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Tell The USTR To Stop Being A Pawn Of Hollywood Lobbyists

TechDirt  Feb 03 12

Every year, the USTR puts out its infamously laughable Special 301 report (as I've pointed out in the past, I've seen people in the ideologically-aligned US Copyright Office mock the Special 301 report openly -- showing that even those who support it know that it's ridiculous). The way it works is that the USTR asks for comments about what countries aren't doing enough to protect US intellectual property abroad, and then puts out a "who's been naughty" and "who's been extra extra naughty" list to publicly shame countries. It's been so ridiculous that Canada -- whose copyright law is much stricter than the US in many ways -- is frequently listed as naughty, and has officially stated that it does not consider the Special 301 process to be legitimate. Full story...



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