Expressing Sense of Congress that Russian Federation Must Protect Intellectual Property Rights
EXPRESSING SENSE OF CONGRESS THAT RUSSIAN FEDERATION MUST PROTECT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS -- (House of Representatives - November 16, 2005)
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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the chairman, the full committee chairman, and my cosponsor of this bill, Congresswoman Watson.
We traveled to Russia earlier this year. We saw firsthand that it is not just about piracy; it is about a complete absence of a willingness to enforce that. On the main streets of Moscow, in fact, within sight of Red Square, one can every day see advertisements for movies, DVDs of movies that have not yet been released, impossible to exist, literally not existing in the United States; and yet they exist in Russia, already translated into Russian and, yes, as the chairman said earlier, into many other languages and exported around the world.
The Russians admit that they have more than four times as many optical disk producers as they could possibly justify. And although we often talk about DVDs and music, we also need to recognize that Microsoft and other major software producers are being robbed of countless billions in this process.
Many talk of the WTO accession and whether or not it is appropriate for Russia to be granted that, and I certainly agree it needs to be withheld until there is a showing of a willingness and a proven track record of enforcing these laws.
But I want to make one other closing remark here. We pay, we the world pay world-class prices for oil no matter where we buy it in the world, and today that is $60 a barrel. Russia is one of the largest exporters of oil to Western Europe; and yet in a time when they are receiving $60 a barrel on what costs them less than $2 a barrel to get out of the ground, they will tell you they cannot afford the intellectual property produced by Neil Diamond, Steven Spielberg or from Bill Gates' company. This is disingenuous.
Mr. Speaker, if they want to be part of a World Trading Organization, they have to recognize that value is not determined by what you are willing to pay; value is determined by what you are willing to pay for the legitimate goods in an arm's length relationship. We pay world-class prices for oil. They should pay world-class prices for intellectual property and not literally steal it from the inventors here in America and in Europe.
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