Slashdot Mirror
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!"
Unfortunately, I already beat you to it! and most of the links you mention were alreayd mentione din comments. All I have to say is... if you're going to have an email address so that subscribers can let the editors know of dupes, atleast READ the email you get on it
Signed,
AC
Boy, it's obvious the UN isn't in the pocket of the Big Corporations, yessiree!
Will they outlaw ink and paper next?
Hey, if the government doesn't trash the economy and the rights of individuals in order to protect an outdated and relatively small sector of the business community, what good are they?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I'm serious. I keep emitting photons, and all these people keep engaging in signal theft, usually by looking at me, or even more nefariously by having cameras.
and look what they choose to do with it. *sigh*
This doesn't only rule out computers; say goodbye to paper and pencil, too.
Depending on what sorts of "encryption" were used with a signal, all sorts of devices could potentially aid in that signal's decryption. I mean, it could be argued that whatever appliance was intended to receive that signal could potentially be modified to aid in decryption. Sounds a little self defeating--lets hope it actually is defeated.
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.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
This shows what happens when bureaucracy gets a hold of power. What's next? Banning oxygen, since its a flame hazard?
got sig?
This could outlaw calculators -- especially ones that can do hex -- pen, paper, crayons, blackboards, telephone.
It can outlaw trucks, cars, and telephones since they can be used to make available ideas, calculations, and formulas, that can help decrypt signals.
Fight Spammers!
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.
Apparently procreation and thinking are not something WIPO is keen on, as the human brain is a "a system" of tissues "capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal".
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
for Pete's sake just don't broadcast it!! How simple is that. Duh!!
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
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 :-)
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
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.
So while we may encrypt things, we will never under any circumstance be able to decrypt them. This would outlaw DVD players, too.
The UN charter (and US Constitution) need amendments outlawing illogical legislation.
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...
Rich capitalist pigs are trying to steal the internet off the people who make it actually work for them.
;)
I say turn the internet off for a couple of days, see how they like that
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
They can have my penis when they pry it from my cold dead fingers!
My site: Free Nature Pictures
As long as you're not tresspassing while taking those photos, you're 100% in the legal right if you take pics of her naked in the bedroom with a zoom lense.
Once it was said that couch potatoes hurt themselves watching TV all day.
No NOT! They hurt many more. Millions of couch potatoes made dancers and singers and their supporting corporations SO strong that they're now trying to control information and educational channels because it *may* be used to *steal* *BROADCAST* signals !!!
What next ? Are they going to ban copper wires cuz they can be used to hook onto power grid and *possibly* steal electric power ???
Throw that idiot box out of your house if you're really serious about protesting against this insanity!!
- mritunjai
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...
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
We ARE all being ruled by corperations!
d iaBosses
Well at least by proxy. Coperate reps bribe/dine/blackmail/makeloveto ministers/senators/congressmen/presidents/MEPs/Me
and the rest of us end up losing what little rights we have.
WIPO is a forum set up by the powerful for the powerful. An unelected body whose job it is to increase the powers of producers and reduce the rights of consumers.
I'm sick of this rubbish. Big business getting laws passed so that if we want to even glance at a film we must pay money each and every time. what's next? CD's with ongoing fees? DVD's that self destruct? MP3s with encryption?
Oh wait......
May the Maths Be with you!
You have it BACKWARDS. The US and corporations are pushing *for* this treaty. The purpose is to shut down the pesky public and pesky innovators with things like VCRs and the internet and PVRs and opensorce software that can allow a computer to be or do anything with 'content'.
Corporations especially want to eliminate that pesky 'fair use' nonsense.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
However, whether these people realize it or not, it is humanly possible to decrypt or to help decrypt a program carrying signal by hand, starting with nothing more than the raw unencrypted data! Technically, that would make the act of human reproduction illegal, since the child could very conceivably grow up into a person with enough mental accuity to take on a task like that. Yes, it would take time, but there's no mention of how long is has to take in order for the system to be outlawed. This proposal is tantamount to governing what people are legally even allowed to _think_ about and absolutely, categorically, _MUST_ be stopped.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
On the plus side, with no more home computers, nobody will be using Windows anymore either.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Actually, there's a funny story about that... heh.. you see, I've actually been reading the notes on the treaty for the past couple of days, and a whole bunch of nations, notably Brazil and several others, are quite opposed to this treaty, out and out stating that it's a danger to creativity, the free flow of information, etc. etc. etc., and they repeatedly keep asking for this treaty, or at least several particularly nasty parts of it, to be removed. Only a few nations seem to be eager to see this mess go through, and chief among them is the US: the US delegates keep harping on about how industry needs the protection that this treaty will give it, and how the other nations just don't *understand* the real meaning of the many nasty clauses in the treaty. So, basically, it's the US that is doing most of the pushing to get this treaty passed as is, with all the nastyness. Keep in mind that most of the stuff on this treaty wouldn't affect the government itself. It wouldn't be illegal for the NSA to use encryption. It *would* be illegal for normal citizens to use it, or attempt to crack or understand it. The US government, and a large chunk of big business, would love nothing better than to see this treaty go through, since all of it benefits them, and none of it benefits the average joe.
"Two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the first one." - Albert Einstein
Apparently most/all of Canada's comments were completely disregarded.
I'm left to wonder if our representation is that bad (probably) or if Canada is just expected to go along with the status quo, as put forth by the US (probably).
Personally - while radical and unlikely - I'd just as soon see Canada completely withdraw from this organisation.
Look... whatever... nobody is going to ban PCs or pen & paper or your brain or math or your TV set.
Right. And if that's all it takes to make you happy...
Though we already know that the general-purpose PC is directly in the sights of these companies for termination. But as long as your rented locked-down media-center pay-per-view system came from Dell and it has a Pentium in it, it's still a PC, right?
These people have their own agenda, however they aren't stupid by any stretch (which they would have to be if these interpreted outcomes have any chance of happening; think about it, don't just react). Calm down, go back to what you were doing and forget about this...
Yes, think about it. The point is not that this will result in the outlawing of PCs or paper, but the fact that it could. When they could apply the law to anything that means they will apply it to everything they want to. Someday, that just might include something you don't want them to. But you missed your chance, because you believed it couldn't happen.
This is exactly the same technique behind the passage of the PATRIOT act. "Oh, but it will only be used against terrorists!" they said, even though nothing in the act itself ensured that this was the case -- it could be applied to practically anything, but just calm down about it because that won't happen, okay? Then a couple years later, morons (particularly Democrats) in Congress are shocked and dismayed that *gasp* the PATRIOT act powers were used in many (mostly) non-terrorism investigations! "I never would have voted for it if I'd known that was going to happen!" they said. Shite. Idiots.
And what will be your excuse when you still have your "PC", but you can't install any software that wasn't approved by the Powers That Be because that software might not respect the new rights they just gave themselves? When that and your precious pen & paper is all you have? Well?
The enemies of Democracy are
Argentina doesn't really have a significant media industry with the exception of exporting some telenovelas. How did they get into the middle of setting intellectual property and technology standards? Maybe it's the less than democratic governments in the developing world that are equal members of WIPO that put all this weird stuff in here. I'm talking about the same countries who put Cuba, Zimbabwe and Sudan on the U.N human rights commission.
These people have their own agenda, however they aren't stupid by any stretch (which they would have to be if these interpreted outcomes have any chance of happening; think about it, don't just react).
Have you ever tried drafting a treaty or legislation? It's quite tricky to get the details right. When you think you've got one aspect nailed down, you've totally missed something else.
I don't believe the original draftors of the DMCA _intended_ it to be used to silence people involved in legitimate cryptographic research, but because they failed to ensure it couldn't be, it has been.
