Its always nice to see sanity prevail over headline grabbing drama.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080318-israel-rebukes-us-our-copyright-laws-are-fine-thanks.htmlIsrael wants the US government to know that it won't implement laws banning the circumvention of DRM and it won't rewrite its ISP safe harbor rules; furthermore, neither of these issues should have any effect on trade relations between the two countries.
The Israeli filing (PDF) made to the US Trade Representative comes a month after the International Intellectual Property Alliance called out numerous countries around the world for not living up to the IIPA's vision of the ideal copyright enforcement regime. Canada came in for a thorough trouncing, and Israel was also subject to criticism that it wasn't doing enough on copyright.
The IIPA's comments were made as part of its "Special 301" report to the US Trade Representative. Private groups like the IIPA submit reports to the US government, which eventually decides whether to place other countries on watch lists or apply trade penalties. Israel has no intention of remaining on its current watch list, and the filing has an irritated tone to it.
The reason for the irritation is that Israel thinks it has done plenty to help copyright owners. In 2007, it overhauled its copyright law, increasing the maximum statutory damages that can be collected for infringement five-fold. In addition, Israel added a "making available" right and clarified that a copyright owners' right of reproduction includes even temporary copies.
Those Israeli laws look reasonable to me
Lets be honest folks a wish list should remain just that. something to aspire to but not something particularly possible, when countries who believe they have struck a fair balance between all stakeholders in the P2P/copyright arena come under criticism from those who have used bribery, trickery, and plain bullying to acheive an unfair legal monopoly you have to look squarely at those ppl for their own activities rather than merely follow the direction of a pointing finger.
