WIPO Wants Service Providers To Act As Trademark Spies And Police

from the third-party-liability dept

What is it with intellectual property holders? The government already grants them an unfair, innovation-limiting monopoly that extends way beyond reason… and then they still expect others to go to ridiculous levels to prop up their own business models. The latest is that trademark holders are pushing for new third party liability rules in treaties via WIPO. Specifically, the apparent proposal would mean that third party service providers wouldn’t just need to take down things on request, but would also have to proactively monitor and hand identifying info over to trademark holders without a court order. The sense of entitlement here is astounding.

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Comments on “WIPO Wants Service Providers To Act As Trademark Spies And Police”

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14 Comments
Jay says:

Becoming confused

With all the laws on patents, copyrights, and trademarks, it’s getting quite difficult to keep all of them intact.

We might as well have one protection law regarding all three intents.

We should call this new law a moral law and have it as follows:

If you can feel it, touch it, see it, smell it, or hear it, you can apply to protect it. This protection lasts for as long as you have it in your possession.

However, if someone else is allowed those senses, your protections lasts as far as you can hold on to your protection. You can not take away any one else’s senses nor protections. You can’t confuse your own work with those of someone else.

I think it’d be a lot simpler this way.

Ed C. says:

I give up...

You know what…I give up. Just make it so that any idgit that wants this shit enforced can hand a list of their IP to ISPs and have them sort it out. That’s right, copyright, patent, trademark…whatever! Just make it a free-for-all IP clusterfuck! Never mind the fact IP holders like Viacom–who repeated sent DMCA takedowns for works that they posted themselves–can’t even tell what’s infringing or not, or that there’s no way for ISPs to reliably determine the legality of every use of IP on the net. The solution to nailing every instance of infringement is simple–just block every copy, fragment, or even mention of the IP on the list. That way, no one will be able to see it on the net at all! Once the internet embargo in firmly in place, almost no one will even know, or care, that the IP exist. I’m sure the IP holders will stop complaining about piracy then! I doubt that they’ll complain about much of anything else either; without any business, they’ll just slip away into oblivion.

You know what, they’re right, we’ll be so much better off with absolute enforcement. All those who want it can have it…and then we’ll never have to worry about them again.

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