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Leaked ACTA Treaty to Outlaw P2P?
miowpurr writes to tell us that a draft of the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) has been posted on Wikileaks. Among others, Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow has weighed in on the possible ramifications of this treaty. "Among other things, ACTA will outlaw P2P (even when used to share works that are legally available, like my books), and crack down on things like region-free DVD players. All of this is taking place out of the public eye, presumably with the intention of presenting it as a fait accompli just as the ink is drying on the treaty."
Considering it uses p2p for patches.
Outlaws will continue to use P2P.
Sneak it in the back door via treaties that trump sovereign laws.
Im glad our collective governments have all the real issues of the world solved ( like famine, disease, terrorists , etc ) and can focus on such important things as saving some corporate entity from having to adapt to the future.. ( and make us all criminals in the process )
Can you say 'one world government by proxy' ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yes, let's do our absolute best to not advance technology. Let's make it criminal to think as fast as possible!
People will substitute away into another technology that will get around the requirements of the treaty if enacted. It's a nice thought though, isn't it ;-)
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
I swear to God, if Harper signs this, I am going to skull fuck him.
Bring it on CESIS, I'm ready and waiting!
So what is next for this? Will JavaScript 2 be outlawed because it is an advancement over JavaScript 1 in the way P2P is an advancement over standard downloads? Or the way that Vista is an advancement over... wait, never mind.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"How can we outlaw P2P? A lot of people use it for legitimately trading legal content."
"Exactly. We make legally trading content illegal, then we'll catch those copyright infringers."
"But if you outlaw legal file-sharing you set a dangerous precendent and risk a horrific backlash from the populous."
"Look, you want this kickback or not?"
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
\begin{comment}
It might well put a damper on piracy efforts that rely on decentralized distribution to stay afloat, but it will seriously hurt the (few) legitimate uses of peer-to-peer distribution. Imagine the strain on software development if the the good will and bandwidth of end users disappeared from their distribution model. At the end of the day somebody has to pay for the $n$ million downloads at 700MB apiece; I seriously doubt the paid development, marketing, sales, and support staff want to see it reallocated from their budgets.
\end{comment}
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
What, so I'll have to go back to BUYING the seasons of the shows I like? Argh! But seriously, this had better not pass.
Tell them to stop selling out their constituents.
From TFA
Thank you also to the Members present, who have done so much to advance
the cause of IP protection, including:
- Rep. Mary Bono (R-CA)
- Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA)
- Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
- Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
can someone come along and say "you can serve", and "you can request", and keep and monitor that separation? seems rather daunting
otherwise, if the status quo is two way traffic flow, p2p traffic can be obfuscated in such a way that it is hard to detect and hard to isolate from "acceptable" traffic
so i think all these laws do is breed stronger p2p apps
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Shutting down P2P may be extreme, but somebody needs to stop to those annoying Domplayer torrents.
Can we gather a list like this and ask candidates to comment on it, like the groups interested in abortion or taxes or the environment do? Or is that outside the scope of
I'm reading the leaked document and don't see that anywhere. It looks to me more like they are trying to make the legal climate in other countries more like it already is in the US regarding IP Infringement, not prevent legitimate operators from distributing their work through P2P.
Corporations used to write laws, but that turned out to be really inefficient. Why bother when you can write treaties instead?
And like I've said before, there's no bribing going on: the people writing these laws and treaties believe with all their hearts that the good of the nation -- nay, all humanity is served by maximizing corporate profit through physical force.
I wasn't always like this. And in fact, lest you mistake me for a turtle-suit-wearing WTO protester, I'm actually all in favor of free markets. It'd just be nice if we ever actually saw an actually free market in my lifetime.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
"...The agreement does not cover currency fraud..."
So that's still OK because it's not a copyright violation.
"Goodluckwiththat" Seems appropriate for this article.
I've been tossing around the idea of leaving the U.S. again. Last time I left for the destination (Southern Mexico beach). Now I want to leave because the U.S. is quickly becoming the kind of place where I don't want to live anymore...
