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Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
SpaceAdmiral writes "The Canadian government is secretly negotiating to join the US and the EU in an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The agreement would give border guards the power to search iPods and cellphones for illegal downloads, as well as to force ISPs to hand over customer information without a warrant. David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, characterizes ACTA this way: 'If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close.'"
If you can't buy a law, buy a treaty. This one would force software patents on the EU. I am ashamed of my country for pushing things like this and I'm amazed we try given our excessive petrolium consumption, excessive pollution and a war of aggression. Is this GWB's way of getting as much done as he can before leaving office or have all of the world's government become this much less democratic?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
go together?
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
I can't wait for the baby boomers to die so we can take our damn country back and start thinking logically about copyright law.
I mean, all the standard talk about Big Brother and the futility of fighting music piracy and the ethical problems of fighting the means of music piracy etc. aside...
IPods full of American music smuggled past Canadian customs? I'm sure that's exactly how Canadians are getting illicit copies of American music. (And vice versa.)
How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod (i.e. downloaded without buying it in any form), from a song ripped from your private CD collection (which as the RIAA would have us believe, is illegal too), from a song bought from the iTunes store?
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
The third page of the article explains how the US is able to get away with such outrageous requests:
So the proposal is, "surrender your citizens rights or we will make it cost you." The answer should be, "without rights, you will just take our money anyway, no thanks."
So when I travel, do I have to carry proof of purchase for all the stuff on my iPod? How exactly do they plan to enforce this?
how will they manage file encryption.
Just one more excuse to induce more fear in the normal population.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Copied disks sold as retail are counterfeit. Copying disks breaks copyright. But it is a stretch to see how you could tell if the stuff on an MP3 player came from counterfeited or original sources.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
--
make install -not war
ISP records don't have anything to do with it either. This is naked imperialism - a power grab without disguise. It's not about "protecting" brand names, it's about silencing political dissent.
Selling tickets on the "Get Me Off This Rock" shuttle, leaving as soon as possible!
Knee jerk reactions from a moribund industry that couldn't find innovation if it was hanging off the Sears tower with a 500 foot long neon arrow!
But these things seems to be somewhat against the idea of a democracy at this point.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
A couple of these links are several months old; this has been brewing for awhile, and action needs to be taken now to stop it.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Can we just stick all the music and movie industry execs in prison now and have done with it, rather than having to shoot all those politicians later? I mean, it would save several years and a lot of trouble.
I say let'em review every single electronic device we have, ipods, computer, phone, hearing aid, pace maker and watches. It will take a week to cross a border or take a plane -- the economic reality is a far greater deterrent to this kind of ludicrous action than all the belly-aching complaints. Mule
Someone who's been blinded by the IP propaganda term might confuse "fake" handbags with ripped music. The confusion is intentional and it's designed to take rights away.
Even given that, the demand for ISP logs and invasion of Canadian and EU citizen privacy is ballsy.
Intellectual property was the desert property of the twenth century.
from Canada
What?
> I'm guessing you're a member of "Generation-Me"
You mean the baby boomers?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As an avid traveller both business and personal this is just getting too far.
Think ill just carry a deck and vinyl from now.
Think of it like speed traps. You, presumably, sped. The speed trap captures this, takes that moment-in-time shot, and you get the bill in the mail. You are, at this point, guilty until proven innocent. Yes, you are guilty, you were speeding; (important) technicalities such as calibration times of the speed trap, etc. aside... you were speeding.
Now it's up to you to 1. challenge this and 2. provide evidence that either you were NOT speeding, or that you were speeding for a damned good reason which exempts you from getting a ticket.
---
So to get back on-topic...
"How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod"
If it's in the AAC format with Apple's Fairplay DRM - which they license to nobody and all that.. then it's probably legit.
If it's an MP3, it'll get added to the list of 'probably-illegal' bits of music.
"from a song ripped from your private CD collection"
1. Challenge it, 2. provide evidence that you, in fact, are in posession of that CD.
"(which as the RIAA would have us believe, is illegal too)"
If that is indeed the law - which, last time I checked, it's not - yhen you're screwed even in the above case regardless.
"from a song bought from the iTunes store?"
Presuming you purchased an unprotected MP3 - that purchase should be listed in your iTunes Account. 1. Challenge it, 2. provide the evidence - name Apple if you want.
-----
Now, personally, I don't think this will actually be checked all -that- actively. Lines at airports and the like are queued enough as it is and they're strapped for money just to check for things like, you know, actual terrorists, drug smugglers, etc. That's not to say I'm complacent - I already sent in my letter of protest several weeks back, but we're not exactly part of the G8 countries so that's probably going to do fook all good - but I don't think that the first kid with a few MP3s on his system is going to be shipped to Gitmo either.
Now, with that out of the way, the clauses regarding the restrictions of privacy tools use online (and, possibly, offline; that TrueCrypted drive you've got and such) I find far, far more unsettling (and was the majority of the body of my protest letter; personally I can't really justify saying "I'm only downloading a movie! What's the harm!?", but I did point out the ridiculousness of involving law enforcement officials in this, never mind the penance, and my disagreement with those clauses on those grounds).
I'm still waiting for them to hook this into a "That way we'll get the terrorists, too!"-type defense argument.
But maybe they're not, and they're expecting people, to just fume at the worst bits, then blank those out and just leave it with the anti-piracy bits which might be grudgingly accepted.
