Fretting Over Foreign Laws
........INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 8/29/2011
investors.com
Overcriminalization: Guitar. n. a stringed musical instrument with a long, fretted neck, a flat, somewhat violinlike body, and typically six strings plucked with the fingers. Also a target of the federal government.
It's true that, since those long-ago, legendary days of Jimi Hendrix and his mates, the ancient instrument — kitarah in Arabic, kithara in Greek — has been distorted beyond recognition. But are some zonked backwoodsmen now hooking them and poking them into trout streams? Are they amping them up so the sound waves knock endangered eagles out of the sky?
Neither, it turns out. Now the Internet is reverberating with a mean blues riff about how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the last two years has twice raided Gibson factories in Tennessee.
The federal blue meanies have decided that the iconic guitar maker may be violating the century-old Lacey Act, which outlaws trafficking in flora and fauna whose harvesting has broken foreign laws.
Actually, the plant and timber provisions of the law were toughened in 2008. So the federal agency felt unbounded in its search for the contraband even if it hindered not only livelihoods in the music industry, but also the future success of wannabe Claptons and Segovias.
In the first raid, G-men hauled away ebony fingerboards, alleging they violated Madagascar law. Gibson responded by obtaining the sworn word of the African island's government that no law had been broken.
Last week the feds found materials imported from India, claiming they too moved across the globe in violation of Indian law. Again, Gibson responded by saying the Justice Department had misinterpreted Indian statutes, that the action did not have the support and consent of New Delhi, and that the law in question was not in any way directed at poaching — Fish and Wildlife's proper preserve.
So, should globe-trotting Americans leave their musical instruments at home if by chance they were made with a material protected by some foreign government? The short answer: Because penalties can be stiff, including in some instances jail time, it might be prudent to forget about playing minstrel in a strange land.
Besides, like their bureaucratic brethren at Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Customs agents also operate with heightened awareness of the Lacey Act.
And all those rock stars who campaigned for tougher environmental laws? We wonder if they're grateful. |
