Once-Secret ACTA Copyright Treaty Approved By EU

itwbennett writes "By a vote of 331 to 294, the EU Parliament has approved the controversial and once-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). According to an ITworld article, 'the most controversial paragraph in the final text leaves the door open for countries to introduce the so-called three-strikes rule. This would cut Internet users off if they download copyright material as national authorities would be able to order ISPs to disclose personal information about customers.... The proposed agreement would also place sanctions against any device or software that is marketed as a means of circumventing access controls such as encryption or scrambling that are designed to prevent copying. It also requires legal measures against knowingly using such technology.'"

Comments

Cool!

[Captain Splendid]

Awesome! This just means higher adoption of encryption and more bodies on darknets!

Works for me, and, I suspect, most others here too.

Re:Cool!

[girlintraining]

Awesome! This just means higher adoption of encryption and more bodies on darknets!

The problem is you can't hide the data. The bit is either there, or it isn't. It's on or it's not. All you can do is apply statistical and mathematical formula and methods to the data in an attempt to obscure or distort the information to the point that it is no longer useful to anyone other than the intended recipient(s). And almost every method we have of creating plausible deniability is being hunted down by governments around the world. If they want it to stop, they just pass a law saying "If you can't give us the keys, methods, etc., used to mask, alter, obscure, etc., your data, we can simply throw you in jail."

In other words, the mere act of creating privacy between two entities will itself become a crime. That is the next step after ACTA. And it's already being planned.

It's time...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to go kill some lobbyists.

Re:So when are they coming for us?

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't. They'll nab you for child pornography that appears on your desk an hour before the dawn raid.

Re:I'm torn on this

[alexborges]

Whats "material" cost of music? Most of the cost comes from a distribution method that has been obsoleted in the digital age. This law only tries to impose limitations on a better and less costly way to get digital "wares", to save the ass of a distribution bussiness that is simply not needed anymore: music labels, cable companies, tv channels.

We should have ONE link, the internet, and content providers, both independent and from label and shit, competing together: THATS HOW CAPITALISM WORKS.

Protecting unnecesary monopolies with law is both plain stupid and a plain robbery from the people. We are supposed to do "as if", the internet wasnt there with regards to digitalizable content. But it is there. And digital content can travel through the net. That is "bad" for the distribution monopoly and they thus bought politicians to FUCK US ALL IN ALL OF THE WORLD.

THAT SUCKS.

Re:Been there already

[blair1q]

No it didn't.

The church built its learning institutions on the model of others, and there were secular learning institutions alongside them.

The church is in conflict with the forces of reality. It has a long history of oppressing the free spread of knowledge, and of couching its tyrannies in the language of benevolence. And of coopting institutions and traditions and pretending they were the province of their religion all along. It's only typical that they would pretend to have invented higher education, and would call it open and free exchange of ideas.