Slashdot Log In
EU Proposes Retroactive Copyright Extension
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Jul 17, 2008 02:14 AM
from the nothing-lasts-forever dept.
from the nothing-lasts-forever dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has unveiled a plan to retroactively extend musical copyrights by 45 years, which would make EU musical copyrights last 95 years total. Why? They're worried that musicians won't continue to collect royalties when they retire and this will give them an additional 45 years during which they won't have to produce any new music. Perhaps the only good point is that the retroactive extensions won't take effect for any works which aren't marketed in the first year after the extension. Additionally, while there are many non-musical retirees wishing they could get paid for 95 years after they finish working, McCreevy has not announced any new plans to help them."
Related Stories
Submission: EU Proposes Retroactive Copyright Extension by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Interesting)
Add to that the fact that most new artists lose all there copyrights to the labels by contract and you'll find the only ones not getting screwed by the extension is the labels. Infact for the most part many artists will lose more money since the labels "own" most of their songs they will have to pay royalties to the labels every time the perform them!!!
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Musician's right to retirement is pretty much the same as anybody else's :
* Public (state) welfare if existing in country of legal residence (and usually paid for with taxes on Musician's incomes during working years).
* Any sort of private savings.
I'm an IT consultant. When I retire I'll be paid according to the rules above. Why should it be different for other professions ?
Or shall I invoice, 40 years from now, "maintenance fees" for systems I installed in the last years.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well they did choose that line of work didn't they. No one forced them into it.
And if an artist is still getting royalties after 95 years they're not likely one of the artists on the bottom end of the pay scale that need protecting. As has been mentioned here by others, this extension is to protect the record labels and copyright holders who are very likely not the original artists.
A 95 year protection would be acceptable to me only if it was to the original artist and not transferable. If you buy the rights maybe you only get 25 years protection.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Informative)
Work is intermittent (Jon Pertwee used to say actors spend 95% of their time unemployed)
Then that means they can simultaneously work other jobs 95% of the time instead of sleeping, sitting on their asses, or partying. Only the most successful richest artists are going to have people still interested in their music decades later. This is pure welfare for the richest musicians, musicians that live in mansions, ride around in limousines, and snort and fuck everything that moves.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay Muscians actually do get paid and this isn't about record companies. This is the poor sap playing his ass off.
Read this [negativland.com] and this [salon.com]. Thank you.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a right to a retirement then why don't they?
As a developer I don't have the right to retirement any more than you do. I earn my pension by having part of what I make put aside for later use. (Not the code, the money)
If you are anything like me, you do what you do not in order to make the money, but because you have to, because you love it. I don't mind the money I make, but if all I wanted was a lot of money, I would go and do something else. Since I don't want my soul to die, I'm staying with software. I suppose you would still create your music?
It is my understanding that the copyright laws where made, not to help artists make a living, but to advance the arts. In my opinion, the proposed law would only hinder new artists in creating what they need/love to do, and not advance the arts in any way at all.
Parent
95 years from the copyright date. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your math is as bad as your spelling. Let's be generous and say a musician starts his professional career at the age of 15. If he works for 60 years as you say, then he retires at 75 (possible I guess). The 45 year extension means he can still collect royalties when he's 110 (despite advances in medical science, I can't imagine most hard-living musicians are going to live that long). Of course that's just for the work they did at 15. They can collect royalties on the work they did at age 40 when they're 135, and they can collect on the work they did just before their retirement when they're 170. Tell me again how this makes sense?
Parent
Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a novel idea: abolish copyright. [abolishcopyright.com]. We should act now before this gets even more dumb.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Interesting)
but without copyright, the creative commons and GPL wouldn't work, these things rely on copyright law.
personally, have no problem with an automatic 14 year copyright term being applied to any creative endeavor, hell, maybe even throw in a one-time-only 14 year extension for a fee. but after that, everything should enter public domain.
I can't be the 1st person to think of this system...