I'm hoping that a new administration with fresh ideas might go some way to improve the situation here, but I'm getting tired of a country whose politics are motivated by money. It wasn't too many years ago that companies felt some sort of obligation to the betterment of society. Today, their only obligation seems to be to their board and their stockholders (in that order). And through lobbying, too much money is finding its way to politicians, corrupting the entire system. It no longer seems like a government "of the people, by the people, for the people."
"Who is really behind ACTA? Follow the money:
Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA)[4]
Top four campaign contributions for 2006:
Time Warner $21,000
News Corp $15,000
Sony Corp of America $14,000
Walt Disney Co $13,550
Top two Industries:
TV/Movies/Music $181,050
Lawyers/Law Firms $114,200
"
Can we outlaw these groups from the internet? kthx
So, my home FTP server would still be legal right? That technically makes me a server, and peers connect to me, so it's not P2P at all. IRC fileserver sharing would similarly be legal.
All we need are internet indexing tools for people's FTP servers and it's all good.
That was funny to read. Once. Now you're just spamming it everywhere. Fuck off with a steampunk dildo and die.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I wonder if all of the Deep Packet Inspection talk that has been happening as of late with ISPs was in preparation for the covert passing of the ACTA... and if they do "..restrict the use of online privacy tools.." i wonder how long until encrypted traffic was deemed illegal.
I honestly can't imagine what the pretext would be if, asked point blank, somebody needed to justify doing this sort of thing in secret. Obviously, it is secret to keep the dirty proles and rabble-rousing journalists away; but I can't even imagine a plausible sounding excuse.
How could doing this sort of thing in secret possibly be justified?(I'd honestly be curious to hear plausible sounding answers, my usual arsenal of quips is exhausted)
It would render a mmorg that ran its world distributed across the users computers illegal as well.
Not that I know about anyone that's working on such a thing [koff] as far as you know [/koff]
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
.... more shyster than a pickpocket in the Marakesh Bazaar.
and when you think that you people actually VOTE those into power in america, i become speechless.
Read radical news here
I went to wikileaks, read their summary, dled the PDF and read as much of it as i understood, and this document does nothing to 'criminalize' p2p activity. What it does criminalize is...
"For example page three, paragraph one is a "Pirate Bay killer" clause designed to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of unauthorized information exchange on the internet. This clause would also negatively affect transparency and primary source journalism sites such as Wikileaks. "
Basically, not just a pirate bay killer, but a wikileaks killer all rolled in one. Legitimate P2P is completely unaffected. except that there will never be 'open' trackers after this law goes through, in member nations. it's really easy to have a closed tracker, as WOW uses for distributing patches... now if WOW or say, SC2 uses P2P for 'user created content' (custom maps, sprites etc) then they might have to 'kill' those features in a patch, after all you can easily infringe on copyright (especially with custom sprites)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
Never. The business community needs encrypted traffic.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
...if this gets signed, will it kill off MediaDefender's business model?
and has to pass laws pursuant to our treaty obligations and if those laws can still be found unconstitutional.
Because the document he is commenting on doesn't say anything about P2P.
Yes, all IP packets are sent from one peer to another.
The defining characteristic of what people call peer-to-peer systems is that the peers find each other without relying on the Domain Name System. A service that relies on the DNS--like a web server--can be shut down by removing its address from the DNS. Wikileaks had a problem like that recently. If you can force everyone to go through the DNS, then the DNS become a single point of control for the entire internet, and you can easily shut down anyone you don't like.
The tricky part is establishing the legal principle that forces everyone to go through the DNS. You have to make it illegal to send a packet to an IP address unless you have obtained that IP address through a DNS lookup. Or something like that...
Well, of course a phone conversation is a P2P interaction. You can't ban all phone conversations. That is anti-industry. I'm sure the lawyers will sort this out. It should be just a matter of allowing content free conversations to take place. So allowed would be:
'Wazzup?' 'Dunno.'
