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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."
Remember when the RIAA shut down Napster and declared victory over the music downloaders? Remember when they started their pathetic little lawsuit harassment campaign? Tell me, is there a single person here who has trouble downloading a pirated song today? Is there anyone here who couldn't start up Limewire right this minute and find a copy of virtually any song they could want? For all their heavy-handedness, they didn't even make a DENT.
Times have changed. No law is going to change that. They're just embarrassing themselves trying.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And we (the US) are pissed at China for what, now? Sounds like this is taking a page out of their playbook for censorship.
Information wants to be free!
A shift in the way we think about copyright has to happen, or this is going to get out of control in a hurry.
you vote SHIT like these into power, just because they ranted about conservative values, and they make a total crap out of everything.
thats why world hates you. nothing else.
Read radical news here
Whilst I can understand and to some extent sympathise with the desire to take down the PyratByran, Wikileaks is in no way part of the same phenomenon. It's a site exposing what we, the great unwashed, are not supposed to know.
Fuck this!
When do we head to Boston and Ctrl-Alt-Delete this out-of-control government?
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Next step is to tie the passing of this legislation to fighting terrorism or child pornography thus removing the stink of corporate favouritism. Maybe throw in some sort of muttering about intellectual property protecting American workers from having their jobs shipped over seas and this will fly through with barely a comment from most people.
Insert pithy comment here.
Republicans & Hollywood Democrats, big surprise there.
There is a war going on for your mind.
The full and unequivical end of file shareing! Don't you think?
People say my sig is the best thing about me.
You just outlawed every search engine!
Finally we'll have the end of government spin merchants putting their garbage on Youtube http://uk.youtube.com/10DowningStreet
As for the other stuff, politicians still don't seem to "get" the internet, whatever law they come up with, there's a way around it. It shows you how dangerously uneducated all those English/Latin/law/history/politics/art degree holding politicians are.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
The copyright cartels are already broken. Musicians, moviemakers and other participants of creative industries are already exploiting the Internet as a means of distribution. This genie certainly won't go back into the bottle unless another "trade agreement" enacts a system of strong guilds such as that found in Mussolini's Italy.
Besides, one international agreement does not make enforcement any easier. Millions of people just in northern europe have come to accept torrent downloading etc. as an everyday thing; international agreement or not, no country is going to toss even one percent of their population in jail for something that was not previously a crime. Not to mention actually catching and prosecuting etc. those people... matter of scale, really.
Also, trade agreements such as these don't have the power to override national legislation. Even if the EU signs and ratifies this, it will only be at the level of the EU -- i.e. they can pass a directive which EU member nations are perfectly free to implement as laxly as they please. Remember, the EU is not a federation. Not to mention how this would meet rather stiff resistance in the euro parliament, members of which have lately been strongly turning pro-privacy and pro-free culture.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
First, they killed Napster. So we moved to Limewire. Then we moved to Kazaa. Then, after a bunch of **AA lawsuits, we moved to bittorrent. Now, what in God's name makes them think that we won't move someplace else? They're never going to kill filesharing. What the fracking industry has to do is come up with content that has value and that we actually want to pay for. Piracy will never go away; it's been around in one way, shape, or form since the age of exploration. But, if content is good enough, the majority of people WILL spend money on it. The problem with radio, television, movies, and music today is that they've been feeding us crap since the early 90s, and no one but a select handful of zombies and drones wants to throw their good, hard-earned money at it.
I propose that the service will have to:
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement"?
These people are dishonest even in naming their legislation. This is the "Anti-Copying Trade Agreement", or perhaps more aptly, the "Anti Fair-Use Trade Agreement".
Doesn't it seem kind of absurd that there is a multinational effort to shut down 1 website?
Really?
Maybe instead of protecting us private media interest we could start protecting private citizen interest; a la leave us the hell alone. There have been few bigger wastes of time this decade.
This is exactly the problem with the world today, corporations have way too much power. Even when they lose under the law, they simply create new laws to suit their needs. They never lose. Thus there is no balance between any power citizens may have and corporations have.