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Interesting)
If there were no copyright of software, RMS would have never needed to create the GPL to begin with. It's well documentation that through the GPL Stallman was only trying to restore the state of affairs that existed before copyright on code became an issue.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting point: One of the reasons for copyrights (and patents too) is to reduce reliance on trade secrets. Reveal your secrets and get (limited) government protection for them.
Remembering things like that can make patents and copyrights make sense. Not the current implementations, mind you.....
(I'm commenting a bit much in this discussion)
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Informative)
Why? Copyright is not some kind of inalienable natural right. It was never even thought up until a couple of hundred years ago. In ancient Rome, when poets' recitations were transcribed, mass-copied by amanuenses, and sold in the marketplace, they never saw a dime in royalties, but it didn't bother them. The only protest we hear from antiquity is when Martial lampooned a talentless aristocrat who was putting his own name on copies of Martial's verse. The American Founding Fathers enshrined copyright in law because they thought it was good for the public, not because people have some absolute right to it. And the concept is very eurocentric, for outside the West, to this very day, copyright makes absolutely no sense. Try explaining to a person in Eastern Europe, Asia, or South America that they are doing something wrong by downloading or copying a CD, and they will look at you like you're a lunatic.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:4, Insightful)
Should this apply to fundamental truths as well, like mathematical theorems? You're insane if you think that.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please explain how "discovering" certain numbers / symbols work well in certain situations is any different to "discovering" certain notes / words work well in certain situations, to the extent that the "artist" is entitled to free-load for the rest of their lives, while the mathematician is not.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll note I said nothing about copyright in my post: I suspect we're on the same page there (i.e., I think this proposed plan is insane).
As a scientific realist, I simply don't want art and science to be seen as aiming at the same end. But anyway, the effects of certain notes will always end in unpredicable results, since the goal is to make people react, and nobody knows how anyone will react. If you read the reviews linked in my sig, you'll discover I have no idea how anyone can listen to top 40 music, and yet that music is made precisely to be universally loved. Nevertheless, it's not, and thus it is a good example of the unpredictability of musical effects.
On the other hand, the effects that science strives for do not depend on subjective reaction, and thus, at the level of their aim, are predictable, reproduceable, etc.
So, that is the basis for difference between the two. And thus, whereas the scientist is discovering what is already there (and hence universal), the artist is creating something new - and to that extent offers something novel to the world. Copyright, for better or for worse, is designed to protect and stimulate that use of the notes and scales (etc.) already in the public domain, just as patents are to stimulate and protect commerical applications of scientific discoveries.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is interesting. If Ms. mathematician produces a novel-length mathematical model that predicts airflow over North America with unprecedented accuracy, I would like for copyright to exist in that mathematical model. It is a useful science, will be very useful to all humanity when it hits the public domain, and she should become rich on it, as thanks for her useful work.
However, there is no real difference between her model and E=mc^2, or G=Mm/r^2 - just complexity - a continuous scale of complexity, as well as accuracy (remember, E=mc^2 tells us that G=Mm/r^2 is wrong!) - who is to say that this deserves a copyright, but that doesn't?
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you create something, you have a choice whether to show somebody else. You have the choice to distribute it, or not to distribute it.
Once you give a copy to somebody else, then, for all intents and purposes, you no longer have any control over it.
Copyright gives you an artificial limited monopoly over distribution - nothing more - simply because this encourages persons to create and distribute works. Once works have been distributed, copyright has done its work. It is then a liability to society.
Copyright's purpose is to increase the amount of works in the public domain. Anything that reduces the flow of works to the public domain (like copyright extensions) is against the purpose of copyright.
(With regard to software - for any protection under copyright, I believe that the source code for the work should have to be released. Otherwise, copyright makes no sense, as the works have very limited use when they hit the public domain.)
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. There should be a short period of protection, after which the product of your creativity is put into the public domain. The period should be set based on things like how valuable to the wider public that kind of thing is versus the need to create incentives in the first place.
