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Antigua Government Set to Launch “Pirate” Website To Punish United States
- DigitalSea 14y agoI'm heating up my popcorn kernels in a large pot of oil as we speak, things are about to get very entertaining. If Antigua start a piracy website selling US copyrighted material, won't the US just ban access to the site and other countries (definitely the UK and Australia) will follow suit? Potentially resulting in free-speech and Internet rights advocacy groups (and the likes of anonymous) kicking up a massive storm of trouble? It's obvious the bans on Internet gambling is due to the fact it's hard to regulate and it's even harder to tax and when it comes down to it, it's all about money. The US only has themselves to blame, this isn't about protecting people from addictions because lets face it if you want to gamble legally you can go to a casino and if you want drugs you can walk down to the corner and if you want booze you can go to a bottle shop or bar. What's the difference between Internet gambling and going to a casino? The government can tax non-Internet based casinos... If it gets that far and something isn't worked out prior, this will be an interesting test of Obama's merits as a president and where he stands on things like unrestricted and free Internet access. Given the US's harsh words against China's censorship over the years, it would be pretty ironic if the US were to block such a site.
- 1337biz 14y agoGreat point. Even so I don't expect them to really go through with it, it is great to see small countries at least trying to stand up for themselves.
- No1 14y agoI don't really expect it to happen either; sounds more like a power play to get the US to finally cough up some restitution for the claimed billions in losses that Antiguan economy has suffered. If it does play out though, things will get very interesting.
- rayiner 14y agoStanding up for themselves against what?
- mentat 14y agoAgainst the US who abides by WTO when it pleases them and disregards it when it doesn't.
- defrost 14y ago> definitely the UK and Australia Why would Australia, the country, follow suit? While it's true a few misguided Family First types have proposed mandatory filtering laws for Australia such laws are not in place and have repeatedly suffered setbacks. The other side of that coin is Australia has had one of its major ISPs defend all the way to the Supreme Court the right not to monitor the torrenting behaviour of its users. It's a robust and engaged debate here in Australia and the country hasn't followed the American industry lead on tracking piracy.
- Maxious 14y ago>While it's true a few misguided Family First types have proposed mandatory filtering laws for Australia such laws are not in place I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but http://delimiter.com.au/2012/11/14/iinet-internode-implement-conroys-new-filter/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/11/14/iinet-internode-implement... This is for obscene content but it appears that there is at present no legal barrier to the government just issuing further Section 313 orders that would block websites that breach other laws.
- defrost 14y agoIt's a robust debate and a complicated one, to be sure. That's the state of play as a few months back, iiNet has agreed to filter the interpol list of serious child porn sites and that's: - not the same as the initial black hole, black list initially proposed - something I have far less of an issue with, particularly if a significant proportion and cross section of the population has access to the list (still being ironed out) - the story's still not played out (and hopefully remains in play, forever, as a point of active debate for Australian society). Thanks for posting the link, I was aware of that and deliberately simplifying above. Coming back to the banning of Antigua from within Australia should the US do so, I can see that being proposed and raised up the mast here, I don't see it being pushed out and actually floated quite so easily.
- pyre 14y ago| interpol list of serious child porn sites If they are so serious why are they allowed to operate? Are there really jurisdictions that allow them to operate with impunity? Or are these sites really in legal grey zones[1]? [1] e.g. Country A says that you must be 21+ to appear in porn, but Country B says that you only need to be 18+.
- mrb 14y agowon't the US just ban access to the site? Currently, the US has no ability to do this, they have no country-wide firewall like China. At best, they can revoke/hijack the domain name, since ICANN is pretty much under US influence, but the site would remain accessible by IP address, and it is likely that tens/hundreds of alternative domain names would be set up by the site supporters. Or, the US could hijack the IP space with BGP black holing/null routing, but this would be seen as an extremely offensive act. It would be the first time a western country does this AFAIK.
- bo1024 14y agoOr simply ask the major ISPs to block it. They are already opting into 6 strikes and throttling certain types of traffic (e.g. torrents). It wouldn't surprise me at all if they "voluntarily" (or really, voluntarily) blocked such sites.
