Digital counterweights on Trump’s rates

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Roula Khalaf, publisher of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is special advisor to the electronic Frontier Foundation, a computer visiting professor at Open University and author of “Picks and Shovel”

What needs to be done by a (old) commercial partner? In Canada, Mexico and the world, leaders try to make a response to Trump’s rates, and they are all landing in the same place: if the President of the United States, Donald Trump, rates, we tariff. But tit-pertat rates are things of 19th-century geopolitics. In the 21st century, assaulted foreign leaders had an exciting and digital that could have a devastating effect on the most profitable business lines in the most profitable companies in the United States.

Contrampassado, which could make things cheaper while eliminating the benefits of monopoly extracted by the most economically important companies in the United States, is to repeal a highly technical intellectual property law called “anticircumvance”.

The laws of Anticircing prohibit the manipulation or overcoming of software locks that control access to copyright works. The first of these laws was Article 1201 of the Digital Millennium Digital Millennium Act, which Bill Clinton signed in 1998. By virtue of DMCA 1201, it is a crime (punished by a five -year sentence or a fine of $ 500,000) to provide someone a tool or information for a digital blockade, even if no copyrights were violated.

The laws of anticirconation are the reason that no one can sell you a “jailbreaking” tool, so your printer is able to recognize and use cheaper and generic ink cartridges. That is why farmers could not repair their own John Deere tractors until recently and why people who use fed wheelchairs cannot fix their vehicles, even even smaller adjustments such as customizing management.

These laws were made in the United States, but are among the most successful exports in the United States. The United States Trade Representative has pressed, excessively in the negotiations of the treaties; As a foreign legislature, he discussed his IP laws: for America’s commercial partners to promote their versions.

The Quid Pro Quo: The countries that passed these laws had access to the American markets without rates. Canada promulgated its anticircumvent law, the C-11 bill, in 2012, after the responsible ministers rejected 6,138 opposite comments, as they were the “Babyish” opinions of “radical ends”. Mexico promulgated his version in the summer of 2020 to fulfill his obligations under the agreement of the United States-Mèxic-Canada. He made this hash that the Supreme Court triggered a review.

I trust you see where this is going. Why all the weights a Mexican iPhone owner pays to a Mexican app creator take a round trip and return home 30 lighter cents? Why do you accept this for every 1,000 Rupees, someone pays to the application in the Dainik Bhaskar newspaper of India, Does the paper only get Rs 700? After all, if an Indian technology company makes its own application store, it could collect competitive fees that attract all the best customers of App App Maker.

And why should all mechanics in the world not offer a price of a price of all software subscription and updates for each Tesla model?

Better yet, as these are software products, there is no practical way to prevent North -Americans from buying them online from abroad. Canada should not be limited to exporting pharmaceuticals at reasonable prices, it could also incubate a large software sector that exports technological self-determination tools to the US public, the first victims of Shakedown Anticircion.

North -American monopolistic companies have spent in the first quarter of this century, extracting trillions of consumers from around the world, isolated from competition by the anticircumbuations laws that pressure. From the printer ink to the fan repairs, they have been able to pursue monopoly prices, sure that no one would underline them with cheaper and/or better accessories, markets, software, consumables and services offers.

Companies can say that the repeal of the laws increases the risk of not respecting the rights of consumers. But they may be more respectful of these rights. After all, the technological giants of America have hardly been too worried about our privacy, work or consumer rights.

Trump’s fast and aerial dismantling of the global commercial system is a unique opportunity for the countries around the world to establish themselves as leaders in these sectors. Some countries could have the same relationship with app stores or the payment processing that Finland had to have cell phones during the 15 years when Nokia was a king.

It is fashionable because of technology companies for their ethos of “moving fast and breaking things.” But surely, it depends on who breaks things? Moving quickly and breaking things from the billionaires seems to me a splendid idea, especially when the billionaires in question are the same men who stayed behind Trump in the inaugural daisies.