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TPP Copyright Chapter Leaks: Website Blocking, New Criminal Rules On the Way
An anonymous reader writes: Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) [Wednesday] morning released
the May 2015 draft of the copyright provisions in the Trans Pacific
Partnership (copyright,
ISP
annex, enforcement).
The leak appears to be the same version that was covered
by the EFF and other media outlets earlier this summer.
Michael Geist unpacks
the leaked documents, noting the treaty includes
anti-circumvention rules that extend beyond the WIPO Internet
treaties, new criminal rules, the extension of copyright term for
countries like Canada and Japan, increased border measures,
mandatory statutory damages in all countries, and expanding ISP
liability rules, including the prospect of website blocking for
Canada.
The goose that lays the golden egg that is the internet one day.
and considering the utter populace indifference, they will prevail.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
At this rate you'll soon be able to smoke all the pot you want, but damn, if you download that song you'll be doing hard time.
This global framework of laws will render the nation state useless. Corporations will have ALL of the power nation states used to have. And you will have none.
It is not that we are going to sit on our laurels and do nothing, but the said truth is, WTF can we do?
It's the *ELITES* that are controlling every f*ing thing - so much that now they want to criminalize the non-elites for dipping out hands on their exclusive domain
Yet more proof we live in a global oligarchy, championed by assholes, who have stacked the deck so heavily in favor of corporations the rest of us are completely fucked.
Everything in these damned treaties are about maximizing the profits of multinational corporations, and don't benefit the citizens.
The treaties are basically theft on a global scale designed to give corporations more rights than people.
This is really American politicians fucking over everybody else in the world because they're so undeniably on the fucking payroll of the corporations it isn't even funny.
It is now pretty much a moral imperative we either start eating the rich, or start copyright infringement on such a massive scale they simply can't do anything about it.
We've sold the farm on the bullshit promise that what is good for greedy assholes and corporations somehow uplifts us all, when nothing could be further from the truth.
The pressing problems we need to solve in the world haven't got a fucking thing to do with copyright.
This treaty is a terrible idea.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Internet may be the goose that lays the golden egg, to 99% of the people, but to the *ELITES* the same Internet has become a threat to their exclusivity
Before the Internet the masses had no way to know what the *ELITES* were doing - yeah, we may have the trash rags with occasional pics of the *ELTES* doing _something_, but all in all the *ELITES* were well protected, even their scandals could be covered up easily
With the advent of Internet, more and more of the scandals of the *ELITES* have been pried open and leaked into the wild. As more and more of the internal dealings are being known to the masses the status of the *ELITES* has started to crumble
That is why for the *ELITES* the Internet is no necessarily the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is a big threat to them, and is becoming more and more threatening
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Do you think voting for any other candidate would have created a better outcome?
I used to buy all of the media I consumed. It seemed to be the right thing to do.
Now they say I can't rip the media I bought to use it when and where I want. I'm infringing simply by watching it where I work and on my way to work (oil rig, hotel on the way).
A treaty from another country gets to write my country's laws? And we don't have any say in it?
I am so sickened by all this that I stopped purchasing media. It only funds these assholes. I have no respect for copyright any more. Why should I? There is no respect for the consumer any more. I'm a freetard now.
Who knew that trade negotiators could pass legislation without the knowledge, let alone approval, of Congress? Do countries other than the U.S. also kowtow to the music and film industries? Google or Microsoft could buy the entire music and recording industry, and never bat an eye. How does such a small industry carry the weight to mandate worldwide legislation?
And we have a Prime Minister who's vowing and trying to get TPP ratified just before the vote. He's disappointed he couldn't get it ratified before the election call, but in the middle of his campaigning, that's one of his key pillars.
Might also try to participate in that debate as well and ask about it. Though given bill C-51, and the other bills he's trying to get passed, website blocking might be the least of your problems.