Whereas absolutely illegal would be: 'Help. Help. The building is on fire.' Not only does that convey data, it is also spreading despondency and alarm. However, it could become legal to phone movie the fire, transmit it to a TV studio, and once they have the royalties sorted out, they alert the authorities who in turn ring the fire department. (On a B2B or blob to blob basis. Blobs have area and are not points. Blobs are not lumps of data. Blobs have CEOs running them. Blobs are good. Points are bad....)
... is that this "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" has taken aim, directly or indirectly, at a number of currently legitimate practices. Of note, I see fair-use being all but completely shut down by this.
Many people even download software to "try it out" before they commit to purchasing a full license. It seems that is about to be criminalized as well...
And what is this *expletive* about ex officio authority to act against suspected infringers? Now we've gone and devolved the international copyright system's legal arena to the level of the Salem witch hunts.
Bravo, society. Bravo.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
If I use P2P of any kind for any reason, legal or not, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I get for free, legally or not, what I could PAY for, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't spend every last penny I make on what corporate America tells me to, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't purchase a gas-hogging SUV every three years, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I ride a bicycle because gas is so expensive, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't consume, consume, consume, and CONSUME, I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
I object to having to live in a fucking nanny-state, so OBVIOUSLY I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
If I don't live exactly like EVERYONE ELSE, then I'm a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.
Know what? The fucking bastards can fucking drop me in an oubliette in Gitmo then, because I guess I'm a fucking terrorist. I don't do everything I'm told to do, believe everything I'm told to believe, and keep my mouth shut because my opinions aren't "politically correct", so that makes me an "undesirable", worthy only of societies' scorn, and I should be treated like a dog.
Let them sign their fucking little treaty. It's all paperwork bullshit anyway. I say it over and over again like a mantra: You can't stop the signal, goddamnit! Outlaw BitTorrent? Let's see them try, and if they do, someone will re-tool it into something completely different. Make the public internet unusable for anything other than their corporate bullshit? We'll find a way to subvert it into doing what we need it to do, or we'll tell them to go fuck themselves and go back to SneakerNet -- or maybe we'll just start creating a mesh network of our own and SCREW the ISPs!
</SOAPBOX>
I have the freedom to express my ideas using peer-to-peer packets.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Then you'll need a license to use encrypted traffic. Looks like investing in a good tinfoil hat is increasingly attractive.
Cynical Idealist
Okay, I only skim read it, but I couldn't find a clause that would outlaw P2P. And the clause about circumvention measures would not require signatories to legislate against circumvention of region coding.
It's things like this that convince me of the need to go the route of IPv6, build some kind of overlay network and slowly deprecate the governmental systems that exist officially... they're slowly approaching an absurd and unmaintainable end state.
:/
Then again, we'd need to find a system that wouldn't end up in the same place first. Bah.
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz
ACTA also has the effect of requiring that all traffic (and transactions) be routed through central points so that infringing content can be tracked back to the source. Pretty much a puts us back in the old Mainframe & PBX days. This not only impacts P2P traffic, but anything that is decentralized, which means the internet as a whole, along with email, IM, IRC, Skype, etc.
The framework of "collective rights" (meaning, in effect, the right only exists to whomever the government decides to permit to have it; which, in turn, means it is not a right at all) was established by our wonderfully progressive courts in order to circumvent slow-moving politically-backward legislative bodies who weren't really up to speed on certain social issues. The judiciary, being elite, know what the country needs far better than those pesky voters and their lapdog congresscritters.
The President of the United States has already used that framework to justify warrantless wiretapping-- it's a military issue, so the collective right to privacy in the 4th does not apply. (As opposed to individual Joe Blow simply having a right to privacy, period.)
The same tools will be brought to bear on freedom of speech as well.
