Slashdot Mirror
Thousands Take To the Streets To Protest ACTA
An anonymous reader writes "The protests
against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement continue
to spread in cities across Europe. The protests began in Poland, where thousands
have taken to the streets and opposition politicians have worn Guy
Fawkes masks in protest against the country signing the agreement last
week. The scenes
from Poland and France
are remarkable, demonstrating the widespread anger over
the decision to join ACTA. A full rundown of protest plans
can be found
here."
These protests are short-lived and I wonder if they end up doing any good. I am against ACTA and I have called my congressman as has my son to ask him to not support it. Interestingly, he knew little about it and wanted information. We had a fairly long call. At the end of the call he said that he would not vote for it. How many others in congress are not aware of what's in this bill? Protesting is well and good but I think making phone calls, emails, etc. are also very, very important. We can get to folks in congress one phone call at a time and put ACTA out of our misery.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Aside from the first sentence of the post? Fucking retard.
ACTA represents the end of political power as we knew it, growing up. ACTA, the NDAA, SOPA, PIPA, and the inconcievably invasive H.B. 2288 (which I am ashamed to say originated here in Hawaii) represent some of the best efforts by the 1% to control what we say and do, especially online. What hubris!
Thinkingman.com New Media
While artists and such do deserve a right to be able to make a fair shake on what they produce, why should patentable items only have a 20 year shelf life while a song have 100+ years of protection?
This is insane.
That should give the entertainment/content industry pause, if there was a strong united Internet demand for fair copyright terms.
That should give some pause to those trying to hijack the production and distribution of ideas.
There are going to be about 4,000 geeks in Brussels next weekend for FOSDEM - I bet at least half of them could be persuaded to pop over to the EU parliament for a little bit of protesting...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why do corporations contribute so much money to politicians in western nations? Because they except and get a 10-fold return on investment, by having laws, tax policies, regulations, and government purchases catered to their wishes.
Protesting only value in the political equation, is its dollar value against the advertisement and other media costs needed to negate it. (Note that SOPA was only stopped, when Google, Wikipedia, and others put the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising against it, and not but grass-roots protests alone.)
The only reasonable way to stop ACTA now would be to get some major corporate support on board and/or generate a signifigant bribe fund for politicians that would be greater than the amount the media company are bribing with.
partly to FTFT, partly to inform: ACTA is an enabling piece of EU legislation that allows Governments to shut down websites they deem to be overly freethinking in their politics (eg positive action group blogs and newsboards). This is nothing to do with copyright infringement but with ACTA, they won't need pesky courts of Law, or even investigation into claims of copyright infringement - just the mere suggestion of copyright infringement will be enough for permanent shutdown and shitlisting of the domain.
Screw due process, Slashdot is subversive and it links to copyrighted material. Hell, you don't even have to go to court or attend police interviews.
Bye Slashdot, 'twas nice knowing you.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Those opposition politicians in Guy Fawkes masks are mostly from PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwo - law and justice) party.
Most opressing, conservative, supposedly catholic bunch of political scoundrels.
Can you feel the irony?
The problem is that ACTA is being touted as executive agreement which the president has already signed. IIRC a bunch of senators were even denied access to the ACTA negotiations as a matter of "national security." Obama has essentially given congress the finger.
Does it concern anyone else that Americans seemingly couldn't be bothered to actively protest this very same legislation with any level of ferocity here in the states? What will it take to get us upset enough to leave our collective couch, do you think?
I'm glad there are people in the world voicing their opinion.
People in America seem to make infographics, complain on message boards, shout in slashdot comments... anything, as long as they don't have to get up from their computer desks.
Are you scared of pepper sprays? Europeans clash with the police and aren't afraid to get a little hurt to express their anger towards draconian legislation.
That is why when RFID chipping comes to America, people will take it.
As always people are not being logical and are not looking at the root of the problem, which is the fact that copyrights and patents are enforced by government in detriment to the individual rights of the people in the first place.
You can't handle the truth.