It'd be nice if this minority government would have an election forced so we could get rid of Stephen "Little George Bush" Harper and his Conservatives. It's no coincidence that all these "Canada trying to get X law put it" stories are coming around now that they're in power.
The baby boomers built the country? Please! They were sitting around protesting, free-loving, and smoking dope while their parents and grandparents actually built what we have today. No one on this planet has the same entitlement mentality as United States baby boomers. No one.
Cause you know the court is going to declare it unconstitutional.
You don't know me. I do like my life, I work hard, and I also vote. Forgive me for expressing dismay over the possible adoption of ridiculous policies.
Where do you draw the line between whining and merely stating one's opinion? Seems to me like you are a whiny baby-boomer who can't handle the criticism of younger people (I'm 27). See how easy it is to flip that around? I can argue with you and make up negative things about you, rather than actually attacking your opinion with logic.
I got it though, you have enlightened me. The baby boomers were here first so they deserve the chance to not only gobble up the world's resources and pollute the environment, and to write up some draconian laws that will persist and cause the next generations to suffer for decades after they are dead and gone. All so that a few large media corporations (run by baby boomers) can get wealthier and the CEOs can be entombed in large structures with their luxury cars and secretaries.
I got news for you old man, you're gonna die, and your country will be ours. So long. We won't miss you.
Then again, he might tell me that I should get an iPod for the US, and another one in Canada. The same goes with all my music.
I understand IP. I understand what is theft, and what isn't. I don't abide by customs searches for somebody's IP. I bought and paid for every single piece of music I have. None were torrented, or obtained through nebulous means from a copyright respect perspective.
And the music moguls now want to enforce the ability to check on me. With WHAT??? How can a customs agent possibly determine the MP3s that I have are, or are not purchased with validity???? THEY CANNOT!
IP protection isn't the backbone of the US economy. It's an intangibles-fantasy to think so. That's not what my father built, his father built, my mother built, and so on. It's the asset protection mechanism of the nonsensical. It's not innovative, it's not producing return on the intangible asset, it's as flimsy as derivates. Yet I respect the concept of asset ownership, and my rights under the law as a consumer. Now some nitwit's pressured various treaty signators to look at my damn MP3 player-- where's the justice in that??????
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
... looks like its time to buy a travel ipod to go with that travel laptop.
Of course, pity the person who legally format shifted music they own in accordance with various fair use or national copyright doctrines around the world.
Or pity the person who legally purchased mp3's without drm; unless they carry all of their purchase reciepts with them!
My MP3s do not have 'skanky' stamped on them. If I rip one of my CDs it is OK, but if I have a rip of someone else's it does not get stamped 'illegal'. They will just guess, and based on the fact that there is unlikely to be anyone with an iPod full of legal tunes, they can just collect iPods for their friends and families.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Maybe it's the product of growing up under the red scare, but between the anti-Vietnam movement, the war on drugs, "Family Values", the war on terrorism, and the bare minimum of environmental laws/cheap gas/tax breaks for SUVs, the boomers' voting record will probably cause them to be remembered as the most cowardly and coddled generation in history.
"Generation-Me" indeed.
Why yes, I do have karma to burn.
Software patents are one small but important piece of the IP Empire which demands universally oppressive laws.
The list goes on and on but it has one common theme, your rights mean nothing, shut up and get back to work for the man.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
I seem to recall that Alan Cox, and probably others, were so disturbed by the DMCA in the US that they vowed never to visit the US again. So, the Linux Symposium has been held in Ottawa for some time.
Will this force Linux conferences to be held outside the US, Canada and the EU? Of course Alan Cox lives in the EU. It really makes one not wish to even travel through the region, which is pretty difficult if you think about air travel hubs, etc.
When will we get a notion of priority in this sick world? We've got so many issues in this world, much to do with security and protection; Please tell me why pirated music will take priority when our current ACTUAL border security is a joke? I'm imagining a scene where some guy is getting shook down for copied music while hoodlums rape a woman nearby unquestioned. Lets get a list of frikkin priorities here.
Pity we can't have the RIAA keeping the Mexicans out on the Southern border, and the Muslims out on the Northern border.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
what ever happend to the people putting fear into the government ;\
The only thing that surprises me about this is that the agreement doesn't have "Anti-Terrorism" in the title.
16 hour work days, food that's poison, obesity, insurance and medicine they can't afford. At some point it collapses on itself because there's only so much greed an economy can stand. We are entering a recession exactly as predicted by Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz in 2006.
The baby boomers are (were?) a bunch of dope-smoking draft dodgers that have run this country into the ground while their parents wonder why exactly it is that they fought World War II, since they just ended up living under authoritarianism anyway.
Over Christmas, my now almost 95 year-old grandfather apologized to me, my sister and our 2 first cousins for the sorry state of the world that my parents generation created.
However, the boomers did such a good job of screwing things up, and peppering our generation with the semi-retarded after-effects of marijuana on the gametes that the US is pretty much doomed.
Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. What does it take to defect to Russia these days?
is a fascist asshole.
Sell a new version of iPod software that encrypts your iPod's contents with a password, then you don't have to give them the password because of that recent Supreme Court ruling, where being forced into giving up an encryption password is not allowed under the 4th amendment, assuming the US Constitution is still in effect by then, not that I believe it is in force now.
