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EU ACTA Doc Shows Plans For Global DMCA, 3 Strikes
An anonymous reader writes "The European Commission analysis of ACTA's Internet chapter has leaked, indicating that the US is seeking to push laws that extend beyond the
WIPO Internet treaties and beyond current European Union law. The
document contains detailed comments on the US secret copyright treaty
proposal, confirming the desire to promote a 'three-strikes and you're
out' policy, a Global DMCA, harmonized contributory copyright
infringement rules, and the establishment of an international
notice-and-takedown policy."
More evidence that there is a real movement afoot for a global government with the goal of undermining the freedom and liberties of U.S. citizens.
I don't think this treaty would pass in the US Senate. I would forsee the unlikely coalition of far rightists and far leftists actually collaborating to defeat this, just as they actually have on some other things.
This is my sig.
Down with the white-man based one world government!
New Economic Perspectives
On this point I am really saddened by the Obama administration. The 3-strikes-and-out is hugely unpopular including amongst artists. It is "lobbying for special interests" at its finest and really should not belong to the 21st century. There are already some countries who recognized access to internet as an opposable right.
I thought now there were progressives in the White House and in Senate ? Does nobody want geeks' votes anymore ? How many pirate party will be necessary in order for this madness to end ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Did you see the bit about legal enforcement of DRM provisions. LAN parties might get you out of having your ISP 3 strikes you; but they won't do you much good if possessing gear that can actually rip and copy stuff is about as safe as possessing Schedule 1 substances...
Dear Rest-of-the-World:
I realize that you have already had to deal with an invasion of Iraq to eliminate imaginary "weapons of mass destruction" and a world-wide financial collapse (although, to be fair, you bear some of the responsibility for that one... after all YOU believed our our uncritical rating agencies). And we're still stumbling around on that ruining-the-planetary-climate issue. So I know it's a big favor to ask, but would you please, PLEASE restrain my country's insane leaders?
Thanks...
-- A Sane American.
So say you get kicked off the net - how do they enforce this? Just off the top of my head I can think of a dozen ways to browse the net semi-anonymously (coffee shop, library, college, neighbors wi-fi etc etc). Not to mention having internet access at work - does that mean I'd be denied employment world-wide for messing around on the net?
versus
millions of teenagers who are
1. technologically astute
2. media hungry
3. POOR
let them pass any goddamn law they want. who fucking cares?
its nothing more than damage to route around, like the internet was designed to do
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I would think that after all that has happened in the last decade, people would stop being so surprised when our bloated government abuses its power *again*.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
People like you are as much a problem as Big Media's absurd power grabs. You are unashamedly breaking the law, which makes you the poster boy for Big Media when they are pushing for ever more extreme laws. And while you will deserve it if you ever get screwed by those laws, lots of people will wind up suffering through no fault of their own if these measures go through.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Politicians call it "strategically avoiding success."
By 2025 (at the current rate of advance sustained over the last 30 years) a TB of disk storage will cost about a penny. For $100, you will be able to buy a hard drive that will hold 2.5 *centuries* of HD video. While that might not be enough to hold all of mankind's copyrighted media, it will be more than enough to hold more media of whatever format will be in use in 2025 than a person could reasonably consume in their lifetime.
http://brownzings.blogspot.com/2009/11/disruptive-change.html
The point is, if we copyright any and every scrap of content produced, and maintain the same sorts of restrictions on such content that we enforce at the current time plus all the restrictions of the ACTA.... We will have no legal way to use a storage card we might get as a prize in a Cracker Jack box, much less a drive we actually buy.
And if people can carry around cheap storage sufficiently large to simply clone everyone's media libraries who they might meet, to sort out what they want later, who needs the Internet to "pirate"? (Thus what would be the real use of "Three Strikes"?)
When I write a joke, it is copyrighted. But jokes are so easy to repeat, and so hard to track that there isn't any way I can be paid for each time my joke gets retold. When media becomes easier to pass along than a joke, how can anyone require a payment for each retelling? There are other ways to be compensated, and the entertainment industry is going to have to learn to live with Moore's Law just like any high tech company does. Learn to leverage the efficiencies they gain with better technology to offset the loss of revenue that occurs as technology eliminates sources of income.
