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Pro-ACTA Site Says 'Get the Facts'
Glyn Moody writes "We hear a lot about politicians and countries rejecting ACTA, but not so much from the treaty's supporters. Here's a new site, called 'ACTA Facts,' which invites Europeans to 'get the facts' on how wonderful ACTA really is. Judging by its content, this one will be about as successful as Microsoft's 'Get the Facts' campaign a few years ago, which tried to dissuade people from using GNU/Linux. For example, a new report linked to by the site claims that ACTA could 'boost European output by a total of €50 billion, and create as many as 960,000 new jobs.' Unfortunately, that's based on numerous flawed assumptions, including the idea that countries like China and India are going to rush to join ACTA, when the treaty is actually designed as a weapon against them, as they have already noticed."
Members of Europe's Parliament have come under considerable pressure to "look the other way" on the fight against counterfeiting and piracy - a global problem that impacts virtually every product category in every sector worldwide.
If that "considerable pressure" is being brought by the people who live in the EU, then perhaps it's not something they want. Why pass laws that nobody who lives in the EU wants? Doesn't sound like this is in the best interest of the population in Europe...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
...Nancy Reagan?
Okay, I'd like to get the facts about who was involved in the treaty planning, and what they said.
Oh, I'm sorry. By "facts", they apparently meant their talking points. My mistake - I assumed we were using the normal meanings of words today.
Fiction: ACTA can lead to the recording of personal data of Internet users (as they are defined by Art 2 of the Data Protection Directive 95/4/EC)...
FACT: ACTA is very protective of privacy; the word “privacy” occurs six times
Every time I see one of these "Get the facts!" sites it is always full of lies. I think everyone has pretty much figured that out now. Except the MAFIAA
For example, a new report linked to by the site claims that ACTA could 'boost European output by a total of €50 billion, and create as many as 960,000 new jobs.' Unfortunately, that's based on numerous flawed assumptions, including the idea that countries like China and India are going to rush to join ACTA, when the treaty is actually designed as a weapon against them, as they have already noticed."
As horribly flawed and guestimated as statements on the site may be, it will probably work on vast swaths of the population, simply because vast swaths of the population are stupid, and believe anything that they see or read.
The best possible way to avoid this is to keep this as unseen by the public as possible. The less it's mentioned, the better. Thankfully, at least a decent portion of Slashdot readers will be smart enough to see through the idiocy, but if it were advertised aggressively to the rest of society... wrong or not, it's going to be accepted.
Looks like its 10 years old and written by someone not much older at the time. Should a assume that the content on the page is of similar quality?
should work pretty well if the comparison holds true. Who, other than people on /. uses linux for their desktop os?
ACTA was conceived and written in corporate boardrooms, for the benefit of the corporations those boardrooms control. Corporate money solicited politicians to secretly adopt it. Corporate money funded the politicians. Negotiations were done in secret so that the general population couldn't see what underhanded business was going on. Politicians were paid to change national/international laws to allow ACTA. Again, they were selected in boardrooms, funds drawn up from corporate funds and listed as 'investment'. Corporations led negotiations. Corporations put the soft sell into the politicos. They found vulnerabilities in the politicians and offered 'helping hands' in a quid-pro-quo form. In many cases the politicians problems were exacerbated so that the corporations could 'save them' in a more pronounced way. The entire thing was stage managed from beginning to end. When given the light of day and public scrutiny (that's where we are at now), ACTA fails. Its corporate greed writ large. Its draconian and undemocratic. The corporations will yelp and complain about its absence, but their interest is in corporate welfare. When you look at ACTA, repeat the words of Gandalf: "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"
Is that the amount they plant to extort from 960,000 people per year?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
How dumber can it be to assess that the EU's ombudsman rejection to give access to some documents an opinion toward the goodness of ACTA? I did not bother giving more head to it...
Beside, the author did had clear ideas by not putting its name on the site. The code, however, is quite revealing.
the Buisness Software Aliance and other orginizations dedicated to breaking the kneecaps of orphans, their nuns, and all other fine folk without reasonable cause since 1988.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Now we are talking!
(Australians will know exactly what I'm referring to. For those outside Aus, that was a website that was set up by Telstra as a propaganda mouthpiece. Shutdown about three years ago, shortly after Sol Trujillo left.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I say we DDoS the site.
a.k.a. Fuck ACTA
€50 billion won't nearly be enough for those 960000 new lawyers!
The whole point of terms like "fact", "neutral" or "fair and balanced", is to hide the inherent bias that every life form in this universe must have.
And the point of hiding it, is that it is assumed, that if it weren't hidden, the victim would not accept the bullshit it actually is
You will never ever see a wise man say those things. He knows that he knows nothing, that everything is just nice theories that happened to match observation until now, that everything is relative in physics, and that neither our senses, nor our brain, have even a concept of non-biasedness. (Is this the correct way to say that in English?)
