Reactions from the U.S. Music Industry

The U.S. music industry is forced to pay the price to the U.S.’s decision to discriminate in its offshore online casinos gambling legislation. Last month, the World Trade Organization arbitration panel awarded Antigua a $21 million judgment, and the ability to ignore U.S. copyrights as a way to retrieve the judgment. And while that wasn’t exactly what Antigua was looking for, the small island nation has already started plans to target U.S. music copyrights, something that isn’t sitting well with the U.S. music industry. The music industry has nothing to do with the online casinos dispute, so most are wondering why they have to pay the price. A recent opinion piece on a popular music Web site was not thrilled with the U.S. Trade Representatives who went along with the WTO’s decision and did not necessarily argue that awarding $21 million in copyright infringement for the music and movie industry has little to do with the online casinos gambling issues at hand. The article went on to say, "As a result of the US wanting to protect the billions of dollars in domestic online casinos] gambling interests above all, we now have a situation where the WTO has officially deemed it fair game for US musicians’ (and film and software producers’) products to be distributed and consumed by Antiguan businesses without any recourse to revenue. Musicians are certainly going to be thrilled that their own government has allowed a situation to arise where they are just a mere pawn in the game resulting in the fruits of their labor being given away for free to a foreign government." Another concern in the U.S. music industry is that Antigua could set case precedence for countries to sue the U.S. through the WTO looking for similar compensation damages. Although the $21 million have little impact on actual revenues, the judgment has implications in other areas. Source:http://www.gamblecraft.com/

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