Live Concerts, Movie Theaters, endorsement deals, Shirts, and other value adds (plus who-knows what value adds might arise in the future) may be where the entertainment industry will have to go. Cheap (and I don't mean $10, or $5, or even $3) downloads of non DRM movies would bring in plenty of income from those that simply don't want to bother with other services.
Life is tough as technology takes away your income. But we are not going to kill the advance of technology, as much as the entertainment industry would like us to.
The little guy who sells bootleg dvds in order to support terrorism. Damn pirate bay have been cutting into his profits.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Just for curiosity's sake, could we ensure the following if these laws get passed?
Company A becomes convicted of copyright infringement 3 times
Company A loses permanent access to the internet
I'm sure that Time Warner, Sony, et. al. have all been convicted of copyright infringement at least 3 times. Can we have their access to the internet permanently revoked?
Thank god they're following baseball rules. It could have been worse. It could have been cricket.
your random grandmother or soccer mom will lose their internet access for what leachers on their insecured wifi do or what their children's friends do
and all the while the real action will move further underground, further encrypted, steganographed, obfuscated, made sparse, and otherwise evolved to be more and more resistant to any sort of inspection, interception or even tracking
thank you, governments of the "free" west, for breeding the ultimate untraceable file sharing network due to your overzealous protection of your corporate executive friends in dead media industries. fucking blind fools
it does you no good, assholes, to be the losers in the game of technological progress, and not even know it
one should know when they are defeated
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As a self-employed game developer, I own the copyright on all the stuff I sell. While I can recognise the need for a unified global copyright system (and unified global laws on sales and export/import tax), my sales model assumes I can sell any given product for 10 years, and I would be perfectly happy if copyright durations were reduced to that. That said, 10 years may well be optimistic, and I doubt I would have any problems if it was reduced to 5 years. Anyone in a who must make their money back quickly is in the same boat — the rest of the profits are just "keeping score".
From what I've seen, this treaty is not going to make the world a better place, it's going to make it worse, especially given how little most people know about IP law (patent != copyright != trademark != database right != industrial design right != geographical indication != trade secret). Short duration IP-monopoly-rights are non-issues for rapidly moving industries, and shorter durations make it easier to move faster.
Once something is ripped, you don't need any special tools to copy it.
That is the core of why DRM is so absurd. It only takes one guy with a cracking tool to give access to the other 6 billion of us.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I know I shouldn't, but:
The condo stuff you mention is because you didn't read the contract you were signing. I own my home and the ground its on so I can do what I damn well please. Pet regulations aren't just for rabies, they are humanitarian so we don't have streets teeming with unvaccinated starving wild dogs and feral cats like Calcutta. Car insurance is so you don't get hit by a deadbeat who won't pay to fix your car, and is a common protection. Emissions tests are really only in California so you give yourself away as being against liberalism simply to be contrary since you have the choice to live where you will, but then you wouldn't have anything to bitch about, no? Your tax info is just wrong. You have to file one return for State (that includes your whole family), one for Federal, and possibly a local/COUNTY (not country you stupid non-english speaking copypasta) return. Airline security is theater to make sure people don't stop (as I have) using the air transit system since there is little to no REAL security involved in the system. Helmet/seatbelt laws are mainly there to stem the tide of braindead (literally) idiots who we pay to keep housed and fed since they turned themselves into drooling idiots and the government is left with their care when their broke white-trash families can't afford to pay after paying for all the chrome and noise. Mind you I ride, I ride safely, and I wouldn't think about getting onto a road with a bunch of cagers without a lid on.
My Babylon
Describe a credible system in which anyone can copy anything without restriction but there is still sufficient incentive for people to produce and share high quality work in the first place
Assurance contracts. The author specifies a bounty amount, fans pledge money, and if the sum of pledges meets the bounty amount, the author is contractually bound to publish the work under a free license.
You mean like artists and entertainers before copyright came along and current artists and entertainers whose works are not covered by copyright?
I seriously doubt we'll here anything negative on the mainstream media about ACTA.
I share this doubt. The only major TV news outlet that's not MAFIAA-owned is PBS. All the rest share a corporate parent with an MPAA member: NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC are with Universal Studios, ABC is with Disney, CBS is with Paramount in National Amusements, and Fox News is with 20th Century Fox in News Corp.
Not really. I'm not in the share-everything-cause-you-can boat but this has become something like destroying a persons life for jay-walking.
We rally against such laws because they become increasingly divorced from the reality of modern human existance.
When the media distribution companies decide to join us and work with the rest of the modern population maybe something less rediculous or radical will result.
If, and only if, devices continue to be built in the "default allow" mode.
Consider the xbox360 or the PS3: Unless the hardware is subverted, one unit at a time, they will refuse to execute code that hasn't been cryptographically blessed by their respective overlords. Now, because the games are pressed onto disks for retail sale, this system would still be vulnerable to bit-for-bit disk clones; but in the (very likely) future download-heavy environment, this will likely be replaced by signed unique-per-device binaries, and devices that will execute only binaries that are designated for them, and signed.
Audio and video would be harder; because of the market pressure created by the large amounts of legacy material; but that is nothing that buying the right law couldn't fix.
As long as DRM is based on trying to build uncrackable systems, it is(as you say) absurdly impossible. Any one crack means a plaintext copy circulating freely. If, however, you create a DRM scheme that is "default deny" instead of "default allow", it suddenly becomes a great deal more plausible. If a device will only interact with material signed by a trusted party, a plaintext copy is useless. If some trusted party does sign a pirated copy of something, they can simply be revoked.
Sure, there'll still be hacked devices(or built from scratch devices) floating around that can read plaintext copies of things) and people who play cat-and-mouse by stealing signing keys and signing pirated material and circulating it until those keys get burned; but it will be radically harder than it is now. Even worse, depending on how exactly you design the crypto key hierarchy, you could even use it as a means of punishment. Say, for instance, that (because of strong pressure from holders of legacy non-DRMed material) our hypothetical DRM system allows users to sign previously plaintext material themselves, in addition to automatically signing future documents they create. If material you have signed ends up circulating P2P and your key is revoked, all your documents become unreadable. Any number of unpleasant elaborations are possible.
Blame the corrupt entertainment industry that lobbies our lawmakers into betraying the very people who elected them.
One can't get elected without the exposure that the news media offers. Look at how the press buried Ron Paul, for instance. I'd blame the lack of separation of news media and fictional entertainment: NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News are all owned by MPAA members.
The Fashion Industry.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
So, why don't you see if you can do better? Describe a credible system in which anyone can copy anything without restriction but there is still sufficient incentive for people to produce and share high quality work in the first place, and I'm sure the sceptics like me will be interested in what you have to say.
It's called "not having copyright," and it was good enough to give us Shakespeare and Milton. ...why? Hollywood comes up with maybe two worthwhile ideas a year. Before I fight you on that one, I'd like to hear your explanation of any system that will actually cause people to produce and share high-quality movies, since it sure isn't happening now.
Really, what's the problem here? Are we worried about musicians? The vast majority of popular musicians would make more money working at a 7-11 than they do during their time on the market under the major labels.
Are we worried about books? People have been writing books without copyright for as long as there's been books. The publishing industry is collapsing under its own weight, because of the abundance of free content out there (since the Internet appears to prove that people prefer "free" to "good").
Are we worried about movies?
Really, for someone with a sig protesting the power of the state, you seem awfully chipper about "property" that's been wholly invented by the government.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Nah, these laws are a very recent phenomena. I think if you put copyright in the context of entire world history you'll see that great works of art were also produced in times when there was no copyright. A lot of our intellectual property laws, especially those concerning patents, are descended only recently from Elizabethan English law where the monarch granted trading monopolies and guilds were formed to eliminate competition.
......
You think Homer wouldn't have written The Odyssey if they'd been no copyright? Oh wait
If it's human nature to produce great works of art (including music) people are gonna do it regardless.
1. Perhaps it's true that most popular musicians would be better off working at 7-11... but if that were true they'd be spending their time working at 7-11, not making music. So that doesn't actually address the point.
2. Gutenberg invented his press in 1436. Copyright was invented in Venice in 1486, a mere 50 years later. So no, people have not been writing books without copyright for as long as there's been books. Again, that doesn't address the point.
3. With movies your argument basically boils down to 'movies suck anyway,' which is a pretty subjective statement. The 'poor quality' in your view certainly hasn't prevented Hollywood from being popular. Certainly, it produces works good enough to encourage people to break the law to view them. So again, this doesn't address the point.
1. The point being, strong monetary incentives are not necessary for people to produce quality works (or whatever passes for it) in the music business.
2. So now no books were written prior to 1486? Pfft. Besides, early copyright was (1) laughably poorly enforced, and (2) primarily intended to ensure the accuracy of the text, rather than the profitability of the print shop.
3. It produces works terrible enough that people won't watch them on the terms offered by the market. "People won't pay to see your movie" is not a strong argument of the movie's quality. In any event, my point here was just that I don't care if Hollywood rots. If there's that much demand for its content, someone will fund it somewhere.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
So, why don't you see if you can do better? Describe a credible system in which anyone can copy anything without restriction but there is still sufficient incentive for people to produce and share high quality work in the first place, and I'm sure the sceptics like me will be interested in what you have to say.
It is a system just like ours, but without copyright. It's a very credible system, as it worked very well for some 10000+ years and gave us epic works of art of every form imaginable: literature (fiction and non-fiction), music, architecture, painting & drawing, live acting, to name just a few. There is not a shred of evidence that copyright provides an actual incentive to create artistic works, i.e. that fewer works would be created without copyright, or that the overall quality would suffer. Not a shred. Indeed, recent studies concerned with measuring the dependence of artistic output on copyright term length failed to find anything statistically meaningful (citation on request). If you are concerned with credibility, you should stop saying that copyright helps to increase artistic output, because, as a matter of fact, it does not.
There were plenty of works created before the copyright was invented, and today we still have high quality works, artistic and otherwise (e.g. FOSS) that are being created every day. At the same time, there is a bounty of evidence for the systemic abuse of the copyright by the content owners, who find the law helpful for cementing their content distribution monopolies. They do so mainly by hiding in their vaults a good century worth of artistic works, thereby robbing us of the PD and creating an artificial scarcity.
Additionally, you have to explain why a monopoly is good when it comes to producing copies of artistic works. If you agree that markets operate well (from the consumer's point of view) in presence of competition, you have to point out the fundamental difference between pizza and painting. Apparently, there is something about distributing copies of a painting that makes a monopoly good, so please tell us what it is. Explain why an artist should have a right to restrict the sale of anything but the first copy. Why does a pizza parlor owner have to bake pizzas to make a living and an artist can sit on his hands after drawing just one painting? If you try to address this issue, you will probably say something about inability to recoup costs in case of big-budget projects like movies, but this is bullshit. You will still have to explain why a monopoly is the best way (for a consumer!) to pay for these projects, while other perfectly sound ways of raising funds are known and used today (citation on request).
Now is the time to start financing the guys who work on the TOR and Freenet protocols
No sig for the moment.
Much of what you said is wrong, even if I don't, necessarily agree with the OP's rabid rant.
"I own my home and the ground its on so I can do what I damn well please."
This depends, entirely, on where in the US you live. Many, many parts of this country (especially in and around cities) have zoning laws that restrict what you can and can't do on your land (examples: no cars on blocks, no loud noises at all hours, building size limited based on lot size, zoning board final approval over what you want to build, etc.). You can get away from much of this by living way out in the country, but even that isn't a gaurantee. Then (as mentioned by someone else in this thread) there are eminent domain laws which say that the government can take your land at any time as long as they pay you for it. You may not like it, but they are the law.
"Pet regulations aren't just for rabies, they are humanitarian so we don't have streets teeming with unvaccinated starving wild dogs and feral cats like Calcutta. Car insurance is so you don't get hit by a deadbeat who won't pay to fix your car, and is a common protection."
both true enough.
"Emissions tests are really only in California so you give yourself away as being against liberalism simply to be contrary since you have the choice to live where you will, but then you wouldn't have anything to bitch about, no?"
Thanks, I'll have to remember to let them know that the next time the state of Illinois tries to fine me for not bothering to submit to their mandatory emissions checks. Also, someone should write a letter to the New York State DMV to let then know about the typo on their website where it says "All vehicles registered in New York State must get a safety inspection and an emissions inspection every 12 months. " (http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/vehsafe.htm). Let's see, that's two examples of you being, outright, wrong in your facts (representing, might I add, a very large portion of the population and, by extrapolation, a large portion of this country's economic opportunity with which to support yourself and your family). How much you wanna bet we can find more if we look?
This, of course, brings us to the sheer BS of your basic premise of "you have the choice to live where you will, but then you wouldn't have anything to bitch about, no?". We all live in what I like to call "the real world". Of course it's possible to move if you don't like your states laws, but in the "real world" moving is often a harsh economic/social hardship on you and your family especially if you happen to own you house outright like you just got done advocating in your previous sentence. I think it's, more than a little, condescending to try and write off his argument with that kind of, flippant, response.
"Your tax info is just wrong. You have to file one return for State (that includes your whole family), one for Federal, and possibly a local/COUNTY"
That's only true if you are either young (and don't have all the complications of a full family and investment portfolio) and/or are willing to pay much more in taxes than the system is designed to charge you. When you start to have kids, houses/condos, investments, businesses, you start to have to file multiple extra tax forms at the state and federal level to declare everything and (more commonly) to claim tax credits/deductions. Before you start going on about how no-one if forcing him/her to claim all the credits/deductions, remember that the tax rate is calculated assuming that the people eligible for those credits/deductions will claim them. Without them, a person will be subjected to much higher taxes than they are supposed to (I'm talking about people who, honestly, have a claim to them, not to people that game the system to claim credits/deductions they don't, really, deserve). US taxes are not the simple, one form per government level, system you are trying to claim they are.
"Airline security is theater to make sure people don't stop (as I have) using the
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
I'm not sure we'd have had a Shakespeare if he had lived in an age in which anyone could record and distribute plays at near-zero cost. You don't need so much copy protection if it's already hard to copy your work.
Absolutely right. County-wide ordinances here pretty specifically define things you can and can't do on your own property. Aside from the obvious things like not being able to open a business on your own property if it's zoned as residential, there's other things. Unless it's licensed as a junk yard you can not house "abandoned vehicles" - with abandoned vehicles literally defined as anything without a plate and taxes being paid.
Even out in the rural areas you have to keep your grass cut to a certain level. There are noise ordinances (again, even if there's no house within miles) that specify how loud your property can be (either from things like music/partying or from heavy equipment - we actually ticket industrial factories on the noise ordinance more often than private residences). You also can't keep farm animals, even as pets, in certain zones. Wanna live in an RV for a while? Aside from mobile homes (of the large variety), RV's and "camper trailers" are not to be used as permanent dwellings - neither are boats (no matter how large or equipped they are).
In today's society it's absolutely not the case anymore that you can do as you wish on your own property. Personally I see that as a negative, but it's the point we've come to. There are other negative things that I care more about that I'd rather work on fixing than this that's pretty low down on my list (and since I work for the local government supporting the systems that help enforce this is what keeps my paycheck coming in).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It is a system just like ours, but without copyright. It's a very credible system, as it worked very well for some 10000+ years and gave us epic works of art of every form imaginable: literature (fiction and non-fiction), music, architecture, painting & drawing, live acting, to name just a few.
And how many Hollywood blockbusters with $100 million budgets did that produce?
How many million-lines-of-code software products?
How many detailed, fact-checked, well-edited 1,000 page textbooks?