So, everyone, be sure to be happy that you managed to destroy those unpopular 2nd and 10th Amendments, because in so doing you created the weapons that will allow each of the other to be rendered impotent as well-- just as soon as there is a popular reason to do so.
FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS.
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
I would think that covers P2P.
Outlawing P2P is about as legal as the government banning telephones because some people use them to make drug deals.
What kind of enhancements does a steampunk dildo have? Where would a person get one if they were interested? My, uh, friend wants to know.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
I wish I could stop. But I am a CYleBERty, and as such, I will wither and perish unless everyone pays attention to me.
The problem is that these guys have mistaken PIRACY for PRIVACY.
Now every lobbyist is fighting for new ANTI-PRIVACY laws.
I look at these people, and I see nothing worth liking.
Everybody uses broad generalizations.
It is a rather odd turn of phrase, isn't it? Ah well, it'll amuse the guys over at the Gaslamp Bazaar, I should think.
"Lisp
is there any way to verify that this document is real?
Just think of Kyoto, anti-personnel mine and Non-Proliferation, etc... I'm sure this is one is even easier to enforce.
Ask and you shall receive! Steampunk Dildo
Well...yeah! Look at it from the dictators' point of view. Do you people have nay idea how dangerous this "freedom" thing really is? You're trying to destroy entire social and economic hierarchies here. Sorry, man. It's gotta go.
What?
[quote]it's really easy to have a closed tracker, as WOW uses for distributing patches...[/quote]
Blizzard's tracker isn't closed. You can connect with any client you want and you don't need a username/password to connect or to download data from their torrent.
Of course if you don't have a WoW account then there's not much you can do with the game or patch you download, but that's a separate point.
Typical ... Sneak it in the back door via treaties that trump sovereign laws.
Treaties do NOT trump federal law or the Constitution.
When a treaty requires some internal law change to implement its provisions, that can only happen if congress passes such laws. Congress is not obligated to pass such laws or refrain from repealing them. Laws implementing a treaty are just as subject to being struck down as unconstitutional as any other law.
The idea that treaties are a way to effectively amend the Constitution by an easier procedure comes from a common misreading of the "supremacy clause" of the Constitution. What the clause ACTUALLY means is that the Constitution, federal law, and treaties, each trump state/county/local law when they conflict (and the laws or treaties are constitutional).
The supremacy clause from article VI:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwith-standing.
But see also article III Section 2:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;
Note how, in both, the treaties are subordinated to the Constitution and how in article III they're also clearly subordinated to federal law.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
the simple act of networking one computer to another is a p2p network ... It just might be hat day, because I sure see a great deal of individuals investing a lot of time and money for the distinct honor of wearing one shaped like their asses...
- satat
When I was in school, we were taught about Francis Cabot Lowell, who heroically copied machine plans in England to use in the US for textile mills.
England was so worried that their monopoly on their mill technology would be taken that they would search ships, cargo and passenger for hidden plans.
Fortunately for the US, Lowell memorized the plans and was able to build his own plants in the New World. His business was the beginning of the industrialization of the New World. Without which, the United States would have continued to be merely agrarian in nature. Does anyone know if they still teach this lesson in gradeschools, or was it killed when they started teaching kids to respect copyrights more?
Where do you want to run?
Do you think that European governments aren't listening in to everything you do or say? British police records and retains license plate information all over the place, as well as having installed massive video surveillance. Germany has passed a data retention law, and the main German phone company (and possibly some other companies) have been using stored data to spy on their employees and journalists. In addition, they tried out massive facial recognition screening in public places. It's pretty much the same thing in all Western nations.
And European governments have been falling all over each other trying to pass DMCA-like laws. That's in addition to already fairly draconian copyright laws and more limited "fair use" provisions.
And in the others? They screw you the old way: secret police, secret evidence, secret trials, informants, etc.
I guess one minor advantage of Europe is that they can't pass the death penalty for copyright infringement (since they don't like the death penalty) and that the prisons are apparently cleaner. And in Japan, at least you'll be bigger and meaner than everybody else. Beware of caning in Singapore, though.
