Saturday 18 July 2009

ZookZ claim WTO permission to download without permission

ZookZ is a new site offering unlimited music or film downloads for under $10 a month, or both for $18. Its trick for keeping prices down is not to pay copyright holders. ZookZ says it doesn’t need to. Why? It’s based in Antigua. The LA Times explains:

‘The governments of Antigua and the United States battled for several years before the WTO over whether US restrictions on online gambling discriminated against foreign firms. The WTO sided with Antigua in several preliminary stages, but the US kept contesting the body's findings. So to increase the pressure, Antigua asked WTO arbitrators to give it permission to suspend its obligations under sections of the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement related to copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial designs and trade secrets. The arbitrators agreed in December 2007, finding that Antigua could request the WTO's permission to suspend its obligations up to a value of $21 million annually.’

No comments: