Copyright Infringement

Even from that point of view (IPR protection), I am not convinced that banning web caching is an efficient or even effective measure: 'Governments have many ways to ridicule themselves; the most efficient one is to forbid what they cannot prevent'.

I would also suggest that 'global participation in e-commerce' (i.e. including smaller firms from smaller countries) is essential to the expansion and the stability of the economic model which could underpin the next century. As the international community braces itself for the Third Minsisterial Meeting of WTO (Seattle, November 1999), what are advanced countries like Japan doing (and what could they do) to build the necessary climate of 'global confidence and mutual respect' ?

We see that the issues go to the heart how the world works today, and to the heart of how we are changing the way the world works into the 21st century.

The issue of access costs, especially the very high fees charged by NTT in Japan, has been raised in both the English and the Japanese discussions. How can we get a sanctioned monopoly to open up to competition, even foreign competition? Japan signed the WTO agreement on basic telecom liberalization, but it has done nothing about it! NTT still dominates.

Does this become an international problem that other nations should address? Is NTT so deeply ingrained in Japanese culture that it cannot be challenged in the marketplace? What about alternative telecom technologies to go around NTT to provide Internet access? How can this be done?

The questions of intellectual property protection clash with the issues of privacy. Can an individual search the Web for all the information and knowledge and trash that is there without being traced, tagged and charged for it? There is so much knowledge being stored on the Web should we not pay those who organize it for us?

We are now seeing artists selling their works (music, art, literature) directly to users through new Internet intermediaries like MP3.com, and being paid royalties directly - without the publishing companies getting into the process. Is this more efficient? Or do publishing companies provide protections and valued services to the artist?

You have raised the differences between regions of the world and their approaches to the Internet. My experience in the G7 negotiations over the past four years is that the European Commission would really rather have the Internet stop until they could create a theoretically perfect regime of rules to govern it.

They know that they are behind North America and even Asia in the invention of new technologies, and in the business exploitation of those technologies. Instead, they are competing by issuing policy directives - even those which they hope will apply outside Europe.

In the US the governors of our states, with whom we just met, are scared silly about losing sales tax revenues to e-commerce transactions. The US Electronic Commerce Commission, created by the Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998 is still arguing over its membership and is wasting time finding a reasonable answer to the question of fair taxation of online sales.

Right now, there is a sort of "happy chaos" around the world in government policies impacting the Internet and e-commerce. Is that good? Is the private sector really taking a lead in organizing a market that will operate fairly for all parties? Look at the fight over the private sector handling of the domain names issues. What do you think

Could I simply make a website called keizai.co.jp (not one of mine, but wanted it) that would tag on a daily basis media in Japan and abstract and tabloid Japanese business in English. Probably with excessive use of frames.

If someone publishes the whole works on a website, not linking, and then aggressively registers with search engines so that the content is linking directly to a different URL than the original copyright holder. Further maintains content after negotiations for licensing same content. This is bad. Where is defense?

It seems that the only solid protection is the ownership of domain names. No one can take it. This post is to really ask the question. What is the value of spending money for trademarks, servicemarks and copyrights if the system has no real way to defend violations?