The IPR GPR: The Emergence of a Global Prohibition Regime to Regulate Intellectual Property Infringement (original) (raw)
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Chapter 2 The U.S. IP Hegemony and the Politics of Piracy and Resistance
To provide a global context in understanding the persistence of media piracy in emerging economies such as the Philippines and Vietnam, this chapter broadly describes the ongoing politics of hegemony and resistance in the global intellectual property (IP) trade between the United States (U.S.) and China and economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Primarily relying on documentary evidence and applying the hegemony, relational, and social resistance theories, it investigates briefly how the U.S gains hegemonic power in the field of IP through the cultural mechanism of law in multilateral, regional and bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the aid of U.S.-dominated multilateral institutions. It paints a global economic order with the U.S. occupying a privileged position at one end as the leading producer and exporter of IP goods and services in the emerging global creative economy, particularly in the fastest-growing Asia-Pacific region, and China and some members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) emerging economies with trading ties with China such as the Philippines and Vietnam opposing this hegemony through piracy and resistance strategies on the other end. Contrary to the popular assessment of Jurisprudence and industry-led enforcement debates which paint the piracy problem as simply a case of theft and criminality or " cracks in law enforcement system " , this chapter argues otherwise and views piracy, particularly media piracy as a form of social resistance or the " Weapons of the Weak " (Scott, 1985) of IP-consuming countries against the U.S. control of the global IP trade. For resisting countries, stricter IPR regime stifles technology transfer and harms their informal economy which generates national income and employment for the poor, unemployed, and migrants. Seen from this perspective, media piracy in the Asia-Pacific region and the ASEAN, particularly in the Philippines and Vietnam, is more than just a theft of intellectual creation but a manifestation of an ongoing resistance against the U.S. hegemony in the global copyright trade in the world.
Intellectual property piracy in a North-South context: empirical evidence
Agricultural Economics, 2006
The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) has been a contentious issue for more than 20 years. Industrialized nations have moved to knowledge-based economies, and simultaneously, trade barriers have fallen, making intellectual property (IP) vulnerable. Adding to this vulnerability are conflicting international institutional environments, belief systems, and economic realities. The debate over IPR protection has become a significant global trade issue pitting the net-technology producing "North" against the net-technology consuming "South." With this in mind, there has been much debate about the impact of alternative IPR regimes (tight or loose) on the welfare of Southern economies. Policy makers, in both the South and the North, search for arguments to convince recalcitrant Southern countries to follow the Northern model of strict IPR regimes. The South, faced with a dilemma, searches for arguments to justify looser regimes or convince its populace that tighter regimes are in the best interest of the nation. The objective of this research is to add empirical clarity about the welfare impacts of weak IPR on the firm and host country. To this end, we employ a novel methodological design and unique context. The research design is deductive, in that we use the empirical setting of Pioneer-Argentina, S.A., a seller of bioengineered agricultural seeds, to test the existing theory of weak IPR impacts in a North-South context. JEL classification: F23, O12, O17
This dissertation is an analysis of criminal enforcement of digital copyrights. I argue that an international prohibition regime to govern intellectual property rights (IPR) has emerged through systems of international trade and law enforcement. The regime, or international system of norms and decisionmaking procedures, is supported primarily by the United States, the European Union, and multinational intellectual property industries, and these stakeholders are consistently creating measures to strengthen intellectual property (IP) enforcement to include criminal sanctions. The question guiding the research is how the governance of IP enforcement through the international prohibition regime affects the legitimacy of intellectual property law enforcement. I engage the research question through case study analysis that adopts a critical legal methodology and relevant stakeholder analysis.
The digital age has transformed the leisure experiences and the way we access and consume cultural goods. Spain has been pointed to as a country with one of the highest levels of infringement of intellectual property rights on the Internet. Constant pressure has forced Spain to develop a new regulatory instrument that complies with both European directives and international obligations on protecting intellectual property rights against violations on the Internet. Thus, amidst great controversy, a law popularly known as the Sinde Law was adopted and came into effect in March 2012. The Sinde Law created a new procedure aimed at enhancing protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet. However, it is widely questioned for both legal aspects and for failing to recognise how Internet architecture can be used to avoid its consequences. It shows a disregard for digital leisure practices based on the freedom of creation, transformation and consumption that the Internet technology offers to users. The rights of the parties are in disequilibrium, the demand for digital leisure is not acknowledged and a burden is imposed on intermediaries. Critical analysis of this instrument for regulating intellectual property in the digital environment reveals it to be a formal legal solution that fails to provide a suitable response to either the complexity of the phenomenon or the different rights and interests involved. It is committed to defending just one of the parties at all costs and is unable to meet the challenge of regulating the consumption of digital content on the Internet. However, despite questions regarding its legality and effectiveness, the Sinde Law has one clear achievement: the US has recognised Spain’s efforts in fighting digital piracy and has removed it from the Watch List where it had been listed since 2008.
