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EU Privacy Chief Says ACTA Violates European Law
An anonymous reader writes "Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor, has issued a 20-page opinion expressing concern about ACTA (PDF). Michael Geist's summary of the opinion notes that it concludes that the prospect of a three-strikes and you're out system may violate European privacy law, that the possibility of cross-border enforcement raises serious privacy issues, and that ACTA transparency is needed now."
So after reading a bit of his "opinion" piece (written way more formally than any opinion piece I've read), it seems that without reading the full extent of ACTA he is dead set against it. Any aspect he has heard of (most likely through Doctorow or Geist) he makes a case for it being a violation of privacy. Without even reading all of it, he knows it's illegal. His title sounds like he should have been invited to these proceedings but I think I can decipher why he wasn't invited ...
... maybe privacy and international IP/copyright enforcement are inseparable. Not being an expert, I cannot say. I am fairly certain, however, that each country has to pass this into law once the countries agree on a basis. I will say that my representative and senators had better damn well represent the majority of the population and I hope that majority is with me on this. What the EDPS should do is continue to demand transparency but also get the citizens and all the members of the EU to promise not to pass this into legislation without transparency right now.
I agree with him but it sounds like he would be opposed to anything they could dream up. And maybe that's the way it should be
My work here is dung.
Will the country with the most stringent policies suddenly be the equivalent of the patent troll district in Texas?
They already are. That is why they came up with ACTA in the first place.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Good point. I certainly hope not. Copyright is already problematic in that copying is built into nature, so going against it is swimming upriver - they're better off going with either a pledge-money-for-band-X's-new-album system or else lowering prices so far that downloading illegally just doesn't make sense anymore (especially if you can get it automatically sorted into the right folders with ID3 tags just they way you want 'em). Lower prices to 10c / song and I'll immediately spend $200. Add the right to re-download whenever you want and you've got a business model. Although on a practical note, there's no reason bands can't do tat themselves. There's plenty of platforms available for it.
On the side: There's a Facebook group I started in the hope to raise awareness, with the ultimate goal being to petition / lobby governments. Feel free to join, it's called We need 5m people to prevent the labels killing internet freedom with ACTA.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
Most countries also prefer to avoid having anything to do with the men threatening western civilization instead of fighting them.
Yes, because if EU had declared war on the USA while Bush was in power, it would have caused WW3. The nicer approach was to just wait for his term as a president to finally run out.
>>>data-sharing for enforcement purposes among countries that have different criminal punishments for copyright law is hard to justify
Not really. The U.S. member states constantly share information across borders and it's justified as "being tough on crooks". The EU member states will likely do the same, if not now, then in the near future.
What I'm surprised he did not address is the violation of the Right to a trial by your peers (jury). The 3-strike law presumes guilt without any requirement that the state prove its case FIRST. Although this may sound harmless, I can easily imagine the state government, or a progressive leader, using the 3-strike law to silence bloggers/reporters he doesn't like by making false 3-strike claims. In such a case the connection gets cut automatically (presumed guilt), the blogger is silenced, and the leader smiles.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Although on a practical note, there's no reason bands can't do tat themselves. There's plenty of platforms available for it.
And that's exactly the reason you'll never see anything like this happen by the big studios. Offering this business model poses the (quite real) threat that it just might work out. And then even the dimmest bands can easily see that there is zero reason to dump the lion's share of their revenue down the mouth of the studios.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That might even be illegal in most countries. But you may rest assured it becomes "public" a nanosecond before the vote. Since politicians rarely if ever read the laws they vote on anyway, they won't even bother to find out just since when they could read the law and go for the usual way they walk when tasked with voting on some law: Asking their party leaders how to vote.
I really wonder why we need so many representatives. It's not like they do anything but raise their hand whenever the party says they should.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
On the side: There's a Facebook group I started in the hope to raise awareness, with the ultimate goal being to petition / lobby governments. Feel free to join, it's called We need 5m people to prevent the labels killing internet freedom with ACTA.
That's great. How do you propose we go about it? Just sitting around in a Facebook group bitching won't accomplish anything.
Who do we write to? Who do we call? What are they in charge of? What power (realistically) do they have over the situation? Do we tell them that we back them, or that we're against their support of ACTA?
We need actionable information, or pointers to where we can find it. Anyone know where to start?
Proteus' Child
Doko ni datte; hito wa, tsunagette iru.
I'm pretty sure it violates law in pretty well every continent where it's planned to be implemented.
You forgot to add, that the ACTA is designed to make every country behave like That Texas District.
Unfortunately, it will probably be your local police showing up at your doorstep, enforcing your own country's laws. That law being to comply with another country's laws. . .
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
>>>As for your concern...using the 3 strikes law to silence a blogger/reporter seems like a tiny risk compared to the others. What's to stop said reporter/blogger from walking over the nearest newspaper/tv-station and getting his story out that way?
>>>
Well if we imagine that the person who was cut-off was an anti-government blogger/reporter like Alex Jones of infowars.org, then he really does NOT have the recourse to ask the pro-government organizations like BBC or NBC or CBS to carry his report, does he? He has been silenced.
There's a line from Star Trek, about how even one trampled freedom or right forges the first link in a chain that will eventually bind us all. It is correct. Leaders should not have the ability to simply say, "That guy violated the 3-strike law," and silence them without benefit of trial.
>>>Ah, I see you're a fan of Glenn Beck.
And Judge Napolitano, and Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and Andrew Jackson, and anyone else who (wisely) thinks neither government nor its leaders can be trusted with power, and it's time we start enforcing the Tenth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There's a line from Star Trek, about how even one trampled freedom or right forges the first link in a chain that will eventually bind us all. It is correct. Leaders should not have the ability to simply say, "That guy violated the 3-strike law," and silence them without benefit of trial.
There's also a line in Terry Pratchett's Feet of Clay, about how freedom without limitations is really just a word.
My point is that there are consequences that are a lot less far-fetched than the heroic individual blogger who gets disconnected. Arbitrarily disconnecting soccer moms or Joe Sixpacks is just as bad, and a lot more likely to happen without any ruckus.
As for Glenn Beck, let's just see if he spouts the same rhetoric when it's a "leader" pulling the exact same crap while flying the conservative banner. You do realize ACTA is a big business interest right? Something the left traditionally opposes? The real left, that is?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The nicer approach was to just wait for his term as a president to finally run out.
Right. Because the new guy was going to repeal all those horrible decisions.
Oh wait, he didn't.
Well at least he wasn't going to make the same types of horrible decisions going forward.
Oh wait, he did.
I can't wait for THIS guy's term to run out, so we can deal with the next guy.
I just bet he'll be different...