But, really, you can't run away. The only way to fix this is to fix it at home.
Outlawing something that millions of people do....hrm...That worked really well for alcohol now didn't it?
we'll just have to learn to write on the walls in secret hieroglyphs...
and form a mesh of underground railroads.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
legitimacy
a very important concept
the law must hew closely to an actual concept of fairness. the law must not just serve a few well-placed economic interests. otherwise, it undermines the entire relationship between the law and its citizenry should it be understood that the law serves a special economic interest group at the detriment of the rights and freedoms of the people at large
if the people begin to see the law as illegitimate, as serving a special class of people rather than the public at large, this undermines society in subtle ways, large and small
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...this treaty is meaningless.
P2P is free speech ... I have the freedom to express my ideas using peer-to-peer packets.
It's also a free press: You have the freedom to publish your writings and other fixed works, along with any other writings or fixed works that are either not under copyright or to which you have an appropriate license (individual or general) from the copyright holder, by using peer-to-peer packets.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
making 'encryption' only for 'authorized' users will just mean every major 'pirate' will also have 'authorization' i remember when they busted this one warez dude using the university PCs he maintained to host several tb of warez files.. know i read it on slashdot but i can't find the article.
the whole point is just this, in terms of encryption, the cat is out of the bag, you can't stuff it back in if you can't catch up to it, and even if you catch up, people will find a work around. this is why computers in cuba, a complete dictatorship are still used to 'inform' the people living there, even though they can't get internet at home, they just get 'smuggled' flash memory cards or USB sticks, full of old news and they swap em around with friends etc. people found a way around the dictatorships rules, and as long as they don't strip search and full body cavity search Every Person who goes into cuba they can't 'stop' every source of 'sneaker net' data cards.
so no, they'll never get 'encrypted traffic' to be illegal, but they could easily make it so that all the torrent trackers have to be hosted in iran, and everyone using them had to use 'onion routing' or the like to connect to the trackers and then seed the p2p... oh and hey, while we're at it, our new police state that doesn't allow p2p, we can frame anybody we don't like, even the printer at work, of P2p infringement.
that's gonna go over real well, once somebody collects a list of IP addresses owned by billionaires(and fortune 500 companies), and frame them all of intense, p2p violation.
sure they got the money to pay the lawyers to get them off, that's not the point, the point is having a body of 'case law' where anyone can point to Gates vs Sony BMG where bill gates proved he was framed for 1,769 cases of 'copyright infringement' by a disgruntled hacker who's ip was never tracked down.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
A 'closed' tracker requires a user/pass that is private to 'create new torrent downloads'
blizz's tracker is closed as far as i can tell, in that nobody but blizzard can make new torrents on the tracker.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apparently there is some more information and a form letter you can send to your senators on the EFF website: https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=383
ACTA calls for copyright filters! That's right, internet filters that try to block you from accessing unauthorized content. Think Great Firewall of China, only for all of us!
My source on this is William Patry (check his blog). Patry, mind you, is someone who wrote a huge and well-respected treatise on copyright law, so he ought to know about this.
It's also been mentioned by Ars Technica. Sure, they "only" want to go after counterfeiters, but we all know how laws get used for unintended purposes and once those powers are given away, they're hard to take back.
there is a bell curve of trust for government in every populace. this bell curves drifts toward more trust, and drifts towards less trust as the government does certain things. one of the benefits of democracy as opposed to other types of governments is that trust and therefore legitimacy and therefore stability are maximized in these societies
on one end of the bell curve are the nimrods who trust their government no matter what, a fatal amount of overtrust
likewise, there are always permanent malcontents on the other end of the bell curve, who distrust their government no matter what, a fatal lack of trust. there are always people who you can't ever convince or reach, and these are just people to be written off as useless, since their distrust of the government is more a feature of their own malformed psychology than anything their government did or didn't do. unfortunately, these permanent useless malcontents are often the loudest (and dumbest) voices on a number of issues
so just because there exists people who distrust their government doesn't really mean anything. there are always people who distrust the government. the question is really one of how much of those people make up the populace. there is always a permanent residual amount, hopefully (for society) in the minority. there just the empty malcontents of history. a permanent feature of the human condition
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Where in there does it say "p2p will be outlawed"?