The only thing politicians value more than money is their own life. As terrible as it is to consider, this is really the only avenue to effect change that the electorate has.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
why should patentable items only have a 20 year shelf life
You say it as if the moment a patent expires, any products covered by that patent become unprofitable to sell. There are a lot of counterexamples to this statement...
if there was a strong united Internet demand for fair copyright terms.
Copyrights are dead and everyone knows it. Trying to enforce copyrights, as originally envisioned, is as crazy as trying to tell people that they are not allowed to drink their tap water. It is not going to work. In the worst case -- the one where we continue to have copyrights -- we need to turn copyright infringement into an offense that you receive a ticket for, like parking your car in the wrong place. The better alternative is to develop a new system for compensating artists and ensuring public access to arts and useful sciences.
Palm trees and 8
http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/leaks/Anti-Counterfeiting%20Trade%20Agreement.pdf
The most important part is Section 5: "Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Environment" at page 15
Check out my cross-platform apps
Yet another problem is that while tens if thousands "like" the event on social sites and promise to protest, there is only a hundred to a few hundred who actually come and do.
Media has a field day saying that "would-be-protesters" do not walk their talk.
Main influence could be that young people try to defend their freedom (=internet) during the next elections - if they remember about it in 3.5 years time.
You know, you bring up a good point. If the internet community can try to fight with legislation of their own - legislation that would limit copyrights and extend fair use and public domain - then these media giants might find that they've awakened a sleeping giant. Not only should we be contacting our congressmen and telling them what to oppose, but we should also be telling them what type of changes we want made in regards to copyright.
Even if the endeavor isn't successful, imagine how scared shitless the MPAA would be if we could get guys like Ron Paul and Ron Wyden to introduce a bill that would get rid of the Mickey Mouse Protection Act or other such nonsense. Furthermore, if we can convince guys like that to vocally campaign on these issues, it would do a lot towards raising awareness.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Not any more ironic than the fucking corporate media giant and SOPA/PIPA supporter Time-Warner making bank on all those Guy Fawkes masks being sold to people who are protesting the dominance of corporate influence over their governments.
While artists and such do deserve a right to be able to make a fair shake on what they produce
- what does that have to do with government enforcing copyright?
You can't handle the truth.
It would be nice if people stopped conflating the two.
Copyright: World wide by default
Patents: Only valid where it is applied for (IF granted) . In view of the cost, most patents are only applied for in 1 country/jurisdiction.
Copyright: No cost to the copyright holder
Patents: Applicant must draft costly patent application
Copyright: Never ends in your lifetime or that of your children
Patents: End when the proprietor stops paying the renewal fee and in any case within 20 years.
Copyright: Even for DRM where the work will never enter the public domain
Patents: The applications are publicly available (for the treasure trove on just about any topic, see for exampole http://espacenet.com/ for everyone world wide (including developing countries).
Copyright: Has to be original (low bar)
Patents: Must not only be New, but also Inventive (very high bar; sure, some bad stuff slips through but there are review process/opposition procedures to weed them out if someone is bothered by one). The invention must be described in a way in which an ordinary person skilled in the art can work it (or the patent is null and void).
So, while the patent law is crude, it is working. You don't think that applicants would provide the long explanatory texts that patent applications are if they had no chance of getting protection for their invention, do you?
Copyright law, I agree with you: No balance between society and copyright holder. And the balance is shifting in the wrong direction too. If you conflate the two, you make it harder to get something done about copyright law.
Bert
Those differences are irrelevant in the face of one striking similarity: both are granted by government, both are protected with the force of government, both are a subsidy to specific business models and both must go.
You can't handle the truth.
So the way to fix the corrupt politicians is to corrupt them even more? Wasnt most of the western nations democracies, where the politicians are elected? There is where you should get rid of them. And if you have enough people behind that, you can even try to promote anticipated elections to get rid of them sooner.
At least that should work if enough people is aware and in a real democracy. US isn't by now, so there is no hope in that front.
This is the argument for apathy, and it's wrong. Protesting isn't just about results, protesting is about standing up for what's right. Regardless, I do believe there are positive results - right now we, along with many others around the world, are discussing an issue that may not have occurred to us, or we may not have known about, had it not been for a group of Polish protestors.
Money isn't everything. That's just a defeatist attitude. It's the type of attitude that, by accepting injustice as inevitable, is complicit in it.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
why should patentable items only have a 20 year shelf life while a song have 100+ years of protection?
It's easy. For every patent with an owner who wants that patent extended, there are half-a-dozen other companies who don't want that patent extended.
For every copyrighted book or song, there is a party strongly interested in extending the copyright of that item, but not too many who would profit by having it shortened. Copyright is easy to work around by making your own thing. Thus there are groups who really want their copyright extended, but there is no group who wants the copyright shortened (yeah, maybe you personally want copyright shortened, but how much are you willing to donate to a campaign to shorten copyright? How much have you donated?)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
To correct this misleading statement: ACTA is a trade agreement pushed by the US government rather heavy handedly. So it is quite clear that the usual suspects MPAA/RIAA pushed this forward. Being a trade agreement or at least presented as such it used secret negotiations and participants having to sign non disclosure agreements. This "trade agreement" status is a rather shady arrangement which served to avoid public scrutiny and democratic control. ACTA is not EU legislation. Though the EU has signed, it still requires ratification by all EU member states. The troll above clearly thinks that he can influence the process by misinformation.
My guess is that the building opposition and increasing public awareness following the SOPA debacle will leave this process dead in the water. Good riddance.
Are you sure?
According to my news sources, the faction that showed the masks are called "Ruch Palikota".
They are being described as "left wing, liberal" and seem to have a tendency for publicity stunts like this.
They did not use the actual masks being sold. They used cut paper printouts.
Who cares. Both of opposing parties tried to suck up to protesters without much luck. Kaczynski (leader of PiS) lost all credibility when he admitted that he did not really know what ACTA was about when his party negotiated it, neither he does now, but he is of course sure that government is wrong. Palikot (leader of RP - second opposing party) was shouted down and physically forced back to his car when he tried to join protesters.
He signed it months ago, as a matter of fact. Before all the publicity surrounding SOPA and PIPA.
He's been doing a lot of that lately, ignoring the Constitution.
Source: http://www.infowars.com/obama-signs-global-internet-treaty-worse-than-sopa/
We are in the situation now that parties like The Pirate Party are a viable option for people. We are so fucked that so called pirates has to lead the way. Much like the pirates of the seas of old. Did you know, pirate ships was one of the first places in the world where something democracy-like was observed in practice ?
Can I light a sig ?
ACTA is a trade agreement pushed by the US government rather heavy handedly
For those who think this is or would like to paint it as an exaggeration.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
America is truly the land of sheep! President Obama used an "executive order" to invoke ACTA here, where constitutionally the Senate is needed to ratify treaties. I'd say that is a clear violation of his oath to uphold the Constitution. Nobody here seems the least bit concerned about losing their right to free speech. Sure, SOPA/PIPA are postponed, but they will be back. Meanwhile in Poland, thousands take to the streets to protest their voices being silenced by the ACTA treaty. Maybe they remember the old days under Communist rule and don't like the same thing coming back with a different face. Wake up America!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet_spread/
They wanted to have 500 thousand names, but it's over 940k names now.
The names will be presented to the European Parliament in Brussels.
Also: I've made a promise to myself. If ACTA or other "anti-piracy" (=pro-censorship) laws go through, I will STOP buying music and movies. I will also stop going to the cinema. I don't need more entertainment, I got my existing albums, DVDs and books, all paid for. I'll just treasure those more as works of art instead of a throw-away product. Not a penny more to the parasites.
...the old days of TRIPs, UCC and WCT are definitely over: quietly dealing in back rooms, and the news ended up on the 3rd page of the business section in the newspaper. Today, people are starting to notice. People are realizing how this directly affects them. People are becoming involved.
A lot of commenters predicted this would happen; Tarkin (RIAA/MPAA) kept on tightening his grip, and now systems are about to start to slipping through his fingers. And it's about time, too.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Both patent law and copyright law are out of balance I think. My cheap monitor is black and has rounded corners, do you think Benq should pay royalties to Apple?