The people who have to use those words, are the manipulative dicks and liars. Including Wikipedia. No exceptions.
So, there's a FAQ that has no questions, but some fairly arcane "rumors" or "myths" that they're debunking. And the "why you should support ACTA" links to an impossibly brief pamphlet that pretty much tells you that ACTA only does good things.
I suspect the site is aimed at people who already support it and want to find legal opinions to justify themselves.
"It appears that the Agreement per se does not impose any obligation on the Union that is manifestly incompatible with fundamental rights.“
That's a positively ringing endorsement of ACTA, especially with the "per se" and "manifestly" qualifiers.
And the Euro notion of "fundamental rights" always makes me chuckle, there are something like 50 of them in their freedom charter.
From http://www.actafacts.com/faq.htm , going by point to point in the faq. I'm not copying it here so you'll have to put it side by side ;p
About the Internet
- "No requirements" - In other words, open to interpretation by the reader with no policies put into effect to prevent abuse.
- Same story, open to interpretation and abuse with no set policies against such breaches of freedoms and privacy.
- ACTA "mentions" privacy according to this entry but does not actually safeguard it, having no policies (yet again) to do this, letting it open to interpretation of the reader.
- Very clever wording, "seeks not to duplicate" -> However, ACTA seeks to CONTROL and supplant any existing policies regarding governance of the net.
- Again clever wording without actually mentioning safeguarding the rights and freedoms of anyone, much less the citizens, making no mention of whom it's supposed to protect.
About access to medicines and patents
- Good in what way exactly? In who's eyes? While removing counterfeit medicines is a good thing, the current treaty also prevents medicines to be produced without consent of the patent holder, which encourages price fixing and does not actually help the patient at all. The treaty makes this international law and as such only protects business interests of patent holders.
- Vague wording on a policy governments "may" institute or not.
- Again, open to interpretation, as governments may appoint customs officials as a 'competent authority' to save money.
- 'Lawful generics' - IE, patent holder interests, not patient interests.
- Seeds are not but patents and intellectual property are, under which seeds fall as per the design. While this entry doesn't blatantly lie it does beat around the bush trying to do it.
About Fundamental Principles, Rights, Data Protection and Freedom
- ACTA "recognizes" privacy and does not make data retrieval 'mandatory'. So what DOES it do exactly?
- Open to interpretation yet again, where it does not reference any existing law or policy safeguarding these freedoms, not to mention the loopholes that already exist in current law all over the globe.
- Again, using words like "recognizes" and "does not require" without giving any guarantees whatsoever to protect said freedoms and privacy.
- A savings clause that safeguards laws which already permit breaches of privacy and security, or might soon do? Loopholes are abundant.
- Same as above. "Protective of privacy" - Of whom exactly?
- Freedom of expression is exactly that, freedom of expression. When phrases, songs and looks are trademarked in such a way that you can get arrested for imitating them anywhere, it kinda limits what 'freedom of expression' actually is, right? This entry is just a blatant lie.
- Very open to abuse, this one, as it heavily encourages patent and copyright infringement trials which due to "protection" will most likely end up in the plaintiffs (usually corporate) favour, combined with the already mentioned breaches of privacy and basic rights above.
About Transparency and Governance
- In other words, it's a corporate effort to sidestep official national and international lawmaking.
- Clever wording: "Texts of ACTA were made public". ACTA as a whole was never made public and what WAS made public has always been subject to revision immediately afterwards.
- The question didn't mention changing the agreement but enforcing it. VERY sneaky here.
- The public is mentioned as an implied secondary party AFTER freedoms and rights were mentioned. Suspicious yet?
- In other words, if someone makes one penny from anything involving anything infringing, to their knowledge or not, they can be taken to court. The "indirect" wording here is especially worrying.
- This one is just too funny. "ACTA will not have a website" - What am i reading then? Not to mention the governing body which is mentioned at least once before this, does that not count as an international organization?
- US does
For example, a new report linked to by the site claims that ACTA could "boost European output by a total of 50 billion (euro), and create as many as 960,000 new jobs."
How can you tell when a politician or special interest group is lying?
When they start talking about all the jobs their new laws will create.
I wonder if ACTA and suchlike make sense in terms of the individual nation's self-interest: Economically shouldn't nation X clamp down on its own citizens copying product from itself, but encourage copying from nations Y, Z, A, B, C? Or is it that if consumers have free stuff from other nations, they won't buy domestic product?
How can you tell when a politician or special interest group is lying?
They're moving their lips.
From the site:
FACT: ACTA is very protective of privacy; the word “privacy” occurs six times
I would argue that's not nearly enough, plus, of course, meh, doesn't deal with context, blah blah blah, etc etc.
this is actually a fairly important question. we're a technical group. what's the best way to croudsource an _effective_ rebuttal? how much is 'actafacts.org' going for? or 'therealactafacts.com'. and who would put such a thing together in a convincing way? after that, it would need to 'go viral' a la the SOPA protest...
