Multinational long range profit strategy would oppose unrestrained and uncontrolled activities important to the success of young, unknown, upstart, high technology companies and to the Internet in general.  Control over access, content, and presentation would be in their natural best interests.

The multinational would find it useful to use government as a :

Upstart companies generally find government expensive to access, difficult to negotiate, and unresponsive to new technology and new companies.

Individuals find the regulations curb constitutional freedom and serve the needs of the corporate world as opposed to the needs of the individuals.

Hence the balance problem: law, rule, and enforcement against three forces in competition: the towering multinational strength, the new and struggling business environment, and the package of freedoms and rights guaranteed to individuals by the constitution.

Issues important to multinationals are the antithesis of rising young companies each with new, next, hot technologies seeking to access the market.

Furthermore, regulations in general, and the threat of court action or criminal penalties in particular, trample constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and rights of individuals, especially when the individuals lack the financial resources to insist on their rights in court.

The multinational, on the one hand, find they need government because government is the great defender of status quo, holding in check the flow of upstart ideas and unplanned challenges which could disrupt their plans. Occasionally, a new technology emerges which has the potential to replace or challenge, the market and power position of the multinational. In that case, government has tended to side with buggy works factory, because it is known power with established relationships, and because the multinationals understand how to lobby but also have the time and resources.

Thus lobby power, creates an unbalanced field of play for the business seeking to promote a new technology.

New technologies spring up all of the time, but some disrupt "status quo"; challenge, the resources of governments, venture capitalists, and in true gold rush fashion, replace one market for other overnight. Government regulatory agencies are in place to prevent, where possible, just such events.

Governmental regulatory agencies can slow the introduction of new technology, redirect who can profit from it, and even exclude certain players from participation. They do this by interacting with the regulatory framework, the laws, the lobbies, challenge on the ip front, and a whole host of market related activities.

"IP strategy" is a game of exclusion. Its purpose is to restrict and retard competition.

The tools used to play the IP strategy game include: heads of state, treaty negotiating power, lobby swap power, legislative power, legal firm power, court power, and naive indifference of people in general.

"IP strategy" referees include legions of money hungry licensed "IP warriors" and 100,000s of thousands of surveillance and enforcement criminal justice teams.

The idea of "IP strategy" is to write laws that encapsulate every word, every utterance, every thought, every art, or art form, every idea that anyone can ever have. The successful players would find ways to get the ip laws to include all worthy technologies as patents, all works of art, software, and literature as copyrights, and all business methods as a method of doing business patents. Thus, one objective of the strategy is to create laws that serve as an intangible property net. A successful net would enable not only the capture of ip as it develops but would also convert it from unbounded public domain artifact to intangible property, complete with full boundary description and register number, assigned by the appropriate government office.

Encapsulation by definition is legal conversion; that conversion becomes complete when it issues from a government office with a titled a certificate of ownership, i.e. a patent, copyright or a trademark.

Multinationals are not after every day stuff, they only want to own and control the next light bulb, or the next communications technology, or then next invention that powers every ones homes and cars, or the next new drug (the one that actually works). So as a practical matter, the laws (patent, copyright, and trademark) provide exemptions and licenses for everyday speech, and for everyday technology developments. But the big ones, eventually become the private property of the multinationals, because they can easily control the access of the original owners to whom the patent, trademark, or copyright issued to markets and profits.

Multinationals pay lobbyists to create or amend laws and law firms to sue and sue and sue in ways that delay, delay, and delay or in ways that make clear the intent of the laws. Delayed long enough, even the better capitalized new firm (not many exist) will fail. Delays, also create market place uncertainty, and undermine investor confidence in the ability of a new company to successful convert entrenched markets from the old technology and established players to the unknown IP players in unproven market.

Initial failure, is a certain outcome, of the a technology in the hands of the unproven management. Only the most talented entrepreneur can introduce significant new technology and successfully adjust its fit into the scheme of things. Most, become a part of the management team of the multinational as the fledging entrepreneurial company is acquired by the interested multinational. (The IP players responsibility, was to create a deed so to speak, in the technology, so that, if it proved to be useful, it could be acquired with quite title)

The multinational need a way to convert inventions, great business ideas, great literature, or great art from public to private domain. Even multinationals cannot profit from public property or property that enjoys unlimited, uncontrolled access or use by the public.