I'm sure these people don't intend to outlaw PCs, and I'm equally certain that this particularly outrageous interpretation will be stamped on some time between now and when this treaty actually enters force... but that's not to say that software that performs decryption won't become illegal. A badly drafted law can be used by people as a sneaky attack on something that wasn't originally foreseen by its authors. In this case, I can see that:
1. DeCSS might be covered if the phrasing remains particularly bad. I'm pretty sure it is at the moment. Note that there are no 'significant alternative use' provisions or similar, as exist in the DMCA and EUCD.
2. Video signal synchronizers, used to restore the sync signal between a playback and a recording device, will almost certainly be covered unless a 'significant alternative use' clause is added. This hardware is essential for anyone trying to perform high quality duplication of video signals without spending huge amounts of money on it. Yes there are legitimate reasons you might want to duplicate video tapes.
3. This will probably render it illegal to sell the designs for those cable tv descrambling boxes. I don't know about you, but I strongly believe that no transfer of _information_ should be prohibited, except possibly where that information has come into your hands due to a priveleged position (this would cover the protection of national secrets in a manner similar to the UK official secrets act, among other things). Note that by information I'm
talking about distilled facts; this isn't an anti-copyright stance.
4. If future PCs are supplied with some kind of DRM monitor that prevents you from tampering with managed data, this treaty might prevent the sale of kits to remove it, or even the transfer of information on how to remove it.
By surfing Slashdot, you may be violating your listener's license agreement.
Give your ears a taste of Independant Librarian Dynamic Sean Kennedy the Sixth for a truly horrific scenario based on this kind of shinanegans. Then give him a little donation because, at the moment, his stories are still legal to freely record, broadcast, and disseminate.
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.
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
You have not demonstrated that the UN is sufficiently worse than all the governments underneath it. The UN is no worse than any nation-state, in fact it occasionally goes to those areas of the world the US is so reticent to participate in like africa and provides minimal support. Minimal it may be but it's better than what the US ever does.
You wanna talk UN don't restrict your debate to Iraq or whatever, talk about the whole UN and talk about what the world would look like without the UN and why it would be better.
Anything less is simple finger pointing.
Your arguments are shallow, and a wholesale indictment of the UN would need to be hundreds of pages of foot-noted text. Don't insult my intelligence with this cheap wankery. Since I'm not the one making the ridiculously shallow claim the burden of proof doesn't rest on me.
Photos.
"When laws stop making any kind of sense or justice, I stop obeying them."
Or as Thoreau stated in "Civil Disobedience," when a law is unjust, it is the duty of the just man to break that law.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
USA PATRIOT Act and the proposed PATRIOT II Act
CAPPS and CAPPS II
Copyright Extentions
Software Patents
Evoting without a paper trail
ECHELON
Privacy concerns with RFIDs
SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation)
EULAs
Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement
What was done? Nothing. Does anyone here really believe that Congress will "do the right thing" on this "broadcast bit" issue? The magic eight ball says "no fucking way". I personally don't see what the solution is. Bread, circus and prison baby, that's all that will be left.
If I may quote Frank Zappa from "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing":
Think about this: in Iraq right now there are US Soldiers without bulletproof jackets and Humvees without any armour protection yet with have >$100M USD for a State Funeral of Former President Reagan?Forget it kids, game over.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
. . . to its members. That's why you always hear about them voting on resolutions. It's screwed-up because a lot of its members are screwed-up.
People who bash the UN don't seem to realize that there's no alternative. There's only one "everybody." I guess you could disband it, but sooner or later you'd need it again.
You'd need an organization that represents the whole world (not just people who are or could be accused of being in your pocket) to endorse your plan for Iraq. You'd need the help of every nation that diseases spread to in order to fight the next SARS. You'd need a forum where nations can discuss and study things that affect everyone.
You'd end up with essentially the same organization under a different name, accountable to the same screwed-up members. Because you need it.
-- . . ramblin' . . .