The United States is finally taking action against the Bahamas for the rogue nation’s lack of enforcement of copyright and intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n
The Nassau Guardian reports that nine Bahamians were arrested in a New York airport over the weekend and are being detained in the United States in connection with “an ongoing criminal investigation”, according to U.S. Immigration officials.<\/p>\n
The Tribune says 10 Bahamians… who ya gonna believe?<\/p>\n
The straw vendors – all women – were taken into custody by the United States Customs and Border Control Protection (CBP) after they had already checked into their Jet Blue flight on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Bahamas, which signs treaties and “talks the talk”, fails to “walk the walk” when it comes to the enforcement of international copyright laws.<\/p>\n
Vendors selling fake designer handbags, pirated DVDs and other violations of intellectual property rights are rampant throughout the Bahamas, even at events sponsored by the government.<\/p>\n
Not to mention the fact that, for years, Cable Bahamas, a publicly traded company in The Bahamas, made a living stealing satellite TV signals and selling the programming to Bahamian viewers.<\/p>\n
A representative of CBP was unable to give more information, due to “privacy issues”.<\/p>\n
However, the Guardian reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Spokesperson Khaalid Walls confirmed the women are being held.<\/p>\n
Asked why they are being detained, Walls would only say that they are a part “of an ongoing criminal investigation”. He said charges could be filed as early as tomorrow, but he did not say what charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nine Bahamian straw vendors were arrested in a New York airport over the weekend on charges related to an ongoing criminal investigation regarding counterfeit items.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[93,31],"class_list":["post-2211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-corruption","tag-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}