{"id":179432,"date":"2010-01-14T02:29:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T07:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100112\/2339157722.shtml"},"modified":"2010-01-14T02:29:56","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T07:29:56","slug":"ustr-will-listen-to-the-public-on-creating-its-ip-axis-of-evil-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/179432","title":{"rendered":"USTR Will Listen To The Public On Creating Its ‘IP Axis Of Evil’ List?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among copyright experts and copyright policy folks, it seems widely recognized that the US Trade Rep’s “Special 301” review process has been a massive joke. Last year, at an event discussing copyright, even folks from the US Copyright Office laughed off the Special 301 report. Historically, what it’s been is the entertainment industry putting together a list of countries that don’t have draconian enough copyright laws, and it gets the USTR to complain about them and put them on a “watch list” of sorts. Pretty much everyone who understands these issues knows it’s a complete joke, but unfortunately there are lots of people who don’t understand these issues, and it lets diplomats and politicians make laughable claims like saying that Canada is a hub for piracy — and the press almost never questions where that information came from because it sounds all official.<\/p>\n

So it’s nice to hear that apparently the USTR is opening up the Special 301 review process to the public<\/a> (slightly) in not just asking for written input, but also holding a public hearing for the first time ever (via Michael Geist<\/a>). That said, I’m not convinced this will really make a huge difference. Since this is a discussion about what foreign countries are doing with their copyright laws that doesn’t directly affect most of the American public directly (though we can be concerned about the fallout). So who’s going to take part? The usual suspects form the industry will, asking for increased protectionism designed entirely to prop up their business models, rather than actually looking at a country’s copyright laws. But will others really have enough to say? KEI plans to submit something, and does a good job cautiously praising<\/a> the slightly more open process, but worrying about whether it will actually make a difference.<\/p>\n

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Among copyright experts and copyright policy folks, it seems widely recognized that the US Trade Rep’s “Special 301” review process has been a massive joke. Last year, at an event discussing copyright, even folks from the US Copyright Office laughed off the Special 301 report. Historically, what it’s been is the entertainment industry putting together […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}