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Why Google, Bing, Yahoo Should Fear ACTA
littlekorea writes "US intellectual property law expert Jonathan Band has warned that Silicon Valley's search engines, hosting companies, and e-commerce giants have much to fear from the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, negotiations for which continued in Switzerland today. The fear for search engines in particular is the erosion of 'fair use' protections and introduction of statutory damages, both of which could lead to more copyright claims from rights holders." The article links a marked-up ACTA draft (PDF) that Band and a coalition of library organizations and rights groups believe is more balanced. Quoting Band: "Our high-level concern is that ACTA does not reflect the balance in US IP law, [which] contains strong protections and strong exceptions. ACTA exports only the strong protections, but not the strong exceptions."
The war on filesharing is untimely.(Bad economics)
Because they'd rather you not listen to their music at all than let you download it.
This is about information control, and controlling who can and cannot be happy. It's also about profit margins. But the truth is most college students and recent college grads aren't going to spend more than a specific amount of money every year on entertainment no matter what they do. They can pass any laws they want and it's not going to improve the job market. They should be finding a way to make money on ad revenue but instead they want to keep the old models even when the economy doesn't support it.
Because they'd rather lock you up than hire you or give you a raise.
If a college student budgets $200 to spend on movies and music for that year thats what he or she is going to spend. He or she can spend it all on one concert or buy albums and movies on itunes but the limit is not going to change no matter what laws they pass. As the economy is getting worse they keep upping the price of the music on itunes so that young people can afford less and less of it, while at the same time complaining that sales are down. They cannot have it both ways, and they have to compromise just like everyone else has been forced to do in this economy.
If they think passing ACTA is a good idea it's not. It's not going to make someone friendly to your business if you sue them. This goes for corporations like Google or for individuals. And the 3 strikes policy is completely unacceptable, ruin a persons livelihood because they downloaded some music they couldn't afford or didn't want to risk paying for? Find another strategy, not wait until an economic depression to crack down hard on all the poor jobless undergrads and recent grads unless they really want to make the the situation worse and make people desperate.
If sales figures are down it's because we have less disposable income. If people aren't buying music, movies or art it's because they are paying their bills. Find a way to expand the market, is that even up for debate? And before anyone comments, I own several copyrights and these people backing ACTA do not represent me.
lawmakers and everyday people live in different worlds. what they refuse to understand is that if people can get something for free, they will get it for free. period.
another important issue is that it's very dangerous to try to forbid something that you can't actually stop. that's when you lose all authority.
offtopic: http://xkcd.com/137/ . we shouldn't be afraid to say the truth about what we want.
new sig
A brief 10-second ad before every time I try and play a song would be worse than paying $1.25 to never hear the ad. That shit would get old really, really quickly.
Below is the text from a Q&A session with ACTA negotiators held on June 28, 2010 in Lucerne. These were notes taken by hand by the questioner, and the answers were considered "on the record." I have highlighted some important parts, and omitted some irrelevant parts.
On June 28, 2010, at 7:30pm Swiss time, a group of civil society representatives met with 21 ACTA negotiators. The negotiators included representatives (21 in all) from the Switzerland, France, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Mexico, Japan, U.S., Morocco, Canada and Korea.
...
The questions raised were given to the negotiators in advance and the answers were represented as those of the collective views of the negotiators rather than of an individual negotiator unless otherwise indicated. Unless otherwise indicated, the speaker is the chair of the Swiss Delegation who was appointed to speak for the group.
There are a couple news items here. First, there is an “emerging consensus” to take patents out of the border measure chapter, but not out of the rest of the agreement. Some parties appear to desire to take patents out of the whole text. The EU appears to be in favor of leaving patents in the civil chapter. The change appears to be a rather direct result of concerns raised by access to medicines advocates.
There are still major concerns on access to medicines and free flow of goods in the border chapter. Negotiators seem committed to requiring in transit seizure and it is possible (although there seems some division) that it will include common trademark infringements and non-commercial scale copyright infringement, thus reaching far beyond TRIPS standards.
There was an admission that countries may have to change their laws to comply with ACTA. That may not be real news, but I have not heard it admitted by a delegate before. But the EU continued to press that they will not change their laws.
There seemed to be little desire to remove or narrow considerably the internet chapter. There was a desire by some delegates to ensure that DMCA-like protections are in the ACTA internet chapter. But several discussed (off line) the desire to combat “file sharing,” even apparently when not done on a commercial scale.
Meeting with ACTA negotiators, Lucerne, 28.06.2010; Compiled questions from the civil society for the Q&A session
1. Will negotiators commit to continue releasing the text of the Agreement following completion of this week's negotiating round and subsequently until the completion (or abandonment) of negotiations?
A: This is a question that the delegation takes up at end of each round. This will be a question to be discussed and agreed by consensus.
On issue of public comments, this is a plurilateral process and each country will have to take that into account. It is not as if the ACTA group is a formal organization. For a pluralateral agreement, we have promoted a great deal of transparency already – more than in other agreements.
Q. Wait. In other processes – e.g. anything done at WIPO or the example of the Doha declaration – civil society got access to text before and after each round. That has not been the case here. We received text once, after years of negotiations and close to what you declared to be the end point of the discussions.
A. Those are multilateral negotiations. This is a plurilateral negotiation. We do not have a secretariat to assist with such matters. This has been an extremely transparent process.
2. Are negotiators reviewing the text of the Agreement to ensure it is fully consistent with the WTO TRIPS Agreement? Will the WTO or other independent legal experts be asked to review the text of the Agreement to ensure it is legally consistent with WTO rules? Will you provide clear and objective information regarding the evidence base upon which ACTA is purportedly justified, as
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
ACTA is an end run around the legislative process. Treaties like this should ratify what is already the the consensus of the legislative bodies of the participating countries, not try to legislate entirely new bodies of law by subterfuge, on a take it or be considered an international pariah basis. Unelected international bureaucrats have no business deciding what that consensus should be.
Bah, he should be an equal opportunity conspiracy nut like the rest of us.
Are what secret negotiations over treaties that will obligate us to write laws in concert with the treaty. There was some fuss about something like that once somewhere.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
ACTA highlights the fundamental problem with politics (in the U.S.) today.
You've got intellectual property interests driving a legislative bonanza for Intellectual Property holders that, on its face is totally offensive to commerce. These vested interests are the lever driving their interests forward. In response, you get a compromise, (from the librarian group) which acts like a pawl, restraining the ACTA juggernaut, but still the ACTA juggernaut scores a a major win. This process is simply repeated. After ACTA will be another more restrictive set of legislation and the moderate political forces will restrain it, but there will be another big win. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Every time you think, "It can't get worse than this." Think again. Because that's how the Ratchet Effect works. They have to drive the most extreme legislation forward so they get a compromise that resembles exactly what they wanted. If the issue dies, just try again.
And few look around and ask, "how did we get here?" Instead, another economic bonanza is in the legislation queue like so many airplanes waiting for Congress' moderation and approval to further constrain economic activity. The proper response is, "ACTA is harmful to the economy. Here is legislation that eliminates restraints on intellectual property/copyright." The fundamental political failure is the lack of an Anti-ACTA, or Anti-DMCA. This is where the voter has gone wrong. Demand an Anti-Acta and Anti-DMCA is just one way to get the process more balanced.
I didn't make up the term "The Ratchet Effect." This story is an excellent example.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html