There's already a system for dealing with illegal material, and there are very good reasons for requiring a warrant for such searches. The issue in question is already covered. Is this nonsense really necessary?
I get the impression that someone may not understand the meaning of the word "secretly"...
Repeal copyright. All of it. If they want to fight, give 'em a fight. Let us not piddle about minor interpretations of legalisms. Let's gut the whole thing. Patents too. Both of them were designed to promote progress and now the serve the opposite purpose. They should be done away with.
Patents shall not issue. Copyrights shall not be granted. All patents and copyrights are void. (New amendment)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Paragraph 1 of the Charter says that The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. and Paragraph 8 says that Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. This is definitely unreasonable search and seizure, and there's no way you can justify searching private devices without cause for copyright infringement. Also note that this paragraph says "everyone", not "every citizen of Canada".
Every single person in the country will be easily proven to be a criminal. If this gets passed by the Senate, the American Experiment is over and proven a total failure.
Since when was it acceptable for democratic governments to secretly sign treaties?
This is just plain bullshit. Democratic governments are supposed to be open, and take public opinion into account. How the hell are people supposed to have an informed opinion when the government is running around doing stuff behind closed doors?
Oh and we Canadians just found out that our Foreign Minister is steping down (getting the boot) for:
1) Leaving classified documents laying around.
2) Dating a woman with links to organized crime.
3) Publicly humiliating us over the helecopter thing.
The current Canadian government is starting to look less and less like a government, and more and more like a gaggle of ass clowns.
(Oh did I mention they are under investigation for suspitious money transactions during the elections?)
This seems like a desperate push by the republicans in congress and the Bush administration to impose more Intellectual Property laws. Note, that as an "international agreement, it bypasses the Constitution's treaties process. That is, it does not need to be presented to Congress and voted on. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty#United_States_law
The odd things is that this is going to have a chilling effect on crossing borders and visiting other countries. People are not going to want border agents going through their data, because it is intensely private stuff. Family pictures, financial statements, personal medical records. Consider also, that there has so far been no disclosure as to how the border agents in the various countries will be storing and securing your data.
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
"How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod"
If it's in the AAC format with Apple's Fairplay DRM - which they license to nobody and all that.. then it's probably legit.
It's pretty unlikely that any border guard is going to be checking the format of any random song on any random traveler's iPod. Most will most likely happen in the worst case is that the border crosser will have to get a 'certificate of compliance' from a record store or Apple store. You'd bring your iPod to the Apple store, they'd run a check of the DRM on all the songs, seal it somehow (maybe in a plastic bag), and then give you a 'certificate of compliance', all at a hefty Apple fee. You would show this to border guard. They might or might not let the iPod through. They might or might not let you through. You might have to pay a supplemental fee (in cash of course) to get either you and/or your iPod through the border.
Then you would do all the same routine on your way back home.
Please don't tell me I'm crazy. My friends and I have had a lot of experiences with the US/Canada border and the meatheads in uniform who work on it. Nothing is too weird and crazy to not be true. Especially now.
One thing that may develop is a program that takes standard MP3 songs and reformats them into the Apple configuation, along with the Apple DRM signatures on the files and reloads them onto your iPod. Everything is now 'legal'.
My gut feeling is that the Border guards will just start charging an iPod fee of $50 or so to bring your iPod across the border. Then the Border Patrol will work out a certain percentage of this fee that would go to the American RIAA, a percentage to the Canadian RIAA, and a majority of it kept by themselves for adminstration costs.
The Americanization of Canada continues.
And if you want to put a even more interesting spin on it, this information only came out a little while ago. Now suddenly the Foreign Affairs Minister that would have been part of the Canadian side of this treaty is resigning, and the Trade Minister is taking over. The only one we haven seen any movement from is the Heritage Minister. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080526/harper_bernier_080526/20080526?hub=Canada&s_name=
Its like a really bad shell game except your trying guess were the nut isn't.
I bought repealcopyright.com. I'm going to need some suggestions for site software and some volunteers to admin the thing.
Let's get on it. Who's in?
Replies here for suggestions, touch the obvious gmail for access.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If the so-called guardians of our culture all decide to go bat-shit crazy over who 'owns' a musical recording, then the best thing to do is to learn to play music yourself. Learn to read music. After all, you learned to read English, you learned C++, you can learn to read music if it's so important to your life.
Remember the scene in Amadeus where Salliari picks up one of Mozart's score from the piano; looks at it and says 'it started like a rusty squeezebox, and then, from heaven, a beautiful oboe note appeared, took a melody, and transformed into a glorious clarinet'? He was looking at the musical score and hearing it in his head. Now, That's reading music!
If you get to the point where you can do this and actually play on a musical instrument what you see on the sheet music or what you remember from all the other times that you played a song, then it doesn't matter if some pig cop steals your iPod. Because he can't steal your music. It's in you, it's a part of you.
Every day another law is passed,
News of evil terrorists in the shadows,
More FBI powers,
More RIAA penises getting harder,
More Microsoft corruption,
More "You gotta have Microsoft anus plugger version one point oh to run this mafia proprietary content",
Massive jailings of non-violent drug offenders to be violently sodomized and beaten,
Rising gas prices and oil execs mastubating over their profits,
Bloated corporations reducing quality of service while increasing profits,
More drones launched into the air to scout for flowering weeds,
More DEA telling you to keep an eye out for marijuana (wouldn't want medicine to counter the corrupt big Pharma) when hiking,
It is all BULLSHIT. It never ends!
