Piracy is a crime... well, not everywhere
This news has something incredible... The World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that Antigua and Barbuda will be allowed to infringe US copyrights and trademarks for the next years for a total value of 21 millions USD per year.
In 2006 US passed a law that made illegal the internet gambling runned by non-US companies; few weeks after the law, banks and credit card companies blocked every transactions from foreign gambling sites. Problem was that the internet gambling was one of the biggest business in the Caribbean. So, Antigua and Barbuda started a litigation about this case in front of the WTO asking for 3,4 billions USD as award.
The WTO took a decision on 21 December 2007: the US law has been considered "illegal" (well, take a look at the links for more explanatory informations, let alone my english).
The WTO ruled that Antigua will be allowed to infringe US copyrights, trademarks, industrial designs and patents (see paragraph 5.6 of the PDF) for a total value of 21 mln USD per year(see paragraph 6.1 of the PDF).
I don't really know how laws are working in the US (and even in the WTO) but it sounds me really strange that if a judge (WTO) decides that one party (US) commited an "illegal act" (declaring illegal online gambling for non-US companies) against a second party (Antigua and others), the award allowed by judge could be the permission to perpetrate crimes (infringe copyrights).
Normally by us (Italy), the second party would be awarded with a money reparation.
Then, conclusions: they continue to tell us that piracy is "one of the worst crime" you can perpetrate against intellectual properties, but somehow it turns out that copyrights infringements are tradable/negotiable.
Well, I don't know how it sounds to you but I call this kind of things "dirty".