Reactions from the U.S. Music Industry
The U.S. music industry is forced to pay the price to the U.S.’s decision to
discriminate in its offshore online casinos gambling legislation. Last month,
the World Trade Organization arbitration panel awarded Antigua a $21 million
judgment, and the ability to ignore U.S. copyrights as a way to retrieve the
judgment. And while that wasn’t exactly what Antigua was looking for, the small
island nation has already started plans to target U.S. music copyrights,
something that isn’t sitting well with the U.S. music industry. The music
industry has nothing to do with the online casinos dispute, so most are
wondering why they have to pay the price.
A recent opinion piece on a popular music Web site was not thrilled with the
U.S. Trade Representatives who went along with the WTO’s decision and did not
necessarily argue that awarding $21 million in copyright infringement for the
music and movie industry has little to do with the online casinos gambling
issues at hand. The article went on to say, "As a result of the US wanting to
protect the billions of dollars in domestic online casinos] gambling interests
above all, we now have a situation where the WTO has officially deemed it fair
game for US musicians’ (and film and software producers’) products to be
distributed and consumed by Antiguan businesses without any recourse to revenue.
Musicians are certainly going to be thrilled that their own government has
allowed a situation to arise where they are just a mere pawn in the game
resulting in the fruits of their labor being given away for free to a foreign
government."
Another concern in the U.S. music industry is that Antigua could set case
precedence for countries to sue the U.S. through the WTO looking for similar
compensation damages. Although the $21 million have little impact on actual
revenues, the judgment has implications in other areas.
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