[Smedley]

Last Thursday, the United States was sucker-punched by an international organization. A majority of countries belonging to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to support a joint French and Canadian initiative aimed at making it easier for foreign governments to limit consumer access to American cultural products.

I think that this might well be a violation of GATT. While there are cultural exceptions to free trade under GATT in order to preserve an indigenous culture, I don't think that you can single out a single country.

BTW, having done research on this issue in Law School, Canada and France are the two biggest tools on this issue. Canada even went so far as to screw over the Country Music Channel (CMT) in favor of their own country music station (CNC) under the cultural exception even though there was little or no difference in the perceivable content. It was a $$$ scam.

http://www.american.edu/TED/cmtvcan.htm

Likewise, France declared war on the American entertainment industry calling movies like "Jurassic Park" the biggest threat to French culture. Dont ask me how a movie about dinesaurs that takes place on an island off the coast of South America is a threat to the French.

http://reason.com/9807/fe.cowen.shtml

In a contest between Hollywood and the French, who do I want to lose?

[A Strict Constructionist]

Maybe we should ban all "cultural exchanges" with the French and Canadians. This would eliminate a lot of the SNL crowd, the movies produced in Canada and other such exchanges. I guess it's too late on the news anchor front.