Re: FAT patents. Do we need to revive non-US?

On Thursday 12 January 2006 00:28, cmetzler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> Also, bear in mind that at one point, panama was our territory, but
>> I'm not sure if Noriega actually did some of his drug related stuff
>> while it was still our territory.
>
>No. Panama has been an independent nation since it seceded from
> Colombia in 1903. Perhaps you're referring to the Canal Zone,

Yes
> an
> area embedded inside Panama which extended five miles to each side of
> the Panama Canal. That was indeed U.S. territory until the end of the
> 70s, when it was under joint U.S.-Panamanian control until the end of
> the 90s. U.S. control of the Canal Zone, however, has nothing to do
> with jurisdiction over any drug trafficking-related activities of
> Manuel Noriega inside the completely separate nation of Panama.

Ah, someone who actually knows the history. OTOH, could he have brought
that crap across the Canal Zone without violating our laws in so doing?
I have serious doubts any of it was ever put on a boat, sent out to
intl waters from the south side of the zone, and then re-landed north
of it from intl waters just to be legal about it.

>A perhaps more relevant (to the FAT distribution issue) example of the
>U.S. applying intellectual property laws to actors and actions outside
>the U.S. which were legal in that location would be the case of Dmitri
>Skylarov, which I'm sure Free Software advocates here have not
> forgotten.

Touche', I had indeed momentarily forgotten that. I had also at the
time spoken rather pointedly to my senators and representatives about
the absurdity of it, and that it should be stepped on at the earliest
possible point in time. As to my bitching making any diff, I don't
have a clue, but damnit, this IS supposed to be a democracy we have
here. Hopefully Adobe learned a very valuable PR lesson in terms of
visibly lost income over that because of boycotted sales on a
planet-wide basis.

>-c

--
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