More Followup on Treaties and Domestic Law

(Reply forwarded from Free Software Law Discussion list,
fsl-discuss@alt.org)

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:08:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Gabe Wachob <gwachob@wachob.com>


On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Steve Waldman wrote:

> It seems to be a pattern, a common strategy, that
> monied interests evade full public debate on issues
> by lobbying the treaty-making branches of
> prestigious international organizations -- and
> government executive branches directly involved
> treaty-negotiation -- in order to get their way.
> More democratically accountable legislative branches
> are then presented with the treaties as  practical
> fait accomplis, and are faced with the unpalatable
> choice of accepting what has been negotiated or
> wreaking havoc with apparently useful goals like the
> harmonization of commercially important law. But
> these treaties require signatory countries to
> "implement" their provisions by passing domestic
> laws in the future, and countries that fail to do so
> may face international penalties under the terms of
> the treaties.
>
> I have a few questions about all this:
>
> 1) Am I mischaracterizing what goes on? I haven't
> yet looked into these treaties in a careful way. I
> just keep noticing they are used to justify a lot of
> onerous stuff, here, in Europe, and elsewhere.

You are not mischaracterizing this at all. In '96-97 while I
was in law school, Pam Samuelson raised all sorts of red
flags about WIPO and the way in which it was going to be
used to push an IP regime into the United States that
copyright holders would have a harder time pushing directly.
And thats exactly where we are today.

	-Gabe

-- 
Gabe Wachob                   gwachob@wachob.com
Personal                   http://www.wachob.com
CTO, WiredObjects    http://www.wiredobjects.com

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Received on Thursday, 21 February 2002 16:13:16 UTC