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A Look At ACTA Wish Lists For RIAA, BSA, Others
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property brings us an analysis of several organizations' goals for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which we've discussed previously. In particular, he points out the anti-privacy views of the Business Software Alliance: "While the ACTA itself is not public, the US Trade Representative has at least released the ACTA comments. While many of them are to be expected, such as the RIAA & co. wanting copyright filters, one item on the BSA's wish list really stands out: 'In a number of European countries one of the biggest impediments to efforts by rights holder to enforce their IP rights on the Internet is the overbroad interpretation of privacy laws by some European authorities.' They want ACTA to 'fix' that by neutering the privacy laws. Given the BSA's other questionable activities, it couldn't hurt to tell their member companies what you think of their participation. After all, organizations like the BSA exist in part to shield their members from bad PR."
Full documents of comments from the various organizations are available at Public Knowledge.
I guess we as citizens will have to start bribing our politicians too. Too bad the IP cartels can outbid us. :-(
They want to "fix" privacy in the EU to fix the industry they are killing all by themselves, no problem, the EU = EUSSR. There is no democracy in the EU.
Under bullsh*t of terror, privacy, freedom, and democracy has been rapidly hacked to pieces at the hands of the EU, it makes for a very unpleasant place to live. Hell, to can't even elect the rulers of the EUSSR, so they are free to pass whatever law they like, with impunity.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
crap, the list contains pretty much every company that I know of, including those that I work for.. Alright, Google is not there, but our beloved Apple is in, so what's up with that?
From the wiki:
* Adobe Systems
* Apple Inc.
* Autodesk
* Avid Technology
* Bentley Systems
* Borland
* CA, Inc.
* Cadence Design Systems
* Cisco Systems
* CNC Software/Mastercam
* Corel Corporation
* Dell
* EMC Corporation
* Entrust
* Hewlett-Packard
* IBM
* Intel Corporation
* Intuit
* McAfee
* Microsoft
* Monotype Imaging
* Network Associates
* Oracle Corporation
* PTC
* Quark
* Quest Software
* RSA Security
* SAP
* SolidWorks
* Sybase
* Symantec
* Synopsys
* The Mathworks
* UGS PLM Solutions Inc.
When's the next trip off this rock?
1984 was not supposed to be an Instructable dammit. B-(
The problems that I see though are:
1) People won't get off their butts to protect their rights. I'm just as bad - frankly because I'm afraid of losing everything. And with FISA in place disappearing when you disagree with the government is becoming more of a possibility every day.
2) Corrupt corporations and corrupt government are hand-in-hand. And due to the previous problem that likely won't change.
3) People growing up now think that's the way it has to be because they don't know any better.
I just wish someone had a good solution but I think if it existed someone would have used it already.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
I just cannot understand what possible rationalization there could be for ACTA not being worked on in the open(yeah, yeah, obviously I know why working behind closed doors would be what they want; but I'm talking about justification here).
Even by the bizarro world standards of something state doesn't like = terrorist threat and camera in same room as child = pedophile menace, I can't think of a good justification for doing a copyright "harmonization" treaty in private. WTF.
The "special interest" groups - like the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA - have far too much money, and in a capitalist society that leads to far too much power. We, the minority voice, cannot match the buying power these groups have, nor do we have enough political power to sway votes.
And believe me, no matter what your little nerdgasm makes you believe, we are a minority voice. We're such a small voice that my senator actually laughed at me when I called him up to complain about his support of FISA, as he assured me that the majority demanded this legislation be passed.
Quite frankly, there's nothing left for geeks to do but wait and watch as all of our freedoms are stripped away to protect the special interests.
Oh sure, some geeks will post bullshit about having their own revolution, but they're too close-minded to own a gun, and too lazy and distracted to actually get anything done.
Oh wait, those geeks are talking about a peaceful revolution, the kind we have every 4 years. The same "revolution" that is carefully controlled and manipulated by two (illegal) political parties. Yeah, great idea there. Or you could vote for the miraculous third party candidate who - thanks to his radically different views from the two parties in control of the house and sentate - will basically cause government to come to a standstill and get nothing done, assuring that another 200 years will pass before a third party candidate is ever elected again.
Quite frankly, I'm just damn tired of these stories and of the comments. "Write your senator" doesn't work. "Call your congressman" doesn't work. We're tried to get organized and fight these abominations of our rights as human beings, and we continue to fail. In fact, we've yet to even eat away at aging laws like the DMCA and Patriot act, yet we yammer on and on about how we can stop laws like ACTA.
Face it, fellow geeks, we have no chance. so, I beg you, slashdot, stop posting these stories, because they mean almost nothing now. Unless someone comes up with a way to organize a para-military force through an anonymous service to physically stop these kinds of atrocities, I see no point in discussing this stuff.