Pharma for example, does and rightly should, only be protected for a relatively short period, 6 years or so. Beyond that, it's in everybody's interests for medicine to be available at the lowest possible delivery price.
I don't see why music and movies need such an insanely long period of protection. There should be a short period of exclusivity (say 5 to 10 years) after which it is in the public domain. If your music is good enough that people want it and you can't make a profit in a decade then bad luck.
You know what you get when you try to set up a complex set of rules protecting the output of human creativity? Modern copyright and intellectual property laws.
Parent
The Difference Is Psychological (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect the difference is that laws regarding physical property are strongly tied to the human territorial imperative. Like many other creatures on this planet, we have a strong urge to claim territory as our own, and territorial disputes when they do occur are frequently violent and sometime bloody.
Having a legal structure that helps minimise such disputes makes sense, since it means that we spend less time organising blood vendettas against our neighbours, and more time on constructive activities. Of course, that may depend on what you consider a constructive activity.
On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any similar deep root territoriality to ideas. In fact, I would argue that converse seems to be true. Human beings have a strong urge to propagate information in all its forms. From jokes and stories, to music, to software - sharing abstractions seems to be a part of our make up.
Which, in my opinion, is why the record labels and studios and software houses are having such a hard time with this. They've coined the term "intellectual property" to try and make it seem as if the human territorial response should apply to information in the same way as it does to tangible assets. But it doesn't; not at the level of human psychology.
And that, so far as I can see, is the major difference. Property laws for tangible assets work with human psychology, and are respected for that reason. Trying to apply those same principles to information is working against human psychology which is why the practice is so widely opposed. Put another way, the first case has a basis in human behaviour, the second one lacks any such basis, and is more of an attempt at social engineering seeking to change human behaviour to suit a relatively small number of people.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only reason I can't use your car or house when you aren't using it is because of artificial laws saying I can't and granting you protection from such actions - whats the difference? I deprive you of something?
Yes, that's the difference. A pretty important one.
Why is that important?
Because if you take my car, I won't be able to use it. I will have been harmed by your actions. Harming people is bad.
On the other hand, if you copy my song/program/movie, I won't have been harmed: I'll still have everything I had before you made that copy. (I might wish you had given me some money for it, but that money was never mine anyway, no matter how hard I was wishing. I might be sad about that, but I won't have suffered any actual loss.)
Surely sharing is a good thing?
Sharing is usually a good thing, but not when someone is harmed in the process. Surely you already knew that?
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh and the rest of the world understands the concept of copyright, especially the creators themselves.
I make a living from copyright as a writer, and a 95 year term seems ludicrous to me. In China, copyright is not respected because, traditionally, taking credit for great works was not considered polite - the greatest honour you a philosopher or poet could receive was having their works distributed anonymously (or pseudonymously). In Europe, attribution is considered more important. The text of copyright law in the UK contains the phrase 'the natural right of the author to be identified with this work' - being able to take credit for your own work is viewed as a natural right. Even when copyright expires, this right typically persists: prints of public domain works are almost always attributed.
But the issue is not whether the world understands copyright, it's whether society will benefit from a 95 year copyright term. Copyright (as a government-enforced monopoly) exists as a bargain between creators and the rest of society. I agree to release my works immediately to the public at large and society agrees to enforce my right to charge for them for a limited time. Society benefits because they have immediate (but limited) access to things I create and long-term total access when copyright expires. I, conversely, benefit from being paid.
I quite like being paid, and I'd like it even more if I could be paid in perpetuity for things I create now. In fact, it would be really great if I just needed to write one thing and could live off it for the rest of my life. Well, maybe not so great for society, because it completely removes the incentive for me to write any more[1]. Ideally, copyright would ensure that I was paid enough to live (comfortably!) while I worked on my next project, and put a little aside for when I eventually retired. I believe something in the seven to fourteen year range would be ample for this, and possibly even shorter. Once a work falls into the public domain, then it can be distributed by anyone to anyone, and as long as the 'natural right' of attribution is preserved then it serves as advertising for my later works. I would, therefore, be in favour of two copyright terms: a short-term monopoly and a longer-term legally-enforced attribution.