A deeper, less hysterical, and non-intellectually dishonest analysis than Doctorow's chicken-littling is at http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080602-the-real-acta-threat-its-not-ipod-scanning-border-guards.html
"For example page three, paragraph one is a "Pirate Bay killer" clause designed to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of unauthorized information exchange on the internet. what exactly do you think a p2p client is, my dear kesuki?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Seriously....the govt obviously has no ear nor idea of representing the population any longer.
I guess everybody, needs to incorporate themselves, and band together to lobby to try to get some individual rights again....
Apparently, the individual citizen doesn't matter as much as the corps...so, lets lawyer up and suit up in corporations...to fight on more even ground? Heck why not....you can pay less taxes that way at the very least....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The dirty asshats who keep trying to put out this shit really don't quit do they? When will they realize that the internet is much bigger than they are. It isn't going away. They will keep fighting it till they are dead, and will likely die trying. There isn't any going back though. The internet isn't going to bend over for them. They didn't invent it, and its not theirs to control. I get the feeling that Bono got pushed into a tree for suggesting the DMCA, and there are millions who would have pushed him (attached rockets to his skis and made sure the tree was made of steel-reinforced concrete) had they known. Its trampling on other peoples civil liberties. Saying that people who are pushing it are honorable is a joke. These honorable people in the past, and in the future, have been shot. Brutal dictators always get called what they are. Its the same on the electronic frontier as any other.
P2P webcasting has incredible potential for motivating social and political change. All the more reason for government to get behind business in outlawing it.
You guys are idiots. Have you actually read the document in question?
The most interesting bit is the part about international enforcement. It seems as though the US may be able to pluck citizens from other countries and try them in US courts..?
Recently a British citizen was extradited from Australia.. to the US. So I guess they can already do that..
Oh no, it's not unconstitutional, we just make private companies do it... FUCK THIS. If this thing goes through it is literary time to take to the streets.
I don't have to use DNS, I can type in the IP address directly.
Will they make this illegal as well?
No sig today...
Have you ever considered why those are your only options? (And, btw, isn't law in the US made by more than a single person?)
:-).
I am pretty tech-savy (having a Ph.D. in Computer Science helps), and I am also active in politics, both national and local (I am a member of my city council in DK, approx. 45000 residents, and was a candicate for the last national election). And, while one of my major motivations for joining politics was to work for better laws in the tech area, I quickly realised that in order to have any influence, or getting elected to anything you need a much wider scope. Tech stuff simply does not interest enough people to get you any votes. This is OK, by definition, the voters have a right to focus on what interest them. The problem with that however is, that in order to stay sharp on the issues of "the masses", in order to get any votes at all, you lack the time to work on/stay updated on "fringe" issues. But I digress.
Now, what pisses me off in your sentiment, which is echoed by many, is the inherent "it does not matter anyway" attitude. It does freaking matter what you do. But laying on the couch, waiting for a perfect candicate to get enough exposure that you discover him, and can vote on him, will never help. For the candicate it is a chicken and egg problem: As long as he can not demonstrate that tech issues has the interesst of a sufficient number of voters, he/she gets no leverage on the party. For fringe candidates (and most that are tech savy are that), you simply can not get any leverage on these issues. The candicate needs you to get off that couch and take part in the public debate (and, no, that is not Slashdot, believe me) and make this an issue that engages influential people or the media. Then, you will see tech savy candidates to your elections. So, get off that couch right now. Find the local candidate that are tech savy, and support the one that matches your overall political profile best. And by support, I mean: join his party, call him, go to meetings, write letters to the newspapers, let your neighbours, friends and coworkers know that this is something that matters to you. Join your local branch of whatever passes for a digital rights group in your area (EU: http://www.edri.org/).
