 Antigua
Can't Violate US
Copyright Laws And
Here Is Why...There has been much talk on Friday about the tiny island nation of Antigua being permitted to violate copyright laws now that it has been determined that the US will not abide by a World Trade Organization ruling that it allows online gambling to be legalized (or at least abolish the carve out that makes its own online horse racing industry legal). There are calls for Antigua to start getting into the counterfeit CD and DVD business. Why can't that happen? Antigua is an island that is virtually cut off from the rest of the world without shipping and without the one single cable pipe that travels to it. Shipping and the pipe all lead back to the United States, in one way or another, and if the US really wanted to play hardball, they could simply cut Antigua off. Like it or not, the world relies heavily on what happens with the US economy. China and India learned this recently. The two countries for some time felt they could eclipse the US economy (and this could still happen in the future) but because these two nations modeled their respective economies so closely after the United States, they are now left feeling the pain brought on by the dollar's continued collapse. China's yuan is not yet supported by a fully functional financial infrastructure and has too long been pegged to the dollar to suddenly go it alone, writes Justice Litle for The Daily Reckoning. In 1999 the budding offshore financial sector in Antigua was seriously hurt by financial sanctions imposed by the United States and United Kingdom as a result of the loosening of its money-laundering controls. Think that won't happen again? Here is one of the key reasons why Antigua cannot and will not engage in counterfeiting activities. The island nation lacks the resources, that being a labor force. There are not enough people living on the island (population just over 60,000) to carry forward a serious industry such as counterfeiting. Not that this can be considered a serious industry, but the demand will be serious and cannot be met by the Antiguan population. Antigua is not permitted to contract workers outside the nation to engage in this type of activity. Already there are labor shortages on the island that have limited its agricultural abilities. To lessen its vulnerability to natural disasters, Antigua has been diversifying its economy. Transportation, communications and financial services are becoming important, but once again, there is a reliance to some degree on the US economy. Antigua and Barbuda is a beneficiary of the U.S. Caribbean Basin Initiative. Its 1998 exports to the U.S. were valued at aboutUS $3 million and its U.S. imports totaled about US $84 million. It also belongs to the predominantly English-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Friday's WTO Ruling
The WTO panel said
Antigua was entitled
to compensation of
$21 million a year
from the United
States for being
shut out of the U.S.
online gambling
market. Antigua and Barbuda today expressed its mixed reaction to the ruling of the arbitrators issued Friday in its long running dispute with the United States over Internet gambling. Mark Mendel, the lawyer who has been spearheading this case for the Antiguan government since it began back in 2003 observed "I am pleased that the panel approved our ability to cross-retaliate by suspension of intellectual property rights of United States business interests. That has only been done once before and is, I believe, a very potent weapon." Mr Mendel expressed less satisfaction with the amount of damages assessed. "I find it astonishing that two of the three panellists would in essence grant the United States the benefit of a hypothetical method of compliance most favourable to the American side in assessing." "The reality is that the WTO cannot exist without the United States," said one online gambling industry analyst who wished not to be identified. "The World Trade Organization does not want to be seen as weak and they need to appease the US in some way while showing they are still a force. This decision meets somewhat halfway." As Gambling911.com has been reporting over the past few months, iMEGA, which is setting itself up to be the protector of privacy for everything Internet, serves as the best short-term hope for the online gambling industry. Some of the politicians embracing online gambling (i.e. Barney Frank) are starting to come to this realization. iMEGA is mounting a REAL court fight on US SOIL in front of a REAL JUDGE. "The court system in the US has more pull than the court systems in a number of European nations and I think that European online gambling operators don't really understand this," commented Joe Brennan, Jr., founder of iMEGA.org. The reaction to iMEGA by the industry overall was lukewarm at first, but many are starting to warm up to this grass roots trade organization. It's not just the online gambling industry monitoring iMEGA's court challenge closely, it's Wall Street and the banking sector, all of which have stakes in what transpires here. Antigua deserves praise for its valiant effort in standing up for what it believes in, but ever since they got into the online gambling industry, they (the powers-that-be) have acted on their own. They haven't exactly worked in conjunction with iMEGA from what we can tell and they certainly have little if any communication with this website (Gambling911.com) either. On many fronts, tiny Antigua has worked in an "antagonistic" fashion. Is anyone surprised that ever since Antigua lodged its complaint against the United States government, the US government has begun cracking down on Internet gambling with reckless abandonment? They could have done this years ago. Perhaps the industry suits that have come on board in recent years didn't get the memo regarding former Attorney General Janet Reno's visit to the online gambling Mecca of Costa Rica. Reno was the original "enforcer of the industry" in 1998 when her administration indicted 21 Internet gambling businesses stretching from Antigua to Curacao to Costa Rica. Some time later, during a visit to Costa Rica, Reno is widely quoted as saying "just don't rub it in our faces". She was referring to the burgeoning online gambling industry evolving before her own eyes in Costa Rica and that Central American nation's right to have such an industry (which employed the children of many government officials she had come in contact with), but to respect the stance of the US government that the activity was not deemed "legal" on United States soil. Another "brilliant" idea brought on by industry suits who don't have a clue is to hire big bad lobbying groups to bleed them dry. Many will jump on that bandwagon now that the WTO has essentially failed them. Not that the WTO really failed anyone. The award given to Antigua really is more than they deserved when you consider how minor a part they play in the overall scheme of online gambling. Bodog is the only Gambling911.com endorsed company that actually operates there. Intertops and World Sports Exchange are good too but their marketing efforts are not enough to sustain Antigua as a true online gambling powerhouse the likes of Great Britain, Malta, Gibraltar and Costa Rica (where the licensed companies actually employ those in the nation where they are licensed). Let's not forget that Antigua, for the longest time, allowed "sub licensing" from a software firm called Starnet. Many of these sublicensees actually resided in such online gambling rich jurisdictions as Boston and New Orleans and Kansas City to name a few. If all the companies licensed in Antigua actually operated there, more than three quarters of the population wouldn't live in poverty. This is not a put down of Antigua. We at Gambling911.com respect their efforts and have praised them. But the reality is clear. They and the rest of the industry need to accept it. Industry observers need to monitor iMEGA closely and start supporting their efforts. This is the message we are getting from a number of the more influential US-facing operators (all of whom have been promised anonymity as a result of their support in iMEGA and all of whom will be demanding this of their peers). (learn more about iMEGA here) "The European i-Gaming sites can run to some Remote Gambling operative and complain (which is what they did on Thursday)," said one US facing industry operator. "It's like yelling 'Stop' to the French police. They won't understand and they won't care and neither will the rest of the world." The best news for online gambling is that there are plenty of people in the industry who really care about it as opposed to those who only care about themselves and pleasing their shareholders. "By the end of the day the (online gambling industry) will win for the simple reason that for us this is not a job, it's something we believe in," said Brennan, Jr. "Those in charge of enforcing policy against it are doing so because it is their job to do so, not because they necessarily feel strongly about it. You have to have your heart in it to be truly successful." ---- Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher CCostigan@CostiganMedia.com Originally published December 21, 2007 8:39 pm EST
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