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EFF, Public Knowledge Sue Over Secret IP Pact
Cowards Anonymous writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have filed a lawsuit against the Office of the US Trade Representative in an attempt to get the office to turn over information about a secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement treaty being negotiated to step up cross-border enforcement of copyright and piracy laws. ACTA could include an agreement for the US, Canada, the European Commission and other nations to enforce each others' IP laws, with residents of each country subject to criminal charges when violating the IP laws of another country, according to a supposed ACTA discussion paper [PDF] posted on Wikileaks.org in May."
There are too many old people waving money around, not enough young people to do the work to keep society operating, and not enough cheap oil to cover the missing labour. The old people have a sense of entitlement, and they lack the sense of interconnection that would preclude them from sacrificing our future on the alter of their comfortable old age.
So, the agenda is going to be, deprive the young of more and more, paying particular to attention to young immigrants who haven't been indoctrinated into the incumbent system through centrally controlled education. This way, you can bully them more effectively. Make sure you keep them divided so you can keep em under control.
These things are all inevitable. It's a generational war to the death. It doesn't matter what particular law is fought or not fought, or who gets elected. It doesn't matter how many pieces of paper with numbers on them get shuffled around. None of these meaningless activities alter the nature of the problem, none of them will change how it all pans out, none of them will change when it all pans out, it's simply a matter of towering inevitabilities rooted in flawed cultural values that were created long ago finally coming to their natural and painful conclusion.
All you can really do is laugh and try to be psychologically prepared for the coming conflict.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed comments offering suggestions for the trade agreement. Among its recommendations: Countries should allow investigators to treat piracy like organized crime, giving IP enforcement efforts additional resources used to fight organized crime. The RIAA also wants laws requiring ISPs to remove infringing materials posted by subscribers, the trade group said in its comments.
Organized crime?
Good luck with that. Who's gonna stand up to America - Labour? The Tories? Maybe the Lib Dems? The Green party would, but there's no hope of them getting anywhere.
The Labour party is shafted anyway. Gordon Brown's desperate clinging to power is exacerbating the mess left in the wake of Tony B.Liar. The Tories are at the highest popularity since Maggie's heyday and Labour are too busy fighting each other to do anything about it.
So we end up being at the mercy of EU bureaucrats who just rubber stamp anything to make their lives easier and wonder how we got in this mess.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
ACTA is something that has not seen public debate and that's remarkable for such sweeping and draconian legislation. Because the U SAP at RIOT ACT was passed without time for legislators to actually read it, and torture is AOK bills, I'm not surprised by much the US does anymore.
What, exactly do they tell EU and Asian officials to make shit like this happen? It looks like they convinced/bribed key legislators that this is all dry technical stuff best handled by subject matter experts and then stuffed the panels with copyright/IP warriors. The sad fact is that most legislators are too old to realize the implications of the laws they are producing. John McCain, who has never used email, may be sadly typical. Protest will surprise these legislators and start to convince them there's more to this than dry technical details.
This is the most worrisome part of it all. No oversight, no public control.
The only advantage is that it isn't technically constitutional and can be corrected with a more "pro-rights" legislature.
The U.S. government has become EXTREMELY corrupt.
Umm, because as sovereign nations the people in each nation should be deciding their own laws, surely?
If I have to abide by US law, or French law, I want a say in their elections too.
My argument against that:
Country A and Country B enter into this agreement.
Country B makes it illegal to teach a black person to read.
Now, you are prosecuted in Country A, because of Country B's law.
I would NEVER agree to be bound by a law of a country in which I have no representation.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I would go further:
executive orders last 6 months, then they must be approved as if they were laws by simple majorities of both houses.
Ridiculous. I shouldn't be able to go around and violate the laws of the country a live in, since I have full democratic rights within that legislature. Any other country is not my business. I can't vote there, so they have no right to put me under their law (except when I'm on their soil).
The exact same reasoning is applied to countries with oppressive regimes, because we find that their population has the right to oppose the government.
If the population is stupid enough to support a government that enforces bilateral treaties that enacts the law of foreign states on its population, so be it. But it sure as hell shouldn't be so because it sounds logical to someone.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
That's assinine - have you seen the USA's laws? As a non-american, I have no desire to be subject to their insanity.
As an American I don't want to be subject to our insanity.
"Democracy only works if you make it work."
... it was true in his time, and sadly its still true now.
That statement is so true and its not something I fully realized, even just a few years ago. I had thought that as my ancestors and people like them had fought so long and hard to finally win Democracy. Then surely as we now have Democracy, we therefore much now just keep Democracy. I didn't realize there are people constantly trying to undermine Democracy for their own gain and so over time, Democracy has to be constantly defended against these people.
The people trying to undermine Democracy for their own gain are almost by definition people without empathy towards others. They actually choose to violate Democracy for their own gain.
Its good to see that there are still groups around that will stand against the people who undermine Democracy. I have never been that interested in politics until this year, but the almost constant news in 2008 has shown me that 2008 should go down in history as the start of a massive move towards a global Big Brother. This year has finally shown me the danger of letting this minority of powerful people undermine Democracy. Its sad that in every generation, we have to suffer this minority of power seekers constantly trying to dominate others and undermine Democracy for their own gain.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken (September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
I assume you'll be giving up alcohol, then, as is the law in certain Middle Eastern states? And also giving up the practice of your religion, as is the law in North Korea? You'll certainly be surrendering your gun, as is the law in the UK. And according to the rules of various legislatures, you'll not say anything disparaging about Ataturk, the king of Thailand, Mohammed the Prophet, or beef.
