Slashdot Mirror
Experts Say ACTA Threatens Public Interest
langelgjm writes "In the lead up to next week's Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations in Lucerne, a conference that drew over 90 academics and experts from six continents has released a statement issuing a harsh condemnation of both the substance and process of the agreement. Held last week at American University's Washington College of Law, the attendees say, 'We find that the terms of the publicly released draft of ACTA threaten numerous public interests, including every concern specifically disclaimed by negotiators.' The 'urgent communique' covers more than the usual ACTA topics of interest on Slashdot: in addition to the agreement's effect on the Internet, it also considers the effects on access to medicines, international trade, and developing countries. Meanwhile, Public Knowledge has an action alert where you can send a note to the White House expressing your opposition to ACTA."
Well, according to the Canadian government, those "experts" are just radical extremists who pretend to care about copyright. If you are against copyright bills, you are a terrorist.
The question is not whether ACTA is in the public interest, but whether it's in the collective interest of those empowered to enact it. It's safe to assume that with the supporters of ACTA in control of a lot of cash and the majority of television airtime, the folks in power are very likely not giving a rat's behind what these professors and petitions are saying.
I am officially gone from
How much money are we paying these "experts" to sit around and come up with this again? Next up: Water's wet. Crap slides downhill. kdawson gets no respect.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Fuck acta
just wait for Google to get black listed and then this crap will stop.
Developing countries and other countries that aren't included in the ACTA meetings aren't just sitting by.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
It's not just experts who believe ACTA threatens public interest.
My name is on that list, too.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Dear Government of the USA,
Please stop trying to cram your shit house laws down the rest of the worlds throat.
Maybe if you took care of your own internal issues properly and stopped interfering with the rest of the world we would hate you less.
Kind regards,
The rest of the world (yes there is life outside the USA)
You're nuts. You or I don't have enough money for them to notice us, and if we did, we'd have lobbyists go to the white house and make the points -- and campaign donations -- for us; not use a web feedback form.
Realistically, there's nothing we can do.
Because that link was so convenient, I was able to send my "two cents" to the white house and all that. If only my two cents could compare to the hundreds of millions that law makers get from the companies sponsoring ACTA.
This is a post I wrote for another forum on the subject of the Obama Administration's just released vision of intellectual property rights enforcement (as reported by DailyTech, which I assume to be a prelude or complement to ACTA:
The fact is, as others have often pointed out, digital information wants to be free. You can turn the whole world into criminals trying to fight that simple truth, but it's only going to create a virtual international police state. I don't want that, and I don't think you want that, either. If copyright infringement is that damaging to your bottom line, I think you have to figure out other ways to monetize your product.
There's only one analogous example to the grip of the media cartels that I can think of. Government and other organized labor employees are destroying the industrialized world with their lavish pensions and other benefits. They work 30 or 40 years and then demand and get guaranteed pensions for the rest of their lives, even while the countries they're sucking dry are going into national bankruptcy. Politicians naturally assume they'll just raise taxes ever higher in order to pay off these corrupt deals. May people know about the serious financial problems posed to the US by the public entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But nearly no one discusses the fact that Government Employee Entitlement costs are almost as large as the public Entitlements.
Similarly, with copyright protected media, the creator produces something once and then expects to receive guaranteed income from it forever. But in this case it's not even the original creator who gets most of the recurring revenue - it's the media cartel that distributes his or her product. Despite the fact that the march of technology has changed the way we interact with distributed media, some still expect to get rewarded financially in the same fashion that they were rewarded prior to the consumer Internet age.
Now here's the thing, I have a limited amount of respect for copyrights. I think granting a limited-time narrow monopoly to the creator of a given product is a desirable trade-off to support the creation of works of art and science. But the key word is limited. The Constitution calls for limited-time copyrights, but as time has gone on copyrights have gone from limited to unlimited, and now the media cartels want to turn the Internet into a virtual police state to enforce their permanent monopolies. If enforcement provisions like the ones envisioned go into effect, we're on a very slippery slope to the death of the Internet as we know it. If a person can be prosecuted for a random search term that may draw the wrath of the media cartels, then that means it's no longer safe to surf various sites and click links to different pages indiscriminately. Remember, we're talking about merely searching for terms that the media cartels think may lead to an infringing download, not the infringing download itself. What this is referred to as in the law is an "inchoate offense" - a violation of the law the precedes the actual illegal act, and it's a very controversial subject because of the far-reaching implications involved. When the media cartels get that kind of power over our online lives, it means they've taken things way, way, too far. And make no mistake - this will be a slippery slope. If government can snoop on search engine keywords to help the media cartels, what's next? Logically keyword searches about anything that could arouse even minor suspicion could put a user in danger. What this announcement looks like to me is a "War on Digital Piracy," and just like the "War on Drugs" it will certainly ensnare many innocent people, erode liberties and be of dubious value - if not harmful in all respects.
Is this a Socialist move? Yes, I believe
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
There's a lot we can do, but it calls for harsh direct action against the industry mob.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
This kind of bullshit is not going to stop. It's going to get worse for the rest of our lives. Eventually, they will push it too far and all of these assholes are going to wake up with a rope around their neck and discover themselves dangling from the nearest tree. ACTA is a great symbol for everything that's wrong with this world, and exterminating every one of the parasites who is participating in it would definitely make the world a better place.
In the meantime, we get to watch as they chip away at our civil liberties and systematically corrupt and dismantle one of the best innovations the human race has come up with -- a giant network for the free exchange of information. Aren't we lucky, those of us who witnessed its creation and over the next 15 to 20 years are most probably going to witness its downfall too.
I swear; All I did was comment code ..
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Remember for a moment that the word "socialist" wasn't coined until the early 1900's, but the ideas underlying the concept had been around for many, many years prior.
