CAFTA Treaty Exports DMCA

PingXao writes "The BSA, RIAA and MPAA successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress to include DMCA-like provisions in the recently approved CAFTA treaty, according to CNet. Among other provisions, Chapter 15 of the treaty requires treaty signatories to allow software patents, extend Copyright protections to 70 years after the author's death, and make it illegal to produce 'circumvention devices' for protected works."

Comments

Cue angry rants.

[TexasDex]

Yeah. I know this is a bad thing. But I'm starting to suffer from 'outrage fatigue'. It's getting damn tiring hearing about our rights being eroded and getting angry about it. So I have decided it's time to give my blood pressure a rest. I think I'll make a cup of tea instead.

Re:Cue angry rants.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Re:Cue angry rants.

[jdigriz]

So you're willing to give your life for your country, but not to live for it? Arguing with people who disagree with you is not particularly useful, unless it's for the benefit of an audience, because if they were reasonable in the first place, they'd already agree with your arguments, assuming you yourself are reasonable. Quite frankly, the people running the parties right now are completely inept and it would only take a few thousand coordinated like-minded individuals in each state to take each party organization over completely legally according to their own rules. Witness the takeover of the GOP by the theocons. I should know. Starting from nothing more than showing up to a precinct convention in '02 on a whim, with no prior experience in politics, I got selected as a delegate to my party's state convention twice in the last two years. At the last one, I even got a bit about space exploration inserted into the party platform at the state level. Politics sucks as much as it does because the good people of this country have given up and opted out leaving it to the powerhungry, inept and corrupt. Show up, speak out with conviction, and don't let them fool you with the idea that the general elections are where the action is, the policy and candidates are selected *within* the two major parties by a tiny minority of voters. I think something like 9% of eligible voters vote in primaries.

Sure, you may be willing to take a bullet for your country but are you willing to drag your ass to public hearings that start at 8am and go till 3am just to testify? Are you willing to spend an entire weekend of our time voting on and hashing out hundreds of resolutions, many of them submitted by dimwits? Are you willing to become a volunteer registrar and get 100 other likeminded people to register and vote in the next election. Democracy is hard, painful work. Stopping a bullet just hurts for a little while. All the same, ballots not bullets I say! In the face of widespread public involvement these bastards in the legislatures just slink away and try to sneak it in again some other time when we're not looking. They respect massed political power. But...they use tedium, complexity and apathy as weapons against the populace to make sure that people don't care. Hence all the droning speeches, the overblown impenetrable language of the bils, the public hearings till 3am. Sheer volume of verbiage puts people to sleep and then a deall is cut in a back room and by a committee. We have to guard against that. And toss the bastards out come November!

Waste of time

[hackwrench]

The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.'"

'Odd,' said Arthur, 'I thought you said it was a democracy.'

'I did,' said Ford, 'It is.'

'So,' said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, 'why don't the people get rid of the lizards?'

'It honestly doesn't occur to them,' said Ford. 'They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.'

'You mean they actually vote for the lizards?'

'Oh yes,' said Ford with a shrug, 'of course.'

'But,' said Arthur, going for the big one again, 'why?'

'Because if they didn't vote for a lizard,' said Ford, 'the wrong lizard might get in'"

-- Douglas Adams

Let's stop this now

[Rambo666]

Here's an idea. Let's find out who these asshole law makers are and publish their names and make sure they don't get re-elected or work in the tech industry again?

Re:Let's stop this now

[stinerman]

Such idealism!

The legislative districts are so gerrymandered in some parts of the country you could literally prop up a cadaver in a wheelchair and he/she would handily beat the opposition (alluding to Strom Thurmond). In many parts of the country people would rather have no representative than a [pinko democrat/jesus-freak republican].

Of course, we all know independant candidates aren't going to win, so basically you're stuck with the guy you have now until redistricting in 2010.

Re:~Security - ~Freedom

[955301]

essential liberty. temporary security.

These things, these adjectives, they actually mean something and serve the purpose of specificity. Try not to ignore them, will you?

His point was that you must endure the threat of physical harm while engaging in those activites required to promote and emphasize those principles which are essential to our spirit and freedom (actual freedom, not how the word is used today).

Re:~Security - ~Freedom

[Zeinfeld]

Liberty cannot exist without security. Therefore, this statement makes no sense. Threat of physical harm while performing an activity that one should be free to do, dissuades someone from performing that activity. Therefore, liberty is lost.

The key words in the phrase are essential liberty.

It does not appear to me that CAFTA deals with any issue that Franklin would have considered an essential liberty. Franklin was talking about freedom of speech and due process of law.

On the other hand Franklin would no doubt be saying that imprisonment without trial, military tribunals and the use of torture were exactly the type of abuses that the constitution was drafted to prevent.

There is a big difference between national security and a pretext for a power grab by the executive. The administration does not seem to have much interest in Osama Bin Forgotten, except when it comes to getting the vote out for elections.

There is still time to fight it!

[Garabito]

For those of us who live in Costa Rica, Nicaragua or Dominican Republic. Congress (or equivalent) of each one of these countries have not yet approved the treaty.

But it will be a difficult fight, tough. The American market and is very important for the economy of these countries, and not approving the agreement could hurt it badly.

In Costa Rica, there is a huge PR and marketing campaign promoting the "TLC" (as the treaty is known here), the benefits it's supposed to bring and how thousands of jobs will be gone if it doesn't get approved. Mainstream media is also pro-CAFTA. As a result, most people are not aware or are misinformed of all of its implications.

We see this posted on /. because of the issue with Software patents/DMCA, but that's just a sample of what DR-CAFTA really is: a bill that gives more power to U.S. corporations in the region. Thanks to this treaty, Big Pharma will extend their drug patents +5 years. Governments will have to compensate corporations if they get in the way of their right to make profits.

It's a shame we are so dependent on the U.S. that we have to accept crap like this.