Techdirt. Stories filed under "colombia"

Colombia's Other Copyright Bill: Moving Things In The Right Direction?

Glyn Moody — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:03:00 PDT

If you wanted an indication of just how much copyright has moved on from being a dry and boring topic of interest only to a few specialist lawyers to an exciting area full of surprising twists and turns worthy of a soap opera, you could do worse than look at what's been happening in Colombia recently.

A year ago, the Colombian government rushed through a really bad copyright law, known as "Ley Lleras 2", pretty much as a welcome gift for President Obama, who was about to visit the country. It did this by invoking an "emergency procedure" that let it ignore nation-wide protests that had followed the presentation of a similar bill earlier, the original "Ley Lleras". In January of this year, Ley Lleras 2 was struck down by Colombia's Constitutional Court, but for purely procedural reasons, rather than because of its substance. Before this, however, another bill had been prepared that sought to fix some of the glaring problems with Ley Lleras 2. Even though the latter has been blocked for the moment, the other bill is proceeding:

This Bill contains provisions regarding limitation and exceptions to Copyright Law. Last 16 of April the Bill passed the second debate in the House of Representatives. Now it is pending for debate in the Senate.

This Bill contains six articles regarding limitations and exceptions. Article 1 mandates an exception for temporary copies made as part of a technological process in some specific circumstances. Article 2 mandates an exception in favor of people with sight or hearing disabilities. Article 3 mandates an exception in favor of libraries and archives allowing them to lend a work. Article 4 mandates an exception in favor of parody. Article 5 mandates an exception in favor of educational institutions allowing the public performance of a work under certain circumstances. Finally, Article 6 repeals all provisions contrary to the ones mandated by this Bill.

As infojustice.org points out in the post quoted above, this "other" Colombian copyright bill has already had a number of positive effects: First, after the petition made by Red PaTodos, this Bill is being publicly debated. This is a positive point because previous copyright bills have been enacted through processes without public discussions. Second, some sectors of society other than copyright scholars have engaged in the discussion, and they have manifested their concerns regarding this bill. For instance, radio shows and news organizations that use parody as a way to inform people or make political criticism have raised their concerns about the scope of the parody exception and its effects in limiting parody. This is positive because it shows that different sectors of the society have realized the importance of copyright law in their daily activities. Third, the Colombian Parliament has the copyright law in their legislative agenda, and it has realized the importance of having a balanced copyright system.
It's too early to guess what the final outcome of these two interlocking bills moving through the parliamentary system will be -- there's still plenty of time for yet more surprises. But the fact that there has been some open discussion of the proposed law, and that people are becoming aware of and engaged by the key issues raised by it, offers some hope that Colombia might end up with a better-balanced copyright system than either of the original Ley Lleras proposals would have provided.

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Colombia's SOPA Struck Down, But For Procedural Reasons

Glyn Moody — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:35:31 PST

Back in April last year, we wrote about Colombia's own SOPA, the "Ley Lleras 2" copyright bill (it's version 2, because an earlier attempt to pass it failed.) This was rushed through by the Colombian government using an emergency procedure so as to have it ready as a grovelling welcome gift when President Obama came calling shortly afterwards.

A challenge was mounted, and the Constitutional Court has now returned its verdict. The good news: the law has been struck down. The not-so-good news: it's for procedural reasons, as infojustice explains:

the Court declared the unconstitutionality of the entire law due to procedural irregularities incurred in Congress because the law was processed in the Second Commission of Congress, like an international treaty, but not as the internal implementation of an intellectual property law which the process should have been carried out in the First Commission. Furthermore, the 1520 Act was processed as an ordinary law and not as a statutory law.

Obviously, it would have been better had the court struck down the law due to the numerous problems with its measures, but as Sean Flynn points out: The Court's action provides the opportunity for Colombia to revisit these issues and produce a more balanced outcome for Colombia's citizens and businesses.
So even if the law is by no means dead, this latest decision does at least mean that civil groups have another chance to ask for a full and fair discussion of the measures and their impact on Colombian society. Let's hope their government listens this time.