[1] I enjoy writing, as you can see from the hundreds of thousands of words I've posted on Slashdot, but without a financial incentive there is very little reason for me to go to the effort of getting things edited and published.
Parent
Re:Who really gets paid? (Score:5, Insightful)
for as long as people are enjoying them
Why? Chairmakers don't receive compensations for as long as people are enjoying their chairs. Builders don't receive compensation for as long as people enjoy their houses.
How about this; people get paid for working, and the state interfering in the market to create monopolies favouring certain classes of work is a particularly bad idea.
If you want to argue for why certain groups need extra support, be intellectually honest and handle it as an ordinary welfare system. If you think creative work is particularly heavy and dangerous, or particularly valuable to society, perhaps they should get a lower retirement age? Argue the case and fund it through ordinary state budgets, not hidden away in the uncounted taxation of intellectual monopoly rights.
Parent
Enforce it how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Enforce it how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop complaining about the "anti-americanism". Personally I'm not at all against Americans but very much against American politics (black curtain authorian corporatism and fear mongering). Except for a few nutcases I'm pretty sure that applies to most people you call "anti-american". Putting aside the non-stop war mongering, the biggest reason is that USA (the government, not the people) send armies of lobbyists to Europe trying to close down our freedoms to chase ghosts.
This law proposal is an obvious result of heavy American lobbyism, and it's just an example out of thousands. Yes, I blame European politicians just as much (if not more) for falling into the trap.
Thank you for stopping communism, bla bla bla, in the past. Whatever. That doesn't change what is happening right now.
I know a lot of Americans and they are all fantastic persons. It's all about the government and politics, not the people.
Parent
The summary overlooked the other reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The summary overlooked the other reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
50 years wasn't long enough?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:50 years wasn't long enough?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't sign up, you don't get the deal, and don't get advertising and distribution. If you do sign up, it's on the large label's terms (they get most, if not all, and sometimes all and more from the artist too, to cover 'production costs').
What the recording industry is good at doing is exploiting the wish of people to be famous, and leading them with promises of fame and fortune (by presenting images of the 'successful' pop idols) to sign on the dotted line. Once they do that, they're more often than not pretty screwed.
Parent
Obviously not for the musicians' sake (Score:4, Insightful)
What's different from physical property though? (Score:4, Interesting)
In other news, people whose great great grandfathers fenced off land and invested in *property* retain the ownership to it still, despite having died many years ago.
Nobody shows any sign of caring that they can inherit property which they contributed *nothing* towards, and have full expectation of leaving that same property to their children.
yet if that property is intellectual rather than physical, there is huge outcry.
Why the double standard?
because a big chunk of many populations expect to benefit from inheriting daddy's house, whereas the people who benefit from IP are a smaller number, and thus easily attacked.
All earnings from old IP are taxed. All earnings from property are taxed. What is the difference here?
Re:What's different from physical property though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What's different from physical property though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Difference 2: If you sell me your ranch, the ranch is mine to do with as I please. If you sell me your song, shouldn't the song be mine to do with as I please? After some profitability, songs and other intellectual property should go into the public domain, especially if a large portion of the public have paid for it.
Parent
Re:What's different from physical property though? (Score:5, Insightful)
the difference is, if i take your physical property, you have less.
if i take your intellectual property, you lose nothing.
bytes are not atoms.
Parent
Re:What's different from physical property though? (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, even if the land is just sitting there, you still get taxed on it. If you don't pay the tax, the government seizes the property and sells it off to someone who will. Remember, this is completely apart from the income tax applied to any revenue you generate from the property, whether it's from building a house and renting it out, farming it, grazing animals on it, or paving it over and charging people to park on it.