The European Political Order and Internet Piracy: Accidental or Paradigmatic Constitution-Shaping?
European Constitutional Law Review, 2010
Modern age technology spurs legal development – Temporal coincidence of conflicting national and Union legislative processes triggers interdependence between EU and member states – French Loi Hadopi cuts Internet without recourse to a court – Conseil constitutionnel enshrines Internet as fundamental freedom – EU telecoms reform incorporates several French fundamental rights safeguards
2016
The signing of the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) between twelve member countries, with Malaysia included, has set a new, higher benchmark for copyright enforcement. In three ways, the landscape of copyright law has been changed significantly. First, TPPA expand the coverage of the kinds of Intellectual Property recognised. Secondly, what constitute copyright violations has been expanded. Thirdly, sanctions for copyright piracy has been made tougher and sentencing lengths for such piracy has been lengthened. The usage of trade agreements to compel countries to improve copyright domestic policy is not a new strategy. The antecedent to TPPA is the TRIPs Agreement that was concluded on the basis that copyright piracy and counterfeiting has grown from just mere domestic nuisance to an effective barrier to free trade. This paper addresses the TPPA and analyses the rationale to the introduction of more stringent measures under TTPA. It seeks to understand the shift in the d...
Treasuring IP: Free Culture, Media Piracy, and the International Pirate Party Movement
SAGE Handbook of IP (eds. Deborah Halbert and Matthew David), 2014
This chapter concerns the emergence and growing popularity of the international pirate party movement. We survey critical approaches to the phenomenon of piracy, consider the usefulness of this concept in discussions of digital practices commonly labeled ‘media piracy,’ and discuss the role of the pirate parties in opposing conflicts around these practices. Contrasting the international pirate party movement with the historical figure of the maritime pirate, we approach the modern-day pirates through Christopher Kelty’s concept of the ‘geek,’ which describes individuals motivated by the desire to preserve their ability to use digital tools for the sharing of information, communication, and creative purposes. Our discussion highlights some of the gross imbalances imposed by current copyright laws on digital culture and on the private use of digital technologies, and proposes that the activities of today’s so-called pirates can be understood as a critical commentary on the vilification and criminalization to which everyday users of digital technologies are often subjected. In considering how these imbalances are reflected in the rhetoric of the pirate party movement, ultimately we suggest that the movement represents an experimental arena of political dissent and policy reform efforts.
Media Piracy and the Terrorist Boogeyman: Speculative Potentiations
The criminalization of media piracy, which dates as far back as the seventeenth-century yoking of copyright infringements to more violent forms of looting on the open seas, runs up against the romantic allure of the swash-buckling pirate. Whether the rogue booksellers of the eighteenth century or contemporary digital file sharers, the media pirate cuts a hip, antiestablishment figure: at once creative, transgressive, and enterprising. So the search for more demoniacal associations continues, roping in the smuggler, the counterfeiter, the serial killer, and, closer to our times, the terrorist. As the war on terror bleeds into the war on piracy, the dual logics of segregation and immunization that shape all biopolitical paradigms of security increasingly inform reports brought out by government agencies and ostensibly independent think tanks. Securitizing the global population against piratical depredation requires the partitioning of piracy into creative activities (collage, sampling, mash up) that produce something new and acts of mere poaching that add no value. This demarcation is mapped onto the planet: large parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America—the historically constituted Global South—are marked as problem zones for the global governance of intellectual property. Within these regions, there is a widening chasm between neoliberal elites and the relationally subaltern masses in their adherence to IPR (intellectual property rights) regimes and their attitude toward piratical activities. Starting with the liberal distinction between productive and unproductive forms of media piracy, a distinction that shores up a geopolitics of legality with Asia as its wild and recalcitrant outpost, this article explores the implications of the gap that opens up between legality and legitimacy. In the absence of hard evidence from the informal “survival” sectors, the article draws on ethnographic and anecdotal evidence to explain the lack of political will in enforcing IPR laws. Taking into account the myriad ground-level practices around media forms and platforms, the concept of global media is reconsidered. Finally, the article ends with two takes on the framing of piratical activities as “parasitical.” First, it argues that the “third” of Third Cinema now lives on in these “Southern” piratical practices. Second, in a more speculative vein, it argues for a development of the parasitical as a framework for apprehending the creative potentiations of media piracy beyond the confines of bourgeois legality.