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The New Imperialism: Forcing Morality Shifts And Cultural Change Through Exported IP Laws

Tim Cushing — Thu, 4 Oct 2012 09:46:33 PDT

As could probably be expected after its quick trip through the Congress, Panama's 510 Bill became law last Friday, granting its Copyright Office unprecedented power to pursue filesharers directly. But this is only one of several problems with the 510 Bill. The bill goes further than any US law, extending copyright protection to buffer copies and content stored in cache.

Transient copies, such as buffer copies on a computer’s random access memory (RAM), are necessary for a host of streaming services that carry content over the internet to end users. Recognizing a right to exclude such copies, in addition to the ultimate right to distribute the content itself, adds another layer of licensing requirements that can block innovative services (like Netflix or Pandora) from being offered. Many other trade agreements and national and regional laws contain explicit exceptions for “transient” or “incidental” copies necessary for technological or other communications. But the Panama Free Trade Agreement contains nothing of the kind, and neither does Panama’s law. By extending protection to temporary electronic storage, with no clear exception for transient electronic copies – the Panama bill fails to give internet service providers and other businesses the legal certainty they need to enter and maintain operations in Panama’s market.

The law also severely limits fair use, moving from an open-ended clause to a "closed list" system which narrowly defines fair use limitations and exceptions. The US has an open system, much to the chagrin of various content industries. Moving other nations to this more restrictive standard first will make it easier to bring ourselves in line with several other nations sometime down the road.

Users' rights are also being narrowly defined, erasing any trace of "balance" in Panama's copyright law. Between the severely limited fair use, the extension of protection to cover nearly every file that moves through a user's computer during normal internet usage and the government's ability to pursue filesharers with the burden of proof falling to the citizens, the public is left with nearly nothing.

Compare this legislation with Portugal's response to filesharing: a "hands off" approach to non-commercial infringement and the recognition that an IP address isn't necessarily a person. I would imagine that Panama's copyright office won't be interested in making that distinction, not when bonuses are at stake.

Is there a huge cultural difference in play here or is it just varying levels of pressure from content controllers (used to differentiate from content "creators," not all of whom espouse the same view as the industry "representatives")? Up until recently, Spain's view on filesharing was roughly the same as Portugal's, a viewpoint that seemed to draw extra attention (read: "pressure") from the US government and its associated trade organizations.

As the EFF notes, many Latin American countries used to have more progressive copyright laws, but recently passed legislation has changed much of that. The previous laws drew the attention of the US government, either landing these "non-conforming" countries on the infamous Special 301 list or threatening their participation in bilateral free trade agreements. Further pressure is being exerted by the highly secretive TPP whose negotiations seem to consist of shutting the public out and telling other nations how to run their own countries, IP-wise, while excluding them from negotiations.

Colombia pushed through incredibly extreme copyright legislation ahead of a visit from President Obama, ignoring an outraged public which had staged SOPA-style protests during the law's debut months earlier. Spain, like Portugal, also considered filesharing legal, until the US stepped in and rewrote its copyright laws after smacking it around with an appearance on the Special 301 report. Switzerland pushed back against outrageous Hollywood-backed claims about filesharing and is now on The List. Canada recently went through some copyright reform of its own, but apparently not to the liking of the entertainment industry, which has suggested it will simply overwrite the parts it doesn't like with the TPP.

The end result is the US government using protectionist policies to force cultural change on other countries, shifting legislative viewpoints to match up with corporate demands which routinely exceed the severity of our existing laws. In essence, "your culture is wrong." Should the US government be in the business (and it is very much a business) of applying "our" moral standard on other countries, especially when non-conformance is subject to threats implicit and explicit?

It's been stated here before that infringement is not a moral issue, but those pushing for harsher legislation and more enforcement abroad certainly believe it is. Making countries subject to compliance with an arbitrary moral standard (written by certain industries) as a prerequisite for entering an advantageous trade agreement doesn't create copyright converts. Instead, it creates the IP equivalent of "rice Christians" who allow the US to rewrite their IP laws in order to prevent being locked out of beneficial agreements by one of the most prosperous nations in the world. The end result is coerced compliance that runs roughshod over existing IP laws at the expense of their own constituents.

