The Legal Aspect of Globalization
Faculty
Description
This lecture has the sub-title of “The International Viewpoint on The Telecommunications & Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs)”, and focuses on the legal, political, economic and technological aspects of the telecommunications, including the Internet, and IPRs.The reason why these two areas are chosen for the topic of the legal aspect of globalization is to highlight, on one hand, the antagonism, on both the global and the domestic level, between the supply-side voices and the demand-side ones, and, on the other hand, to show up the real features of the international problems, often in a “hidden” form as seen in the so-called NTT problems which are seen by most Japanese people, including specialists in economics, as only domestic ones.
That the technological, or innovation aspect is the most important one is the very prerequisite of this lecture.As seen in the U.S.-Japan trade friction on the NTT which occurred over and over again almost always just after the remarkable innovation and/or (international) standardization activities of the NTT like FTTH (Fiber To The Home), 3G Mobile Communications (IMT-2000), and even the IPv6 itself (!), the lack of technological viewpoints is the roots of grave misunderstandings, as seen in the normal analysis of the so-called neo-classical approach to economics.
Indeed, the systematic criticism against the neo-classical economics is the core of this lecture.The IT (Information and Communications Technology)-driven society must be established for the betterment of all people and for all nations, though there are strong supply-side voices which only stick to one-sided (further) liberalization of trade and investment, as clearly seen in the collapsed OECD activities on MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) and the present WTO regime.We must fight against such one-sided trends of our real world, always keeping in mind the very notion of human dignity and the real welfare of our own world.The rise and fall of the INTELSAT regime, once established on the firm belief, of J.F. Kennedy, in the equality of all people and all nations, and Iowa’s ICN (Iowa Communications Network) which is often called as “ Field of Fiber”, and other examples of our real world will be treated in this regard, e coin of the New Zealand's Experiments..
With regard to IPRs also, we can see the fundamental antagonism as stated above.One-sided voices for strengthening the level of exclusive rights are not sustainable.Curiously enough, however, we can find the fundamental lack of economic analyses which cope with the real features of the above-mentioned recent (one-sided) trend.In this regard, fundamental problems of the “distorted” notion of fair competition, regulatory reform and/or deregulation, etc., will be treated in this lecture, referring also to other areas like aviation services, insurance.