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EFF and PK Reluctantly Drop Lawsuit For ACTA Info
mikesd81 notes a press release on the EFF website that begins "The Obama Administration's decision to support Bush-era concealment policies has forced the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge (PK) to drop their lawsuit about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Federal judges have very little discretion to overrule Executive Branch decisions to classify information on 'national security' grounds, and the Obama Administration has recently informed the court that it intends to defend the classification claims originally made by the Bush Administration. ... Very little is known about ACTA, currently under negotiation between the US and more than a dozen other countries, other than that it is not limited to anti-counterfeiting measures. Leaked documents indicate that it could establish far-reaching customs regulations governing searches over personal computers and iPods. Multi-national IP corporations have publicly requested mandatory filtering of Internet communications for potentially copyright-infringing material, as well as the adoption of 'Three Strikes' policies requiring the termination of Internet access after repeat allegations of copyright infringement, like the legislation recently invalidated in France. Last year, more than 100 public interest organizations around the world called on ACTA country negotiators to make the draft text available for public comment."
ACTA will mandate software patents, criminalization of copyright infringements, censorship lists, data retention. States that today resist such measures due to local democratic pressure will be able to cite "Obligations under International Law" as an excuse to move towards eFascism. The goal is to send 4chan, piratebay, and anyone else who offends the powerful to jail.
This is a major campaign in the war on the future, by the past. Winning this war will push the digital majority towards adulthood.
Bring it on, I say!
How can the non-disclosure of the terms of an international treaty be justified on national security grounds?
I could use some :(
Energy and knowledge lead to discontent.
A full belly is enough for most people.
Oh, it will be made public. About 5 seconds before the vote so nobody, not even the senators (or congressmen, I don't know which is responsible for that in the US legislation) can read it. Or act against it. Or at least point out to those that should vote for or against it where the pits lie.
Bluntly and honestly, if I was a politician, I'd be strongly against it on these grounds alone. If a law is suggested with so much secrecy, it can only mean that I'm going to be bullshitted into voting on something that I won't support.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
if it is anything like the bank secrecy act it is probably .... like what they do for money now, but applied to 'intellectual property'. and full of the following:
specific indications of what should 'trigger' investigations of people, and/or their transactions, i.e., certain amounts of certain types of IP put through within a certain amount of time.
requirements to 'report' all transactions over a certain amount to government authorities... ie in money its , say, 3,000 $... in data it might be, 1 terabyte or something.
the illegalization fo trying to 'avoid' aforementioned 'reporting requirements'. IE, in money, if you separate out your transactions into smaller ones, it doesnt have to be reported to the government... its illegal, so... in data maybe they will say 'you cant split up a 5 TB file into smaller pieces to avoid reporting'
requirements about proof of identity for anyone performing transactions of certain amounts. ie, you have to prove youre a citizen or something before you can transfer a large file, with a photo ID or some other proof.
gag orders against all government and corporate employees who are responsible for reporting these suspicions to the federal government department in charge of the program. ie, these workers cannot discuss anything they report with anyone, including coworkers, or they will be in violation of law and subject to punishment.
add in a bunch of international crap to this...
maybe some standradization on what is in the reports... banks in the US have standard forms to fill out to report transactions over certain amounts to the government.
there is also the state department list of countries you cannot trade money with or whatever. well, now they will probably apply that to data too, or something.
who knows what other crazy shit they will put in here. it is absolutely ridiculous though to keep it a secret.
the trouble is that Mark Felt types dont usually work in huge corporations... not a lot of leakers on the board of goldman sachs or microsoft.
That is probably exactly what will happen, and when people acctually gets a chance to read the law and start protesting against it, they already have a set of cosmetic changes ready to make it appear more resonable. It i exactly what happen with the last three laws that are supposed to protect us from internet terrorism where I live.
We seen this happen quite a few times now, and still people in general does not seem to wise up to this after the fact "door in the face" tactic.
About 5 seconds before the vote
What vote?
This treaty is so important, and so secret, that it will be enacted by "Executive Branch Decision."
There are probably plenty of "secret treaties" already. We just don't know about them because, they are . . . well, secret.
"Negotiating secret treaties with foreign countries." That sounds just grand.
"Hey what law have I violated?"
"Sorry, can't tell you. It's secret."
The conspiracy folks will have some fun with this.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm not sure what the situation is in America, but the Australian Government seems to be covering its bases in this information page, saying "This decision to participate in negotiations does not bind Australia to join any subsequent treaty" and "Taking part in the negotiations does not oblige Australia to join any resulting treaty."
When the details do come out, and the public starts to scream about it, the Aussie government are likely to back away from it. I'd guess that other involved countries will take a similar stance. I mean, what are we? Iran?
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
Same as the old boss. Almost
He'll be better than GWB (heck, even my cat would be) but he still has orders to execute. For those who live under a rock, keep in mind that the US President decides absolutely nothing: he jumps when the Congress says to jump, and the Congress says "jump" when the financial/economic oligarchy that rules the western world says "tell him to jump". If we as a whole don't change tha way the economic world got corrupted until today (ie, corporations being more important than people) we shouldn't expect a single human, be it the US President, to do anything good.
This is a major campaign in the war on the future
Am I the only one who thinks the war is already won? You can not put the majority of a country's population in jail. The culture of the internet has already changed the game and no matter how many laws are passed, lawsuits are won, technology and attitudes are already ahead of those that seek to put the genie back in the bottle.
This just smacks of desperation. The powerful seem to be busy enacting policies which they hope will change attitudes whilst the rest of us are busy ignoring them and getting on with our lives.
