Geist on International Copyright “Standards”

Michael Geist has an excellent BBC article on a recent report purportedly documenting inadequate copyright protections outside of the United States. But as Geist explains, in many cases it’s US law that’s out of touch:

Countries that have preserved their public domain by maintaining their term of copyright protection at the international treaty standard of life of the author plus an additional fifty years are criticised for not matching the US extension to life plus 70 years.

There are literally hundreds of similar examples, as countries from Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America are criticised for not adopting the DMCA, not extending the term of copyright, not throwing enough people in jail, or creating too many exceptions to support education and other societal goals.

In fact, the majority of the world’s population finds itself on the list, with 23 of the world’s 30 most populous countries targeted for criticism (the exceptions are the UK, Germany, Ethiopia, Iran, France, Congo, and Myanmar).

Countries singled out for criticism should not be deceived into thinking that their laws are failing to meet an international standard, no matter what US lobby groups say.

Rather, those countries should know that their approach – and the criticism that it inevitably brings from the US – places them in very good company.

The really funny thing about this (aside from us being on a list with Iran, the Congo, and Myanmar) is that on multiple occasions I’ve heard it argued that we needed to pass the DMCA and the CTEA to comply with international treaty obligations, as though we’re somehow behind the rest of the world in expanding copyright protections. But of course, those “treaty obligations” were largely imposed at the behest of the American copyright lobby.

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