Boing Boing reports on a chilling development:
The Kremlin is using Russia’s new anti-software-piracy laws to target dissident media outlets and shut them down. This is an eerie echo of the Soviet era, when black marketeering and other universal activities were used as the excuse for arresting dissidents and other inconvenient people.
The difference is that this time, the anti-piracy laws were enacted at the behest of the US trade representative, who made stringent patent and copyright enforcement a condition of the recent US-Russia free trade agreement, forcing Russia to take on board stricter laws than those in place in the US.
In many senses, intellectual property is the “insanity” of our time.
Originally posted 2007-11-15 13:21:43. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
We seem to keep making the same mistake over and over again. America sees the world in its own image, so we are always amazed when other nations use the law in ways we wouldn’t (or would we?).