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ACTA Signed By 8 of 11 Participating Countries
An anonymous reader writes with this news on the ACTA treaty, straight from the EFF's release on the news: "On Saturday October 1st, eight countries (the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea) signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in Tokyo, Japan. Three of the participating countries (the European Union, Mexico, and Switzerland) have not yet signed the treaty, but have issued a joint statement affirming their intentions to sign it 'as soon as practicable.' ACTA will remain open for signature until May 2013. While the treaty's title might suggest that it deals only with counterfeit physical goods such as medicines, it is in fact far broader in scope. ACTA contains new potential obligations for Internet intermediaries, requiring them to police the Internet and their users, which in turn pose significant concerns for citizens' privacy, freedom of expression, and fair use rights." Update: 10/20 13:24 GMT by T : As several readers have pointed out, the quoted news from the EFF describes the EU as a country; I'm sure they know it's not.
The EU is not a country.
The core problem here is that we have nation-states regulating the nationless internet.
The world's people are no longer divided by stupid, arbitrary national borders. And yet we still have these gigantic nation-states serving to limit our freedoms.
It is downright ironic that as we open up our capabilities, we move closer toward totalitarianism.
What we need now is to move beyond nation-states by implementing new forms of governance, starting at the community level.
Many major corporations are in favor of ACTA, and no major corporations oppose it, so clearly, signing it is a no-brainer.
I'd have been more surprised if any of the countries in question had had the cajones to stand up to Disney, News Corp, GE, or Time Warner.
I am officially gone from
Al Qaeda destroyed your constitution. Not physically, that would have been a regrettable loss of a historical artifact at most, but spiritually, which is much worse.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A Treaty signing is meaningless in the USA. A Treaty is NOT binding until it has been ratified by the Senate.
So, no, the fact that Congress didn't approve it in advance is meaningless, since they're not supposed to.
On the other hand, it has no force until the Senate approves it (which it will, almost certainly - there are enough Dems in bed with Hollywood to pass it on their own, even ignoring the Reps who would approve it).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
They will sign it as soon as practicable? I thought that the European parliament and the Mexican one had explicitly instructed the commission and the Mexican government, respectively, not to sign ACTA in its current form
I suppose that's just a minor detail.
Al Qaeda destroyed your constitution. Not physically, that would have been a regrettable loss of a historical artifact at most, but spiritually, which is much worse.
Nope, the americans destroyed their own constitution. They were bamboolzed into thinking that Al Quaeda was the coming on the devil on earth and that every possibile action was justified. What is the proverb is fitting to this historical situation "the road to hell is paved with good intentions " ?
Don't kid yourself.
The Constitution has been ignored when convenient for far longer than the last ten years.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Alright shit's getting real. I say as a first step we start by moving everyone onto a Tor-like darknet that runs on top of the current infrastructure. Once the uber-geeks are on we can start bringing Average Joes on, the incentive will kick in for them when they can't get their football game streams, replica handbags, Chinese knockoff batteries, cheap viagra and pirated MP3s. Maybe work in an IPv4-IPv6 transition at the same time, but that's just as much work by itself.
Then once everyone's on the darknet, start forking the infrastructure. Once the Internet becomes impossible to police there might not be a need to use a wireless mesh, everyone can have fiber to their door - not that a wireless mesh isn't also a worthy endeavor.
See also: my old commu-net concept: http://search.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1634334&cid=32019410
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think "Bread and Circuses" is more appropriate. Americans couldn't care less, so long as they get to watch American Idol and don't have to see people laying dead in the street.
Isn't there the question of whether this is unconstitutional here in America?
You can't be serious. When it comes to corporate greed, The Constitution of the United States of America takes a back seat, pal. Corporations are citizens too (the Supreme Court has said so) and since they have all the money, they are the most important "citizens". Their unique needs outweigh those of you and me. Keep voting for candidates who are paid corporate lackeys, because the "free market" can't survive without government welfare/protection.
[/sarcasm] It's becoming clearer every day... Obama was a wasted draft pick.
