“Policy Laundering” June 10, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Issues and Legislation , trackbackSpeaking of international issues, at the recent copyright conference at the University of Maryland University College Center for Intellectual Property, Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge used the above phrase to describe a disturbing trend in copyright legislation. “Policy laundering” refers to the practice of negotiating bilateral trade treaties with other countries that include rules about intellectual property that are more strict than US law, then presenting the agreements to Congress as evidence that the US must change its law in order to “enable” the treaties. This use of trade agreements to force legislation without regard to whether it serves the original purpose expressed by the Constitution in its authorization of copyright and patent laws – “to promote the progress of science and useful arts” – represents an end run around the Constitution.
Concern about this practice is not merely abstract. David Nimmer, whose name represents the highest authority on US copyright, writes about the TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement as a similar, and successful, attempt to use trade negotiations to circumvent constitutional strictures in his book Copyright: Sacred Text, Technology, and the DMCA.
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[...] on it by Georgia Harper here at Collectanea, reinforces a point made in this space about “policy laundering” using international trade [...]
[...] did in defending the Maximus deal. Scholarly Communications @ Duke. Posted by Kevin Smith, 2007. http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2007/06/10/policy-laundering/ …at the recent copyright conference at the University of Maryland University College Center for [...]
[...] he talks about the process of policy laundering–negotiating international treaties behind closed doors as a vehicle for passing laws that [...]