The rules and successful strategies of IP gamemanship have evolved over the events of the past 800 or so years. Different problems, unforeseen at "strategy time" have made multinationals experienced players. They know law is useless without a governmental entity to oversee its administration and its enforcement and without the funds to provide enabling resources. The leassons learned from each mistake, have become a part of the IP Players rule book.

The latest oversight was a technology called network file sharing made popular by a company called Napstar. The legal loophole, which Naspter intended to capitalize on was found in the already litigated copyright act. It was an exemption, negotiated back in the 70s, resulting from upstart technology consumer demand so strong, it could not be denied. That technology enabled consumers the ability to copy video tapes and movies onto home vcrs.

It created a crisis for the multinational relying on copyright to save protect a business interest. If allowed, no copyright would be enforceable because what people do in the privacy of their homes is unenforceable?

How was the threat resolved?  Litigation was initiated to delay the technology. The copyright acts were used to get to the courts, the congress was made a party to the negotiations, and the government (but not the people) all agreed to a special exemption from the copyright laws. The home copy exemption essentially allowed owners of a home VCR, to legally copy, a single copy, of a copyrighted TV show or other video devic (VCR). Multinationals agreed to this exemption to further their protection under the copyright laws, since non-enforceability negates a law.

Napster, apparently intended to rely on that exemption, claiming that copying a computer disk file, containing copyrighted materials, over the internet to a home computer, for personal use, was the same as copying a copyrighted VCR, and therefore Napster, should be entitled to rely on the home copy exemption. Thus, a general license was granted by amendment to the statute. Recall the basics of the IP game: Lobby, Legislate, Encapsulate, License, and Criminalize (LLELC). The courts were used this time, both stop the Naspter threat and to define them out of the  exemption.  Just in case lawsuits were filed against individuals who were making file copies for at home personal use. These suits, it turned out, were unnecessary, because the court ruled, that the VCR industry can have the special at home copy exemption for its owners, but the computer cannot.

So, ip laws, provide multinationals, with the knowledge they need to oversee developments,  with the legal means to convert public right to private ownership, with the means to enforce them, and with the means to comfort protect copyright owners, with the time needed, to handle  Napster like emergencies, to restructure legislation or to find a way to exclude upstarts, like Napster, from successful at home personal copy exemptions.

It’s a strategy not a method that dictates legal framework.  Controlling it, is a function of the courts and government. A few know about it and fewer are player, but the world class multinational ip game is for keeps.

One example consistent with the application of IP strategy arises by comparison of the present situation of the American Citizen to the situation of the American Indian in the 1800s (the Indians believed they enjoyed a native entitlement to access and use public properties.. What they failed to understand was laws could be developed which would convert those vast waste lands from public use to private ownership. An Indian claiming the right to enjoy his land could produce no deed in any court, so always he was trespassing on the land owned by someone else, as evidenced by the deed recorded in the courthouse. A judge presented with these circumstances had little choice but to rule for the landowner and in the Napster case it took only a few months.

Consider again, the force of treaty, the power of lobbies, the strength of legislatures, the operation of agency, the confusion of courts, and the impact of Art 9, Sec 2 of the Berne treaty and the TRIPs treaty which provide in part that "..it shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the union (those nations, subscribing to the treaty) to permit(<please note the use of the word permit) reproduction ..in certain special circumstances.."

These Art 9 words have already had an influenced U.S. Copyright office and National Telecommunications and Information Administration efforts (Fed Register in October, 2000). An examination of the separate interests of 26 respondents, clearly shows a division between the old guard and those advancing new technology.

The meaning of Art 9 should be frightfully clear to every freedom loving, constitutional abiding, American Citizen. No member country [it says], including the United States can permit anyone to say or write anything unless it is permitted by law. The problem with that is, to be permitted by a law, there must first be a law that includes all speech of whatever kind. . Hence some principles of the multinational strategy are revealed: lobby, legislate, litigate (get every utterance, every written word, every picture, every symbol, "everything", get it all included in the copyright acts, and that which cannot be included as a copyright include it as a trade mark or a patent).

So, whether or not we want it, our government has negotiated to include your speech, your words, your thoughts, however they come to be expressed, as law. Moreover, at the international level several things have been agreed to: 1) the laws need to be more or less uniform from country to country, and 2) the resources to police violations of the act need to be made available, and 3) penalties sufficient to restrain flippant violations must exist.

That seems simple enough. It is now against the copyright law to do this or that? No problem. But there is more to it than that, because with each law comes a penalty for violating the law. So how do you get around the penalty? No problem, if you are a multinational, you just buy a license, or hire a lawyer to hire a lobbyist to write an exemption into the law to provide for a license or other device.

