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Antigua lashes
out at United States over failure to comply with WTO
decision: Could retaliate with next Napster
 Antigua on Tuesday accused the United States of
flaunting a World Trade Organization ruling that
deemed unfair U.S. efforts to restrict Americans
from using Internet gambling sites based in the
Caribbean island.
Finance Minister Errol Cort said pending U.S.
legislation on online betting would make it harder
for Antigua gambling companies to do business with
U.S. citizens.
Antigua took the dispute to a WTO panel, which ruled
that the U.S. legislation would violate global trade
rules. The deadline for the U.S. government's
compliance passed Monday.
"The deadline has come and passed and the United
States has made no effort toward compliance," Cort
said, adding that the U.S. legislation would
"further entrench the discriminatory nature of the
United States' approach to cross-border gambling."
Cort said U.S. trade officials have "rebuffed every
offer Antigua and Barbuda has made to engage the
United States in an attempt to work out a reasonable
resolution of this dispute."
U.S. trade officials weren't immediately available
for comment.
The United States contends that Internet gambling
should be prohibited because it violates some U.S.
state laws. Antigua says the offshore industry is a
lucrative source of revenue and provides hundreds of
islanders.
Cort said Antigua was "exploring all available
options" to make the U.S. comply with the WTO ruling
but conceded that settling the dispute would be
"extremely challenging" given Antigua's lack of
economic and political clout.
That said, China is
likely to take notice of the US stance on this
matter and use it to their advantage.
A senior U.S. trade
official said Tuesday the government is reviewing
China's compliance with international trading rules
and will not hesitate to enforce the rules in the
World Trade Organization. The U.S.-China Economic
and Security Review Commission spent an entire day
Tuesday examining U.S. trade with China and Chinese
trade practices.
Antigua may even follow in China's footsteps.
The tiny island could
stop enforcing US trademarks and patents, allowing
manufacturers in that country to start making
knockoff goods.
It's definitely an
interesting retaliation strategy, but Jerry Brito
takes the argument one step further, suggesting to
TechDirt.com
that an even more compelling move might be to
allow the creation of online music services that
have been banned in the US, such as the original
Napster or my.MP3.com. Or, at the very least, an
online music store like AllofMP3.com that currently
exists in a legal gray area over in Russia. That,
clearly, could get the attention of politicians in
the US, since they seem so tuned into the "concerns"
of the entertainment industry these days. No matter
what, though, it seems like this could be an
interesting strategy for any country involved in a
trade dispute with the US. In the past, we've seen
Brazil use intellectual property enforcement as a
weapon in trade disputes. However, using it as an
offensive weapon to allow such products (especially
digital ones) back into the US could be seen as a
very powerful tool in such disputes and could lead
to some challenges for the entertainment industry.
Imagine every country that has a trade dispute with
the US simply setting up servers upon servers of
downloadable music and movies. Of course, if the
industry learned how to embrace file sharing with
alternative business models, this entire "threat"
could disappear overnight. Somehow, that seems
unlikely -- and, instead, we'd be subjected to
commercials warning everyone that downloading from
such sites helped our enemies.
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Gambling911.com News Wire
Originally published
April 4, 2006 11:50 pm ET
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