The Facts: No one is being helped by draconian laws designed to gain ludicrous amounts of revenue for the selfish recording industry, the latest victims could posibly have been tomorrows customers.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/fea5b154-a23b-11da-9096-0000779e2340.htmlPoor countries are being wrongly advised to enact tougher copyright laws than required by international treaties, making access to copyright publications prohibitively expensive, Consumers International charged on Monday.
The London-based group, which links more than 230 consumer organisations in 113 countries, said the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organisation was giving “thoroughly inadequate” advice to poor nations. Such countries were already under pressure from the US and other industrialised countries to provide ever stronger copyright protection.
Wipo’s “misleading” draft laws were reinforcing this pressure by including rights not required by international treaties and by failing to point out flexibilities, especially those relating to use of copyright work for educational purposes.
The World Trade Organisation’s intellectual property agreement, the Berne Convention and the Wipo Copyright Treaty all have provisions for public access to knowledge. However, the CI study showed, for example, that none of the 11 Asian countries had laws allowing the use of copyright works in educational broadcasts and five unnecessarily restricted the number of copies that could be used as teaching materials.
Its a fact that for certain selfish organisations to stay rich many members of the global community will need to stay poor, how else does the term "cheap labour " come about ?
It seems to me a crime against humanity to enact laws restricting the distribution or transfer of educational knowledge and I have no hesitation in urging people not to respect laws that infringe on our rights as humans.
