US Plots "Pirate Bay Killer" Trade Agreement

An anonymous reader sends word that Wikileaks has revealed that the United States is plotting a 'Pirate Bay killing' multi-lateral trade agreement, called 'ACTA,' with the EU, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Switzerland and New Zealand. "The proposal includes clauses designed to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of copyrighted information exchange on the Internet, which would also affect transparency sites such as Wikileaks. The Wikileaks document details provisions that would impose strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods. If adopted, the treaty would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime imposing new cooperation requirements upon Internet service providers, including perfunctory disclosure of customer information, as well as measures restricting the use of online privacy tools."

Comments

Re:Can't put that genie back into the bottle

[claytonjr]

Just a wild guess, but he may be referring to the *AA slapping lawsuits against some of the people who do not have the wherewithal to fight it.

Re:Can't put that genie back into the bottle

[xpuppykickerx]

I was referring to his reply, which I apparently read wrong. Illegal doesn't mean wrong.

The moral thing

[thtrgremlin]

I am still a little dumbfounded by this the

it's OK to download a file illegally It is either illegal and legally wrong, or it is OK and NOT ILLEGAL. If people are going to say "it is legal to do something illegal", that statement should really be clarified.

Am I to assume that is what you meant by

cannot make a rational contribution to this discussion in part? With double negatives? By contrast, one of my favorite quotes of recent is "You cannot question the government unless you are willing to listen to the answer". Lobbyists have a lot of power through money. I feel or hope to believe that congress works in the best interest of the people, and they do listen. It is just very hard for them to hear over all the voices of the lobbyists; their voices quickly drown out those of the American that can't spend their life up on Capitol Hill. Big media has a lot of money to drown out our voice, not to mention I think that while people may not be deterred from downloading from this oppressive regime, it may stop us from publicly voicing our opinion, and from the looks of it, even voicing our opinion anonymously as this would outlaw things like Tor. One thing is sitting at home, encrypting and re-routing your traffic through proxies to circumvent a bad law, it is another to get out there and yell to the police and lawmakers that you are breaking a bad law that should be changed.

Would you vote if you knew that who ever got elected would execute all those that voted against them? Amnesty to those who didn't vote. What if you were pretty sure your candidate could not win?

What is the moral thing to do? Risk your family, your life, take amnesty, or vote for the worst thing that couldn't be avoided?