Applying a new moral standard via the institution of new laws that only benefit the industries being catered to sounds a lot like an advantaged group using its governmental patrons to conform the world to its preferred standards. The government of perhaps the most powerful nation in the world at your fingertips is the sort of thing that no industry, no matter how "beleaguered," should ever have at its disposal.

The end result is an entertainment industry occupation by proxy. The limitations enacted in order to enter a free trade agreement put these countries at a severe disadvantage by crippling local tech industries. Opening trade means very little when innovation is thwarted by legislative overreach.

Free trade agreements have great potential to unleash new competition in markets, producing better products and services at lower prices. This assumes, however, that these agreements actually lower barriers to trade.

Unfortunately, due to misaligned priorities and poor drafting, the U.S. Government’s framework for free trade agreements has neglected aspects of U.S. law that are instrumental to a flourishing Internet sector, and in doing so has erected new barriers to tech exports.

The trend of expanding liability and constraining the balancing provisions of copyright law also manifested recently in Colombia. Also responding to a recently enacted Free Trade Agreement with the United States, Colombia hurriedly passed a controversial copyright revision this spring which similarly left little flexibility for technology innovation. The upshot of the copyright law revisions in these countries is to erode certainty and discourage investment by online services, e-commerce platforms, device manufacturers, and ISPs. This is not lowering barriers to market access.

It would be a mistake to understand this as solely an issue affecting U.S. exports, however. In fact, it is a more serious issue for our trading partners, because while U.S. firms may look to more fertile export markets, Colombian and Panamanian firms must survive at home before they can reasonably expand abroad.

An economy stifled by restrictive additions to existing IP laws puts the continuing development in the hands of American special interests who don't actually care whether or not a country thrives as long as their own interests are protected. Sabotaging innovation to protect legacy business models is nothing more than imperialism redefined. The entertainment industry, speaking through the government, is now an occupation force, one that uses "free trade" as a cover for top down dominance of the native population by removing protections, erecting barriers and excluding the affected constituents from the legislative process.

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Lawsuits Filed In Colombia To Challenge Local Version Of SOPA

Mike Masnick — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 13:59:00 PDT

You may remember that, a couple months ago, Colombia rushed through its own version of a SOPA-like copyright law. The details were particularly horrifying. Last fall, the US and Colombia signed a "free trade agreement" (FTA). Tragically, like many FTAs put together by the USTR these days, it included something that's the very opposite of "free trade": a requirement to put in place extraordinary protectionist measures in the form of expansive copyright laws. In order to be in compliance with the treaty, Colombia had to pass some really bad legislation. Its first attempt, a few months earlier, failed when the public spoke up. However, in April, President Obama came to visit Colombia on a very high-profile trip. In order to make him happy, the Colombia government rushed through a ridiculously bad copyright bill, making it law with almost no public discourse. Not surprisingly, the bill is terrible.

Thankfully, two Senators have now filed lawsuits challenging the law, saying that it violates privacy rights and limits freedom of access to information. Oh yeah, and it violates the Colombian constitution. The serious problems with the bill had been raised with the Colombian government prior to it passing, but in their rush to make Obama happy, apparently they didn't care.

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Colombia Rushes Through Its Own SOPA In An 'Emergency Procedure' To Appease US Ahead Of Obama Visit

Mike Masnick — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:35:00 PDT

Last fall, we wrote about how the Obama administration celebrated the signing of what they incorrectly called "free trade agreements" with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. These agreements had been the subject of significant controversy, but they did eventually get signed. Of course, the Obama administration -- via the USTR -- has long been a proponent of putting in ridiculous protectionism policies into free trade agreements. To this day, we still can't understand what copyright laws have to do with free trade. They're the opposite of free trade: they're government granted monopolies. We had warned about the excessive language in these agreements when it comes to copyright, and now we're starting to see the impact of that.

President Obama is heading to Colombia this weekend for a summit, and we'd been hearing stories that US officials had been putting tremendous pressure on Colombian officials to pass new, ridiculously draconian copyright laws ahead of that visit. So that's exactly what the Colombian government did -- using an "emergency procedure" to rush through a bad bill that is quite extreme.