The preamble of our constitution includes "promote the general welfare" rather prominently. Now in that usage, that is as that word was used before The New Deal, means health care and care for the less fortunate.
Before you launch into the talking-point versus talking point debate, it would be nice to see everybody read up.
Please take a moment to really internalize these words:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
"Posterity" not "citizenry"; Justice, Tranquility, Defense, Welfare, and Liberty. These are pretty lofty goals, and oddly enough, socialist to the very last.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
People on /. think it is, but then I'm not convinced many people here have a good grip on copyright. A non-trivial number seem to think that any copyright is a bad thing, that it hurts the economy, etc. There is some pretty good evidence to indicate that's not the case, but they aren't interested. They have an all or nothing stance on it. As such, this treaty is automatically and "obviously" a bad thing to them, since it increases copyright.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and say they are perhaps not the best to make that call, due to their bias. That doesn't mean I think they are wrong that the treaty is a bad thing, I think they are arriving at that conclusion incorrectly and that is why they might think it "obvious" when maybe it isn't.
So this is the kind of thing I like to see. Some real analysis to determine what benefits and costs it has (everything has benefits and costs) and if those result in a net benefit for the public. Looks like these experts say that no, it doesn't.
I think that is far more useful than just trying to claim "It is obvious!" When you think something is obvious, especially something complex (as any new law is) ask yourself: Is it really, truly obvious, which would mean that nearly everyone should see it, or do I think it is obvious because of my biases?
Our freedoms were won by blood and by sword. It doesn't say anywhere we do not have continue to fight for them. And if words no longer work then bullets have to take over.
Save democracy, kill a politician.
Mind you, the politicians know this and so make sure the rabble get their bread and circusses while Rome burns.
History has seen the same story repeat countless times and will no doubt continue to do so.
The current situation in the western nation has arisen because the parties have reached a balance point were no politician can actually get anything done any more. Holland is in death lock after its election made the largest party have fewer votes then the number of people who didn't vote and a three party coalition being the absolute minimum with a FIVE party coalition being considered.
Belgium? Falling apart at the seems, it no longer is a question of IF the republic will seperate but when.
England? Bankrupt and the voter just has no idea who to vote for. The party of sleaze, the new party of sleaze or the liberals who are to small to sleaze properly for now. As a Hignfy presenter put it, Labour and the Conservatives agreed to pay back millions in donations and the liberal supporter got his book token back.
The US? Obama won? Bush won? Hardly. Both "victories" are well in the margin of counting errors and even then you are NOT counting the voters who didn't vote. The US is deadlocked, democrats block republikans and vice versa. And NO dear US citizen, this is a NOT a healthy system of checks and balances anymore. This has become a situation in which absolutely NOTHING can be done.
Democracy has its limits, for instance a referendum about which side to drive on would be very democratic but how are you going to deal with a vote to drive on the other side? Democracy also asks of the loser to accept that they lost and let the winner do their thing. Opposition is one thing, blocking everything is another. Yes, it is the job of the opposition but it creates a system were EVERYTHING is opposed.
Ultimately this leads to back room deals because that is the only way to reach agreement on anything, but those backroom deals soon spread until you get ACTA. One giant backroom deal just so that none of the people involved have to deal with those messy election processes were you can never get a clear YES or even a NO.
The EU constitution was the same. Backroom dealers convinced they did it for the best but had to conveniently ignore public opinion and so argued that the public just didn't understand the issue.
But there is a solution to this. When the ruling elite becomes to detached and start talking about eating cake, then it is time to chop of some heads. It is remarkably effective. But of course, who is going to be in the front line as an unarmed protestor storming the bastille? Not me, Idols is on and I got a 300 dollar tax rebate. Bread and circusses.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Of course, a non trivial number also seem to think that more copyright is always better, too.
I'm interested. If nothing else, I'm interested in what you'd consider "evidence" without a parallel universe to use as a control sample.
Of course it is also possible to be of the opinion that copyright laws are currently too strong without necessarily being a deluded extremist. So you can make an entirely rational case that the ACTA is a bad thing in so far as it works solely to strengthen copyright provisions that many feel are already over strong.
Why don't you start? What's this evidence you mention?
So what, then? We should all sit tight and wait for someone in authority to tell us what everyone thinks? I can see problems with that approach, personally.
I should also add that I'd find your call for objective self-examination a lot more convicing were it addressed to both sides of the debate. Otherwise, it seems as though you don't think the copyright maximalists need to examine their preconceptions. Perhaps your own biases are showing here?
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I don't really doubt Obama's *intentions* when he was running for office, I just don't think he had any idea just how many entrenched, self-interested parties exist at the top of government with sole purpose of making sure that their own existence continues.
See Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister/The Thick of It - no matter your good intentions, government is constructed with layer upon layer of civil servants and corporate lobbyists who will oppose, block, delay, mislead and outright screw you over if you try and do anything that would change the status quo, assuming your own party or opposition party don't get there first.
At first I thought the same: That the thighter the controls, the more people will protest.
I have since changed my stance: In the end it's much easier to defend existing liberties that it is to regain ones already lost.
I think past experiences with restrictive regimes have shown that it takes a long time before the pendulum starts to swing back, and much is lost before it does.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
ACTA is the wrong economic strategy for the US. It's the modern equivalent of the British trying to force the American colony to pay British publishers, and it'll fail in the same way. No outright rejection or bloody rebellion, just a never-ending political argument over what's fair. The MAFIAA may collect for years, until China or India (or others) decide to "moderate" their enforcement of the rules. Then the US will find that a large part of it's economy is faltering with no way out, because it didn't take the pain and adjust when the technology changed.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss