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Europe To Block ACTA Disconnect Provisions
superglaze writes "The European Commission is 'not supporting and will not accept' any attempt to have ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) force countries to disconnect people for downloading copyrighted material, a spokesman for the new EU trade commissioner has said. All the signs are that the new commission, which took office earlier this month, intends to take a hard-line stance against US proposals for a filesharing-related disconnection system. 'Three strikes' is allowed in EU countries, but not mandated by the European government itself, and it looks like the new administration wants to keep it that way. From trade commission spokesman John Clancy, quoted in ZDNet UK's article: '[Ac ta] has never been about pursuing infringements by an individual who has a couple of pirated songs on their music player. For several years, the debate has been about what is "commercial scale" [piracy]. EU legislation has left it to each country to define what a commercial scale is and this flexibility should be kept in ACTA.'"
... but there's really now way all these countries are going to agree on everything these treaties propose. Some portions may even be contrary to a country's current laws, let alone their culture's mindset or philosophy.
A nice debate on the relationship of open source and ignoring copyrights (aka "piracy") would be interesting.
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With regards to Europe, it really doesn't matter. If the European commission decides something (it has to be voted by every country) then it's law. All countries have to accept it regardless.
The war on terror has now moved to Europe.
What exactly is the process set down by ACTA for those falsely accused? Or more to the point just accused?
It will be nice when the day comes when open source has taken over and all of this will be a moot point.
Most imaginary piracy is of US imaginary products. The EU has far less to lose in terms of jobs and tax revenue - i.e. swill for the Brussels trough - than the US.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
http://digg.com/tech_news/Bill_Gates_Piracy_Confession
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D'oh! accuser!!! ;) Open mouth, insert foot :D
Shh.
Jeff Raikes, head of the company's business group, said at a recent investor conference that while the company is against piracy, if you are going to pirate software, it hopes you pirate Microsoft software. --- http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070312/165448.shtml
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
All this means is that international lobbying doesn't have a nice easy single point they can go to in order to get similar laws to be enacted in all EU member states.
Being as there is no EU-wide proposal to explicitly ban member states from imposing internet disconnection, it follows that the lobbyists will talk to individual countries instead.
Despite this, the UK takes a line that typically follows the US one. Our govt sees no problem in disconnecting users without anything like a 'trial'.
Let he who is without copyright infringement cast the first takedown notice.
Something is wrong with the way we keep using the phrase "downloading copyrighted material" like it implies something illegal is going on.
The Linux kernel is copyrighted. Me downloading it is not illegal.
If I buy a book for my Kindle and download it, that's not illegal either.
But they are examples of downloading copyrighted material.
There needs to be a language adjustment such that we use "illegally downloading copyrighted material" instead.
Yes yes, proponents of ACTA and the like do not tire to claim the average Joe would not be affected as only "commercial" piracy would be targetted.
Of course that's all nonsense. In Germany we have this "commercial scale" clause in copyright laws. The result is that judges twist words until they can define a single album or movie as "commercial scale", as long as said album/movie is commercially available somewhere.
Phrases like "commercial scale" are the usual smoke and mirrors to silence critics without backing down one bit.
I live in Sao Paulo, in a middle class neighborhood where the law sort of works, work in a cyber cafe. I have had policemen, who can barely double click an icon, walk in insinuating they will confiscate everything because there is pirate software. They are often paid to go away, they want money. A cybercafe owner told me he once had all hard drives of the place confiscated for months, because they found a few mp3 files on hard drives. Been to places where downloading *all* mp3 files is banned. All access to CD burners or pendrives is blocked out of fear of the copyright police. Cybercafes typically have no software at all on workstations, only duly-licensed windows xp, costing half a month's pay for the typical worker, and OpenOffice. Nothing else. So what I see is, copyright law results in driving access to digital information underground. Linux is rare in private-run cybercafe's, because of ActiveX, MSN messenger, and user culture hooked on ms-windows. Government-sponsored net cafes do run linux, and are full, mostly because they are free, but there are not many of those. Cybercafes on the outskirts of town, poorer neighborhoods, have all kinds of software, all pirated. everything in these places is pirated, the net connection, the electricity, even the land usually has no title. Result --- piracy = free intelectual property = low costs = competitive advantage. Go China!
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
and all I have to say is "thank god someone is standing up to us".
I imagine most warez groups will be quite insulted to have their work branded as counterfeiting... Counterfeit goods are typically cheap (often inferior) copies which are falsely sold as originals...
Warez on the other hand, at least the kind you download, is quite clearly labelled as warez and often branded by the group who ripped it, and is usually a superior product to the original work as the warez copies have drm schemes and other nasties removed.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Let he who is without copyright infringement cast the first takedown notice.
Do as we say not as we do...
Let he who is without copyright infringement cast the first takedown notice.
True story: when I was a kid, I shoplifted once and didn't get caught. Out of curiosity, does this mean that if I ever own a store, I can never prosecute anyone for shoplifting?
there are less judges, police, lawyers or soldiers then ordinary people in a nation, maintaining any kind of draconian law will fail in the long run.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
There's already a lot of laws that have been passed to calm down the CRIA, but in return we got rights, such as copying music for personnal use. We get charged on blank media, the CRIA tries to pass taxes on mp3 players and even tried to pass it on blank hard drives. Fortunately, the ones in charge of passing the laws aren't as stupid as in some other countries which I won't name.
To the US media industry, piracy is anything that does not make them money. Making your own YouTube video. That's piracy. Using open source software: piracy. In the Demolition Man future even a snug with the misses will be piracy if you don't use their DRMed interface gadget (which pay on a per use and per monthly basis).
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
OK, very few things really surprise me anymore if they come from politicians, but that one would.
Dear
i hate this american way of thinking : first sell EVERYthing, including thoughts concepts even basic logic mechanisms to private people, then come up trying to defend their feudal rights over even the logical thought process. yea, it has gone THAT far, if you havent been following the crap that goes on in u.s. patent office - numerous corporations have been trying to patent simple logic arguments and processes as software patents. the implications of this, naturally, as anyone with 2 brain cells can understand, goes WAY beyond the related field or anything else. claiming ownership on a simple process of thought ...
eu doesnt have software patents. this kind of skulldiggery wasnt allowed from the start. noone has been allowed to patent 'single click/double click' or so on. therefore, there are no issues with 'lost revenues' in Eu countries.
and there shouldnt be either. because, allowing people to claim ownership of thought phenomenon, and then letting them to attempt exacting tolls on anyone, who, god forbid, attempts to utilize basic principles for manipulating abstract concepts like mankind has done since the dawn of time, is BEYOND stupid, and feudal.
In any case, score one for Eu. whereas legislation to justice, usa has been the total bitch of corporations, and havent even been able to convict confirmed monopolies and fine them, Eu has been making those stubborn, reckless companies adhere to proper business practices and respect the market since a long time. and now there is this. dont be fooled - it wont stop here - the stuff in acta actually contradict with many basic rights and liberties that have been used as the founding principles of modern society since last 300 years, and eu will come up against those too.
however no surprise in there that, the country which comes up with a 'treaty' that tramples the democratic governance processes of not only their own, but other countries, and also attempts to violate and undo basic human rights for self profit of private interest, happened to be united states. tells heaps about how down you, 'the people' let your country go, while being fooled by those alan greenspan hordes. 'let businesses be, so they can come back and fuck you up in the ass and take even your liberties away' ...
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To your sig: I believe metamoderation affects your karma, so mods are not the only way for your karma to change. Of course, that is not to say that nothing weird happened in the case of your karma.
there are base principles like freedom of speech, freedom of information, and other human rights.
and there will be individual countries coming up with recognizing internet connectivity as a legal right. finland was the first one. european union countries will follow. the next likely ones will be sweden and norway.
eu is that kind of union, aside from britain. britain actually, shouldnt have been in eu in the first place, for they are not compatible with anything eu represents.
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it's the final countdown!
My other sig is a knife wound.
Should be easy. Commercial means you make money from it. e.g. if you sell it. Non-commercial scale is if you don't make money from it. e.g. if you download it for your own usage.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A Copyright is a Copyright http://www.happyendingonline.com/
Adult Toys For Less
The following excerpts of text are taken from a person's comments in a (then) ongoing discussion in comments section of a CNN news piece about digital 'piracy'. The guy
was arguing with copyright activists and shills, and have made innumerable good points to the ultimate end of silencing almost the most shrill shill. i have taken the
liberty of gathering his comments, and i will be posting it on discussion in slashdot in relevant subjects, so that it will help many people who are having difficulties
in understanding how flawed the copyright business and intellectual property is, and how little sympathy one should have for those perpetrating and enforcing them.
These comments are krehator's comments. they are listed in a last to first fashion, the first comments being at the bottom of the text, and the last comment he made being
on top (directly below
==
The truth anti-pirates don't want anyone to believe? I'll use myself as an example. I have been a pirate for decades. I know more about pirating and the facts behind it
than any of the anti-pirates on this sound-off who spew fallacies without any experience.
I download and share movies, software, and rarely music. I'm not a big music fan but I will admit that music is highly pirated. I have no interest in pirated books and
honestly have never witnessesed a big demand for it, outside of students in college. Plus, there is a lot of free material on the Internet which is better. I also use a
lot of freeware "open source" software, because it is quickly becoming better than commercial products.
I support freeware and open source and I do donate to those causes because they EARN my loyalty. Every Operating Systems I have installed is legal. I use Linux
distributions on many of my computers, instead of Windows, because only computer dummies pay for faulty products! Microsoft should be sued for knowingly selling faulty
products. However, according to anti-pirates, businesses are allowed to do that. Only people must live up to moral standards. Wait a minute......aren't businesses
operated by people? Hmmmmm.
Anyway,
I pirate (directly through me) approximately 100 gigabytes of mixed data each month. It varies depending on what is out there. I don't get it from torrents, P2P, or web
sites. Those are not the most reliable, secure, fastest, or primary routes. Those are distractions for novice computer users and the media looking for a story. The
primary routes for pirated data cannot be stopped. Copy protection is not designed to stop hardcore pirates. It is meant to stop the Average Joe from easily sharing with
his friend. A lot of pirating work is done to enable the Average Joe, who then initiates a wave of sharing. Look, some things are true even if you don't want to believe
it.
The deeper inner workings of the pirate community are secured better than the launch codes for missile silos. The people getting caught are low level people who get
replaced in minutes. Anti-pirates have no idea what they are talking about when they try to uncover the real pirate world or describe our motivations. They are akin to
cavemen describing an airplane as an "evil hungry fire bird". Most of what anti-pirates and the industry tells the media and consumers is smoke and mirrors to defend
their own greedy immorality. Pirates get labeled as evil, while greedy and dishonest companies play victim. "oh poor us, we can only make 1 billion dollars this year".
Shyeah, that wins support from consumers and small businesses living on a real budget (laugh).
Of all the data I download per month, 80% is not even for me, and will never be used by me. It is shared with others like me who may or may not value what I have. Of the
20% that interests me, only a very small portion will be deemed as worthy of keeping, after being thoroughly tested. I may find a single good program out of a 1,000 I
download. If that program is superb, and provides m
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If there ever will be an EU vs US was, then EU will be united. We might even take a few hints and tips from the Russians while we are at it. But the advantage EU will have is that it got: *More military units *Some techological differences *Diverse commando training *And have fought battles on their own soil *The US is flat, and have never fought and modern wars on their own soil. Got real, please?
Why does someone from the UK love M$ so much? You should be hanged, drawn and quartered for treason once they take the Ballmer cock out of your mouth.
The treaty is not the central issue here, it is far more complicated than that.
First of all you have to be a lawyer, understand European legal systems (not Anglo-American "Common Law") and know EU law to really discuss this. I happen to qualify :)
Even if the EU wanted to impose a three strike law it would have to overcome a number of obstacles. I believe it could be argued that it would be in conflict with the constitutions of several of the EU member nations. You see as the EU is NOT a federal government, the individual nations still have sovereignty and national constitutions.
More interestingly the European Convention on Human Rights, a central treaty to *ALL* European countries both inside and outside the EU, spell out fundamental rights that neither the EU or individual nations can ignore.
The question has already been raised if such legislation as the proposed "three strikes" law would be in conflict with several fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech, access to information and possibly other rights from enterprise to education.
In many European nations the courts have deliberated and expanded what we consider basic and necessary to function in a modern society. A law that denies people such a "basic" right to communicate, educate, trade/work and participate in public discussions would probably be in conflict with the ECHR [to be determined by the *non-EU* European Court of Human Rights]
In politics, "we will not accept this" means "we will accept this, if you accept this other thing that you're strongly opposed to".
> Killing people for a fucking MP3 file !!!!???? ...
MP3 files, and ebooks, and unhindered Internet access, and unhindered Internet use, and unhindered free software use, and
Newspeak is a gradual process.
"Good news, everyone!"
Reaally? You'd do that? Give a blowjob to someone just so they'd take your solution rather than someone else's?
Wow.
You're seriously fucked.
"'Three strikes' is allowed in EU countries, but not mandated by the European government itself, and it looks like the new administration wants to keep it that way."
So historically all this means is that the U.S. will go around and thumb-screw the individual countries into doing what we want. We have the technology.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
STOP IT RIGHT NOW! All right, no one is to DMCA anyone until I blow this whistle. Even... and I want to make this absolutely clear... even if they do pirate software.
Also the reason the United States is pushing ACTA so hard is because we have nothing else to export. Without copyright protection, people can take our songs, movies, and software for free, and destroy our economy.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I can see your point, but I don't think "this" is the way to do it. Do you?
"Good news, everyone!"
No, and this is a perfect example of why that quote is absolutely bullshit. If everybody followed it then nobody would have stopped the Nazis because every country involved has invaded others and committed crimes against humanity at one point in their past. (with apologies to godwin)
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Any programmer whose productivity in C++ is improved 1500% by using Visual Studio is a really bad programmer, so bad that he more likely has negative productivity, the sort of employee his employer should pay to quit.
At no point in your rambling, barely coherent post were you even close to anything that could be considered proper formatting. Everyone in this thread is now angrier for having scrolled through it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
The whole idea of disconnecting people for engaging in copyright violations is so idiotic that it make my head hurt. Ignoring the fact that copyright violation is a civil offense (as opposed to criminal) in most cases, removing a basic service from a person isn't an appropriate response. As an example, if someone is convicted of growing marijuana, they don't get blacklisted from the electric company. If someone is convinced of dumping chemical waste in a river, they don't get their water and sewage turned off.
ACTA is a clear example of politicians selling themselves like a pack of whores to corporate interests.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We need a -1: WTF? mod.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
You missed the whole point of what Jesus (allegedly) said. He didn't say "Those of you who have never committed this specific crime before, throw the first stone!". He said "Those of you who have no sin, throw the first stone.".
So it doesn't matter if you shoplifted. Or perhaps cheated on your girlfriend. Or drove drunk. What matters is that you have made mistakes and you have learned from them. You were given another chance after that(even if it was due to nobody finding out) and you should then give other people another chance too, so they have a chance to change their ways.
It doesn't say "You should never punish anyone". Fines are... fine. It says that you should give them a chance to change their ways. Notice how Jesus said this when others were in the process of executing someone? So he practically spoke against death penalty and other punishments that ruin your life (in some cases, one line of criminal records might do the trick in modern times).
ps. I'm not a religious person, quite the opposite (One of those annoying, loud atheists ;) ). But that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be a lot of good teachings in bible, too. And that is definitely one of them.
I don't think its the ISP's job to police file sharing, since their users pay them for service, and like telephone providers, they aren't required to monitor your calls to if your doing anything suspicious (although they sort of do, I know this first hand).
ISP's should be required to protect their own network against things that can cause service degradation, such as computers being part of botnets. As someone who worked for major ISP's for 10 years, I would LOVE to see this kind of thing applied to people who get viruses, trojans or other malware. Since most ISP's scan their network for users with suspicious behavior this would be easily done. Not withstanding the fact that most major ISP's provide free A/V software anyway, most users have no excuse. Get infected 3 times, get disconnected until you can prove you know how to use a computer.
Corporate barbie says competing is HARD!!
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
Meh, a lot of dotters need a +1 humor modifier. But we don't go about asking for a lack of one do we? =P
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Well, I had one very pleasant surprise from history when the "Big Evil" eastern block crumbled in my lifetime, so I guess it's only fair that I also get a nasty one one day.
Introduce oppressive legislation. People are upset about 1 item in particular. Pass all but said item into law. Repeat.
So that's what severance pay packages are! Paying negative-productivity execs to quit!
We got 'snopes' email spammed basically, just the subject is a little different than usual, haha. Sounds like every self-righteous email my grandfather spams to anyone who will listen.
http://blog.slaingod.com
Where would a good cool place be to hold a programming lan party?
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
first, i noted that they are not MY 'ramblings'.
second, i have mentioned that they are collections of COMMENTS posted on cnn's news discussion at DIFFERENT times. there is no way to 'properly format' it, for there is no 'proper format' for reciting different timed comments in a godfrigging news comment section.
third, had you read the first sentence, you would have known these, and wouldnt come made a fool of yourself. however, you did.
therefore i think that your problem is not formatting, or anything else, you seem to lack the proper respect for your fellow discussion participants so that you will actually read a few sentences of what they say.
so, i will put it plainly, elaborately, as courteously as it can be put ; fuck off.
Read radical news here
First, try resizing your browser window to less than 1200 pixels wide and witness the awesome power of the dozens of unnecessary and disruptive line breaks in your post. Yeah, that's what most of us had to wade through.
Also, watch the movie Billy Madison.
Also, grow a thicker skin.
Also, fuck you.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I live in Sao Paulo, you insensitive clod!
If the cops were in ur coffeeshops, stealing ur puterz, then the law sort of doesn't work. AFAIK there's only a small task force authorized to do that, provided they have a warrant from the ABES (Associação Brasileira das Empresas de Software) and even that was only after larger companies and those major bootleggers.
Yeah, cops here can be an ass if you let them bully you. I'd get their names and badges, ask for a warrant and file a serious report on their asses if they tried that on me.
Fuck those dirty cops.
And it's true, when I lived in Jabaquara, most Lan houses were all about piracy. Cable jacking and counter-strike galore. Truth is, in general you don't see anyone buying legal software unless they run a business that gets audited. We have so much more serious stuff going on, legal software is extremely overpriced and you find people selling pirate CDs on every street, the notion of copyright infringement is slim at best. You have people hijacking cable modems, open Wi-Fis everywhere.
On the bright side, our government loves Linux, thanks to our *nix zealots in the south and our leftist president. They're doing a bunch of cool stuff like putting linux boxes in public schools, computers with Internet at subways and such. There's a serious Digital Inclusion program going on, wouldn't be a bad place to get a job in IT right now.
Telefonica is such a crappy, old and monopolist ISP, can't even keep their backbone running right, let alone implement any sort of verification or throttling. They are so bad they were actually banned from selling ADSL by Anatel for almost a year. But they virtually own the entire state, cable being available only in São Paulo and adjacent cities.
NET and Ajato are a little better, though both throttle P2P (unless you encrypt) and have a monthly cap (that can be circumvented by changing your MAC address).
And they are all heavily overpriced. I pay around U$70/mo for a sloppy 2Mb Telefonica ADSL that rarely reaches 200kbps. Their boxes are saturated and their tech support is a joke.
Compared to those fellas, we are the Pirate Party. Yarr!
You might be right but in my case I did not moderate, so metamoderation should not affect me either and thus the mistery remains.
Dear
The EU is not a federal government for a number of reasons and it's heavily debated what to call it. A supranational union is the common term used to describe the unique nature of the EU, it lies somewhere between a confederation that is an association of States and a federation. Between confederalism which recognizes the complete independence of States in an association and federalism which seeks to fuse them in a super-state.
What clearly distinguishes the US from the EU is in matters of foreign affairs. The EU only recently agreed to a create a "foreign affairs minister", in an attempt to form a unified front within the EU. However each country still runs their own foreign affairs how they like, power lies with national governments. This is not the case for American states.
While American states plead with the federal government for aid, the EU kindly asks for funds to operate from European national governments. There is no European federal tax because they have no such right.
Another example would be in foreign representation, citizens of the U.S.A. go to their embassy abroad, European citizens go each to their own embassy [where available]. There is no "European" citizenship, just like there is no European identity [only national, cultural lines]. Don't confuse this with the diversity you have in your states, we are talking about whole nations of single ethnic group(s), languages, cultures and religions. Europeans are first and foremost their own nationality, we don't see "European" as in any way descriptive of who we are, only as a loose generalization.
I'm sorry but your states ceased being sovereign states a long, long time ago legally speaking. And while American history is not my specialty I do know there have been three basic accounts of sovereignty in America. The Lincolnian notion that the Union was antecedent to the states; the Hamiltonian notion that adoption of the Constitution operated a transfer of sovereignty to the federal government; and the "Calhounite" notion that the states remain sovereign. So while Lincoln spoke of returning to "his" nation (i.e. state) after the war it is no longer valid.
Oh, and you *do* have an American Court of Human Rights. It was created on the same basis as the European Court of Human Rights. However obviously the Organization of American States is not as important as the EU is to Europe.