ACTA Is Backta, New Round of Talks Start Today

An anonymous reader writes "Negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement resume today in Lucerne, Switzerland, with the ninth round of talks. The Toronto Star highlights the mounting opposition to the deal from developing world countries such as India and China, while Michael Geist has posted a video of a recent lecture that provides background on the agreement and where things currently stand."

Comments

"ACTA is Backta"

[mdm-adph]

Please don't ever do that again.

Re:"ACTA is Backta"

[noidentity]

No shit. It seems that many of the sites I've been reading have dropped to the level of some unknown blog, with lots of stupid things like this. Attention: your audience isn't a bunch of third-graders who are amused by headlines like that, among other cheap attempts at making something funny.

Re:"ACTA is Backta"

[commodore64_love]

(turns off the pr0n). Yo chill! Homie don't play dat.

Clearly this ACTA will be shoved through the same way NAFTA, DMCA, Pelosicare, and the EU Lisbon Treaty was shoved through even though 70-80% were against all of those bills/treaties. Alex Jones claims it's because governments are being run by a banking elite and megacorporations, but I don't think it's anything so complicated. I believe our leaders in the EU, US, and elsewhere have simply decided they are the new nobility, and they are blessed by god/time/fate/whatever to rule over the serfs (us). i.e. Democracy is dead; the People are ignored.

ACTA will pass. It might change names (like the EU Constitution was renamed Lisbon Treaty) but eventually it will pass in direct opposition to our wishes.

L8r.

Re:"ACTA is Backta"

[gstoddart]

Alex Jones claims it's because governments are being run by a banking elite and megacorporations, but I don't think it's anything so complicated.

Then you, sir, have lost sight of the power of lobbying.

ACTA, and anything related to trade and copyright have been pushed through because they've been beneficial to business interests. Most of the US bailout funds was spent on big banks because it would be awful if they had any inconvenience. Then, 6 months later, they're paying it back from record profits so they don't need to listen to the government telling them what they should do.

'The people' are ignored because they're not making campaign contributions on the scale of the MPAA/RIAA, and ACTA is being pushed through because precisely those industries want to be sure that the world is beholden to the US DMCA style laws.

You are correct, the politicians have decided they're the modern elite -- but, they still take a lot of direction from the corporations who tell them how they want things run.

No surprise

[dkleinsc]

For comparison, consider efforts to get voter approval for casino gambling in my home state. The potential casino owners attempted to get approval in just about every election, and despite being shot down 2 times eventually won on the third try. Why did they keep trying? Because even if they had to spend $100 million in advertising and campaigning, they knew that the upside was much higher than that. So they were continually willing to spend whatever money and time it took to win.

ACTA is much like this. The copyright owners believe it will make them huge sums of money long-term, quite possibly in the $trillions. So they will keep spending the time and the money to propose ACTA or ACTA-like ideas until their opponents run out of time and money.

Evil From a Democratic Point of View

[darkonc]

Negotiating, in secret, a treaty that is likely to result in 'A responsibility' to pass a change in the laws of a country is intrinsically undemocratic and, as such, evil from a point of view of democratic principles.

Freedom of speech is meaningless if the issues about which one has cause to speak are shrouded in maximal secrecy.

Re:Evil From a Democratic Point of View

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Oh, that's easy. They'll just negotiate new meanings of words, like this:
Freedom - licensed ability to use product, service or feature*.
Speech - licensed ability to use copyrighted words and symbols of $language_of_choice for intercommunication**.

* Subscription plans for advanced "freedoms" are available to premium users. Basic "freedom" pack includes a "freedom" to pay for services/products/features and "freedom" to consume advertising.
** Basic license grants ability to intercommunicate only with one other person. Mass intercommunication (with 2 or more persons at once) available only to premium users.

After that you can enjoy your "freedom" of "speech" as much as you wish.***

***After exceeding a prepaid limit of enjoyment additional fees will be charged.

Re:Evil From a Democratic Point of View

[JockTroll]

>The democratic process is dead. What options are left to us?

Boomsticks and boompacks. What else? The self-appointed elite sees no reason to listen to the little people, the little people must use extreme measures.

Standings

[Wowsers]

Where you stand with the ACTA agreement if implemented.... no need to worry about it, it will cut the legs off of ordinary people, whilst pandering to big money to tighten it's grip on the little people. Thus the problem of "where you stand" will be eliminated.

Re:ACTA

[mcgrew]

It's not masturbation, it's gang rape. We're all going to be fucked by it.

You can't win

[rsilvergun]

you're up against full time lawyers, and you're just a bunch of starry eyed idealists with day jobs & kids on the way.

Re:You can't win

[Rudeboy777]

As much as I'd like to share in your despair, there are always new starry-eyed idealists coming right up behind the generation that now has a day-job and kids. You may tell them to get off your lawn, but they will always be an important force in the world.

ACTA has nothing to do with counterfeiting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded the version of ACTA posted previously. Considering the title is the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, I figured it would talk about the illegal production of currency, with a page or two that lobbyists stuck in the middle dealing with copyright infringement. So I did a text search on "money," "coin" and "currency."

The only results were talking about whether money exchanges hands for illegally copied works.

In other words, the Anti COUNTERFEITING Trade Agreement has nothing to do with the illegal production of false currency. Nothing whatsoever. The "Counterfeiting" in the title refers to simple copyright infringement. It's trying to equate copyright infringement with one of the most serious crimes a sovereign nation can face.

If a treaty has to lie right in the title in order not to provoke outrage by the citizens of the countries governed by it, it's a bad treaty. No exceptions.

Re:THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM !!

[Runaway1956]

The real problem with this whole "anti counterfeiting" thing is, the common man, the "little people" have no voice. Yeah, the talks are more transparent than they were a year or six ago - they've lost their "top secret" status. But, who is speaking for the PEOPLE? Absolutely no one.

Which songs are entering the public domain, this year?

Which movies are entering the public domain this year?

Which patents are entering the public domain?

Which copyright and/or patent laws are being made less restrictive this year?

When I hear that some party to these talks are actively pursuing the overhaul of copyright law, THEN I'll feel that some good may come of ACTA. Until then, I view ACTA as little more than a highway to hell. If one party wins out, we go to Satan's throne room, if another party wins out, we end up in the far reaches of Satan's kingdom. But, it's still hell.

I want 20 year old copyrighted works in the public domain, unless the so-called "rights holder" is willing to pay some HUGE bribes to society. Not to a handful of lawmakers, but to society as a whole. Give something to us "little people", in exchange for a continued monopoly on some specific copyrighted work. God knows, that bastard Al Gore doesn't need anything, or Obama, or anyone else in Washington. Give something to the school kids, and the moms and dads who have to pay for all the cool schitzls that the school kids need/want.