PlayJazzGuitar.com Forum

[trotsky]

Have you folks seen this?
Hmmmmmm....
Thoughts?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_-taqM5Sk0&feature=pyv

[Gorecki]

Wow, I had absolutely no idea.

I don't watch news or seek out media so I guess while this was all going on is when we were under a hurricane.

There's a bunch of tube video and I'm just starting to plow through it. But all I can say is if DOJ and DHS are involved, this isn't about a few bits of wood. There's something more to the story. What however is totally beyond me at the moment.
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[rwmol]

Now, I watched only half of the video. It seems to me he's stating they violated the Lacey Act. From his statement, the Lacey Act states we must abide by foreign countries laws regarding the import of wood products. Indian law requires that wood products must be "finished" before they are exported. He says the rosewood fret boards are received unfinished. Seems like a violation of the law to me.

Maybe I have this wrong. What do you think?

Randy

[Gorecki]

[trotsky]

CBP falls under Homeland security these days and I would suspect that the teeth of this enforcement has something to do with the goods not being declared properly at the time of importation...which is the part that really has me shaking my head??
Its not like the they snuck the wood in on little tin boat with an outboard under the cover of darkness and Gibson and the nature of their business is not exactly obscure...so why would Customs have dealt with it at the time?

I am kind of a dumby when it comes to politics and worldly events but something stinks here....
We can throw piles of money at the failing auto industry but Gibson guitars are the devil?
There has to be more to this.....

That 335 that I have been coveting is now contraband...????...kind of makes me want it even more...

[Gorecki]

[trotsky]

10-4 on that...

There is a fine line between sparing yourself the 'pain of knowing' and becoming a victim.
I am afraid to open the newspaper anymore.

My heart goes out to those people who are out of work because of this.

[Gorecki]

[cjm]

There is a set of procedures designed to prevent international trade in threatened species, and in order to be effective, the procedures have be adhered to even if the wood is of a species that is not endangered. That's the point -- to ensure that woods traded are not the result of short sighted and damaging exploitation of forests -- and to help ensure that approved commercial species don't become endangered.

The Lacey act also seeks to provide trade protection to the American domestic timber industry and the jobs it provides as well as attempting to create an environment within which trade with the United States doesn't lead to as many labor and human rights abuses within the third world and emerging economies with which we trade.

The exporter, the importer, and Gibson each deliberately chose to circumvent these required procedures and take short cuts.

As to why DoHS was involved, consider that since 9/11, most of our harbors are swarming with Coast Guard patrol craft sporting miniguns. Imported goods are one of the best potential camouflages for weapons delivery...

I'm no fan of having a DoHS, and feel we would be better off without it, but if we're going to have a DoHS, it is only logical that interception of these sorts of illegal imports would be a part of the responsibility of the agencies under its umbrella.

Gibson isn't some part time luthier working out of a converted two car suburban garage. It is a big company that has been immersed in the complexities of international trade for decades. Gibson has the people who know how to do this legally, but wanted to score a quick deal. And it isn't the first time.

[greentone]

The Lacey Act is pretty complicated. Without it, however, we would inevitably end up cutting down the last rosewood tree, much as the Easter Islanders cut down _ALL_ of their trees to roll the moai--the honorific statues of giant heads--on. Well, you and I wouldn't cut them down, but our demand for instruments and furniture would cause folks in the tropics to saw them down and sell us the board lumber.

That wood is irreplaceable. Forests don't "re-grow" in the tropics because the nutrients to grow them aren't contained in the soil. The trees have evolved to draw the nutrients from the duff in the decaying matter on the forest floor. Mature trees keep the sunlight and rain from disturbing the soil and duff. Without the mature trees the forest dies.

The Ford Company tried modern agriculture in Brazil and it was an unmitigated disaster. Nothing in "Fordlandia" would grow to more than a height of about a foot before the soil hardened to the consistency of brick.

It is most unfortunate that Gibson got caught in the snare of a Lacey Act sting. Gibson is not a bunch of criminals. Les Pauls _do_ use rosewood fingerboards. The wood _was_ finished about as much as it could be prior to installation on the necks, i.e., the stock was sawed, planed, radiused, and slotted for frets prior to coming into the US. (That's what I read.) I suspect that non-luther attorney types at the Department of Justice saw that the board stock didn't have any nitrocellulose on it and declared it "unfinished." Ha! Who puts a finish on a fingerboard (besides Rickenbacker)--talking about rosewood, here?
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[cjm]

For a couple of months, beginning in August, this story was all over the "interwebs'" guitar sites, and it even spread to certain political sites -- touted as a high profile example of government abuse.

But even on guitar oriented sites, where Gibson remains an iconic name in guitars, and where scarce tropical hardwoods are a mainstay of fretboard and bridge design, the silence has been deafening since October, and there has actually been little said since mid-September.

Personally, I thought the reaction by the guitar playing community was overblown, over-the-top, and overly politicized, but that's just my opinion.

Still, why has this story died without a whimper? Was the impassioned response to regulatory enforcement all just sound and fury...signifying nothing?

[greentone]

Once the initial political hoopla dies down, it goes into the hands of the lawyers. Now, Gibson's lawyers will build their case and the government will build theirs. The net result, IMO, is that Gibson will likely be found guilty and pay a fine. The fine will be less than the cost of litigation defense. Subsequently, all instrument manufacturers will be careful about the sources of their fretboard stock.

The noise about Gibson being busted in on by Homeland Security (preposterous though it is) will die out as just politics. The real "take away" will be that folks that make things out of scarce hardwoods will have to toe the line.
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Soul Jazz & Blues

[cjm]

[greentone]

9-11-01 really changed our lives forever, it would seem. Just as Great Britain has settled in to the reality that privacy only pertains to what happens in your flat (when you are off your computer or phone), in this country our lives are now impacted in many ways by Homeland Security.
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Soul Jazz & Blues

[cjm]