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BANGKOK (AP) — Thai authorities are upset about being blacklisted by the U.S. for the second year in a row for failing to do enough to combat modern-day slavery.
The State Department said Monday that labor abuses in the Southeast Asian country's seafood sector are persistent, abusive and largely ignored by the government. Those abuses have been widely documented in a series of stories this year by The Associated Press which tracked the supply chains of major U.S. retailers to Thai processors selling slave-caught seafood. Those reports have prompted rescues and repatriations of more than 800 men this year.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Tuesday that Thailand was working on solving the issues and that the assessment was made when his administration, which took over after a military coup last year, was beginning to address the problems.
"We just have to keep working and not to worry. It's an issue of international rules, so we'll have to follow," he told reporters. "Don't worry too much. Their assessment was up to them as they were the ones assessing, not us. We just do our job. What they said in the assessment, we fixed every part of it, but some issues are quicker to fix and some are slow."
The State Department said Monday that Thai, Burmese, Cambodian, and Indonesian men are still subjected to forced labor on Thai fishing boats.
"Some men remain at sea for several years, are paid very little or irregularly, work as much as 18 to 20 hours per day for seven days a week, or are threatened and physically beaten," the report said.

Secretary of State John Kerry arrives for a news conference at the State Department in Washington,
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The Royal Thai Embassy in Washington, D.C. denounced the assessment, saying Thailand has made substantial efforts with concrete results to stop human trafficking.
"Significant progress has been made across the board," the Embassy said in a statement, stressing the State Department report "does not accurately reflect the reality and fails to take into account significant efforts undertaken by the Thai Government."
Those efforts include amending laws and rules, ensuring better law enforcement, streaming legal processes, prosecuting offenders and protecting victims, the Embassy said.
A coalition of 25 human rights and labor organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the AFL-CIO labor federation, said blacklisting Thailand, along with criticism from the European Union and high-profile news exposes, have put needed pressure on the country.
"This decision comes at a vital time for leveraging change from the Thai government in its anti-trafficking efforts," the coalition said in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry.

Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a news conference at the State Department in Washington,
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Thailand, along with Iran, Syria and Zimbabwe, were among 23 countries receiving the lowest ranking in the annual U.S. assessment of how 188 governments around the world are fighting the flesh trade and other forms of exploitative labor. The report is the State Department's key weapon for combatting human trafficking, and comes in a politically charged annual ranking in "tiers"— Tier 1 is best, 2 means more could be done, and 3 is a blacklist that can spark sanctions.
The State Department moved Malaysia and Cuba off the blacklist and up to Tier 2 this year, drawing criticism that politics — not human rights — were a factor.
Malaysia is one of 12 nations negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the key economic plank of Obama's Asia policy, but could be banned from participating if blacklisted. And the U.S. has recently patched relations with Cuba.
Republican Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey said the report, in its 15th year, "has careened off into a new direction where the facts regarding each government's actions in the fight against human trafficking are given almost no weight when put up against the president's political agenda."

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
Copyright law to ban Internet plagiarism

THE NATION July 28, 2015 1:00 am
SOCIAL network scribes should be wary of a new intellectual property law due to take effect on August 4 that outlaws the copying of other people's work and using it for commercial purposes, deputy government spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said yesterday.

Copyright law to ban Internet plagiarism

The government is confident the new law will work well with the nation's digital economy road map. The aims of the new copyright law are to protect creators of content published on the Internet and to catch up with changes in how creators and exploiters use media content, since the old law did not find fault with improper use of other people's original content.

The new law clearly defines copying of other's work as posting images and videos from the Internet to be used for commercial purposes without the consent and knowledge of the creators or improperly citing and cutting credit in order to impersonate the real creator of the content.

"The law determines that wrongdoers will be fined from Bt10,000 to Bt100,000 and if it is an illegal act for commercial purposes they face a jail sentence from three months to two years and a fine of Bt50,000-Bt400,000, or both," he said.

"Pirated goods can be destroyed upon a court order and transgressors will have to pay for that.

"This new law will incentivise Internet innovators and pave the way for new digital products and innovations, which will coincide with the government's digital economy plans," he added. Information on the new copyright law can be accessed via http://www.ipthailand.go.th or the government's 1368 hotline.

Nakrop Niamnamtham, managing director of nForce Secure, said the copyright law will enhance the competitiveness of the country and boost the digital content industry since digital content developers will have the confidence to develop products and services under the protection law.

It will encourage international businesses to come to spend money and invest much more in Thai businesses.

The copyright law will promote and support the IT industry in the long term. It will also increase transparency for businesses in the private and public sectors.