The cattle people just take it -- take it -- take it!
Is there an end to this madness in sight, will people ever come together? With the world growing ever worse, shouldn't marijuana be legal AND mandatory as Bill Hicks suggested?
Someone needs to cross Kudzu with Marijuana so we'll all be stoned and wake up from the haze of this toilet world.
Why does the majority continue to take it up the ass? Why do we remain divided?
I thought counterfeiting also requires the attempt to pass the copy off as the real thing? I think it's another "OMG LOOK HOW EVIL THEY ARE" redefinition, in terms of copyright infringement counterfeiting would be people selling bootlweg GBA carts or fake CDs, not just downloading material on their cellphone.
And hell, if you only have the device how do you show that the copies were not allowed? Will they just assume that it's always copied if it doesn't sound like total garbage and that it couldn't possibly have been created by e.g. ripping your own CDs?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Can you elaborate on this? Maybe some links or tips. I realize that an open Slashdot forum is the worst possible place to go into any detail about this subject. But millions of us need this service and are completely in the dark about to go about getting it. Any further input or comment would be appreciated.
Thank you.
This idea of selling bits is a dot-bomb era fallacy, much like the 99.9% of business plans during hat time which failed, and which you seemingly have bought into.
Cory doctorow does a good job of tearing this apart in this talk
Copyrights are imaginary, they are a concept which anyone can readily ignore, and which those with current military parity DO ignore (china, russia).
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The gov should encourage distribution of child porn on P2P! The $multi-trillions of losses that the porn producers would suffer due to pirates copying their works over the intarwebs would put them out of business.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Maybe the point isn't to stop copyright infringement at all but to extend their rights to detain and harass citizens.
What's to truly discourage an individual politician from enacting these kinds of abuse if the worst that can happen is the laws later get repealed? In democracy where's the disincentive for corruption?
Quack, quack.
Those not willing to fight for their rights do not deserve them.
But, as age tempers me some, I've revised that thought.
Those that would wish to deprive me of my rights deserve to be fought.
Madness? This... is... Canadaaaaa!
don't know - don't fucking care.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
The media giants seem to think that downloads are more important than terrorism, drugs and firearms.
If only those crimes were treated with the same amount of severity by the politicians.
Nobody has a "right" to detail and harass citizens (or non-citizens for that matter). Anyone trying to convince you of the contrary is simply pursuing their own illegal agenda. At that point you have to step back and wonder what that agenda really is.
Russia isn't in such a great state.
I don't really think it's your grandfather's fault anyway. It's probably your parent's generation who are ruling the country at the moment.
But given it's a democracy (of some sorts) it's the voters and the voting system...
"I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy. You can only punish. I warn you that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys everyone it touches -- its upholders as well as its defiers."
The cops and border guards will have an irresistible temptation before them. Your little nephew wants an iPod for Christmas? Don't bother buying one, just confiscate the first new-looking one that you see sitting in a car coming over the border. Welcome to the Third World.
I guess the thing to do would be delete all music from the iPod before hitting the border, and then afterward put it all back on. Maybe have it backed up on a couple of DVD-Rs stashed in the trunk.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
When you go to the USA you have to go through US Customs and I doubt they'd respect any Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms acts. That's the big problem IMO. But also, I don't see how they can reasonably test for this anyways without holding up all the people at the border.
American voters cannot vote these idiots out. There is a line of party idiot miles wide just waiting to step in and 'get their piece' of the American political pie.
Lobbyists suck.
No it's more like faster moves to the North American Union. If those of us who are Pro 2nd Amendment don't start seriously considering taking our government back by force we may not HAVE a 2nd Amendment to do it with soon. It's obvious voting doesn't do ANY good! We still get the same corrupt whores in government!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
I'd be interested to see what they will use to determine whether or not the music/movies in possession are illegal. Anyone know of any "illegal identification" tools? Let us assume also that the filetag doesn't read, "Illegal_Metallica_Song_From_Torrent.mp3".
No yesterday, no tomorrow, and no today.
I did a quick search on ACTA in Google and the Act wasn't in the first five hits. I think this needs to be remedied.
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
Yes, and me without my mod points. Oh well, once I get more, I will come back and mod all this crap down, or the most recent crap.
Guess what, I have absolutely no affiliation with Microsoft. And there are obviously many more like me. I'm just a random slashdot user sick of all twitter's crap, so when I get mod points, I help yet another of his accounts go in to negative karma. I never used the mod points for years anyway except when something really deserved them.
Guess what else... There are more like me. There is no conspiracy. Just a bunch of random individuals who read slashdot and have gotten annoyed at the insanity enough that they use their mod points to do what should be done in the cause of zealotry to the point of blatant falsehood.
I've got some news for you too - you are going to get old and die as well. And, oh yes, almost forgot - those kids you plan on having some day - after busting your ass to feed and clothe and educate your children for 25 years of your life, they will grow up to hate and resent you and wish you were dead. You will also have to listen to their brain splitting lack of logic as they complain about how much harder they have it and how "It's not fair". This routine pretty much runs like clockwork in every generation so I though you might want to know what's in store for you. Have a nice day.
Only terrorists use encryption.
Only terrorists modify firmware.
Only terroroists have something to hide.
Only terrorists use Archos...