For that matter, how many good books did it produce per year, and how many people got to read them?
I've never disputed that valuable works have been or would be created without the benefit of copyright protection, but the scale matters. You can't just extrapolate from the fact that some good works were produced and some people benefited from them before copyright to the conclusion that copyright has not encouraged the creation of more or better works.
There is not a shred of evidence that copyright provides an actual incentive to create artistic works, i.e. that fewer works would be created without copyright, or that the overall quality would suffer.
Except for the millions of people employed around the world in creative industries whose rent is paid by income protected by copyright, you mean?
If you are concerned with credibility, you should stop saying that copyright helps to increase artistic output, because, as a matter of fact, it does not.
If it's a matter of fact, then I assume you can cite actual evidence of an alternative situation where artistic output was maintained at the same or higher levels of quality and quantity without copyright?
There were plenty of works created before the copyright was invented, and today we still have high quality works, artistic and otherwise (e.g. FOSS) that are being created every day.
Ah, the FOSS argument. How wonderfully Slashdot.
You've noticed that very few FOSS projects are even in the same league as their commercial, copyright-supported competitors, right? And that even the big name FOSS projects are not exempt from this? So much so, in fact, that even though the FOSS projects are free, most people still prefer to use commercial offerings.
At the same time, there is a bounty of evidence for the systemic abuse of the copyright by the content owners, who find the law helpful for cementing their content distribution monopolies. They do so mainly by hiding in their vaults a good century worth of artistic works, thereby robbing us of the PD and creating an artificial scarcity.
I've never disputed that there are serious flaws with the current implementation of copyright. Arguments about not extending terms to crazy 50+ year durations are all very reasonable. But if you look at what's being swapped on filesharing systems, is it very early Disney cartoons and back-catalogues for old bands, or is it the latest pop tracks and Hollywood blockbusters?
Additionally, you have to explain why a monopoly is good when it comes to producing copies of artistic works. If you agree that markets operate well (from the consumer's point of view) in presence of competition, you have to point out the fundamental difference between pizza and painting.
Well, among the fundamental differences are that pizzas are commodities and paintings are not, that producing a pizza takes seconds while producing a good painting takes days, and that producing a pizza requires throwing some ingredients on a base while producing a good painting requires skill and talent.
Apparently, there is something about distributing copies of a painting that makes a monopoly good, so please tell us what it is. Explain why an artist should have a right to restrict the sale of anything but the first copy.
Because through copyright, many people
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
BUT WE VOTED FOR CHANGE!!!!
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
You mean like artists and entertainers before copyright came along
Before copyright came along, it was very expensive to make copies of works anyway. As someone else already pointed out, copyright followed only a few years after the invention of the printing press.
It's odd that people are so quick to point out the changing world when saying copyright should be abandoned, yet so slow to notice that the evidence they give for the viability of alternatives predates those same changes.
current artists and entertainers whose works are not covered by copyright?
And who are they, and how much material do they produce and of what quality, relative to artists whose works are covered by copyright?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's not the two party system that is the problem it's something that both parties (and even hypothetical 3rd parties) have in common: greed.
Our politicians are almost all for sale to the highest bidder - typically rich Corporations with agendas that will usually harm Americans.
For a million dollars or more the politician becomes the full time servant of their new Corporate masters and stops serving the Citizens.
Note that this problem is insolvable since the politicians would have to approve of any solutions!
As far as support for the MAFIAA, it all depends on how much cash they have doesn't it?
If internet piracy goes away, people will move to phyiscal media.
You see there isn't a respectable IT firm anywhere in a developed nation that doesn't have a bit of a 'Swap Club', sharing pirated material by USB drives, SD cards and cheap terabyte class drives around the office. Back in the day they shared stuff on CD-R because the internet was rubbish. Now these things are now ubiqutous, inexpensive and expendable. Terabyte range drives are less than 10c per gig for a while now, if you find a good deal.
What happens when these things inevitably become alot smaller and alot cheaper?
What really scares me is what might be done to try to control this form of piracy.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.