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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 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.
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.
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.
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".
I strongly disagree with your assertion that IP protection will "protect America's future". If anything, IP protection will strangle America's ability to compete with foreign competitors.
There's even a precedent: when America was entering the Industrial Revolution, it built up a great deal of its powerful industrial base by "stealing" inventions from Europe. The European countries protested a lot about the U.S. stealing industrial secrets, but that didn't stop the U.S. from using those ideas to leapfrog its competitors into an economic powerhouse.
Doesn't that sound similar to the relationship that the U.S. has with China right now? What could the U.S. possibly offer China that would be worth China deliberately ignoring all those good inventions that it can use to build itself up?
If America really wanted to maintain a technological lead, it would be investing in educating its citizens in hard math & science, investing in applied research, and helping U.S.-only companies use the fruits of that research.
Instead, we get "leaders" who defund public education & finance anti-science propaganda campaigns, and who seem to think that America can keep a position of "world leadership" by waving its military dick around. Between those kinds of leaders & the idiots who blindly follow them, America has pretty much set itself up to be given the "Most Deserving of Becoming a Has-Been Superpower" award.