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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.'"
There is no way this could be misapplied.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The ultimate goal of all the "industries". This shifts the burden ( and cost ) to the government ( tax payers ) and even further stigmatizes a 'non societal' act.
It also introduces jail times, long term detention during proceedings and a life time of persecution after prison..
All they will have to do is randomly accuse people with and sit back and watch the show and collect money.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ah, nothing like learning from experience! Make everything a crime. Let's use some tried and tested methods.
It's just our laws are optional anyway ~
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
the internet as we know it :(
I wonder if they've considered the consequences of jail time... throw a bunch of pissed off computer geeks in the slammer together (I know not everyone who shares copyrighted data is a geek, but just employ your suspension of disbelief for a nano second). Hell, throw in some geeks who haven't downloaded a single "illegal" thing in their life, just for good measure (no innocent people have ever been convicted of a crime, that's unfair to all those guilty people!). Now, simmer on medium heat for 3-5 years, good behavior.
;)
I predict a huge swell in the number of computer criminals actually doing harm to society in the next, say... 10 years. Those geeks are going to get out of prison and wreak havoc. And all because someone couldn't adapter their business model. Hope those media companies and their lawyers have no fear of identity theft
Notice how Russia and China are conspicuously absent from that list of countries....
We all know who to proxy through now, don't we?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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.
In all lesser cases the courts have been sure that individuals downloading music for some personal use and sharing some files hasn't been enough to cause commercial level profit loss for massive record companies. I have heard (from Teosto's - our RIAA - lawyers though that it could be applicable in other special cases. Such as sharing movie before it came to theaters, etc.)
That said, we haven't had those "These 7 songs meant 2 000 000 dollars of profit loss for our company" type of lawyers.
If it's not that bad how come you post anonymously?
They are going after non-profit P2P's. You mean like Shareaza, Kaza, Limewire? Who cares? All that stuff is absolute malware riddled crap. Those networks are not worth anything anyways. While outlawing them is problematic for preserving freedom, it would ultimately protect people. I don't support protecting the stupid out of principle, but we won't miss those networks too terribly. At least I won't have to spend so much effort blocking their installations anymore.
I don't think that this applies to the bittorrent protocol and any of those clients either as that is decentralized. The easy solution is for the client to remove all search abilities. Problem solved. Trackers are another issue, but it's not like any country has had great success shutting down tracker sites and blocking access to them.
In any case, this is moronic. The DMCA prevented companies from manufacturing and selling mod chips in the U.S. The result? Canada gets all the business and it never slowed its pace for a second. You would think that mod chips and pre-modded systems get stopped at the border. Nope.
There will be at least ONE country connected to the Internet that is not a signatory of ACTA. Guess where the repositories and websites will be located? Anyone? Anyone?
Honestly nowadays I think we need more of the Thomas-Paine-Muskets-And-Cannons Common Sense.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
which deters all murders
What is not covered in this article, but buried deep in the links, is that this treaty calls for nations to act immediately upon accusations without any burden of proof, and to absolve copyright companies from any responsibility if they engage in false accusations.
Imagine DMCA takedown notices for the physical world. Talk about a cudgel for anti-competitive harassment with impunity.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
They are trying to keep this secret because it would be politically poisonous if revealed.
As I think our friends in Europe have begun to realize, laws based on treaties prepared in secret by bureaucrats without democratic accountability are inherently corrupting of democracy itself. They are also an invitation for the corrupting influence of special interests, who will try and accomplish in secret what they cannot in public.
If these restrictions are worthwhile, let them be proposed and debated in public, as normal laws are. Otherwise, I think this whole process should be shut down. It has been going on far too long for any good that we have been getting from it.
If you live in the US, write to your congressmen and senators. If you dont, write to your local elected official (in Australia, you can write to your local MP). Write a physical letter (politicians are a lot less likely to listen to an email than to a physical letter although the anthrax scare in the US may have changed things there). Say that you do not support piracy/copyright violations and that you are not arguing that it should be OK to violate someone else's copyright but that you believe that too much power is being given to large copyright holders to take down content/shutdown distribution methods even when that content or those distribution methods do not violate copyright law. Say that you think that copyright holders should be going after individual people who are violating their copyright as long as there is clear proof that a violation did take place. (remember that in most of the lawsuits to date, the proof hasn't been up to snuff which is why the RIAA keeps dropping them rather than risk a precedent against them) Say that you believe that if these new copyright protection measures are introduced that they should be available for ALL copyright violations regardless of the size of the violation, the size of the holder of the copyright or the financial status of the violator (if they are available for everyone and not just the big boys, then they could be used for GPL violations) Say that you do not support their position on the increasing powers being given to large copyright holders and that this issue will affect how you vote at the next election in your country (thats assuming that the relavent local representitive is in fact supporting such increased powers, if they dont support increased powers, tell them that you support their position on this issue and that their position on this issue will affect how you vote at the next election in your country)
Another option is to get a real petition going (on real paper with real people signing it) and send this to your local representitive. Come up with real world examples of how increased powers for large copyright holders will affect normal people.
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.
Not bloody likely. If the RIAA has their way, those geeks are going to meet real (by their own definition) criminals in prison. Some of them (likely including myself) aren't going to be able to eat sufficient shit and will be killed by the other prisoners. Most of the others, when they get out, will be _broken_ by the experience, and will likely die young after slouching through a series of minimum wage jobs.
Not benefiting financial from a crime does not mitigate the crime. The ends do not justify the means.
Um, yes they do. If no one was harmed, it should not be illegal and "piracy" doesn't hurt anyone either financially or physically. Think of "piracy" as radio today, it serves to promote the band so they can make good sales on their concerts which are the primary means that artists get money. A copy of a file does not delete, alter or otherwise distort the original nor does it make it work any less. For example, if I set the Mona Lisa as my desktop background, does the actual painting devalue itself? No, because thats not how art works.
Downloading music illegitimately only hurts the record companies. Now, you might think that the record companies deserve a cut of the profits, however, in this digital age, its akin to preventing the release of cars because a saddlemaker might lose some money. The record company is dead. Saying that by going to a different distributer rather than the record company to get music is stealing, then I steal on a daily basis when I look at a computer in a store but decide to buy the same model from a different site.
Then there is the fact of the insane laws that can charge almost $10,000 for downloading and sharing a single song. These laws that allow for outrageous copyright claims to be made need to be abolished. If you got caught stealing a physical CD from Wal-Mart and you weren't running away, I'm sure that paying Wal-Mart three times the price of the CD would be good enough to set you free with little to no criminal charges.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.