Cato Daily Dispatch for October 22, 2001
Will Bin Laden Be Put On Trial?Bush, Putin Come Closer To ABM Agreement
New Alternatives Fill Void Left By Napster
Will Bin Laden Be Put On Trial?
According to The New York Times, lawyers are beginning to ask the question: What do we do if we catch him?
President Bush, in his demand that the Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden, said on Oct. 14 that "we know he's guilty." But Bush and other officials have suggested that they would place bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders on trial if they were captured alive.
If Taliban leaders were caught, they, too, could be tried, on charges perhaps of giving support to terrorists or conspiring with them.
Whether the United States would try the Taliban leaders if it were to get control of them is not clear. But after the raid on the compound of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's leader, on Friday, President Bush made clear that if the United States captured terrorists, the country would "bring them to justice."
In "Crime or Act of War?" Cato Foreign Policy Analyst Gary Dempsey, an International Criminal Court expert, writes that the "international community has yet to agree on a legal definition of international terrorism or that a global court could open a Pandora's box of legal mischief -- treating terrorism as a criminal justice matter is wrongheaded."
In "Don't Court bin Laden," Dempsey writes that putting Osama bin Laden on trial should not be the main objective of American policy. Comparisons with the Nuremberg trials after World War II are misguided, he says.
Bush, Putin Come Closer To ABM Agreement
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emerged from more than an hour of talks with President Bush today saying they could reach agreements that would alter the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, according to The New York Times. If so, that would free the United States to test a proposed anti-missile system while meeting Moscow's demand not to abandon the treaty altogether.
Both men were elusive in their comments, but Putin's remarks made clear that the two nations were racing to try to reach the outlines of an accord before Putin travels to Washington and to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., from Nov. 12 to 14.
"I believe we do have understanding that we can reach agreements," Putin told reporters, "taking into account national interests of Russia, the United States, and taking into account the necessity to strengthen international security."
One year ago, Charles V. Peña suggested in the Cato study, "Arms Control and Missile Defense: Not Mutually Exclusive," just what Bush and Putin are trying to agree on -- to build a limited National Missile Defense system at the same time both countries have bilateral arms reductions.
New Alternatives Fill Void Left By Napster
After the death of Napster, a dorm hamper's worth of alternatives has filled the vacuum, forcing the music industry to find ways both in and out of the courts to protect copyrights, The Christian Science Monitor reports today.
By nearly all accounts, as much or more free music is available now -- and as easily -- through programs known as "peer-to-peer" file-swapping, which eliminate the centralized server that got Napster in hot water.
"Napster let the genie out of the bottle, and it doesn't appear it will ever get put back in again," says Michael Epstein, a specialist on Internet law at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles. "Despite efforts by Congress and the music industry to get tough with copyright laws in the digital era, they have not been able to prevent the unlimited free exchange of music over the Internet. Nor does it seem they will."
In "When Rights Collide: Principles to Guide the Intellectual Property Debate," Adam Thierer and Wayne Crews try to hammer out a consensus between both sides of the intellectual property debate. They suggest agreement can be found on three points: seeking better understanding of the constitutional clause establishing copyright, not banning new technologies or business models to solve patent or copyright problems, and removing government barriers to the marketplace's ability to protect intellectual property.
The topic of Cato's fifth annual Technology and Society Conference on Nov. 14 will be "The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age." More information about the conference is available online.
/div>