Whils that last one is flippant, I can see it getting that way in the minds of the minimum wage monkeys at airports.
"what, you're not using apple? you're either a cheapskate or a vagabond"
So I'm a frequent (ish) traveller for $HUGE_CORP, the logical upshot of this is that no data travels with you anywhere.
If I'm crossing the border of one of these countries then they can take any data a storage device, copy it and then do pretty much what they like with it.
Like (and this has happenned with corporate communications, I'm looking at you USA) pass it on to $COUNTRY's local competition to $HUGE_CORP.
So we already don't travel with sensitive data if we can, but this would mean keeping the company laptop as simply a remote comms device and hoping that wherever you are there's good net conectivity. Otherwise you risk compromising the company.
Good work RI/MPAA, you've not only pissed off the citizens, but made my professional life more difficult too.
So you are saying our liberty ultimately hinges on the binding precedence of "or" vs "of"? I.e., is it "(the Constitution) or (laws of any State)" or is it "the (Constitution or laws) of any State". In my 49 years as a native English speaker, "of" has always taken precedence over "or". But maybe things were different in the 1700's.
This was a most enlightening reply to my post. Apparently, I am not the only one to have read Article 6 the way I did - but there is court precedence for a less disturbing interpretation. Which is some comfort, anyway.
No, not really. I wouldn't think *AA cares about this too much. They're not dumb, they know this is horribly inefficient at actually catching infringement. No, Christmas for them is more pervasive DRM. Trusted Computing is more their brand of legislative heaven.
No, this sounds like fun more for law enforcement orgs than hollywood.
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
Somebody should tell Steve Jobs to use his political power to try and stop this bill. Forget any fancy techniques, the passage of this bill will simply result in many trading in their iPods, iPhones for cell phones that play music using a sd card. When you get near a border simply simply pop out the sd card and hide it, very easy to do. Fascists fail.
Why, as the article states, do federal trade agreements NOT require parliamentary approval?
I'm a baby boomer and I respectfully disagree.
Firstly, you cant judge a "generation". (And yes, I've read this.) You can only judge the individuals in that generation. And while I can see differences between people my age and those younger (and older) I don't know that I see the kinds major differences that would justify the kinds of contempt and scorn for baby boomers that the posts here would indicate.
Yes, I protested the Vietnam war, spent quite a bit of time reading about the history of French Indochina, and took a perfectly legal student deferment until the draft lottery spun my way. Criticizing that while the Iraq fiasco is underway would be hypocritical (unless you're in the army now yourself).
I smoked some weed and while I don't indulge any more I fully support tossing the ridiculous war on drugs down the toilet - but don't blame the boomers for that - it predated us by quite a while and was further intensified by Nixon and his friends - and most boomers were not old enough to vote for them.
I've advocated environmental laws for years and most of the SUVs I see around here are driven by 30 somethings and younger.
As for the war on terrorism, that may well have been instituted by people in the baby boom generation, and if you like, I apologize for the idiots who happened to be born around the same time I was who pushed it on us. But the militaristic mentality that really produced it is much more a product of the folks who fought in the second world war and built up the massive defense industries that are a major problem in the US.
I could just as easily heap scorn on the generations I see following me, but I don't think it is particularly meaningful and I don't think it is helpful. You want to change things? Great! I'll do what I can to support you. You want to be a "nattering nabob of negativity"? Thats fine too - but it doesn't translate to anything more than blogriping.
If we could design some clever encryption mechanism to hide and restore content, such as using a TrueCrypt hidden container, with a few "legitimate DRM-managed tunes" visible, they'd not be able to detect it.
The trouble would be hacking the iPod OS, etc.
Either way, clearly this is where we come up with more clever tools to manage our private information and content.
According to the Canadian copyright act, copying music for private use is not infringing: ....
================
Copying for Private Use
80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):
(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;
(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;
(c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or
(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public.
====================
Since the treaty only concerns infringing content, and by definition no musical content from Canada is infringing, as long as it's for personal use, no ipods/cell phones/etc should ever be seized or searched. Unless of course, you plug your ipod into some speakers and give a live performance that you charge admission to, or rent your ipod to someone.
I blame the estrogen in the water supply!
I want to go to Canada after I went to the USA with my DeCSS shirt! Three times, one time with music that is obviously pirated/youtubed, one time with bought unprotected mp3s/ripped mp3s from CD, and one time with the pirated files hidden with steganography. :)
So what exactly does an illegal downloaded MP3 on an iPod look like? And can a Canadian boarder guard tell the difference between that and one that was ripped at home with a legitimate CD and encoded using LAME? Sounds like a novel (tougue in cheek) approach to cracking down on illegal file swapping, but something inside me thinks the idea is fundimentally flawed. Meanwhile, somewhere else in the city.... NiN's made 900K on the release of With Teeth under a recording contract through traditional music distrobution systems. ... They made 1.6M with Ghosts I-IV released under Creative Commons on their website a month ago. ... Food for thought.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
The baby boomers built the country? Please! They were sitting around protesting, free-loving, and smoking dope while their parents and grandparents actually built what we have today. No one on this planet has the same entitlement mentality as United States baby boomers. No one.
I thought that WE had little respect for our elders, but you punks take the cake (and eat it too). We didn't "sit around protesting", we marched around protesting. And what we protested was what the previous generations had fucked up.