But if you are a little guy, or small struggling corporation, then you are just out of luck and if you should violate one of the BIG GUN Copyright or Intangible Property Laws, no problem just hand over your assets to an IP warrior (slang for copyright attorney) and he will do battle with other IP warriors on your behalf until you are broke, then off to jail you go complete the finally two strategic rules: license and criminalize.

Copyright vs rights guaranteed by the constitution. Copyright, trademarks, and patents are conversions. Conversions are generally illegal, because they are things like take my bank account and convert it to yours. Endorse to yourself, stock certificates which belong to someone else. But when congress does it, and when the IP lawyers lobby on behalf of their big bucks corporations, they get an office of the government to the convert freedom and access to copyright and limitation.

Look what the FCC did with air! 

Everyone knows air used to be free, right? But after the multinationals finished with it, air became the most expensive thing you can buy.

It was done right.  First they lobbied for and got passed, legislation: which claimed that all of the air was the property of the government. Then, they then made it illegal(like man go to jail) if you used any of the precious air your government legislators snapped up, then they created a commission (FCC), so they could divide the use of the government air up among the multinationals with lots of friendly lobbyists. They had a great big auction, and if you had a few billion or so you could have bought some of the "federal air". But it you are like the rest of us, you were made prisoner by that sale, because now you had to pay, or advertisers had to pay, for what used to be free and if you wanted to continue to use air you would wind in jail.

I can hear it now, lobbyist to congressman: Awe don't worry about voters, they will not notice what we are doing, besides you will make plenty from this, and we will make sure you have the money for the next election. Its only a law that encapsulate the air and puts a federal agency in charge of it. How can that hurt anything? Why no one in your district will even know how this happened. The serious issues will be fought in court between lawyers, and no one, not even the lawyers can figure out all of that junk. It will take several years before everything is operational and by then who did what or even why it was done will be obscure.

Yep! It started back in 1947 with Radio Act. The lobbyists got the legislators to see the profits to be made from "air"! Its was simple said the lobbyists, too many people were using the airways, so the government will need to take control. Besides, none of the broadcasters are making a going business of it. The people are sort of playing with. They are broadcasting radio signals between themselves and learning about the technologies. They are mostly little guys. Oh, please Mr. Congressman, let us have the air, we can make big bucks, with it. Just take if from all those citzens, please, please, please.

Boy, did congress see the profit in the air. They took undisputed control, packaged and sold pieces of it as licenses and made it a serious criminal offense for a citizen to broadcast a signal on their precious airways.

Only those who have a broadcasting license are allowed to do that. Basically, they took the growing radio business, a new technology back then (like the internet is today), where millions of different people were experimenting with the new technology called "broadcasting", and shut them down. Overnight!

HEY, wait a minute said the powerful corporations and rich investors. Some one of these upstart young radio operators is going to figure out how to make some money, and we need to be able to take it from them, when they do. How can we do that? Simple, they thought, follow the rule Lobby, legislate, litigate, License, and Criminalize (LLLLC). Hummmm! That's easy. All you need is bread, lots of green bread. We got plenty!

Its happening again folks. Big brother wants you to pay to use their internet because have everything on it copyrighted.

The neat part of the copywrite laws, is a little mending and whamo Napster, MP3 and a whole host of others have developed the technologies that only big brother can allow to be used. The spoils belong to those who pay for them. You little guys keep trying.. cause we need the new stuff.. but don't expect to wiggle past the United States Patent and Trade Mark Office or the Copyright Laws.. because we got you. We are multinational, have been here a long time, and we have the money to pay our lawyers (IP warriors), so we can load their guns. And as you all know, IP warriors just love to pierce the souls of free thinkers with their sure-fire "sue bullets". The justice department is gearing up to enforce the criminal parts of the little ip game designed to steal your free internet. Besides they have all of the listening devices on their side.

Did I hear correctly, the U. S. Military has been ordered to take the names, addresses, and next of kin, of all who read and understood the book entitled "Gulliver's Travel". The reason, I am told, is to force these thinkers to recover the tea from Boston Harbor and present it, each and every drop, to the U. S. Patent Trademark and Copyright Office.

Want to see something interesting? Look at the list of BIG guns and New guys on the web site icoppright.com these guys want to charge you just to link to their sites. Why I can't believe it, your corporaton is on their list of partners. maybe there is a reason? Care to explain.?

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