+ BTA, WTO, TRIPS, IPRs & Imperial History

In light of:
* This news -- "Vietnam launches US trade website, Feb/2003,
The gioi Vi Tinh, page 25 - The trade council of the Vietnamese
embassy in the US has officially launched a website
<www.vietnam-ustrade.org> to promote two-trade between the two
countries. The website covers information concerning economic,
business and investment environment in Vietnam, as well as the
country’s major export products.", and
* This proposed "Possible OSS strategy", from TL Chuong's
infoDev presentation, at
http://h0lug.sourceforge.net/00.viet/fl0@vnisbiz/02flohow/tl-chuong_infodev/html/img21.html

-- "Prepare to implement the BTA with the United States, in
particular in software intellectual property."

An extract from a thread called "Intellectual Property
Protection" now ongoing on the WTO web site's Forum, at
http://forums.prospero.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=wtoforum&msg=829.9:

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Intellectual Property Protection (& Imperial History)

AGOODARD3 wrote:
<...>
In short, what you are saying is that some societies are so
poor that they can do little for themselves and need foreign
assistance. Who then is responsible?

ADMARSHALL replied:
<...>
... dare we... ask that question sincerely from a longer
historical perspective than you seem to be applying? For
example, how much have the "developed" societies contributed to
the poverty of the poorer societies? And how much are they
doing to maintain or help alleviate that poverty?
<...>

AGOODARD3 replied:

IP protection was first administered on an international scale
over 100 years ago by the Paris and Berne Conventions. You
might like to view the website of the World Intellectual
Property Organization www.wipo.org which is responsible for the
administration of all IP treaties.

ADMARSHALL replies:

The WIPO site? Viewed it already. An interesting bit of PR...

But it's more interesting that you should again focus on the
time "over 100 years ago" of the Berne Convention's creation.

The Berne Convention has been revised 5 times since 1886 -- and
the US waited until 1988, some 100 years later, to sign the
that Convention: http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html

What sort of events led up to the Berne Convention and likely
influenced its content?

One hundred years ago, events in one part of the world took
much longer to affect or feedback from other parts of the world
than they do in today's Global [Media] Village. To understand
the geo-political background to the Berne Convention, we should
thus extend the period for eligible, relevant precedents at
least a couple hundred years more.

We could easily argue that these two periods set the stage for
the Berne Convention, from "World History",
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/World/World.MainCh
ron.html:
1500-1700: The First Period of European Imperialism
1850-1920: The New Imperialism
(Incidentally, and none to ironically for this thread, this
timeline ends with "1950-present: Decolonization and
Independence". ;))

Anyway, those were the periods when the European nations and
Britain were competing for world domination, invading and
exploiting as many nations with significantly less intellectual
property stocks, of military technology in particular, as they
possibly could. No?

As a geo-political background for the Berne Convention, do you
suppose the Imperial forces at work produced an agreement that
treated developing or less-developed nations humanely,
exploitively or simply ignored their interests?

Again, the question at hand: "... some societies are so poor
that they can do little for themselves and need foreign
assistance. Who then is responsible?"

Here are some highlights of those periods that might offer some
clues to the answers -- with a reminder that we are concerned
here primarily with the actions of governments and corporate
organizations nearing the scale of governments rather than the
general populaces they ruled or managed at the time:

* the European invasion and subjugation of Africa leading to
African Slave Trade and later the Berlin Conference was held in
Berlin between November 15, 1884 and November 26, 1885 (one
year before the Berne Convention) wherein Africa's control for
exploitation was largely divided up between the leading
European nations (cf,
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/Africa/BerlinConf.
CP.html),

* the slaughter, plague-infection or subjugation of the vast
majority of native North Americans by the British, French and
Spanish,

* France's invasion and brutal exploitation of IndoChina,

* the phenomenally profitable, military-backed drug empires of
the British Opium "Hongs" in China and HongKong, that still
prosper today as the Swire-Pacific and Jardine corporations,
among others,

* Britain's genocide of the Tasmanians and resting of Australia
and New Zealand from the Aboriginals and Maoris who previously
occupied both nations,

* the Imperial British Raj in India which Ghandi eventually
defeated with the revolutionary application of passive
resistence,

* the construction of the Canadian and American trans-national
railways based on the human trade in Asians and the later
suppression of the surviving Asian-Canadians through the
introduction of the drug laws prohibiting the local Chinese
supply of opium to British Columbians, laws which led to those
that have left us with today's spectacularly unsuccessful
global attempts at Prohibition (like the one defeated by the US
Mafia and corrupted US politicians and law enforcement
authorities)...

I'm out of time and can't go over the similar events Central
Asia, Central and South America and the Middle East. But this
list of, shall we say, "Global (War?) Crimes of Imperialism"
could roll on for several pages more. More details can be found
at http://www.wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/iguide/.

And we shouldn't forget there was a period of US Imperialism
that followed the European periods. See
http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/toc.html

(And, we should always be aware of who the authors of histories
are, remembering history is still generally written by and for
the victors. The losers' perspectives often have to be read
between the lines.)

So who is responsible for "Third World" poverty? Given poverty
is just as relative as anything else, i'd have to say Western
governments and their corporate allies and agent are likely the
primary contributors, if not the primary ones.

And i'd then want to ask, "So what's the West going to do to
alleviate this situation it seems we largely created?"

Will imposing minimum legal protections of our Intellectual
Property (TRIPS) on the nations we impoverished through
imperialism be an acceptable solution for the more enlightened
of our upcoming leaders?

(Remember: Western nations own over 90% of all Intellectual
Property Rights licensed so far, via the legal rules and
enforcement mechanisms the West created for the West's own
interests.)

And all this still leaves the very interesting question of why
the US did not join the Berne Convention for 100 years wide
open.

Should the developing world be allowed to follow the US
precedent?

And could this US precedent have had anything to do with a US
desire to more rapidly build its Intellectual Property stocks
over the century up to 1988, perhaps on the back of pirated
European Intellectual Property, unhindered by any formal IP
Rights agreement with Europe?

I don't know. But they seem both obvious and tantalizing
questions to me. I wish i had time for them.

Again, a timeline of US Copyright history is at
http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html

*--------------------------------------------------*
AD Marshall, VietInfoComm&Edu [VICE]-8 Consulting
Vietnam Information Communications & Education
Post: 8A/G8 Don Dat, Q.1, TpHCM, VietNam
eMail: mailto:AD.VICE@ParadoxCafe.Net
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