We were being drafted to be cannon fodder for a useless war. Some of us volunteered for that useless war out of patriotism (I did). The protests finally eneded thath war. Meanwhile you little whiners are too busy chasing filthy lucre and getting your nipples pierced and foreheads tattood to care that an oil man becaise President and started a useless war for the sole purpose of enriching himself. At least my dad's generation's rich people who starte dthe Vietnam war thought )prehaps correctly) that they were fighting communism, a laudible goal to them.
My generation's protests stopped the war and made the President resign. Where are your protests of the Iraq war? Your stupid generation doesn't even have to be drafted!
Some of us protested the rape of the environment. We got the Clean Air act and teh Clean Water act passed. We got CFCs banned. What are you gutless wimps doing about global warmning? Buying SUVs!
My generation built sna is still building houses, like the one you live in. The parts of the electrical grid my dad din't build were built by those who followed him.
My dad's generation invented computers, but my generation pur those giant building sized machines on your desktop. My generation put VCRs and CDs and DVDs on the narket. My generation made the entire cell phone infrastructure.
My dad's generation smoked cigarettes. My generation smoked pot. Your generation smokes crack.
Your generation uses my generation's music in their fucktardedly stupid commercials. Neither my nor my dad's generation did that.
My generation was pretty ignorant of history, but we were pikers when it comes to your generation.
What has your generation done, except invent internet trolling?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
And China starves in five years. You forgot, the US is the largest net exporter of food.
I'm also quite sure that if the Japanese, etc. dump their bonds than the collateral damage will be worse than the damage they will do to the US.
The baby boomers are (were?) a bunch of dope-smoking draft dodgers that have run this country into the ground while their parents wonder why exactly it is that they fought World War II, since they just ended up living under authoritarianism anyway.
My grandad's generation smoked cigars. My dad's generation smoked cigarettes. My generation smoked pot.
Your generation smokes crack.
You have to have a draft in order to dodge that draft. Fifty thosand boomers DIDN'T dodge the draft and died in that godforsaken jungle for absolutely nothing. Unless you have served in the military (and yes, I did, during Vietnam, despite the fact that I was in no danger of being drafted) you have no right to criticise anyone for dodging the draft.
A generation didn't run the country into the ground, a class did. Your class (if you are rich) ran it into the ground with your selfish grubbing for money, with your exploitation of my friends my age and younger who do the actual work building roads, bridges, houses, cell phone towers, and everything else for you. The rich sent the jobs overseas, not the people who do the actual work. My generation isn't taking rights away, the rich of all adult generations who run things are.
Get your enemies straight, son. While you're fighting me, your masters are laughing at you. I'm not taking away any of your rights, I'm fighting to preserve them. You employer is fighting tooth and nail to get as much of everything as he can, including YOUR RIGHTS. And you dumbass kids do your damndest to help him!
World War Two was started by the same generation that fought World War One. People seem to forget that Hitler and Mussolini were of the same generation as Eisenhower and Truman and Patton. They wouldn't have had to fight that war if they hadn't tried to take over the world. What is your generation doing to fight authoritarianism? Mine got a war ended, protesting in person (and some dying in those protests) while yours bitches anonymously or semi-anonymously on messageboards. "The best generation?" IMO my Uncles' generation (my dad was a teenager in WWII, I was born at the end of the Korean war) was the WORST generation, not the greatest. They brought the world nuclear warfare, my generation brought it the World Wide Web.
If you could have seen what the world was like in the 1950s when I was a child, you would appreciate what my generation has done for you.
The one thing my generation did badly was raise you ignorant, hateful crackheads. I sincerely hope your generation does a better job of raising the next generation than mine did, because we really sucked at raising you.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
It is difficult to control a group of Free men. It is much easier to control a group of Criminals. Pass a law that creates criminals and you start to control the populous.
The Canadian government is secretly negotiating...
Yes they're secretly negotiating. Nobody knows about it yet. Shhh!!!
Those are exchange rates, not relative purchasing power.
The exchange rate has little to do with purchasing power, since it is heavily dependent on trade. The exchange rate has gone up because the US has a trade defecit, which is flooding foregin markets with dollars. Add to this the fact that the dollar has long been overvalued, and it's not hard to understand why the exchange rate is falling. It is basically a market correction, which should utimatelly ballance out our trade defecit (as exchange rates fall, imports will decrease and exports will increase).
Relative purchasing power must be determined by compairing some kind of price index (such as the CPI). Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's simply the only way to compare relative purchasing power. The exchange rate only effects the price of imported goods, and therefore does not say a lot about price levels in general. Especially when you consider that China fixes their exchange rate to the dollar, and all petrolium is sold in dollars.
We need Canada there to keep U.S. honest!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement
Has this been repealed?
So if one goes to another EU country, they will check your ipod????
This is a very interesting point, actually... under which nations laws are the legality of the copyrighted materials determined?
When will you learn NOBODY gives a FUCK about your vendetta against twitter?
Of course now I will be accused of being twitter, so I'm not destroying my years of excellent karma by posting under my login.
