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| Author | International Law Group |
The Mexican Government has issued a comprehensive regulation regarding the production and distribution of movies in Mexico which affects domestic as well as foreign movies. It notes that the freedom to produce movies requires compliance with labor and intellectual property laws. Although it grants access to federal property for filming movies, it also requires producers who are active in Mexico to provide detailed, annual reports. The agency in charge of entertainment, the Directorate-General of Radio, Television and Movies, must classify all movies and their related advertising before they can be distributed in Mexico. Also, the Directorate- General has to inspect movie theaters.
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Citation: Reglamento de la Ley Federal de Cinematografia (March 29, 2001).
After almost thirty years of legislative maneuvering, the Brazilian Congress has passed a lengthy statute whose goal is to make women equal to men before the law. In a key provision, for example, the new statute does away with the long-standing notion of "paternal power" which gave Brazilian fathers the unconditional legal right to make all decisions for their families. The new law requires men to share that authority with their wives. The new code takes the place of a 1916 statute that formally approved the hierarchical, patriarchal view of family and sexual relations that was typical in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America. The current 1988 Constitution purported to guarantee sexual equality for women. The courts, however, tended to keep on applying the 1916 statute since, until now, Congress was unable to implement the new Constitution with a revised statute. With more than 2,000 articles, the new code will probably not go into effect completely until 2003. Its impact upon many existing provisions of law will demand their substantial revision and the drafting of new provisions. Citation: The New York Times Newspaper (Online), August 19, 2001, byline of Larry Rohter, Rio de Janeiro.
On August 7, 2001, the U.S. decided to suspend the duty-free status extended to Ukrainian products because of allegations of continued piracy of American intellectual property, primarily optical media products such as CDS, DVDs, and CD-ROMs. The Ukraine's special duty-free status stemmed from the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which was designed to expand economic relations between the United States and developing countries. Countries identified by...
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