Hollywood Wins In CAFTA Copyright Accord

The Central American Free Trade Agreement included a big win for American lobbyists for tougher copyright laws. “You wouldn’t know it from a political debate veering between labor standards in Nicaragua and the evils of protectionism, but one major section of CAFTA will export some of the more controversial sections of U.S. copyright law. Once it takes effect, CAFTA will require Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to mirror the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s broad prohibition on bypassing copy-protection technology.”