Month: April 2017

The breathlessly awaited Mar-a-Lago, Florida summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump turned out to be much less dramatic than many expected. It was more about establishing a tone and a personal relationship than dealing with the many problems that the two countries face. These range from threatened US tariffs to offset Chinese trade surpluses, to Chinese bases in the South China Sea, to North Korean missile tests to human rights concerns, and so on. The timing of the US missile strike against Syria, coming as it did in the middle of Xi’s visit, also took away some of the media attention the visit would otherwise have had. The meeting was portrayed as almost a “love-in” between Trump and Xi although serious issues remain on the agenda. President Trump accepted Xi’s invitation to visit China later this year so there will be plenty of opportunity to discuss troublesome issues later. Continue reading “The Xi-Trump “Mar-a-Lago” Summit: How will it impact US Copyright Industries in China?”

As I wrote back in August, recent studies conducted by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the Information Technology and Information Foundation (ITIF) have demonstrated convincingly that blocking offshore pirate websites works in terms of changing consumer behaviour (i.e. directing consumers away from infringing content to sources of legitimate content) while at the same time not interfering with normal internet operations. In other words, it does not “break the internet”. The growing awareness and rapid take up of this defensive measure globally illustrates the extent to which disabling access (sometimes called site blocking) can be a highly effective tool to curtail online piracy. Continue reading “Disabling Access to Large-Scale Pirate Sites (Site Blocking)—It Works!”

In the beginning, there was Hollywood. Then Bollywood, the Bombay (now known as Mumbai) based Hindi language film industry, which is the largest film production centre in the world. And then Tollywood cropped up, the term used to designate the not insubstantial Telagu language film industry in south India. And now there is Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry. Continue reading “Nollywood: Is it Realizing its Full Potential?”

The “tweak” to NAFTA that President Donald Trump famously promised Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during their initial meeting in Washington in February is rapidly morphing into more of a “hard squeeze” if recently leaked documents outlining the negotiating objectives that the US Trade Representative’s Office (USTR) will be submitting to Congress are to be believed. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has already talked tough in public, indicating that the US will be expecting concessions from both Canada and Mexico. The latest draft of the document that will be submitted to Congress, obtained by Inside US Trade and reported extensively in the Canadian press, indicates that the US has a long list of demands that it will be seeking. Continue reading “Canada and NAFTA: When a “Tweak” becomes a “Hard Squeeze” (But Are There Upsides?)”