Copyright is incompatible with modern, global civilization and efforts to change this will simply result in corporatism which will eventually collapse. In the mean time, those countries that adopt protectionist, innovation-strangling patent and copyright laws will be trampled by countries like China and India.
It's time to let the Romantic myth of divine inspiration die and respect freedom of communication. We all build on what came before - copyright hinders us all and the methods being proposed to prop it up go beyond hindrance into oppression.
Great Intellect...
For example, a new report linked to by the site claims that ACTA could "boost European output by a total of 50 billion (euro), and create as many as 960,000 new jobs."
How can you tell when a politician or special interest group is lying?
When they start talking about all the jobs their new laws will create.
The way I can tell is when their lips start moving...
GCCCP:
http://www.ccapcongress.net/
AKA every IP profiteering firm in the international business space. (apparently) knocked together by Jeff Hardy:
http://filmprofit.com/?page_id=9 (?)
Apparently the web hosting service is provided by dotster and the site looks like it was created by an 80 year old man fishing for a huge amount of cash.
How is such a blatant exercise in market front page on /.?
They've systematically ignored the actual facts with every single publication they have ever made. Do they really expect people to believe their made-up facts?
Countries like China and India would be very stupid to join ACTA. Just think about all the counterfeited medicine. Nobody there could afford the original stuff from the western pharma industry.
Sure, it will create more jobs and money for the monopolies. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to measure the money created by a free market, compared to an anti-competitive market.
It's kind of funny how they bullshit about how it will protect "intellectual property" (a highly misleading term) but doesn't really get more specific than that. I didn't see any mentions of further entrenching anti-circumvention (DRM laws), digital watermarking and other parts of ACTA on that pro-ACTA website.
They thought that uploading a site was a good way to hide the moving of their lips...
I only have one answer to that: GET THE FACTS. Politicians are also lying when they write.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I couldn't easily find who's behind this site. The about page just lists a bunch of organisations of unspecified selection. Below is the WHOIS lookup for the domain. Does anyone know anything else?
Registrant:
c/o ACTAFACTS.COM
P.O. Box 821650
Vancouver, WA 98682
US
Registrar: DOMAIN
Domain Name: ACTAFACTS.COM
Created on: 07-FEB-12
Expires on: 07-FEB-13
Last Updated on: 07-FEB-12
Administrative Contact:
gpzzza@privacypost.com
c/o ACTAFACTS.COM
P.O. Box 821650
Vancouver, WA 98682
US
+1.360-449-5933
Technical Contact:
jgwyax@privacypost.com
c/o ACTAFACTS.COM
P.O. Box 821650
Vancouver, WA 98682
US
+1.360-449-5933
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.DOTSTERHOST.COM
NS2.DOTSTERHOST.COM
NS3.DOTSTERHOST.COM
If legislation and treaties have to be negotiated and drafted in secret, and then an attempt is made to quickly rush it to passage before anyone can really inspect it and debate it, it is inherently undemocratic. Its wrong for democracies to enact laws in such fashion, it is corruption of the political system and a violation of social contract.
Based on this any legislation pushed in such a fashion should be opposed, always, even if you happen to support the idea behind it. Its the wrong way to do things. The harm to our societies freedom always out weighed by any potential good such legislation might do. Therefore the ATCA supporters are automatically in the wrong no matter what the other facts happen to be.
ATCA should be rejected, without further discussion. They should start over in the day light with new legislation, where they are open about its content and their reasons for wanting it. The "Get the Facts" website should be online before the legislation is finalized not after.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
****"Microsoft's 'Get the Facts' campaign a few years ago, which tried to dissuade people from using GNU/Linux."****
Well, Linux hasn't really grown (unless you count devices that run Linux where the consumer has no choice on what the device uses). People with home computers still mostly run Windows...
Lilnux still hasn't made itself worthy of home use...
Take a look at the about page: I never imagined that there where so many 4 letter MAFIAA's in the world.
Also, not a single civil liberties association, nor someone who actually knows how the internet works
At least they say who they are, instead of hiding behind some "independent" study.
When their lips are moving.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
The term "Get the Facts" is blindly trusted by billions of people worldwide. But what does it really mean for you and your family?
While "Get the Facts" campaigns have appeared on a wide variety of topics over the years, how much do you actually know about them? For instance, did you know that Get The Facts campaigns:
* Are biased and used to spread propaganda
* Employ deceptive techniques and wording to make technically factual statements which are more likely to be interpreted in a mannter that conveys a biased opinion
* Fail to disclose additional facts which would often portray a very different picture of the topic at hand
* Mix facts and opinions together to make opinions appear factual
* Are backed by powerful and well-funded vested interests which are rarely disclosed upfront and openly
* Scare children