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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.'"
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."
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make install -not war
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.
And how exactly does that allow a treaty to remove a part of the constitution? (Crappy politicians defining words however the hell they want aside)
See also Reid v. Covert
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
FALSE. Treaties have the same strength as a law passed by congress, but are not exempt from the Constitution.
"Our constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. It is, consequently, to be regarded in courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision." -- Foster vs Nelson
-- $G
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?
How can a customs agent possibly determine the MP3s that I have are, or are not purchased with validity
When it comes to checking all iPods, they can't. What is far more likely is that if they have you tagged for some other problem this will mean they can then have your iPod checked over for possible infringing material.
I'm wondering whether they will be thinking that a full iPod means the content is pirated or not.
Also, it's not just music that can be stored on a iPod, or similar music devices. You can store just about anything, so it will also be that they can look for non media content.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
In the European Union, much local film and art music is produced with the support of state subsidies. Private patronage isn't as big here as in the U.S. If a government is committed to keeping the arts strong, and if it fairly distributes money evenly to all artists instead of just those a government official favours, then things work very well even without the notion of copyright. France is an excellent example of how state arts funding works well when certain arts are important but not always economically profitable. IRCAM is now in its third decade of generous state funding.
I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but Swiss VPN offer PPTP VPN for $5/month. I can't vouch for the service as I haven't used it, but the price looks good.
Except that private copying of music is legal in Canada.
the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
Sonds to me like the assholes in power are trying to circumvent the laws for the benefit of American corporate interests..
Time to contact your Member of Parliament and express your displeasure. Snail mail works best, no stamp is needed.
Seriously, if you believe that the example I gave shouldn't be allowed to stand, you might as well give children a carte blanche to commit murder. The law in question was designed to prevent young offenders known to have a pattern of criminal behaviour from committing additional crimes. Within 24 hours of it being struck down, the individual stole a car and caused a car accident. Or a popular law which violates the rights of a minority should be allowed to stand? There is no such thing. The closest match is Quebec's language laws, and those aren't popular.
By the way, did you read the copy of the charter in question?
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.
The Register was right in 2003 to be "skeptical" of the merits of any fair use analysis that asserts that space-shifting or format-shifting is a noninfringing use. ... This is particularly the case in today's market, where inexpensive legitimate digital copies of most types of works are readily available, and increasingly can be obtained through online download services. Where a market is functioning to serve the demand otherwise being fulfilled by unauthorized copying, the likelihood that the unauthorized copying is fair use is diminished.
and
Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use.