US Negotiators Cave On Internet Provisions To ACTA

Hugh Pickens writes "Ars Technica reports that with the release of the 'near-final' ACTA text (PDF), it is becoming clear that the US has caved on the most egregious provisions from earlier drafts (advocating 'three strikes' regimes, ordering ISPs to develop anti-piracy plans, promoting tough DRM anticircumvention language, setting up a 'takedown' notification system, ordering 'secondary liability' for device makers) and has largely failed in its attempts to push the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) onto the rest of the world. Apparently, a face-saving agreement is better than no agreement at all — but even the neutered ACTA could run into problems, with Mexico's Senate recently approving a nonbinding resolution asking for the country to suspend participation in ACTA, while key members of the European Parliament have also expressed skepticism about the deal."

Comments

LOL, they'll be back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, guys, those provisions will be back soon enough in some other "agreement"!

still need to kill it

[j0nb0y]

We can't have secret treaties become law in democratic countries. It would be the end of democracy as we know it.

Re:still need to kill it

[kill-1]

Yes, we really have to teach people what "res publica" means.

Re:still need to kill it

[gstoddart]

Big agree there, I really don't understand why even the draft phases of a law would be kept secret from the citizens it is intended to be applied to.

So the citizens don't have a chance to say they don't agree with the law until things they are already doing become illegal?

Basically it's eroding any actual "fair use" that anybody ever had, and making it so that you more or less need the permission of media companies to use the internet or own a computer. If they don't like you, they'll take it away from you.

People don't actually want the provisions in this awful treaty, and it makes no sense whatsoever for every government in the world to be clerks for copyright holders. This really does subjugate personal/government interests to those of corporations.

Re:still need to kill it

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

demacracy is failling, that's why.

as the wealth gap between the poorest and the richer becomes wider, the developed nations are moving towards a form of corporate feudalism, where the general population becomes serfs of large conglomerates, subject to their rules, whose objective is to syphon money and power to themselfs, leaving to the people barelly enough to stay alive an feeding the corporate lords.

it's not paranoia or a conspiracy theory, is just how i see it, so feel free to disagree.

my rationale id that big money doesn't like democracy, they like money and power. mostly because power allows them to earn even more money, and both can become an adiction. a well organized democracy, with enlightened voters can be an obstacle to large corporations to earn more money and power, so they try to corrupt it. the result tends to a kind of feudalism.

to avoid this, it takes an educated people to vote for high taxation for large corporations and wealthy citizens. leave them enough to re-invest and create jobs, but not enough to corrupt the sytem. but i don't see this happing anytime soon anywhere in the world.

Re:still need to kill it

[MozeeToby]

I think the difference is that most treaties affect the signing countries at a government level, whereas ACTA affects the signatories at an individual level; i.e. there are provisions in that treaty which will require many hundreds of thousands of individuals to change their behavior or face punishment. Yes, Arms Limitation obviously affects all the individuals in a country, but it doesn't take cooperation on an individual or corporate level to follow the treaty, nor is there punishment on an individual or corporate level.

Other way 'round

[Brown]

I think you've misunderstood the sense of the "cave" - it was the US government that was pushing for the more draconian measures (the RIAA/MPAA line), not for sanity and consumers' rights in the first place. The "cave" is in fact an acceptance that the rest of the world thinks that the DMCA-like measures etc are dangerous/stupid.

In other words, this looks like a (partial) victory for the people.

Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone just ignored the "products" of these big media firms then none of the copyright legislation would have come into existence.

But people want their bread and circuses. Therefore *you* are to blame, not malevolent lobbyists and corrupted politicians.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

There is some truth to this, but it has its limits. Many people HAVE revolted against the big media companies, most stop buying their products, some resorting to internet piracy, some moving to radio (recording/listening). Their response however has been to simply attributed ALL of their losses to internet piracy (oh and embellished those losses beyond all reason), claiming that's why they needed new, invasive measures. Overall I highly doubt that this is over, the ACTA still contains many unpleasant measures (drug patents, software patents, copyright "improvements"). And I am sure that if they get it passed they will eventually try to backdoor in the provisions they have recently removed.

Still despicable and unacceptable

[airfoobar]

The DMCA stuff was merely the tip of the iceberg. There's still a lot wrong with this document -- like, making just linking to illegal content illegal, the conflation of counterfeiting (trademark law) with copyrights, internet "copyrights" and patents, the way infringement penalties are calculates (as lost sales), border controls on medicines and other products in transit, and let's not forget the despicable way in which the entire thing was written in total secrecy without input from the public (the stakeholders).

I personally refuse to allow ACTA to pass into law (i.e., member countries' laws will need to change, despite earlier claims to the opposite), because not only does it bring even more draconian enforcement of intellectual monopolies (which I disagree with at a philosophical level), but because it sets a terrible precedent that gives politicians and lobbyists even more freedom to take away our freedoms.

Kill it

[mbone]

As a "non-treaty treaty" negotiated in secret without any attempt at public accountability or a public vote of adoption, ACTA represents an abuse of process and should be opposed even if all it did was support Motherhood and Apple Pie.

What.

[Rydia]

The submitter is talking about takedown provisions as "egregious." Considering the alternative to a takedown notice is just opening up with a lawsuit, I'm not sure what about it is so evilly anti-consumer.

Re:What.

[Anonymous Coward]

The DMCA is quite draconian, and routinely exploited for censorship purposes to stifle free speech and open competition. Takedown provisions are not only anti-consumer, but also anti-free speech. Lawsuits are worse, so that leaves us between a rock and a hard place... It means we must have gone wrong somewhere else down the line, so we must back-track, repeal ("re-peel back") the latest copyright acts and work our way from there.

Here's a common tactic

[Spatial]

Pitch something completely ridiculous and unacceptable instead of what you actually want. Tone it down gradually. Congratulations, now your awful idea is a compromise and a relief rather than an outrage.

Stupid question :)

[disi]

Do you think we ever make it past those policticans that punish us with laws?

New laws are very rarely, if any, removed once implemented. There is no way back after they did this to us. I am wondering if we are still allowed to watch DVD on Linux O.o since it is forbidden to circumvent protection technologies.