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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!"
Boy, it's obvious the UN isn't in the pocket of the Big Corporations, yessiree!
Will they outlaw ink and paper next?
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*
2. In particular, effective legal remedies shall be provided against those who:
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(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
After all... the fact that George W Bush is President proves that we do not have a democracy.
Not at all.
The fact that Gore aquiesced and neither Gore's nor Bush's supporters rebelled due to the court's decision and the Senate's failure to act is proof that we DO have a democracy.
The fact that the Senate didn't do their job and debate the Florida results in Congress, which essentially gave Bush the presidency, is proof that each left-wing Senator elected before 2000 is a pansy and a pushover who should resign.
One common fallacy that keeps coming up in all these debates with regards to the 2000 election is the word democracy. This is the one word that everyone keeps saying and yet doesn't apply. Why?
Because The United Stated of America is a REPUBLIC. Yes the citizens are given the right to vote. But unlike a true (read: classical) democracy we do not vote on the specific issues, except in state or local elections. We vote in represenatives to do our voting for us. In ancient Greece (Athens) every voting citizen would gather together and vote on the issues that the government was dealing with (taxes, war, trade, etc.) One citizen, one vote. Or as we like to call it: The Popular Vote. (Popular being Populus or Population)
We don't do that in the US. Our Presidental elections were set up from the beginning with an electoral college. We vote to tell other people how to vote. This is the foundation of a Republic (see the combo of the word represent and public?) Etymology and History are neat huh?
I read Slashdot for the
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.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
And as much as I hate what my senators vote for, they do represent the firmly held beliefs of the assholes that live down the street.