In fact, up until near the end of that century if anyone was using trade pressure to try to get copyright changes, it would have been other countries trying to get the US to change. The US copyright law at the time provided very little protection for foreign authors. Their works were essentially public domain in the US.
But that being said, no rational person could possibly believe that copyright exists only due to external state actor pressure from "the richest countries"... and not due to the fact that entrenched financial interests influence every nation on earth. Over-the-top zealotry only serves to discredit more sober critiques.
History suggests otherwise. Something that many of "the richest countries" have in common, including the US, is near-complete disregard of other countries' IP laws during their formative stages. Once these nations climb to the top on a heap of broken IP laws, they invariably set about building it even higher.
To begin with, a figurative threat to do so is being issued by USA with nowadays unsurprising regularity.
And the more of a paper-tigerness USA's trade policy demonstrates, the more countries ignore it wholehandedly.
Has the US invaded China over copyright? Has India been invaded or embargoed over lax IP laws? How about Russia, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand?
Here's the Priority Watch List from the US Trade Representative naming the biggest IP offenders in the world:
https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/USTR%202014%20Special%2...
We can note that the US hasn't sent a "Marine Expeditionary Force" to any country over the issue. The US hasn't even sent a cruise missle to send a message to prolific IP violators. A strongly worded letter has been the extent of the "invasion."
It's getting to be almost comical that the US is being presented as the cause of all that is wrong in the world. The anti-Americanism that's rife here is a bit ridiculous -- we're on Hacker News -- a site that is sponsored by an organization (YC) that's the epitome of American capitalism, located in the epicenter of one of the most successful and valuable regions on the planet: ground zero for the invention of the devices and software with which you're able to read this and type your responses.
It's ironic to be complaining about the country that invented much of the tech you're using right this minute enabled by the very laws about which you complain.
The United States isn't perfect, nobody is disputing that. However, the suggestion that the United States is going to send in the Marines over differences in IP law.. That's just absurd, based on zero logic, and needs to be called out for the nonsense it is.
Have you forgotten how India was made to agree with TRIPS in the 90's?
Unfortunately, this could be said on basically any forum on the internet. Do you happen to know of an alternative to Hacker News that doesn't have this problem?
Well—here's the other side of that—I frequently get thoroughly sick of the US parochialism, ignorance of history, denial of basic realities etc "that's rife here". Well, people swallowing whole the shiny story the US mass media seems to paint about the US' role in the world in the last 130 years is a large part of it I guess.
Not the first time I've read on here about someone sick of "the US being presented as the cause of all that is wrong in the world." But I don't think anyone says that.
You could have chopped out a page of your comment, the many lines of ridicule, as advised in the guidelines. Well, I can hardly advise you to stick to your point in a comment as off-topic as this. :-) But I thought your complaint needed counterbalancing.