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Australia-U.S. Trade Agreement Contains DMCA-like Provisions
femto writes "The text of the US-Australian Preferential Trade Agreement has been released. It has significant implications for Free Software and the Public Domain within Australia. Implications include extension of copyright terms (death to the Public Domain & Gutenberg Australia), software patents (death to Free Software) and the DMCA (death to fair use). It is not yet law. The Europeans have shown that software patents are not a done deal. Now is the time to write letters to members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Join the EFA. Contact your local library. Sign up to the mailing list to organise opposition. Just make a noise during this year's federal election."
I often wonder why people think that voting is a good thing, and everyone voting would be a very good thing, when the grand majority of people don't pay very much attention to politics most of the time.
What we want is for everyone to know exactly how awful these trade deals/laws/whatever are, and then have those people vote. We want the people who don't follow this stuff to not vote, because then politicians would have to worry about actually addressing the issues in their campaigns rather than running on a kissing babies and an, "I believe in what you believe" platform.
Frankly, if we got all the uninformed people to stop voting we'd probably have a bit more of an uproar about esoteric issues like copyright and trademark law.