Looks like lots of potential for ugliness :-)
COPYRIGHT HOLDERS, TELECOMS DEBATE GLOBAL COMMERCE REGULATION �
[The Washington Post, E4.] Hollywood studios and major record companies are
squaring off against Internet service providers and other communication
companies over a proposed international treaty aimed at resolving questions
of legal jurisdiction in the global economy. The proposal, called the Hague
Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments, would require signatory
countries to recognize and enforce each other's legal judgments in most
business disputes. It would cover all forms of commercial litigation,
including libel, defamation, patents � almost any issue between two private
parties suing each other. The first formal negotiations over the treaty's
terms begin next month in The Hague. The draft treaty comes as nations
wrestle with how to regulate commerce in an age when more and more companies
are doing business over the Internet, which knows no geographic boundaries.
At a conference on the proposal yesterday, representatives of the studios
and record companies said they hoped the treaty would help them in a global
game of Whack-a-Mole, where copyright violators are shut down in one
country, only to pop up in another. But major telecommunications companies,
including AT&T, Verizon and Cable & Wireless, want to drop the treaty's
copyright provisions because they fear they could be sued by copyright
owners who claim their material is being illegally distributed over the
networks. Marilyn S. Cade, director of Internet and e-commerce law and
government affairs for AT&T, argues the proposal would allow copyright
owners to shop around the world for friendly courts and then seek
enforcement in the U.S. or other countries that have a different approach to
the same laws. "We are very concerned about forum shopping," she said.