Earlier this year, Colombia tried to pass basically the same bill, which was called LesLleras, after Interior Minister German Vargas Lleras (who proposed it). That bill was so extreme that it resulted in SOPA-like protests, following significant concerns raised by the public as well as copyright and free speech experts. So, this time around, the government just claimed it was an emergency and rushed the bill through, despite all of its problems. They seemed to think that the public wouldn't notice -- but they're wrong.

As is typical of idiotic trade agreements pushed via the USTR -- who only seems to listen to Hollywood on these issues -- the copyright bill includes all sorts of draconian enforcement techniques and expansions of existing copyright law, and removal of free speech rights. But what it does not include are any exceptions to copyright law -- the very important tools that even the US Supreme Court admits are the "safety valves" that stop copyright law from being abusive, oppressive and contrary to freedom of speech. Public interest groups in Colombia are planning a Constitutional challenge to this new law, but the process itself is sickening.

To use an "emergency procedure" to pass a highly questionable law that was put in place through equally questionable means and diplomatic pressure -- and to ignore the public at large -- is really astounding. I'm ashamed of my own government for its efforts to pressure Colombia into such undemocratic and anti-free speech actions.

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ICE Mistakenly Deports Missing Teen To Colombia

Mike Masnick — Wed, 4 Jan 2012 13:10:29 PST

Wow. We've discussed, repeatedly, the ridiculous situation in which the US government via the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arm of the Department of Homeland Security has been seizing domains and censoring websites, such as the case of Dajaz1.com. As we've noted in the past, the details of that operation showed an organization that didn't really understand what it was doing, and definitely seemed to believe in "shoot first, ask questions later."

As many people have pointed out, why is "Immigration and Customs Enforcement" doing anything involving the internet or copyrights/trademarks online? So perhaps you could "excuse" their vast mistakes as them being out of their depth.

But what about the part of their mandate that they're actually supposed to be experts in? You know, keeping people who don't belong here out? Yeah, it appears they approach that with about the same level of detail awareness as when they deal with censoring blogs. In 2010, 14-year-old Jakadrien Turner ran away from home, "distraught over the loss of her grandfather and her parents' divorce." Her grandmother searched for her with no luck... until now. It seems that at some point in 2010 Jakadrien was arrested for shoplifting. She gave police a fake name... and that name apparently was the same as an illegal immigrant who was wanted in Colombia. And, that was enough to get the girl deported to Colombia last April. She remains there, currently detained by the Colombian government.

Apparently ICE took the girl's fingerprints "but somehow didn't confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her." They've since taken her back into custody, since it was discovered she wasn't who they thought she was. ICE now says that they're "fully and immediately investigating this matter in order to expeditiously determine the facts of this case." Perhaps -- and this is just a suggestion -- ICE should start "fully and immediately investigating" stuff before they go around creating new and bigger problems...

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Up Is Down, Night Is Day, US Pretends Protectionist, Anti-Free Trade Agreements Are 'Historic Free Trade' Treaties

Mike Masnick — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:15:00 PDT

For some time now, we've been noting that the US keeps trying to force countries around the globe to put in place protectionist policies that protect American monopolies, and hilariously pretending these are "free trade" agreements. And today is no different. The White House is tooting its own horn for signing three new anti-free trade agreements today, with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, pretending that these are free trade agreements. The reality, of course, is that they are protectionist plans that will do more harm than good to US interests.

While the White House leaves this part out of its patting itself on the back, these agreements all export the worst of US copyright law to these other countries, forcing them to put in place laws that are against their own best interests, and which serve only to falsely prop up the entertainment industry's bad business model. This is why the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce are cheering it on so strongly.

And, of course, this is just the beginning. The Treasury Department put out its own blog post celebrating the anti-free trade agreements as well, in which they ominously warn that things are going to get worse, as they "build on" these agreements to get the dreadful Trans-Pacific Partnership signed. As you may recall, the TPP has become the way that the US Trade Rep plans to sneak in everything that it failed to get in ACTA... and it's being even more secretive about TPP than it was about ACTA. It's nothing but a government handout to Hollywood. This is not "historic" and it's not about "free trade." It's about protectionist anti-free trade policies that will do long term harm to US innovation and economic interests. What a disaster.

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