There is no double standard because intellectual "property" isn't real property. There's a lot of impetus to treat it that way because there are a lot of business models built on being able to buy, sell, rent, and re-exploit movies, music, and writing, completely ignoring the fact that:
1. While they like to treat it as real property, real property doesn't expire after a set period of time. Anyone stupid enough to build a business model assuming an asset that is supposed to become free after a set period of time is going to retain value forever deserves to lose their investment.
2. The ability to control the property exclusively is a monopoly (generally a bad thing) granted by the government, as a trade off - we give you a monopoly for the time being, in exchange for you making the property available to the public, and ultimately part of the public domain when the monopoly ends.
3. Traditionally, there was no such thing as "intellectual property". If you saw some something cool and wanted your own copy, you'd copy it or hire someone to make you a copy. If you heard a great story, you'd retell it. This is why guilds formed - to protect "guild secrets", and create a competitive advantage for guild members. The problem is, anyone who was really innovative would more often than not, refuse to share their new process, forcing other people to have to rediscover the secret, a horrible waste of time and energy. To get rid of this waste, promote innovation, and enable those innovations to become public so that they're not lost, the idea of patents and copyrights was born.
4. Patents and copyrights are used today to print money, quash innovation by other people, and bribe politicians to extend monopolies (generally a bad thing) indefinitely, at the expense of the public. Because they don't have to pay property tax, they can sit indefinitely on IP and just sue anyone who starts making money on something that does or might infringe on it. You should either get a limited monopoly to exploit your work, or if you want to hold onto it forever, you should be required to pay property taxes on it as a royalty to the public who are guaranteeing your monopoly. Consider all the governmental resources that have been diverted by private parties to enforcing ever longer copyrights in court, and on the streets.
So to answer your question, there's a huge difference between how IP and real property are treated. There is no double standard. The fact that you think there is one is a strong indication of how badly the public has been misled about how copyrights and patents are supposed to work.
Parent
Re:What's different from physical property though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What's different from physical property though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even a yearly renewal after a certain point would be nice. The artist (not the record company) would have to fill out some form every year to retain rights.
Parent
No pensions? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they should have invested some of the money while they were making it, instead of spending it on Colombian marching powder, groupies and hotel room repairs.
Everyone else has to save for a pension or end up on income support. Why not musicians?
Retroactive extension = breaking the deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Now they (the copyright lobby) want to break that deal by lobbying the gov't to retroactively extend the monopoly by Y years. Now tell me again, why should I respect the deal when the other side doesn't?
This is why I voted against the constitution ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... it would give even more power to the European Commission.
They're a bunch of unelected bureaucrats which do not in any way consider the interests of the EU citizens but instead bend over backwards to serve the interests of those corporation which will give them well paid jobs once they've done their time in the European Commission.
(notice how all help-the-industry-f**k-the-consumers proposals of late have come from the commission)
Good thing the Irish brought down the sham attempt at bringing back the EU constitution through the back door that was the Lisbon Treaty.
The funny part is that I'm actual pro-EU and actually feel European. The concept is good, it's just that some EU institutions are degraded and corrupt and need to be eliminated or thoroughly remade.
We need elected legislators instead of these puppets.
Ahem. I would like to address Mr. McCreevy. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is all.
Re:What happens when its the Penguins turn? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:What happens when its the Penguins turn? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure. If someone wants to use a suddenly public-domain Linux 0.1, they can go right ahead. The current version will still be under copyright and available only under the terms of the GPL. Oh, and the Linux name is trademarked, not copyrighted, so Linus and his successors retain that indefinitely.
Parent
Re:Retroactive ? (Score:5, Insightful)
No it means that it applies to works that are already in existence. So for example I own a number of audio books of classic works. The words spoken by the actors on the CD's are long out of copyright. However the recording itself has a 50 year term. When I purchased that audio book I entered into a contract, part of which was based on the fact that the copyright in the recording would expire within my lifetime.
This proposal would change the existing contract of purchase to make me materially worse off. This makes it retroactive.