It's not a law, it's an international multilateral agreement. This is better than a law because it creates the obligation to enact law, without all the fuss of democratic discussion. There have been many examples, some good, some bad.
In Europe the TRIPS agreement (which ACTA in part replaces, since TRIPS has been hijacked by troublesome BRIC - Brazil, India, China - countries) has often been used as an excuse for software patents: "TRIPS obliges patents on software and genes".
Same in the UK with data retention: law was quashed by Parliament in 2005, then the Blair govt. got it pushed through the EU with minimum discussion ("terrorism, crime and child porn" was the justification), and then six months later got it through the UK parliament with almost zero discussion. 180-degree U-turn.
ACTA is like this: "treaty-washing" of legislation that would never pass at the national level.
Please put pressure on the EFF to restart this. It is a major, major threat to global Internet freedom.
Chains we can believe in!
... did the Obama Campaign receive from IP holders? Was it a landslide enough to help him get elected, I wonder?
Between having so many "friends of the RIAA" in the Department of Justice, VP Biden bragging that Big Media will love the new Copyright Czar, and this continued tight-lipped-ness about ACTA, I think it's pretty damned clear what Obama's REAL agenda will be for the next four years.
All of you fools that thought Obama was the Messiah screwed-up: you voted for Judas instead. The real Messiah might have been Dennis Kucinich, and coincidentally he got crucified... both by the DNC *and* voters.
I don't understand how it is legal to enact a law whose text is not public. Somebody please explain!
It isn't legal.
That hasn't appeared to be a requirement for our government to do something for some time now however.
The US can't enter into a treaty without Senate ratification, even if the president signs it. That being said, they might not look up from kissing Obama's ass long enough to take their paperweights off the 'yes' button.
I think by "what the US wants", you mean "what certain interests in the US wants but can't get enough to support in Congress to get". As powerful and wealthy as these people are, the draconian measures are *not* something that most people in the US wants. That's why they are using this "secret treaty" technique to try to get their rules put in place.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Change you can believe in, but not really expect. Thanks for limiting our freedoms and working for big business, Democrats! You're just as bad as Bush.
Since when is our government supposed to be doing the bidding of outside forces, rather than the will of The People??
How did we let things get this far out of The People's control??
Well, I can tell you... it boils down to the old saw, "He who robs Peter to pay Paul is assured of Paul's support." Once there are more Pauls being paid than Peters being robbed, the country is lost.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
That's something I've pointed out before -- you don't get revolution unless a significant part of the population (I'd guess about half) are actively starving, and have nothing left to lose. And that's why real revolutions have always been bloody, and haven't necessarily made things better for the starving (frex, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution).
America is nowhere near that point, and probably never will be. However, with the increasing interest in states' rights, secession is not out of the question, and in today's world it would be damned hard to justify a shooting war to prevent it -- it would be seen as imperial rule preventing the Will of the People from being expressed in their choice of government.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The party flag you're waving seems to have flapped in front of your eyes.
One more time, for the slow kids... BOTH MAJOR U.S. PARTIES ARE CORRUPT. The Republicans are going to vote for this just as surely as the Democrats will. You and your "loyalist" (remember where we've used that word before, historically?) friends are just as slow on the uptake as the people who still think that Obama represents some kind of "change". Our only hope as a nation is to band together and shed ourselves of both infected limbs. Unfortunately the "my party is better than your party" games are apparently too fun, and will continue until we are inconsequential at best.
I know you don't want to hear it, and you've got "but but but" trembling on your lips, but it's so obvious that people really have to WANT to believe in their party to avoid seeing the (very thinly veiled) truth. The simple fact is that, like the Democrats before you, hoping that YOUR party is going to come to the rescue is the utmost in childlike naivety. Hell, it was even oh-so-slightly understandable from the Democrats, because at least that party was PRETENDING they were going to change to course of the nation, no matter how transparent that lie was (voting records are more indicative than speeches), you Republicans have nothing to offer by way of rhetoric other than "the Democrats suck" and some vague and uneducated mumbling about communism.
In short, stop the Republican trumpet call, it will do nothing but fail you, just as it failed you with Bush, just as the Democrats were failed by Obama and Clinton. The partisan squabbling does nothing other than to cement the control of those who don't give the slightest thought toward neither your wellbeing nor your freedom.
The EFF shouldn't drop this. Judges CAN call the Executive out on fraudulent claims of 'National Security' at least to the point of reading what it is that is supposedly classified for 'national security' reasons. When he reads it and finds out that it is just a draconian IP rights treaty, he can allow the trial to continue.
People pooh pooh this and pretend they can't shove the genie back into the bottle when it comes to the net, but it wouldn't be hard at all. Are YOU willing to go to jail to avoid having your net transfers searched? Are YOU willing to go to jail to prevent having your laptop searched at the US, European and other borders?
Most people aren't.
Sadly, I almost see the reasoning for doing this. At this point the US is no longer a manufacturing nation. Most of our GNP is from 'information' work. If we allow that to be devalued our GNP will be much lower than it could be, which means less fancy fighter jets, etc for the defense industrial complex... This is almost 100% certainly the reason this thing is 'classified'. And this will almost 100% be the reason our 'representatives' vote it into law over all our objections.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
I'd say rather that politics is the only business where by default, the fox guards the henhouse, and the fox very often knows that business very well... of course, it's not the business you want experts in when the object is to maintain live hens.
Lawyers (the majority of politicians being of that ilk) making laws will not make them for everyday and the common man, but rather for the courts, and for the corner cases that lead to loopholes, rather than for real life.
In short, laws are made for lawyers, not for We The People.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?