Both Orwell and Marx would be surprised how right they were. A world governed by the watchful corporate eye, the same corporations that also control the voice and contents of information. Still, the EU, or at least Northern Europe with Scandinavia at the top (literary and figuratively) are more democratic, less corrupt and directly controlled by commercial interests than America, but we too are getting there. Sweden is a prime example of this. The current liberal (in the European sense, that is right-wing market liberals) have excelled in demolishing unions (which increases the relative power of producers), privatise public sectors, have deep tie-ins with commercial interests (f.i. Carl Bildt, the former Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister, couldn't understand the conflict of interest in possessing a huge portfolio of Russian oil and natural gas stocks AND residing over the political negotiation on Russian pipelines); and of course, pushing through the FRA legislation.
For us, though, there might be a few things to do.
Switch over more and more to copylefted and FOSS operating systems and software. No copyright or financial interests, no interest for BSA or (maf)*IAA. Of course, the same interests groups have identified this as a potential thread and tried legal and FUD campaigns against it (associating FOSS with communism, and trying to declare FOSS illegal, etc.).
Boycott the increasingly meaningless blockbuster production of Hollywood and the musical cultural industry. I have stopped watching TV and buying music since there simply isn't anything worth the money. Frankly, it is not even worth downloading.
Freenets, darknets and stronger encryption. However, this will mean a rat race where the outcomes may be a larger and growing portion of increasingly controlled population; an increasingly isolated cliché of technologically savvy individuals retaining integrity but being exposed by their very anonymity suspicious black holes in an ocean of whistles; or the death of the openness and accessibility that has made the Web the revolution it was.
It is a horrible situation, and the only hope we have is that younger politicians will have a more vested interest in net neutrality etc. than the current cadre that is old and often criminally ignorant about the consequences of their actions in an informational world. Fat chance.
For Swedes, voting for the Pirate Party for them to gain seats in the EU parliament is one concrete thing we can do now, and let's work to increase awareness of the problem so more pirate parties will emerge.
This is turning more and more into a world I do not want part of.
A sorry geek or (some) f*ckn corporate drone ? What you are calling now is to stop ANY activity to stop this madness. If everybody would act like you we would have software patents in Europe legalized.
BTW, abolishing communism in former communist states (Poland, Czech, Hungary, Romania etc. etc.) was also led by THIN MINORITY (and bankrupting government). Majority chose to stay at homes.
Never stop resisting to corrupt drones or they will grab all your rights piece by piece. And don't believe some idiot senator telling you that your view is irrelevant - he's propably lying and laughing all the way to bank. If your current tactics don't work, figure out a better one.
Given the BSA's other questionable activities, it couldn't hurt to tell their member companies what you think of their participation.
Huh? It certainly could hurt. If you tell the member companies what you think of the BSA's actions, the only likely result is that you'll be added to their list of suspects. You can then expect a letter from their lawyer if someone with a name or IP address similar to yours ever uses a P2P program (perhaps to download the latest linux ISOs ;-).
You should be telling the appropriate legislators in your country and state what you think of it all. That's much more likely to have results that favor us "consumers". Remind them that the BSA have a bit of a history of suing grannies and children, often people who don't even use the Internet. The story of Prof Peter Usher's run-in with the RIAA is a good one to mention, to illustrate the extremes that the recording industry is going to catch "infringers".
I wonder if someone has a good collection of such stories online. It'd be a useful reference to send to legislators when "IP" bills are coming up for a vote.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
If the member companies start to get hit with flack and angry customers for their participation, they may reevaluate it (i.e. stop funding the bastards).
Without industry support, the BSA would dry up for lack of money.
I don't think that congress can do much except not listen to them. And it's hard for them to avoid listening to anyone who has money.
So I really think that bad PR for the member companies is the only way to reduce the member list.
> Money given to them is less
> self defeating than money given to M$
um, what?
Do we need to add EUSSR to the list?
FYI, BTW, AFAICT we have RIAA, USA, BSA, IP, PR, ACTA just from TFS. In TFA itself, we have more: USTR, EFF, ISP, DRM, DMCA, TRIPS, WCT, EDUCAUSE, CEA, ESA, MPAA.
The acromyms has gone FUBAR and if you can't understand them, you are SOL. YMMV.
Without releasing any information what soever, the g8 has fat tracked this abomination.
Oh surprise surprise, I give up. I simply refuse to respect US law anymore. I'll speed whenever the hell I want, steal whatever the hell I want, and if asked, i'll tell them where the fuck to stick it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The solution is to bypass the media cartels and create a direct link between media creators and their audience, wherever they may be... Here's my solution - linking all the world's (possibly, but not neccesarily Creative Commons) Content via an RSS-feed like system navigable from any pc, laptop, mobile or TV set top box with a net connection.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.