Let's face it, if piracy is as rampant as the content industry claims, then it necessarily follows that the vast majority of citizens do not want such draconian laws protecting copyrights. Why should corporations, who cannot even vote, have more rights to create laws than the citizens governments are supposed to protect?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
As I have been saying all along the WTO is the most insidious thing to come along in generations. This only is another example of why i think this way.
It usurps a countries sovereignty and will force the entire world down to the 'lowest common denominator' in all things, not just the veil of 'commercial trade' that the treaty hides behind.
If we keep pushing this, it will come back to bite us in the end as another country will demand the same thing, and negate our laws.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And it's a country.
Antigua.
Considering how even the WTO considers the US is way out of line, and the US refuses to make the reparations, or hold it's end up of the 'fair rules of trade', Antigua currently has a lot of leeway to act as a hub for this kind of thing. And if the US wants to make a trade treaty that'll stick, first they have to open up a lot of markets to Antigua that'll cost billions.
So, this bill gets put live, and every site suddenly stops paying their local ISPs and relocates to Antigua inside 24 hours.
Net result, no difference to the file sharing, loss of money to US/EU ISPs, and Antigua gets better investment in it's infrastructure.
The usual "big stick" the US uses to bully people into submission on this (the WTO) won't bat an eyelid about Antigua doing this.
19th century was a difficult time for american writers because there was no international copyright law. Publishers often just pirated the works of authors rather than paying them.
Since the US have been condemned and keep on refusing to apply the WTO decision to allow online gambling in the states... Antigua will have legally the right to become a PirateBay Heaven :)
Governments (Well, mostly the US right now) pull this sort of stuff all the time. Come up with a "noble cause" to push through a bill which purportedly can further the noble cause, and bring perpetrators to justice.
In fact, as many here have pointed out, there are a huge number of reasons this won't work. However, the MEANS by which it is supposed to work, that is the tools it places in the hands of the government, will have been put into law. This is how every anti-terrorism bill has failed to prevent terrorism, but has succeeded in reducing civil liberties.
Furthermore, by signing an international agreement they can then pressure other signing countries to limit freedoms of _their_ citizens, and also use that as a stick against non-signing countries. ("Your policy doesn't match international standards--fix it, or we'll all have to impose sanctions.")
Pirate Bay, wikileaks, any of these 'undesirable' sites are merely (a) the excuse, and (b) collateral damage.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Considering how many people worldwide are involved not just in the actual downloading/uploading of such material, but also the number of folks involved in indexing P2P, writing software for same, and creating and marketing those "online privacy tools," if they are going to criminalize such activity, I hope this treaty makes provisions to allocate funds for a whoooole lotta new prisons.
That's why this is a quixotic fight. When you have so many people involved in an "illegal" activity, any attempt to enforce laws against it becomes a lost cause. But then, such logic has yet to mitigate the "War on Drugs"(TM) -- yeah, how's that working out for everyone? They'll make a few high-profile busts of Pirate Bay-ish sites here and there (and those will probably just relocate their servers to a country that is not a party to the treaty), and maybe hit a few random private citizens to try and throw a scare into everyone, but most file sharing will go merrily on, unimpeded. What's that quote about insanity consisting of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Oh, wait, bad analogy since he really just became a ghost that didn't seem to be able to do much besides spouting motivational speeches.
But it sounds good in this context.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Unfortunately, this trade agreement....will pretty much do just that, it will unify laws to what the US, and the other top IP countries want.
In THHGTTG trilogy, there is the "third ark" ship with its hairdressers, fashion designers, telephone sanitizers, and other useless members of Golgafrinchan society who crash land on prehistoric Earth. They decide to use tree leaves as money, making all of them incredibly wealthy. However, it causes a huge inflation problem, which the Golgafrinchans solve by burning down the forests.
A digital file is like a tree leaf. They cost nothing. To pay for one is madness, to try to use them as a medium of exchange (trade for other goods) is even greater madness. The only sane use of digital sales is sale of the physical medium the file is stored on - like a CD or DVD.
