount by them to recover damages to their economy. The wheels seem to grind slow but they grind on.

The island nation of Antigua & Barbuda today pressed its favorable decision in a recent World Trade Organization with the United States over online gambling by making a request for trade sanctions amounting to $3.44 billion annually.

Another reason for this reminder is that even more is happening on the UIGEA front — compliments of little Antigua-Barbuda actions.
The European Union (EU) commissioners involved with trade are doing some new saber rattling. The commissioner, Charles Mcreevy, notes that the Bush administration’s approach to the WTO finding against them was to abrogate their treaty obligations. In the realm of unintended consequences this is huge for the EU.

When the U.S. Said, “Oops!” and changed their agreement they opened a can of worms that baited the EU commissioners hook for them. This allows the EU to come to a separate finding that will allow them to establish the cost penalty that it could then use in any number of various penalties against our economic interests. “Under the WTO rules pertaining to withdrawn commitments,” said the EU, “the United States now faces claims from all other WTO members for compensation as a result of the action.” This includes quite a list of folks that don’t invite us to tea.

This ain’t chump change. This is big bucks. The damage on the London exchange is just the tip of the iceberg and that alone is billions. World trade is, at best, a contentious issue. The U.S. is often a bully in promoting U.S. interests. That fact isn’t lost by the rest of the world. Farm subsidies and the like are always on the table. We’ve bludgeon countries like France by placing restrictive tariffs on wine imports. And that is just one item in a long list.

The pressure that this will bring to bear is huge. As the Bush term winds down, the pressure that future administration will feel are going to be immense. Barney Frank’s bill will have greater traction. We aren’t out of the wood but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Meantime, Keep the Faith and join the PPA. If you are cheap, you can even do it with a free membership. We need warm bodies. It will speed the effort. Join now!

ADDENDUM:

We seem willing to blame the Bush administration for the loss of liberties granted us. The Patriot Act is such a problem. But, in times of war we make such sacrifices with the expectation that it will go away after the crisis. We did this in WWII with benefits outweighing the loss. That is the hope here.

But there are older laws that continue to impinge on our freedoms. One is the Stored Communications Act — no, I hadn’t heard of it either. This 20-year old act allows the government to get to our email without a proper warrant.

A case was brought by Steven Warshak to stop the government’s repeated secret searches and seizures of his stored email using the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA). In a landmark ruling, the district court held that the SCA violates the Fourth Amendment by allowing secret, warrantless searches and seizures of email stored with a third party.

The government, which has routinely used the SCA over the past 20 years to secretly obtain stored email without a warrant, appealed the decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court is now set to be the first circuit court ever to decide whether email users have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their stored email. I hope they get it right and straightened out.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 5:36 am and is filed under poker legislation. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.