This proposal however has to get approval from all 27 member countries, which is a tall order given that some, such as the UK have expressed previously that they saw no reason to extend copyrights on recordings.
Parent
Re:The Plan! (Score:5, Interesting)
Just an addendum: You can use the music to "Happy Birthday" - that is a folk tune, and anonymous' copyrights have expired. (Just be sure to credit the music under the name of that forgotten folk tune.)
All that it copyrighted are the words. All 5 of them:
"Happy birthday to you... dear _________"
How ingenious.
Parent
This is nothing to do with Ireland (Score:5, Insightful)
The facts that you've bundled together there are about as completely wrong as you could get.
Ireland had a declining population for years (not owing to the Troubles; it was the South that was declining, not the North) due to the endemic corruption, lack of personal freedom, and poor educational opportunities.
The corruption was a symptom of a high tax economy which was in turn a symptom of bad economic management during hard times. As far as educational opportunities were concerned Ireland had, in spite of itself and taking into account its size, one of the best education systems in the world - which is seen as one of the major contributors to its recent success.
I'll give you the Iran thing. It's probably not completely far from the truth - certainly up to late '80s.
The two schemes that you mention have absolutely nothing to do with Ireland's success. If I may, I would suggest that it was caused by (1) Technically educated workforce at the same time as the Internet got big (2) Low corporate tax rate (3) English speaking (4) Heavily committed to EU and Euro (5) Very business friendly politically (6) Zero tolerance of corruption and (7) the Good weather?.
If you doubt this, look at what happened to investigative journalists like Guerin and Taoiseachs like Bertie Ahearn.
The criminal gangs in Ireland existed like in any other country. And like in other countries Veronica Guerin was shot because she was investigating them - nothing special there.
Bertie on the other hand had no criminal connections. His problems came because he divorced his wife and was basically taken to the cleaners. Individual businessmen gave him a ton of cash to help him out - unfortunately at the same time Bertie pontificated in the Dail (parliment) that it was reprehensible that any politician should be beholden to outside interests. And unfortunately he got caught - it was illegal, but not in the 'Criminal gangs' sense.
The upshot is that shills like McCreevy are trying to keep the artists on board by proposing that they get something which no other professional gets, (if 95 years copyright for a writer, why not 95 years for a patent?) hoping that Ireland will benefit in some way from tax collection. Apple is also strongly represented In Ireland and can presumably afford lobbyists.
Charlie McCreevy is just doing his job - as Commissioner for Internal Markets, and most other countries reckon he's doing OK at it. He's applying his own philosophy to it which is very much pro IP rights - which is why he's a darling of Microsoft and the Record Companies. (I'm not saying I agree with him).
As you say in Ireland there is no tax for artists - but that means no revenue for government, so that point is a contradiction. There also aren't any record companies her - so you're 0 for 2 there.
The economic downturn and the gradual ending of EU structural funding (supposedly for building railways and roads but actually diverted to building country houses for the rich Irish) is putting a strain on the Irish economy. They need the money.
The downturn in Ireland is, like everywhere else, caused by a combination of High Oil Prices, Low Consumer Confidence and a Global Credit Crunch. Nothing to do with structural funding, which did make a lot of people rich, as you would expect - but not in the corrupt way you are suggesting.
Ireland needs to pay for a very high public service bill - but that will need to be achieved by cutting the bill, not by getting a few more quid off an aging Bono.
Parent
Re:Undeserved (Score:5, Informative)
The whole point of copyright is to encourage the creative arts. Retroactively extending copyright creates nothing. We get no new works for it.
The whole point of copyright was to encourage the creative arts. Now it is all about Asia. Asia is a huge emerging market for the EU and the US. Extending intellectual property is a reaction to the new wealth found in that region.
The US and the EU cannot compete with the now-strong manufacturing base of Asia. The only thing we can sell to that region is Mickey Mouse (copyright), Coca Cola (trademark), and Boeing (patents).
Asia does not need the US or the EU to create any of those products. So if they do, we want them to "license the rights" from us.
Parent