Look Inside A PC-killing WIPO Treaty

mouthbeef writes "The Broadcast Treaty is a proposal from a WIPO Subcommittee that's supposedly about stopping 'signal theft.' But along the way, this proposal has turned into a huge, convoluted hairball that threatens to make the PC illegal, trash the public domain, break copyleft and put a Broadcast Flag on the Internet. The treaty negotiation process is unbelievably convoluted and hard-to-follow, and they've just wrapped up the latest round in Geneva. But for the first time, a really large group of "civil society" orgs were accredited to attend. Me and another EFF staffer and the Coordinator of the Union for the Public Domain created a heavily editorialized impressionistic transcript of the meeting (EFF mirror, UPD mirror), trying to untie the knots in the negotiation. This is the first time that a really exhaustive peek inside a WIPO treaty negotiation has ever been published -- get it while it's legal!"

Comments

The trouble with vague legislation

[freejung]

from Article 16, Alternative V:

2. In particular, effective legal remedies shall be provided against those who:
...
(iii) participate in the manufacture, importation, sale, or any other act that makes available a device or system capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal.

This is obviously insanely vague. Now, they might argue that obviously they didn't mean to outlaw PCs and televisions with this wording, and of course it wouldn't be interpreted that way. But that's not the point.

The point is, such vague and overly inculsive laws set a dangerous precedent. Later on, when somebody wants to outlaw some new form of decryption technology, all they have to do is point to the language of this law and say, "see, this is exactly the sort of thing it's talking about." Never mind that this language is so broad it could be applied to almost anything with circuitry.

The freedom you give up now, assuming the goodwill of the powers that be, is the freedom you won't have later when that goodwill runs out.

When computers are outlawed...

[Rick the Red]

When computers are outlawed, only 97% of the population will care. Or something like that.

Hell, I'll bet Time Warner is dancing for joy over this treaty, but wait until they come into CNN's headquarters and take away all the PCs and video monitors. And what will Disney say when ABC is shut down because nobody is allowed to watch it anymore?

I'd love to see the FBI enforce this one! If you thought our government was in Wall Street's pocket now, well, wait until they try to take all computers away from the Fortune 500 :-)

What moron drafted this?

[pclminion]

participate in the manufacture, importation, sale, or any other act that makes available a device or system capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal

That doesn't just outlaw PCs, it outlaws everything. It outlaws the Earth, because on the Earth is a living system of organisms, one of which (homo sapiens) is capable of decrypting a program-carrying signal. Without the support system of the Earth, humans could not exist, therefore the Earth is "helping to decrypt."

I have to wonder how people, who are obviously incapable of drafting a treaty without accidentally outlawing all of existence, have ever reached such positions of legal authority...

Re:What moron drafted this?

[Lodragandraoidh]

WIPO is almost fully (91% I believe) funded by IP holding multinational corporations. Their charter states that their purpose is to bring IP protection standardization to the world - which translates to mean standardizing IP protections to best benefit thier primary funders.

Developing nations and public advocacy groups are being crushed as the IP juggernaut rolls on.

WIPO

[Seth Cohn]

Sadly, government corrupts, and world government corrupts absolutely.

For those of us in the United States, I strongly urge you to look at things like the Free State Project. (http://www.freestateproject.org)This isn't a bunch of wackos looking to move to Montana for another Waco holdout, it's made of people like you who will stand up, be active, and work within New Hampshire (already the best representative State with only 3000 people per Rep, as well as strongly libertarian minded) to reduce the size of government. It's our only hope, because the more they pass nonsense like this, the more you and your neighbors had better stand together...

If p2p becomes a crime, you want your neighbors to defend you when the thoughtcrime police show up. And don't kid yourselves, we are rapidly coming to that.... The day when you click on the wrong download button and the police knock on your door is already here.
Don't own a computer? Get sued by the RIAA
12 years old? Get sued by the RIAA
66 Years old and never used a computer? Yes, Get sued by the RIAA
Now just imagine the force of the WIPO, and 'the law' bolstering this nonsense...

Re:Stop stealing the photons I'm emitting

[IvyMike]

Since when things flouresce, they emit photons, I was going to make a joke that I weara lot of DayGlo clothing with daylight fluorescent pigments. But then I ran across this fact on google:

Clothing: Nearly all laundry detergents contain a fluorescent dye that emits strongly in the blue when exposed to sunlight. The blue light counteracts the yellow tinge of old or incompletely cleaned clothing and thus makes clothes appear cleaner than they really are. The dye is designed to fluoresce in daylight.

You learn something new every day.

Not Your Friend!

[Nom du Keyboard]

Why do people -- at least those in relatively free countries -- keep thinking the United Nations is your friend? It's not!

And it hasn't been every since it quit trying to regulate how countries behaved, and started trying to regulate how the people within those countries behave!

There are a lot of rather repressed countries seeking to use this UN to regulate the entire world down to the lowest common denominator. So this should be no surprise to anyone.

Re:Free State Project

[Seth Cohn]

The goal is to find 20,000 people.
We're at nearly 6,000 people now.
The only way to we'll go from 6K to 20K in the next year or so is to tell more people about it, aka publicity, aka 'hawking it'.

If you have a better way to find 14K libertarian minded people, please speak up. In my mind, the slashdot crowd tends to be more libertarian, technology freedom/rights aware, and able-to-move due to portable job skills (aka the Internet crowd telecommuting). In other words, a good key demographic for people able to be part of this.

If you've heard about the FSP, you're already in the minority... we come across lots of interested people every day who still haven't heard of it yet.

Re:Thanks, Henry David Thoreau!

[Hatta]

The proper quote is:

"Under a government who imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is prison."

I strongly encourage everyone to read this essay. It is, IMNSHO, the most important statement on the relationship between man and the state ever written. Here are more gems:

This government never of itself furthured any enterprise but with the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the west. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and would have done if the government had not sometimes gotten in its way. For government is an expediant, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and as has been said, when it is most expediant, the governed are most left alone by it"

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then?

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.

This one is particularly relevant today:

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicans by profession; but I think, what is it to any independant, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of this wisdom and honesty nevertheless?

I've gotten carried away here, there's just too much, so I'll end with a bit from the last paragraph:

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarcy, from a limited monarcy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual... Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independant power, from which its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.