Post Tagged with: "China"

Peeking Behind the Wall of Canada’s Copyright Complaint Against China

Appeared in the Toronto Star on February 9, 2009 as Scaling Wall Over Canada's Trade Complaint Against China Late last month, the World Trade Organization released a much-anticipated decision involving a U.S.-led complaint against China over its intellectual property laws.  Canada was among a number of countries that participated in […]

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February 9, 2009 Comments are Disabled Columns Archive

Why the U.S. Lost Its WTO IP Complaint Against China. Badly.

The World Trade Organization yesterday released its much-anticipated decision involving a U.S. complaint against China over its protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights.  The U.S. quickly proclaimed victory, with newspaper headlines trumpeting the WTO panel's requirement that China reform elements of its intellectual property laws.  For its part, China was conciliatory and offered to work with the international community to resolve the concerns raised by the decision.  Reuters notes that the Chinese reaction is far less combative than it has been other issues.

Why the muted response?  I suspect that it is because anyone who bothers to work through the 147 page decision will find that the headlines get it wrong.  The U.S. did not win this case, but rather lost badly. China is required to amend elements of its copyright law, but on the big issues of this case – border measures and IP enforcement – almost all of the contested laws were upheld as valid.  Further, the ramifications of this case extend well beyond China's laws into other areas such as ACTA, since it points to the considerable flexiblity that countries have in meeting their international obligations on these issues.

The case centred on three key issues:

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January 27, 2009 15 comments News

WTO Issues Decision In U.S. – China IP Case

The WTO Panel has released its decision in the U.S. complaint against China over its IP laws.  It ruled against China on certain elements, but dismissed a complaint involving criminal enforcement.  Canada participated in the case as a third party against China, a matter that I will explore in a […]

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January 26, 2009 Comments are Disabled News

Canadian Study Uncovers Widespread Chinese Net Surveillance

A Canadian backed study has uncovered widespread Chinese Internet surveillance that tracks text messages sent via Skype.  Coverage from the NY Times and the study itself.

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October 2, 2008 1 comment News

Business in the Hotseat over Net Censorship

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, Ottawa Citizen version, Vancouver Sun version, homepage version) focuses on the growth of Internet censorship and the accompanying pressure on the business community to do something about it.  I begin by noting that as the Internet moved into the mainstream in the mid-1990s, John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, coined the phrase "the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."Gilmore’s comments were a reference to the architecture of the Internet, which was designed to ensure that information was delivered by the most efficient means possible and render attempts to block content nearly impossible. Yet years later, a growing number of countries seem determined to challenge Gilmore's maxim.  China is the best known (as evidenced by recent events in Tibet), having implemented both a massive content filtering system that exerts control over external content and demanded that foreign Internet firms establish Chinese-versions of their services that abide by the government's requirements.

China's censorship system may be the most extensive, but it is not alone. The University of Toronto's OpenNet Initiative, a world leader in tracking state-sponsored Internet censorship, recently co-published Access Denied, a book that highlights its pervasive growth.  The book notes that some countries control all public Internet services, thereby creating an easy pipeline to implementing filtering technologies.  Countries such as Syria have sought to chill access to the Internet by requiring cybercafe owners to record the names and identification cards of clients.  Others – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Myanmar – have tried to censor content by arresting local bloggers who dare to post content that does not meet the approval of the government. In recent months, some countries have also tried to block access to widely popular sites on the basis of a small sample of offending content.  For example, both Turkey and Thailand have briefly blocked access to YouTube due to offending videos, while the United Arab Emirates has blocked access to Facebook.

The growth of government-sponsored Internet censorship has fueled mounting pressure within the European Union and the United States to respond. 

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March 20, 2008 7 comments Columns