- DigitalSea 14y agoThis is the exact kind of blocking I was thinking of. Merely blocking the domain would be enough to prevent access from basic users but maybe not knowledgeable pirates, similar to what has happened with The Pirate Bay in the UK and ISP's blocking access to it.
- sp332 14y agoBut blocking that domain in the UK did nothing to slow bittorrent traffic, according to several sources. http://torrentfreak.com/censoring-the-pirate-bay-is-futile-isps-reveal-120711/ http://torrentfreak.com/censoring-the-pirate-bay-is-futile-i...
- DigitalSea 14y agoYeah, it was circumvented Pretty quickly. You can't outsmart a pirate. It's a good example of a government trying to restrict what it's citizens can do however, even if it failed the government tried to block access in the first place.
- uvdiv 14y agoIt's obvious the bans on Internet gambling is due to the fact it's hard to regulate and it's even harder to tax... Or billion-dollar mafia-run casinos know which politicians to bribe.
- howardr 14y agoThis is how the WTO is able to enforce its regulations. Because the WTO can't actually forced a country to pay another for unfair trade practices (the WTO doesn't have an army), the WTO is allowed to permit winning plaintiffs to break agreements or enact retaliatory tarrifs to recoup losses[1] It comes down to comparative advantage[2]: Countries are better off by opening up free trade and thus have an incentive to keep things relatively open. The WTO acts as intermediary to prevent an arms race of tariffs and retaliatory actions that end up hurting countries in the long run. It seems ironic because the WTO is letting another country enact a retaliatory tariff but for the most part the WTO is one of the more effective global institutions at enforcing its principal. There is a lot more nuance but I hope this helps explain this a little more. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_trade#Ricardian_model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_trade#Ricardian_m...
- arbuge 14y agoIt's about time internet gambling became available in the USA and this prohibition-type nonsense ended once and for all. I don't see why doing it on the casino floor in Vegas is fine but doing it at home isn't. Sure it's addictive but so is alcohol, and you don't have to step outside your home to drink that. The nanny state must go.
- Roybatty 14y agoAgreed on the nanny state must go. But the nanny state is much more than just banning internet gambling. The federal government is so big and intrusive in our lives these days, it's out of control...that's nanny state. And do we (the U.S.) really want to be socialist/nanny-state? Let the Europeans try that model.
- rosser 14y agoI don't see why doing it on the casino floor in Vegas is fine but doing it at home isn't. Because it's damned hard to tax gambling winnings when they happen outside the US government's jurisdiction. A brick-and-mortar casino in Vegas will issue you a 1099 if you win enough; a virtual casino in Antigua is under no such obligation.
- jessriedel 14y agoThe vast majority of the government's revenue through gambling comes from taxing the casinos. Taxes on personal gambling gains are trivial.
- arbuge 14y agoIf that was the rationale, then why aren't US virtual casinos (which are subject to IRS requirements to collect W9s and issue 1099s) allowed? There are tons of affiliate marketers online making money from non-US affiliate networks. By the same logic we should ban affiliate marketing in its entirety too - none of those networks issue 1099s...
- pyre 14y ago1. It's online gambling is easier to ban than affiliate marketing networks. 2. Attacking traditional vices like gambling can be a political slam-dunk. Just the same as counting the number of convictions under your belt to appeal to 'law and order' types of voters. 3. US casinos probably make some amount of political contributions. Banning foreign gambling sites cuts competition.
- No1 14y agour tl;dr summary: The WTO granted Antigua the right to suspend US copyright to the tune of $21 million annually in 2007 because the US ignored the WTO's earlier (2005) ruling that the US violated international free-trade laws by barring Antiguan gambling companies from the US market. Antigua now plans to actually use that ruling to legally sell US copyrighted material over the Internet without paying copyright holders.
- aphexairlines 14y agoHow would Antigua measure $21 million of copyright? For music and movies, would it be the publisher-suggested retail price of albums and blu-ray discs? If they want to sell the content online, how do they even find out content pricing when publishers don't sell direct and give different prices to different retailers? If they want to sell content subscriptions, how can they guess how much content they could stream for $21 million?
- jpdoctor 14y ago> How would Antigua measure $21 million of copyright? I think the bigger question is: How would the US verify that only $21M of infringement occurred?