Ok, so let me get this straight. In addition to your luggage, passport, and plane tickets, you'll also need to carry: Certificates of authenticity for all software on all digital devices you have, receipts for the purchase of every video, song, and other content to prove you paid for them, and official notarized letters from each of the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft stating that you have paid your monthly protection dues and are allowed safe passage from city to city. In addition, every human and animal on this planet should be compelled to have a brain implant that detects automatically each time that subject hears or sees any type of content, so that the actual retail purchase price can be automatically deducted from his/her/its bank account and forwarded to the appropriate organization for each instance. These implants would detect the audio or video and perform the transaction even if the person is blind and/or deaf and therefore cannot actually experience the audio or video, but was in the vicinity of said audio or video. This means that if you are walking down the street and some punk is listening to music on a boombox like they did in the 80's, or if you pull up to a stoplight and the idiot next to you is blasting his stock stereo, your bank account will be debited, even if you did not actually wish to experience the sounds produced by the aforementioned phenomena.
Oh, and I forgot to mention one other thing. Since the border guards will be so busy checking everyone's iPods, they'll probably let another 19 hijackers from Saudi Arabia through. As long as the Saudis don't pack iPods with their box cutters.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
hi twitter
It takes a LOT of corrupt people to sell us to the corporations, not just one dumbass from Texas.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Everybody would be fined if this law passes because you can't prove anything.This would cost us a fortune.Lets worry about maybe building another bridge so I don't have to wait in traffic for hours.
Yet once again, we see exactly why the "Global War on Violent Extremism" (aka The War on Terra) is, was, and always will be a completely fabricated threat, and an unprecidented scam.
Apparently securing the borders is such a low priority that what 12-year-old girls have on their iPods is more important that "securing the borders".
The "conservative movement" is flushed and swirling around the bowl. Can it just die and go away already? The "party of ideas" hasn't had a new one since the early 60s... and those ideas weren't anything to brag about, either. After all these decades, they still haven't explained what exactly about smaller government was supposed to be good... aside from them just saying it would be good.
Let's ask NOLA how great the "smaller gubment" thing looks in the real world... cuz it came across more like government sanctioned ethnic cleansing. You know, the same sort of thing Bush's always-ironic rhetoric is chastizing Burma about.
Look. It's a boat, not a boot.
I think it's a-boat time US Americans finally realized that.
Consider the unintended consequences of your lines of reasoning before you offer them. How about high fructose corn syrup? Displaying the female ankle? Sweatshop goods? SUVs? Clearly your reasoning works well in the case in point and a few other places, but I don't believe you might consistently apply your reasoning to everything without putting rather a lot of stones through your own windows.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
If you want to find out where corporations learned the art of externalizing costs, look no further than sugar grandma.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
I entirely disagree. You can absolutely judge a generation, just like you can judge any group of people. Obviously, there's always exceptions to the rule, and judging a large group of people is different from judging an individual (the judgment "sticks" less, if you will, when dealing with groups). Groups of people have characteristics that they share, and can be judge on, and to avoid doing so prevents us from making valuable judgments and comparing and contrasting things. By saying you can't judge any group of people, you're basically saying "they're all good", which is ridiculous.
You might have been against Vietnam and the war on drugs, but the vast majority of Boomers are not. Boomers are the most populous group in the US now, so while many of them may have been against Vietnam back in the 60s, I think it's safe to blame them for electing the politicians who brought us the Iraq War. Many of them were in favor of drug legalization back in the 60s, but has it happened yet even though they now have voting power? If you ask me, Boomers are a bunch of hypocrites. They wanted drug legalization and an end to stupid wars when they were young, but then they grew up and got greedy and selfish. Worst of all, the generations the Boomers have raised have been big disappointments, and all that can be laid at the Boomers' feet as well, since they were too greedy to bother staying home and raising their kids properly. You say you can easily heap scorn on the generations following you? That's your own damn fault, for your pathetic parenting skills.
I'm not judging you as an individual, but your generation is pathetic, and you should be ashamed of all the people in your age group. For the record, as an Xer, I'm not too thrilled with my generational peers either. And as a US Citizen with voting privileges intact, I'm highly disappointed in all my fellow citizens for the way they've voted. Just because you're a member of a group (usually by birth) doesn't mean you're personally to blame for their behavior, but it is entirely valid to make judgments on the behaviors and actions of those groups, even if you're a member of that group.
Quack, quack.
Other than - maybe - their kids.
The claim that "if it is on your iPod but you can't produce the corresponding iTunes bill-of-sale, or a reciept, or a physical CD, or Tape, or Record, etc." still doesn't seem valid. What if I paid cash, threw out the receipt, ripped the CD, and then lost the CD? I would have made my rightful backup copy of the media, and then lost it, thus demonstrating the need for the backup copy. But now I have no proof of 'ownership' or 'right' to listen to the music?
What if my music collection of CDs was stolen out of my car? Now I have an iPod full of music I rightfully own, but, assuming I usually pay cash, and am bad with keeping reciepts for ten-year-old CDs, I will be prosecuted as a music thief. Meanwhile, the thief that stole my CDs can walk across the border and say, "Hey man! I'm legit, look, here's my CD collection!"
Will I be able to take a lie-detector test? Maybe they'll just scan my brain as I drive through, like a Speed-pass, to determine which songs on my iPod I paid for?
Can we PPPlease! drop this f*cking IP stuff and move on to a more reasonable society? If it was a governemnt of and for the people, this sort of thing would have been banished a long time ago.
The very idea of this is as ludicrous as trying to outlaw particular thoughts... oh, wait, they're already doing that with Hate Crime Laws.