One more unfortunate step towards 1984... :(
Not all of us, just most. The remainder are stuck /facepalm'ing all of the time and shaking their heads in disbelief.
Well people, the age of your relative freedom is definitely over when this is ratified.
Welcome to the neo dark age. This time not ruled by the church but by Megacorp & co that is called the western world.
Keep telling yourself that. I got news for you the EU mostly controls your currency. Has the power to make treaties, and has courts. In most cases EU law has supremacy over member states laws. That is pretty much a nation by any definition. The EU is a central government. It might not be as strong as the Federal government we have here in the states but it is none the less a central government.
Its time EU citizens face up to the fact YOU FOOLS gave up the sovereignty of your to make quick buck by streamlining some trade and travel restrictions. That worked out short term but just like here in the USA globalism is hollowing you out; and EU membership is going to make your own local government impotent and powerless to protect you. The EU just like dear old Uncle Sam here is far enough removed and fractured enough in represented interests, it either does not care to or won't chose to protect you.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I thought the whole "war on...XXX" thing was a way to learn some geography.
No sig today...
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_agreement . ACTA walks, talks, and quacks like a treaty, but the President of the US can sign it without Congressional approval.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
For something this big, isn't it supposed to be standard procedure to have a vote? I mean, if I thought the Canadian government was stupid enough to sign it in the first place, I would have protested it. I guess that goes to show that you should never trust your own government.
In general you're right.
Unfortunately Obama is taking the position that all ACTA's provisions are compatible with existing US Law, so actual ratification is unnecessary.
Look at it this way:
If the Obama administration charges somebody with counterfeiting some product using the US Code the Courts are not gonna let the dude off because ACTA isn't ratified. They're gonna try the guy under the US Code. And, according to Obama, they'll convict if he actually violated ACTA because everything illegal under ACTA is illegal under the current US Code.
The people in charge of judging whether the US is complying with the treaty will have to count the dude's conviction as compliance.
In other words you shouldn't be worried about ACTA. Yopu should be worried that everything ACTA does is already illegal.
Functionally, in areas where corporate interests dictate policy it is no longer your government. "Let them vote for cake" is where things are headed; serious self government is being removed gradually; like boiling a frog.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Now we know why Obama became a "constitutional scholar," to be able to figure out more ways around it when he came to power.
Hahahahaha. European anti-Americanism maps one to one to American anti-terrorist sentiment. Both are fomented as a distraction by the powers that be to steal your rights away from you. Look around you fool.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Doesn't the constitution say that no one shall be convicted of a crime, other than in a court of law?
Killing someone without legal proceedings isn't constitutional either. A person is a person and is not the same as a citizen.
Slashdot doesn't have a "boot, stamping on a human face, forever" icon.
Look around you fool.
I heard that in a Mr T. voice.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
The problem?
The ACTA treaty confers powers with dangerously broad and ambiguous language - an example is language to ban:
So legitimate purposes that are significant, but can be made out not to be commercially significant, won't protect you. Education and research purposes, and fair use gone, at one stroke!
The international coordination is all about the interests of "intellectual property" owners (mostly distributors, in the content industries), and not about consumers or the broader creative economy. The only stakeholders explicitly mentioned are "rights holders" - if we're lucky, the rest of the world may sneak in as "other relevant
stakeholders" - but don't hold your breath - it hasn't happened yet, and isn't happening in the shady negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. And the only measurement or analysis to be done is about how well they tackle the nut of infringement, with no examination of the sledgehammer of social and economic costs of the enforcement regime ACTA requires.
Then there are the optional extras such as:
and
A good government would implement the protections ACTA says they MAY do, and omit some of the more onerous and opressive powers the lobbyists got into ACTA as optional extras.
Our governments, on the other hand, will use draft legislation written by the same content industry lobbyists who wrote the original ACTA policy shopping list, and will try to omit every inconvenient consumer protection measure some ACTA negotiaters insisted on, and include each of the overreaching powers the negotiators reduced from MUST to MAY in ACTA.
Or we can just stop worrying and hope that the law-faries will bring us cuddly, fair and reasonable legislation that servers the public interest, instead.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"