Seriously, did you even think this through at all? Of course you should be able to violate the laws of other countries, as long as you're not in that country. A nineteen-year-old in England can drink all the beer he likes, and the Yanks have no fucking say in the matter. Neither do the English have any say in the matter when a man in America carries a gun around the place. The Sharia laws against apostasy from Islam hold no force in Japan. And American laws forbidding linking to copyrighted material do not apply in Sweden.
When you're visiting another country, of course you obey that country's law. But in your own land, you shouldn't have to give a damn what the idiot politicians of some foreign place decide to ban or not to ban.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"If you are educated and in the west, only a suicidal maniac tries to undermine IP, it's what your economies are built on these days."
Not all of it.
"IP" is multifaceted and in some forms (masses of trivial software patents) starts to strangle the very industry it's supposed to serve. There are companies that patent these useless "inventions" and sue others as there sole business model, there are many companies that feel they have no choice but to keep patenting every little thing so that when they inevitable step on someone else's patents they have something to trade or countersue with.
Patents are granted too easily and are getting in the way of progress, they need to be undermined.
Copyright now extends far too far, it is supposed ot be a limited term, it is a social contract between producers and consumers, such that both parties win. One side has recently pushed their powers far too far.
Trademarks, as applied to internet addresses, have resulted in rulings where people with legitimate uses for domain names have been walked all over by companies that decide they want it for their new product.
The economy of the west and individual IP holders would not be badly affected by reduced copyright terms, weakened trademark rights (or weakened trademark enforcement) and restrictions on what is and is not patentable.
with your logic, you can easily justify feudal overlordship.
feudal overlordship provided a system that those serfs living under it had been assured of jobs. even though it was little short of slavery.
you think that you are happy you have a job. and maybe, you may be happy with what you get, and it may make you live a comfortable life - or so you think - . but, i assure you, you are very probably getting WAY lower than what GNP (or any assessable value) you produce.
its due to bad distribution of wealth, monopolization - corporatism, basically.
IP laws of this date protect this. not protect you at all. you dont have the power to market any copyrighted stuff you may hold efficiently, nor you have the cash to protect your interests, and it wont be any different when shit like ACTA, or copyright cops come. they will be so busy protecting prioritized, big corporations that, you, as citizen or small business, will have to shove your copyrights up in your ass, at best.
so dont even think that there is anything for your interest in such bought-out laws.
Read radical news here
Exactly what I thought. This day and age, virtually anything our government keeps from it's people is due to some sort of corruption.
Even military secrets aren't a very big deal any more because nobody can do much to counter them anyway.
There still is certainly time-sensitive information like specific troop tactics and attack locations, but nobody's going to question that (Yet whenever you question secrecy of some government project, that's the straw-man that is thrown up)
That might be the most dangerous thing of all. The belief that 'it can't happen here'. It's quite safe to pass all these laws allowing all manner of abuses, because no villain will ever arise who will use them to implement a true police state and become a dictator. That can't happen, because hey, the constitution!
The Weimar Republic had a constitution too. Constitutions aren't worth the paper they're printed on once powerful people stop caring about them. As I recall my history, when it happened in Germany, the problem was that their politics had become totally polarised, fairly equally between the Communists and the National Socialist German Workers' Party, with shifting alliances of smaller parties providing the balance of power. With no stable overall government, the executive under Hindenburg got into the habit of ruling by decree (that's 'executive order' to you, chum), pretty much bypassing the constitution. Once the aforesaid National Socialists finally got their man into a position of power, he was perfectly happy to continue ruling in just the same manner. Goodnight, democracy.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Not to mention, it won't be too long till we lose the last generation of people that lived under and know what it was like to live before the current times of expected loss of privacy, sanctioned ovt. spying, and going to the airport before there were strip searches or metal detectors. (I remember the days of always going to the gate to greet incoming guests, and to see them off from the gate).
Hell, we have little kids in schools today with cameras on them at all times...soon, if not already, they will take this situation of being watched 24/7 as being 'normal'.
Sadly, what one generation tolerates.....the next generation embraces.
Protest now, before the freedoms we once took for granted become a forgotten memory.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think that this comment perfectly demonstrates the problem. Warmongering, corruption, ever more absurdly draconian copyright laws, the slow decay of democracy, violations of human rights - all those are minor things compared to how closely the leaders of the country follow some particular economic ideology in the middle of an economic crisis. It's just insane.
Nothing matters as long as the Invisible Hand can work unhindered, come Hell or high water. It's the current western equivalent of Sharia law: absurd, and most people don't want it, but there's always a vocal minority which wants to pass it anyway.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Before you let your bitterness completely kill you, wake up to reality. The people who came before us were working with the tools given to them by the greatest generation. That generation didn't even realize that the government had been co-opted. They didn't have the internet and access to information at their fingertips. They looked around and saw prosperity and they took part in it and did their best to maintain the prosperity for future generations. It has only been the last 15-20 years that large numbers of people have REALLY started to see what is going on.
The reality of the situation is that if you don't like it, don't take part in it. If you don't want the country to fight wars then don't go fight. Educate people who might fight about how misguided our foreign policy is. Don't invest in the market or in companies that fight wars. Don't put your money in banks, keep it for yourself and spend it in your local community. If you don't want to eat poisons, shop at your local co-op and farmers markets and give economic incentives to those who are doing the right thing. If you don't want your country dependent on foreign oil then stop driving your car. If you aren't willing to take the steps RIGHT NOW to change things, you're part of the problem.
'cos there's 40 million copyright breakers in the US at a time.
If you had that many murderers, you'd not have 40 million people!