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ACTA Could Make Nonprofit P2Ps Face Criminal Penalties
dan of the north writes "Based on sources and leaked documents, Knowledge Ecology International now asserts that ACTA drafts are in fact 'formally available to cleared corporate lobbyists and informally distributed to corporate lawyers and lobbyists in Europe, Japan, and the US.' — The ACTA proposals currently include language that would make copyright infringement on a 'commercial scale,' even when done with 'no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain,' into a criminal matter. Both KEI and Canadian law professor Michael Geist, who has been working his own sources, say that the current proposals require all signatories to 'establish a laundry list of penalties — including imprisonment — sufficient to deter future acts of infringement.'"
By reading this comment, you are not committing an infringement. However, if you are committing this comment to memory, you may be committing an infringement due to the possibility of reproducing this comment, and selling it for commercial gain.
So, if someone records a show off of TV, can it be assumed they're going to pirate it? Betamax decision no more? Fair use is out the window? Whatever happened to common sense? All your rights are belong to ACTA!
Ah, nothing like learning from experience! Make everything a crime. Let's use some tried and tested methods.
What does the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies have to do with this? I wish folks submitting stories wouldn't be so fucking lazy and print out the words in full that the acronym refers to at least once before using the acronym. Why do people always assume that everyone should know what all these short forms refer to? Give those of us who aren't into memorizing acronyms a break so we don't have to google every submission to figure out what they are talking about.
It isn't that bad. We have similar law here in Finland. That part has only ever been applied once: When Finland's largest bit torrent tracker was busted a few years ago. The people who ran it got charged with criminal charges.
That doesn't mean it's a good law. At most it indicates a sane legal system.
Which is proven not to be the case in the US.