And always - go vote. I know he also passed a new law making it harder to do so, and the courts have even admitted that while the law is bad, they won't overturn it because it will screw with the election. All the forms and all that were printed out and it's too troublesome for the courts to repeal the bad law because it's too close to an election. Between that and his efforts to disenfranchise voters through other means (including fake phone calls directing people to the wrong location - and handcuffing the officials in charge of investigating election fraud...), well, make sure you have all your ducks in a row, because unless you bring in a Conservative party member card, they're going to make it hard for you to vote.
Although it is hard to know because of the secrecy, it seems like there is a whole lot of stuff around 'intellectual property' and corporations getting to sue governments over policy changes which has been pushed hard by the USA and opposed not quite as hard by everyone else. So there is lots of stuff that objectionable to everyone but the USA. (Given that the USA parliaments haven't been allowed to see the TPP, possibly not even they want it. This could be stuff wanted only by the USA negotiators, not the country.)
What I want to see is USA kicked out of the TPP, then renegotiate to get rid of all the bad stuff USA pushed in. After that, the USA can negotiate for a late entry into the agreement. They can propose all this IP stuff, and the rest of us can consider whether we that badly want USA in the TPP.
That is pretty much a pipe dream, but more realistically: I'd like to see the governments of all participating countries go through all the provisions and state how strongly they are for or against them. If there are any bits that are liked only by negotiators, this would show them up.
It really worries me that this is secretly negotiated by people with almost no democratic oversight and will be presented as a monolithic take-it-or-leave-it with greater effective force than the laws of the participating nations.
Buying into the TPP is effectively accepting a huge lump of laws you had almost no say over and are almost impossible to modify in future.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
You honestly blame the low quality of the puppet theater on the punch, not his player?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sorry, doesn't work. We've been doing that for a while now. All it accomplished was to give them an argument for more ridiculous laws, for when we don't buy their overhyped, overpriced crap content, it can only mean that we're copying it. It is simply not fathomable that we do without it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Next time you want to have music, don't download it. Go into a store, kick the guard in the nuts and grab the CD. Alternatively, find some old granny on the street, hit her over the head and grab her purse, then pay for your downloads.
The reason is simple: If you get caught, you'll be doing much less time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I would have thought that would be incompatible with the legal systems of most countries. "Damages" are normally limited to the real loss suffered by the plaintiff/claimant. "Punitive damages" is a US thing.
I believe if you really think about it, you will find that the election and re-election of Mr. Obama says a lot more about the unbelievably abysmal quality of the opposition, than it says about how dumb the voters are.
Do you realize that the Constitution says nothing whatsoever about political parties, conventions, or primary elections? As far as the Constitution is concerned there needn't be any political parties at all. But it does impose the Electoral College, and (surprise), those electors are not Constitutionally bound to honor the popular votes of their states. So while Constitutionally you could have a Presidential ballot with 50 or 100 unaffiliated contenders listed on it, there is no provision for a runoff if, say, none of them polls over 10% or so.
I don't know how you can destroy the lock the two Parties have on the process, and even more crucially, I have no idea how you can prevent them from conniving with each other. George Washington believed there should be no parties, but it would take a Constitutional Amendment to ban them, and as well as a chilling effect on free association, it wouldn't work anyway. It would just drive the affiliations underground. As a practical matter, most countries have more than two Parties in meaningful contention, many times a great many more than two, which tends to lead to coalition governments. What is not clear is how, practically, you can effect a change in power away from only two parties.
All through the 20th century if you created some content and wanted to distribute that content to a wide audience, you needed to go through a distributor who could distribute that content. These distributors would distribute your content (whether it be music, movies, TV shows, books, video games, magazines or whatever else) to the wide audience and would take their cut.
But in the early years of the 21st century, things changed and new distribution methods have appeared that allow people to distribute their content (even paid content) to a wide audience without going through a big corporation middleman taking a cut.
And now the big corporations are fighting back and trying to put the Internet genie back in the bottle and return to a world where companies like Comcast, Disney, 21st Century Fox, Time Warner, Viacom and Sony get to control what content is available to the general public.
Its been said before but I am saying it again, the #1 problem with this world is the control of the worlds governments by big corporations. Find a way to end that and the roadblocks preventing many of the other problems with this planet from being fixed will disappear.