- gburt 14y agoThe current "standard" appears to be: connect to the Bittorrent swarm, see how many people are connected, multiply by $OBSCENE. That's assuming this ends up peer to peer, I guess that's a bad assumption given that it will be government-sanctioned.
- DennisP 14y agoClearly the only objective way is market value, best judged by whatever they can sell access for. I think $5 for unlimited access was mentioned.
- krichman 14y agoI would donate more than that to any entity that wants to disrupt this overbearing copyright industry, and that goes especially for sovereign nations. I'm hoping Antigua goes all out and becomes a data haven that refuses to extradite for IP infringement. Maybe then the industries that are innovating solely in the field of amount of money per lawsuit will then be forced to compete on the merits of their offerings.
- imglorp 14y agoIn chess, they call this a fork.
- jrockway 14y agoSort of. Remember that the US has options beyond your average chess piece, like nuclear weapons.
- flyinRyan 14y agoOh come on. The US would never nuke someone over something like this. If they did then every nation on earth would have to consider the US the worst kind of hostile and react accordingly.
- jrockway 14y agoOh, absolutely. I thought that went without saying. My point was only that the US is not powerless against other nations like a queen under attack by a knight that is also attacking the king. There is a way out other than US copyrights going away, though I'm not sure what it is.
- tzs 14y agoI'm a bit confused by this. Antigua is a party to the Berne Convention, which requires them to recognize the copyright of works by authors of other Berne countries the same way it recognizes those of its own authors. Can the WTO override this? I'd expect that all the WTO could say is that it is not a violation of treaties and agreements that the WTO oversees for Antigua to pursue this remedy for the WTO violation, but that wouldn't relieve Antigua of obligations under non-WTO treaties. It's been a long time since I've read the relevant treaties and agreements, so maybe I've forgotten or overlooked something.
- jonpeda 14y agoIf necessary, Antigua could remove copyright protections to Antiguan authors (at a loss of nearly $0), in exchange for letting Antiguans ignore foregin copyrights (at a gain of >>$0)
- drunkenmasta 14y agoso they are going to open a site to sell that which pirates pirate for free? I don't see the economic sense of it.
- jsmeaton 14y agoIt sounds like it's mostly punitive - I don't think Antigua are trying to monetize this for themselves.
- atourgates 14y agoTFA mentioned: > "TorrentFreak is in the process of obtaining details of the content to be offered and the prices to be charged. One option would be to ask users for $5 a month in return for unlimited access to U.S. media."
- sergiotapia 14y agoI see it. I live in Bolivia and have a semi-decent internet connection. If such a website existed where I could pay 5 to 10$ per month and I could stream unlimited videos in decent quality (think 360 to 480p from YouTube) I would pay it hands down. It's a matter of conveneance and good service, both of which piracy doesn't offer. Why do I pirate media? It's just too expensive for me and the general people in 3rd world countries.
- mylittlepony 14y agoYou should take your time to improve your pirating skills and find new sources. For example, have you tried with this site?: http://www.argenteam.net/search http://www.argenteam.net/search There you have both the torrents/emule links and really high quality subtitles if you need them.
- GFischer 14y agoI'm not the OP, but I'm from Uruguay and I pay for Netflix because of the quality and convenience. The local latin american pirate equivalent is Cuevana: http://www.cuevana.tv http://www.cuevana.tv which has had its share of run-ins with justice. No torrent site has the convenience of Netflix, and Netflix itself is still a bit behind cable tv in convenience - I want some kind of "channel" experience for Netflix, I think there are some devices in the U.S. that offer it, but none here in Uruguay.
- naner 14y agoDoes anyone know why the US govt is so vigorously against Internet gambling? Is it propping up some other illegal activity? What is the deal?
- ChuckMcM 14y agoThis is a great development. Sometime, maybe 20 years from now, you are going to be able to say "I was there when everyone was figuring out copyrights and patents and stuff." That said, its an interesting maneuver on Antigua's part. Using the WTO rules to push the conversation along. The article on Ars Technica about the Dutch not liking the attention they are getting for facilitating tax avoidance is another interesting piece of this puzzle. I could imagine a number of ways this might branch, from a 'economic zone' which is "the internet" to a outright revolt by the people and the creation of multiple 'shadow' internets. These are the 'conversations' that I find very interesting: "Where" is the Internet with respect to taxation and commercial commerce doctrine? "What" is role of the economic powers in shaping that doctrine, and "who" is the economic power with the most influence? (Currently its the US but it will be China in 5 years if the trend continues) What is the role of the nation-state in person-to-person interstate commerce? What "should" it be? All very very interesting questions and discussions that drive a lot of action from pornography, to gambling, to software sales, to chat rooms.
