Digital Trade

Anupam Chander has posted International Trade and Internet Freedom on SSRN.  From the abstract: Can trade liberalization serve the cause of political liberalization in authoritarian states? In this short essay, I suggest that trade law might bolster political freedoms by liberalizing Internet trade. Trade law puts pressure on state repression

In Foreign Policy, journalist Jordan Calinoff asks, "Is web censorship just an excuse to drive out foreign competition and give a boost to Chinese brands?"  He then writes: ... Google, like Yahoo before it, has been systematically forced out of the market by a Chinese government determined to purge

Google's possible exit from China is all over the news.  Are there any trade issues in there?  Possibly: Lawyers said that Google and the US might have a legal basis for suing China at the World Trade Organisation, a move that would further complicate relations between Washington and

News from Chile, related to U.S. - Chile FTA rules on copyright protection: The Chilean House of Reps has formally rejected the latest attempt Chilean President Michele Bachelet to “reform” that country’s copyright laws to include ISP-level content filtering. Pres Bacehlet had argued that it’s necessary in

Brian Hindley and Hosuk Lee-Makiyama have published a working paper on "Protectionism Online: Internet Censorship and International Trade Law."  From the abstract: This paper suggests that many WTO member states are legally obliged to permit an unrestricted supply of cross- border Internet services. And as the option to

Bloomberg reports: China postponed tomorrow’s deadline for personal-computer makers to include a state-backed anti- pornography software on new PCs after U.S. officials and business groups urged it to scrap the rule

Over at the Kluwer Arbitration Blog, Luke Peterson talks about the investment aspects of the Chinese PC filtering issue.  He notes: One critical question in any claims arising out of this internet-filtering software dispute would be the expectations that investors had upon entering the Chinese market. For instance, it has

The Economist mentions an interesting new detail about China's efforts to have all personal computers sold in China come with filtering software called Green Dam Youth Escort: An American firm, Solid Oak Software, claims Green Dam includes stolen copyrighted code from one of its products, and has launched

At the Huffington Post, Michael Santoro and Wendy Goldberg make the case to the incoming Obama team for Chinese internet censorship to be treated as a trade barrier: Almost all discussion of the harm done by China's strict censorship of the Internet focuses around its human rights implications.