We are so screwed.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Thank you. That was more than I wanted to know (but still interesting). But the simple take home lesson for laymen (from your post and others) is that the question has come up (and I am not the first to mistakenly or deliberately make the treaty trump card interpretation - it seems to come up "regularly"), and the courts have so far decided that treaties are on the same level with federal law, and do not trump the federal constitution.
Does this mean that someone could challenge a treaty on the basis of constitutionality?
You seem to have forgotten the existence of prints. Many artists in this day and age make money through prints in larger quantity and lower price. Photographers essentially make all their money this way.
Can someone tell me how one discerns what songs on a telephone or ipod are counterfeit?
More so -- how would border guard be able to discern this by "looking" at the iPod?
Don't some of these devices store 60GB? or enough to hold 10's or 100's of thousands of songs?
They are gonna somehow 'search' through these while people stand in line at customs?
Um...something doesn't add up. I don't see how this is even close to being technically
feasible...?
Could someone explain this? Sounds like Reagan's Star Wars missile shield program back in the 80's.....and we all know how well far that got...
What makes anyone think this 'initiative' or treaty could get off the ground -- or is this another
bullshit US law to selectively apply to whoever they wanna make trouble for?
"I'm sorry, I'd like to see the receipts for those songs in your iPod..."....
Uh....
I take exception, like the previous respondent, I want you to know that baby boomers comprised nearly 30 million people, of which the majority were and still are mindless savants of the System.
That said, the smaller minority of boomers, like myself, were and still are the most active participants in the trenches of the anti-establishment, anti-corporate movement; whether it be in the streets or in unions or typing into some blog in the remote hills of vermont. Those 'boomers' who discovered, 40 years ago,
painfully and at personal cost, how untrustworthy and mendacious the system is: the military, the government it serves and the corporations/banks our leaders suck up to, remain faithfully in the trenches of radical activism.
Unfortunately, you paint with too broad a brush:(
resist propaganda
Dont get caught up in your grandfather's mythology! It was their generation that also perpetuated those policies that have put us where we are today.
The boomers ended the vietnam war, pushed civil rights thru legislation, oh WTF,
the list goes on an on.
Boomers were not in political power in the 70's (war on drugs), or in the
80's of 'Reganomics', iran-contra, S-n-L scandal, etc... It was your grand-parents generation that was calling the shots, not mine.
Look who maintains true power today, the boards of the Carlyle Group, the Banks,
the Investment houses: all 70-somethings who, if not of the WWII generation, were certainly not boomers.
Yes, boomers were raised self-indulgent, not too unlike the 'millenials' or
the gen-X'ers today. But they were also the ones who heeded the call of
"ask not..." while clinging to the idealistic notion that they could
make the world a better place.
resist propaganda
What's next? Everyone's house gets searched for drugs? The government is just testing how far they can go.. WE have to fight back and let them know that this is pushing us too far.
WTF? nicotine and cigarettes in particular are the worst drugs EVER. more cardiotoxic than crack, more adicting than opiates (read heroine) otherwise cocaine in VERY moderate doses, say 10-fold less than todays normal is better than coffee weed doesnt afect driving skills, and is neuroprotective, so it beats alcohol hands down also, in combo with opiates should 0-out tollerance "druggies" are people who value their health and quality of life, but the governmant ruins it all also its not the generations that fuck up everything, its persuasive moralists from them become polititians.
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
"Do you have any pirated music?"
It's sort of like immigration - (true story)
Border agent steps on the bus
Agent: Is everyone here a US citizen?"
Passengers: Yes
Asian chick: F*ck! I forgot my green card
Everyone slumps forward
The statement "my dad's generation smoked cigarettes, my generation smoked pot and the younger generation smokes crack" was meant to be a humorous jab. I was a butthead for 30 years. Stopping was the hardest thing I ever did (I chronicled my addiction and subsequent soppage a few years ago, google "how to quit smoking cigarettes" and it's still on the first page of results; it was a K5FP article) .
As to "more addictive than heroin", when I was in Thailand in the USAF in 1974 they had PURE heroin, over 99% pure (compared to the 2-5% in the US today). Every GI I met there abused something; we white first termers (mostly) smoked ourselves unconscious with that killer Thai stick (pot), lifers (mostly) stayed drunk in the NCO club when off duty, and the black first termers (mostly) smoked "rails". I say "mostly" because it wasn't universal; lots of black guys smoked pot, for instance.
To make a "rail" you took a Kool cigarette and loosened the tobacco, shaking much of it out. You then removed the filter, tore it in half lengthwise and reinserted it. You then dipped the tobacco end of the Kool into your 100% pure heroin and smoked it.
Some of these guys never smoked anything at all before going to Thailand. I met a few after returning to the states, and not a single one was still on heroin. However, every single one still smoked Kools!
A hooker I know is addicted to both crack and alcohol, and she's been through rehab a few times and tells me the alcohol addiction is worse than the crack addiction.
IMO no drug (except perhaps antibiotics) should be illegal.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
This is an ancient IT adage.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of media.
History is important too. Learn it. A station wagon crossing the Canadian border full of 1TB drives has more than 1^32Bps. You could fit every album ever made in the glove compartment, and every movie ever published by Hollywood in a box on the passenger seat. Bollywood could fill the passenger seats and there would be plenty of room left in the cargo area for all of the PrOn there is. It might be a bit tight for the PrOn, but that's not a bad thing ;-)
Help stamp out iliturcy.