I agree that it would be useful if people stopped conflating patents and copyright:
This following article helps and is very clearly written if you take the time to read it slowly:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
And yes, it's written by Richard M. Stallman. Go read it anyway. Seriously.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Do the thousands protesting ACTA in Europe really think their government or the RIAA/MPAA cares that they're protesting? Do they think that their protests will give politicians and their corporate owners one moment of pause? I don't care if there were millions protesting, SOPA, ACTA, ProtectIP are all coming, one way or another.
It's time that the people learn who's boss
You are welcome on my lawn.
If they have a copyright on the mask, then you know copyright has gone insane. The image has been around for centuries.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Aliens are creating a documentary
"Look at these primitive animals out in the streets worshiping their gods. That white mask that they wear is a symbol of what they believe to be the rain god, they are protesting the lack of rain in the region so that they can better provide for their farms".
If you believe that you'll believe anything.
RT is the most obviously biased pile of arse I've ever seen. It's a Russian propaganda exercise.
The BBC is still pretty impartial, and I have a lot of respect for Al-Jazeera, but RT? Please, it's bullshit.
You're right, parent is wrong. Janusz Palikot's crew are the ones in the masks. PIS also opposes ACTA, but I think that's mainly because the ruling party supports it.
GP's post is not misinformational at all.
Go ahead, allow ACTA to be signed, ratified, and put into effect. THEN, go online, open up a website, and start building up a case AGAINST ACTA and it's proponents. Watch to see how fast your site is taken down.
ACTA is nothing, if it is not a tool to censor the masses, and to form public opinion - while at the same time enabling "Rights holders" to fleece those same masses of their hard earned money.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I wish I still had points. You have, sir, hit the nail directly on the head. Even if that is not the main reason for ACTA, mission creep will soon have the powerful shutting down sites they don't like intellectually.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
I thought the same thing. Offense is the best defense.
But we have wide disagreements. Most people want to reform the system, not radically change it. Most reform ideas involve shortening copyright and patent durations, and scaling back what can be patented and copyrighted. I don't believe that will really solve the problem. We would still attempt to treat abundance as if it was scarce. Reform would be like reducing prison terms from 75 years to 14 years for crimes that shouldn't be crimes at all.
We need a system that defaults to acceptance, not denial. Having to get permission to so much as think, for fear of stepping on millions of "rights" and "costing" others their just earnings is a huge burden. We have no choice but to trample upon these so called rights in order to create more works, and hope that no one sues us. For many, that hope has been in vain. Free software such as Linux has been threatened this way many times, and will be threatened again. Even if the trolls never win any of these lawsuits, merely having to defend a project in court is so costly that the trolls may succeed in killing it anyway.
A workable replacement system about has to be patronage, which we could do so much better than it has been done in past centuries.
To change systems requires a constitutional amendment in the US. Proposing an "Information Amendment" and actually seeing it get some traction would be just the thing to really scare Big Media. Of course it should be a serious effort, worthy of being in the Constitution should it actually be ratified. I've worked out a starting point for such an amendment. Almost the first thing it says is that copyright can no longer be enforced.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I think the misinformation was the idea that it is a piece of European legislation. I'm embarassed to say it came from here where I live, the US.
My biggest problem with ACTA is less about the agreement itself as opposed to how it was passed. The governments of the world hid the content of ACTA the best the could for as long as they could in order to try and sneak it through under the eyes of the people which they represent. The kicker of it is, by doing it as an international trade agreement, it effectively puts laws in place in all the countries which signed it while bypassing the normal law making processes. In effect, by making ACTA a trade agreement instead of laws in each country, people are now required to obey what seems like laws in every way to them even though they were entirely without representation when the law was passed. On top of that, the people who negotiated/passed the laws were in most countries appointed officials, not elected. And therefore, they don't have to worry about things like losing their positions over misrepresenting the people.
The secrecy and intentional efforts to get it passed without public knowledge was a disgusting display of abuse of power. So, while people may disagree with ACTA itself, what they should really disagree with is that national leaders are treating the people who put them in power as school children in a classroom for naughty kids as opposed to their bosses. They demand you stay seated. They demand you don't speak without raising your hands. And if you break either of those rules, then you're a troublemaker.
