Brazil plans legalizing piracy as a weapon in trade wars

[TankGirl]

Brazil plans legalizing piracy
as a weapon in trade wars

WTO Thailand:

Date: October 7, 2005

Brazil yesterday formally asked the World Trade Organization to
authorize its request to impose over $1 billion in retaliation
against the U.S.for its failure to eliminate WTO-illegal cotton
subsidies, and asked that part of this retaliation take the form of
suspension of services and intellectual property rights obligations.
Brazil did not specify how much of its proposed $1.037 billion
retaliation would involve this suspension of concessions, or how much
would take the form of tariffs against U.S. goods, but did outline a
number of areas it wants to target.

Specifically, Brazil said in an Oct. 6 request to the WTO Dispute
Settlement Body that it wants to suspend concessions in the areas of
copyrights, trademarks, industrial designs, patents and protection of
undisclosed information, all areas subject to concessions under the
WTO's Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS).

Wiser Trade:

Angered by subsidies to U.S. cotton growers, Brazilian lawmakers said Thursday that they were considering suspending the intellectual property rights of American products in their country if the U.S. government did not explain how it intended to change subsidy programs by July 1.

The deadline was set earlier this year by the World Trade Organization, which found that U.S. assistance to cotton farmers distorted world prices by encouraging overproduction. If implemented, Brazil's plan would negatively affect a range of U.S. industries including entertainment, software and pharmaceuticals.

"Essentially, the Brazilian position would be, 'We're going to have state-sanctioned piracy,'" said Neil Turkewitz, an executive vice president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, the music industry's largest trade and lobbying group.

Does anybody else like the sound of 'state-sanctioned piracy'? If the RIAA says something is real bad, we can already guess it must be something real good - for the Brazilian consumers at least!

- tg

[JackSpratts]

i heard rio was nice...

- js.