Implications Of The International Cybercrime Treaty

Saber Taylor writes: "Lots of good .signature material in this analysis: 'The treaty imposes criminal liability on businesses if they fail to supervise users who commit potentially illegal acts.', 'If you cable together two computers, you could be forced to comply with investigations that originated in Sofia or Riga.', etc." Maybe this is what's meant by "entangling alliances." Worth reading, wherever you fall on the paranoia scale.

Comments

And guess who's backing it...

[Bill Currie]

the MPAA, RIAA and BSA, our three favourite orgs. Just that in itself is scarey.

Bill - aka taniwha
--

Needs cookies

[Jeffrey Baker]

Good thing these defenders of peace and freedom require cookies before you can use their site. Otherwise, some hippie with cookies turned off might get to read the secret documents!

Bad law made possible by stupid people

[Kope]

The problem, once again, is that the sheople don't understand what is being legislated, so they by and large don't care what the law says or does. People in the USA, at least, have a horrible "if it doesn't effect me I don't care" attitude when it comes to laws effecting privacy and personal liabilities.

Hopefully AT&T, AOL, and the other big players who would be negatively effected will be able to effectively lobby against this. However, don't count on it. The supporters have just as much cash, and the people aren't going to voice their oppinion one way or another.

An interesting aside - what will we do when McCain/Feingold makes it illegal for AT&T to lobby to stop this kind of abuse?! Are we going to suddenly develop a civilly active, well educated populace that researches pending legislation and calls the appropriate representatives? Somehow I doubt it. I bet we get lots of this crap shoved down our throats once we make it illegal for interested parties to lobby.

Living in a free country was nice. I wonder where I can move to so that I might experience it again?

Well balanced article

[ajs]

The referenced article (despite it's cookie sillyness) is a very good evaluation of the dangers of the situation. I'm pleased to see lawyers taking some responsibility for the ethical well-being of thier country.

Here's one bit that both terrifies me and makes me mad:

The Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation are using a foreign forum to create an international law-enforcement regime that favors the interests of the feds over those of ordinary citizens and businesses. Their goal is to make it easier to get evidence from abroad and to extradite and prosecute foreign nationals for certain kinds of crimes.

Also, the report cites supporters, MPAA and RIAA because they're trying to use INTERNATIONAL LAW to force the US to make copying their material a criminal, not civil offense. Cool shit. :-(

Be afraid.

Treating net users like thugs

[Cire]

This is aweful. It treats all net users as if were a bunch of thugs who are out to get pr0n, pictures of little girlies, and while we're at it, run DOS attacks on servers just for fun.

Maybe they should concentrate more on forcing companies who provide servers and services to make sure things are secure. How about forcing MS to put out security patches for NT/2000/IIS as soon as they find out there is a problem. Then making sure that these patches are readily available. How about making sure companies like verisign don't hand out certificates to anyone claiming to be MS.

I mean, really, we don't live in singapore. We don't need to be flogged everytime something bad happens. It should be the governments role to make sure companies make secure products, not to turn the internet into a police state.

Re:Unenforceable

[JesseL]

I think you misunderstand the danger. This could potentially have the effect of (companies with net access, ISPs, portals) in the US being held partly liable for actions of their users that are considered crimes outside the US.

Better alternatives exist

[plover]

A law professor was speaking on NPR this morning, and he made several claims that have been repeated here before:

• The internet is too big to effectively police
• Law enforcement officials are not clueful enough to track "cybercriminals"
• Jurisdiction is often a problem

His suggestion was for victims of cybercrime to take a more vigilante approach: 'hack unto others who hack unto you.'

While this is of course fraught with all the problems of vigilanteism, until a treaty allowing the RIAA to kick down doors in Uzbekistan is approved, it seems to be the most practial approach for effectively "getting some justice done."

John

Oh Lovely

[Kasreyn]

I don't even know where to start...

So let's all just let the most uptight, law-beridden nation in Europe dictate law enforcement in any of the other member countries. There are no checks on this that I can see; this is completely based on trusting the other nations to have sane laws. What if an islamic member nation makes it a crime, a legal crime, for women to not wear their veils etc, and then tried to enforce their weirdo ideas in *other countries*? That wouldn't be appropriate, and thank god it's not happening yet; so why is it appropriate to do the same sort of thing vis. computers and the internet? I'm sorry to inform you, but I am a United States Citizen, Mr. German Prosecutor, and under my freedoms of speech is included the freedom to spout Nazi hate if I so choose.

You know what, you can take your fucking terrorism warrant and shove it. U.S. Prosecutors already have enough on their plates dealing with the criminals we have HERE, breaking OUR laws. The last thing our courts need is a wave of "criminals" whose only f-ing crime is that they broke a law which they were never advised of, which is only a law in a country they've never heard of, under the terms of a treaty they were also never advised of!! Talk about being arrested out of the blue!

What's even worse is that the american public is not even being TOLD. At ALL. Now I understand that our nation has so many laws that only lawyers, those who have dedicated their lives to the law, can hope to understand the vast, bloated beast it has become. However, I don't believe in making laws and never explaining them to the populace before enforcing them. This isn't like a bill in congress, where the representatives who made it can be voted out afterwards, and the bill struck down by the Supreme Court. This is a binding treaty with another group of nations, and it will be much harder for the american people to get out of it.

This entire thing just sickens me. It really does.

-Kasreyn

Unenforceable

[NineNine]

This is virtually unenforceable. I mean, is the Fed going to constantly monitor every machine attached to the Net? Nah. And what about networks in countries that don't recognize this? The Net is just too large and too mis-understood by gov'ts all over the world. They can pass this, but I really doubt it'll stick any more than any other 'International' laws governing the Net.

The Golden Rule

[Invisible Agent]

Allow me to decode:

United States interests want another way to enforce copyrights abroad. This treaty is just another tool to exercise power outside of U.S. borders in order to keep the money flowing into the correct pockets. That stuff about Germans serving warrants on U.S. citizens talking to neo-Nazis is pure fantasy.

Just follow the money:

After the United States and other nations signed and ratified the WIPO treaty, Congress crafted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as implementing legislation. Congress did not seriously debate the most controversial aspects in part because of the perceived need to implement the treaty. One of those made it unlawful to tamper with anti-copying devices and software.

Oh look, it's the DMCA.

Invisible Agent