Business
Antigua & Barbuda gets OK from WTO to become copyright haven
Americans call it piracy. Antiguans call it justice.
The islands of Antigua & Barbuda are threatening to strip intellectual property protections from American goods as part of a long-running trade dispute over the U.S. embargo on the Caribbean nation’s online gambling industry.
U.S. officials say the proposed copyright haven – whose broad outlines were approved Monday at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva – amounts to “government-authorized piracy.” But Antiguans, who’ve won a series of legal victories against the U.S. at the international trade body, reject any suggestion that they’re pirates.
“We have followed the rules and procedures of the WTO to the letter,” Antigua & Barbuda’s high commissioner to London, Carl Roberts, said in a statement Monday. “Our little country is doing precisely what it has earned the right to do under international agreements.”
The U.S. and Antigua & Barbuda have been tussling for years over the ability of Americans to use online casinos based in the Caribbean nation. U.S. laws have long been interpreted to mean that Internet gambling is illegal if it crosses state lines.
The World Trade Organization, however, has come down on Antigua’s side. In 2007, it allowed the islands to draw US$21 million a year’s worth of “nullification or impairments” from the United States as a penalty for the continuing refusal of the U.S. to allow American customers to place their online bets in Antigua & Barbuda.
Antiguan officials say they could make up the money through the operation of a copyright haven, although what that might look like and what its scope would be remains unclear. Antiguan officials have kept details vague and the move has little precedent.
