This is brilliant. It is really gratifying to see that someone else not only recognises the US self serving policies, but the blatant ethnocentrism that the country continually expounds.

Not only are the policies suspect, but the USTR report should be seen for what it is - a biased analysis of foreign law supported by a well-orchestrated lobby effort

 
Personally i have  a couple issues with the US approach.  Firstly they attempt to set themselves up as the governing body for such critical elements as patent, copywrite and domain names. (the centralisation is fine with me in practice) but then they act in self interest while holding all the purse strings. It is bullying. At best this behaviour is lacking integrity as it is a conflict of interest (which, while i’m not a lawyer) is not exactly legal is it.

Secondly the ethnocentrism is truly galling.  The US never really seems to have gotten that they are part of the global system, not the centre of it. The extremely narrow mindset that has very little appreciation for other countries rights, laws or mindsets will in the end catch them. This shows up in many different ways. Georges “axis of evil” is one of them, The Special 301 report typically identifies about 50 countries that the US has targeted for legal reform.  The Special 301 another. Here’s another, i remember having some input on Bruce Schneier’s blog. Bruce was upset about George bugging homeland communications, but perfectly fine with bugging international comms, despite the fact that other countries have data protection laws. (I admit to be very disappointed with Bruce’s response)

 
My final beef with the hole process is lobbying. Not knowing the whole detail, it looks to me to be kind of like legalised bribery. Political officials take large sums of money to fund their campaigns or gain votes from large industry based in their states, and in return vote accordingly on bills or committees.

 Sounds a hellava lot like corruption to me. Not a bit like democracy.

I’m with professor Geist, lets call the US out on this stuff and as a global economy start putting together standards and rules that best serve us all.