Do It Our Way or Else!

In an example of American Legislative Imperialism, the entertainment lobby has managed to sneak some pretty significant clauses into CAFTA that would force signees to alter their copyright laws to mirror those in the U.S.

[Update 11:30am - Ok, it's obvious I fell asleep last nite while posting this so here's the meat:]

Specifically, CAFTA calls for civil and criminal penalties to punish anyone who "circumvents" copy-protection technology or "provides" such tools to anyone else. Like the DMCA, that could cover everything from DeCSS (which removes copy-protection from DVDs) to products that do the same for e-books.

The Central American nations participating in CAFTA must also:

• Permit software patents
• Extend copyright protection to "70 years after the author's death"
• Ban the "manufacture" or "export" of any hardware or software that could decode encrypted satellite TV signals
• Offer "online public access to a reliable and accurate" WhoIs database of domain name registration details

It's true that these may be ideas beloved by the Bush administration and business lobbyists, but they have far more to do with special-interest lobbying than traditional notions of free trade.