As long as the political parties are made up of people that couldn't give less about IP and tech stuff, it is simply to hard to get any leverage for these issues, and the companies that are able to post large amount of money into professional lobbyists will get their way. Sure they will. But, you _can_ make a difference. And if you do not try to make a difference, quit complaining - you are wasting bandwitdh, really. (On satelitte here, btw, so I am entitled to complain about bandwidth
Never said it was right. But it happens every time we sign a treaty like this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
\begin{advice}
I just wanted to point out that you don't need to use any "comment" tags. Just use the form. Everything you put in the form is a "comment" and handled nicely by Slashcode server-side so that anyone who chances to view your text sees it auto-formatted as a "comment".
If there is some label *other* than the implicit "comment"-ness you would like to flavor your post, then it might make sense to include such a label. But "comment" is kinda redundant.
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Is is not amazing how every invention that has been made in recent times always comes under government attack and regulation. But then people everywhere have made government their god. Your chosen government god therefore demands obeisance and control.
Who's vote does ACTA satisfy? Why are you trying to blame the victims?
With an approval rating lower than Nixon, GWB is only doing what about 15% of the country wants. The vast majority of that 15% are simply ignorant. The remainder are people who work in or own oil, telco, broadcast and other corrupt business that depends on "intellectual property" and government protection. His rubber stamp congress is not much better. Please don't pretend that voting matters when crap like ACTA is floating by.
A better answer to "wasting" your vote is to build a web campaign to get out the vote and do a write in campaign, but you'd need to write-in candidates for a good chunk of Congress. Don't waste time trying to get a President in office. Most all of the useful power is in Congress. Oh sure you could get a President elected, but Congress controls the law making.
A president can only sign or veto, mostly. You veto enough stuff, and Congress will bail on you. Just like they did with Jimmy Carter. There's a guy who really wanted to change Washington, and failed, because they have the power to make or break a President.
So if you want change you can't just vote the bums out you have to have your own candidates to vote in, and you need to get people out to vote. This is best done in non-presidential years, since there is less voter turnout, so that an internet p2p campaign could flood the polls with p2p voters and totally demolish any other candidate. If you want a third party you need to work for it. You'd have to have people in every state. If a third party could capture 20 seats in the Senate, it'd be a viable voting block, that could stop any legislation from going forward.
So, in closing to way to create a third party is don't take out TV ads and campaign, and go around and do all that candidate stuff. Just get yourself a candidate to elect and then use the internet to build a voting swarm. Do this in an organized fashion, with enough people in enough states would totally demoralize those Washington insiders and make a formidable third-party.
I could go into many details on ways of effectively replacing the old tired guard with good quality replacements.
Is /. authorized to print any of the summaries of stories from other sites?
/. if this happens. Blogs, did any of you bloggers get authorization to talk about those: patent lawsuits, RIAA lawsuits, , ...
hmmm...
I see an ACTA take down for
Someone has to file suit to have the law overturned as unconstitutional, and get SCOTUS to agree that it is indeed unconstitutional.
Guess it's time to move to Canada. (Unless of course they cave in to the corporate interest and pass it as well)
This bill only seems to act to legitimize and further enable current procedures being used by the RIAA. It sets forth provisions for ex parte searches in civil actions for your home, allows indemnity of ISPs to civil\legal action for cooperation with rights holders, further degrading OUR privacy and the provision to make readily available personal information for identification\ligation once notice has been served for infridgement, possibly stripping some of us of the protection certain universities are providing. Corporations need to get with the times and a business model that works instead of rights pandering which seems to me to degrade innovation.
Apparently jwilcox is trying to discredit me by spoofing my style. I have encountered him on other boards and will resort to name calling as well. Personally, I prefer not to have an account as I would prefer to remain anonymous.