If you didn't post AC, we could give you the beating you deserve.
Just kidding, I re-read your OP after I saw the backlash. I guess some have a problem with reading comprehension or the act of parsing English.
Ahhhh - my mistake. Poor reading skills, I guess. Somehow, I missed the EU legislation thing, and focused on what ACTA is meant to do.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
No. There are far more damaging things to deal with right now. ACTA is the least of our problems. EU's accounting practices are terrible, if it was a corporation, enterprise, it would have been shut down 9 years ago.
There are other issues like the Euro project, they are taking money from other countries, increasing their national debt to prevent Greece from collapsing instead of taking them out of the Euro, letting them have their own currency and devalue it.
There are horrible regulatory legislation coming in against farmers that increase the costs of being a farmer exponentially for no reason and won't provide what the bill actually intends to do.
There is the European Union trying to push legislation over the London economic sector, in order to regulate it for no good reason. The same people who are currently causing huge economical issues for Europe by putting pointless funds into Greece, only delaying the inevitable.
Sorry. I think ACTA is the least of the British worries when it comes economical issues from the European Union. We need to be focusing on the other issues, as well as leaving the EU (since we don't even have any ability to barter, despite paying stupid amounts of tax payer money per day - wtf is the pont?) rather than ACTA.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
To correct this misleading statement: ACTA is a trade agreement pushed by the US government rather heavy handedly. ...snip...
My guess is that the building opposition and increasing public awareness following the SOPA debacle will leave this process dead in the water. Good riddance.
That the protests began in Poland is telling to me.
The number of WW-II German Nazi government extermination camps in Poland
was large and I believe the social consequences of remaining silent is well understood
in that part of the world.
The tools and methods to track, silence and prosecute these laws and agreements
ring too close to history for those old enough to have personal contact with the rare
survivors. For some it is a lot like watching a three year old running with scissors
and other sharp objects. Online piracy and crime must be addressed but these laws
and agreements establish tools with no oversight or governance.
And we thought the banking crisis was an issue for want of oversight and governance.
Hang on to your tin foil hat...
As opposed to the new trade agreements that will cut us off from other non-European countries, such as commonwealth countries?
UK doesn't want to be cut off with trading with the rest of the world and certainly not cut off from commonwealth countries.
If the UK is separated, there is nothing but the European Union preventing trade agreements with the UK and other EU countries. This sort of secularism is not brought on by the UK and you don't need the EU to have a trade agreement.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
OK, that's precisely what I'll do. You see, the correct way to support misinformation is with real information, not to put down those who seek real information.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It wasn't communists & anarchists, it was broke college grads with no jobs, no prospects and lots and lots of debt. It was a bunch of people sold a bill of goods (buy education and you're future's set!). Anarchists are just guys out to riot, and there were no riots. And communists? Seriously? In America you'd have to declare yourself a baby eating Nambla member with ties to the Nazi party and the KKK to even get into the ballpark range of how much we hate communists. Heck, my kid was watching Annie yesterday and there's a Bolshevik trying to kill 'ole Daddy Warbucks. Anti-communism permeates our culture. Or to put it another way... But.. But.. Socialism!
The whole thing WAS conducted like civil rights marches. e.g. peacefully. As for the Sunday's best, the movement was squashed long before it could get that level of organization. It woulda been nice if it got that far, but do you honestly think our ruling class learned nothing from the 60s?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
For US readers, there's a whitehouse.gov petition for ACTA to be considered by the Senate. Dunno how like that is to work, but there you go: wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/please-submit-acta-senate-ratification-required-constitution-trade-agreements/VgZJGZMt
Always remember, there is more to the world than the US.
If the US is stupid enough to kill off the internet, a new one will be born that excludes the US. After that, it'll just be a matter of time. Fifty years after the US killed off the internet, the rest of the world have evolved at a breakneck pace, most notably BRIC countries, while the US will be stuck by what is essentially the same tech we have today. Once that happens... Oh man, they are going to be so pissed when they realise their tech will be lagging after by decades. :)
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.