For a country to base their entire economy on digital files is supreme madness, as stupid as the Golgafrinchans' use of tree leaves as money.
The heavy handed attempts to stop the sharing of something that is entirely cost-free to everyone is as stupid as the Golgafrinchans' torching of the forests.
MP3s didn't and couldn't kill CD sales, but the switch from CDs to "selling" DRM-infested downloads instead of physical media certainly might.
My legislators are morons and my country is on its way down.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Is what worries me the most. If applied broadly, that could apply to many types of software, that have legitimate purposes. e.g Anonymous proxies, OpenSSH, Freenet, etc. Basically anything that hides or obscures your communication from eavesdropping could become illegal.
...that simply doesn't seem to be the case in my history.
...[means] receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works."
0. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Article I, Section 8, US Constitution.
1. Dowling v. United States 473 U.S. 207 was ruled in 1985
Copyright infringement is NOT theft!
2. United States v. LaMacchia 871 F. Supp. 535 was ruled in 1994.
Copyright infringement must have financial motivation.
3. No Electronic Theft Act, 105th Congress, 1997
"Financial Gain
4. Copyright Term Extension Act, 1998
"Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication"
5. Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003)
"As long as the [copyright term] limit is not 'forever', any limit set by Congress can be deemed constitutional."
The major fines are very recent as well. This bull is recent and funded by an organization that knows they are out dated and working on a business model of the past. P2P is the future, and not a future where companies like Disney, Sony, and Universal can control people and their culture. They know they are dead in the water, but they are going to spend every last penny on a war to slow their death. Disney made their money "stealing" (by their definition) popular works of the times and remixing them Disney style, quickly making them a powerful empire. The problem is that Walt is dead and now virtually anyone with an internet connection can DO WHAT DISNEY DOES!
They are fighting like a cat in a wet pillow case. They will use all their money to damage as many lives they possibly can, and wage war against every country that won't acknowledge their rule. This is not old, this is new and it has all started in our lifetime. Please follow the link in my signature if you question the MPAA regime. This is one of the most important things I think we can be doing to save our culture from these dying Monarchs. Also, for something short and cute, search "Fair Use" on YouTube for a great explanation of copyright law / fair use through a remix of quite a few Disney clips.
Ok, i'll fix my sig in a sec, but here is the link: http://www.opensourcecinema.org/lessigfinal
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
The best way to defeat these thugs is to adopt encryption tools to make our file transfers invisible. Tools like Tor are a good start. But we need to get enough people using secure protocols that the government won't be able to single out and prosecute individuals for using them.
So if you care about your rights in the future, start using secure protocols. Contribute code to open source projects. Make these systems work. Use it or lose it!
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The post and thread here appear to be very US-centric -- they assume that any trade agreement that the US decides to offer to the world will be immediately accepted by other sovereign states.
The United States has a history of pushing its laws on other nations through binding treaties. A binding international treaty typically trumps domestic laws in a signatory nation. This is explicitly true in the USA: an international treaty supersedes US law and the US Constitution and Bill or Rights.
One good example of this practice is the way the United States exported its (insanely stupid and misguided) drug laws to the rest of the world. The United States pushed for the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which required that all signatory countries 'toe the line' by criminalizing drug possession. This treaty prevented any signatory country from treating (certain types of) drug use as anything but a criminal offense. The same thing could be done with copyright infringement.
Here's a quote describing this from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation:
"The 1961 UN drugs convention marks a key turning point in global prohibition - enshrining prohibition in domestic law across the globe, and closing down any possibility of regulated models of production and supply for the proscribed drugs (anomalously excluding alcohol and tobacco)being introduced by individual countries even if they democratically determined to do so. An entire avenue of policy options was closed."
www.tdpf.org.uk/Policy_Timeline.htm
This looks very much like what the **AA wants to implement with regard to copyright infringement. Such a binding international treaty would make it impossible for any country to opt out of enforcing standardized laws against copyright infringement. Such an international treaty would, effectively, export US law and policy globally.