- TillE 14y agoI'm just waiting for a ruling or law that says digital purchases confer the same rights (of resale, of perpetual use without asking permission) as sales of physical media. Period. This is crucial for ebooks in particular. Until then, we won't be able to declare this madness over and look back.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI don't know how you can solve that problem. The right of first sale works great when you have an item that, once sold, it guaranteed to be out of your possession. With digital media, it suddenly gets really murky: what does first sale mean if I can trivially hand you a copy? As long as DRM is involved, you don't really own it, so we have to assume the removal of DRM as a pre-cursor to even being able to consider this question, but, once it's gone, thing thing your are selling is...what? I don't foresee this being answered without a wholesale "information is free" society.
- bo1024 14y ago
- gesman 14y agoNews flash: Anyone who comes to Antigua with 10TB of High Definition movies is eligible for Antiguan Citizenship with no extradition guarantees.
- Jagat 14y agoHow is this going to make any difference? Pirated content is already available in US and other countries via thepiratebay and other torrents sites. Pirating copyrighted content is already considered illegal in the US, and is being actively monitored by media companies. If this Antiguan website indeed becomes accessible to Americans, or say other country, how will downloading from this site differ from downloading via torrents. Since torrent usage is already being monitored in US, there's a high likelihood that American ISPs would monitor the usage of this site as well. Edit: Downloading copyrighted content -> Pirating copyrighted content.
- ghshephard 14y ago"Downloading copyrighted content is already considered illegal in US" Not to my knowledge - I'd be happy to be corrected on this though. My understanding is that it's only the unauthorized distribution that's illegal, not the downloading. In this situation, Antigua has a WTO authorization. The reason why torrents are illegal, is that most clients turn you into a distribution node as well as downloading node.
- tedunangst 14y agoYes. If you accidentally say "stealing" the word police will be all over you, but for some reason the misconception that downloading and uploading are equivalent goes uncorrected.
- ghshephard 14y agoAnd - it's a very important distinction. How do I know that the movies, songs, tv that I download from itunes.com, amazon.com, mp3.com, musicmp3.ru, mp3shake.com, etc, etc.. are authorized to sell them to me?
- ChuckMcM 14y agoWell in the case of iTunes and Amazon they have written agreements with the copyright holders which give them permission to sell you copies as long as they pay the copyright holder a specific amount of money. The way you know this is the case is that copyright holders sue people without such agreements in the court system. So when a record label sues Amazon for some service that offers copies of music, you can infer that the music label does not believe that there is an agreement in place which gives Amazon that right.
- RexRollman 14y agoI really think this is interesting for a couple of reasons: 1. The US, who is a member of the WTO, thinks it doesn't need to comply with its ruling. 2. If this does happen, it will be interesting to see if the US tries to interfere with it. For example, would the US try to prevent people from reaching the site and would they pressure finance companies to keep people from buying from it? I can't wait to see what happens.
- sergiotapia 14y ago>One option would be to ask users for $5 a month in return for unlimited access to U.S. media. Day 1 customer if this is true. I live in Bolivia and will pirate it anyway, the US media corporations refuse to price things according to my location, so screw em.
- smelendez 14y agoHow much bandwidth does Antigua have? Depending on whether they can delegate their "piracy" privilege to companies in other countries, that might be the limiting factor.
- logn 14y agoThe US will eventually legalize online gambling and capture their market. Then the WTO will end the suspension of copyright and then the US wins. For good gambling discussion: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57/poker-legislation/ http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57/poker-legislation/
- eriksank 14y agoI wonder why Antigua picked that particular industry, actually? There is simply no god-given right to profit from organized gambling. Why don't they organize an alternative banking system instead? That should be much more profitable, and nobody would object to getting rid of the current politician-controlled banking industry, unless they engage in charging usurious interests or in similar abuse.
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