ACTA just signed in Europe

[ribbit]

Yesterday the European Union, the UK and over 20 other countries signed the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). ACTA is an international treaty, disguised as a trade agreement, whose purpose is to increase and harmonise copyright and trademark enforcement. Many of the goals of ACTA are similar to SOPA and PIPA - proposed laws which the US congress recently abandoned following a huge outcry. ACTA is, if anything, even more objectionable.

It is objectionable because of the process it has followed - secret negotiations, conducted without democratic oversight, a process so underhand it led to official criticism from the European Parliament [1] and the resignation of the Parliament's rapporteur in disgust [2]. It is yet another example of the power of corporate lobby groups, who buy influence starting with the laughably corrupt US political body, and then foist extremist laws on the rest of the world.

It is objectionable in its content, as an assault on civil liberties. It is likely to require unprecedented levels of surveillance of ordinary Internet users by ISPs [3][4]. It insists that copyright infringement become a criminal offence in a worryingly wide range of situations.[5] It provides for massively disproportionate penalties, including mandatory imprisonment. Anyone who has followed settlements in copyright lawsuits over the past 10 years will find this hard to believe, but it allows rights-holders to make up even more astronomical figures when demanding "compensation" [6].

The extremist position of ACTA will make the Internet fraught with danger for ordinary users. For example, if a blogger innocently links to another website, and that website, without their knowledge, infringes copyright in some way, they may well face criminal charges and prison time for "aiding and abetting" copyright infringement. For a link.

The provisions on Digital Rights Management ("DRM") are so extreme as to be laughable. ACTA continues to demand that attempts to circumvent DRM be criminal offences, meaning that blind people could face jail time for attempting to read e-books using text-to-speech, for example [7]. But new provisions mean that any tampering with information that identifies "the work, its author(s), producer(s) or right owners" also becomes an offence, so merely renaming a file could become illegal.

Enough is enough. The music, film and fashion industries make more money every year. Even if you assume that copyright must be enforced in all cases, that Something Must Be Done -- just because ACTA is "something" does not mean we should do it. The way it was created is unacceptable, its content is destructive and it is against the public interest. The pirate party and I will do everything we can to stop it, and we urge others to join the campaign against ACTA [8][9]. We do not have to stand for this.

Source: PirateParty

Well, good luck to all of you Europeans out there. This time it's not just the United States Government. And it's worse than SOPA and PIPA.

 

[ribbit]

Well it does say "likely," so there's a chance that specific detail isn't true, but ACTA in whole is quite the threat to the internet. I linked this article to Facebook, and if PirateParty.org were to be under copyright infringement charges, I would be in trouble for aiding and abetting copyright infringement, to quote the article.

Also, the actual article had quite a few sources to their claims, so I would probably go read a few of those as well.

 

[Richard B Riddick]

Europe is already screwed with super injunctions, the euro, the EU, etcetera.

They've literally lost their freedom of speech with super injunctions & can legally be barred from talking about x person, business or entity.

The ACTA is just the latest nail in the coffin, unfortunately. :x

 

[Six]

I am FROM Europe, and we're not that fucked over with anything. Sure we have a lot of shit going on, but if you compare it it's normal us, and less compared to America.

Getting pretty tired of shit like SOPA, PIPA, and now this. Really wish they'd just leave people be, and not take advantage of their positions like that so much.

 

[Channizard]

Apparently Canada's jumping on that bandwagon now too, with it's own Bill C-11 which imo so far has proven to be a bit worse than SOPA as it disallows the copying of DVDs/CD's to your computer, ipod, phone even if you've already purchased it, and even so far as making PVR's illegal. I don't think it'll last because then all of our entrtainment providers are gonna shit bricks over it losing so much business.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=5144516

http://dearthey.com/2012/01/26/a-co...t-to-pass-sopas-evil-little-brother-politely/

 

[Naoto Shirogane]

Apparently Canada's jumping on that bandwagon now too, with it's own Bill C-11 which imo so far has proven to be a bit worse than SOPA as it disallows the copying of DVDs/CD's to your computer, ipod, phone even if you've already purchased it, and even so far as making PVR's illegal. I don't think it'll last because then all of our entrtainment providers are gonna shit bricks over it losing so much business.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=5144516

http://dearthey.com/2012/01/26/a-co...t-to-pass-sopas-evil-little-brother-politely/

god Damnit Canada.

I thought our country would be smart. :/ However the entartainment industry are gonna be pretty damn Pissed at this. So That's a plus.

EDIT: Father said it was chucked out by the Supreme courts. I'm looking into this.

 

[ribbit]

More news on ACTA

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...a.shtml?fb_ref=article&fb_source=home_oneline

 

[Ayumi Hamasaki]

My boyfriend hasn't mentioned this at all, and he's from the UK.

So I have to assume that it's rather meaningless. We had a discussion concerning SOPA recently too, so I'm assuming that if this was really as bad as the first quoted article made it appear, then he would have mentioned it.

Anyways, they're already finding other ways to deal with piracy, like selling me half a game. Why do they need more laws? It's clear that they don't care about the violation of the rights involved, they just want ways to get more money from it. And it's not like they're not still making a nice profit.


Pretty soon I'm going to have to pay 10 dollars for the "base" of an album, and then pay 2 dollars for each actual song.

 

[greenyxi]

Being in the UK, I haven't actually seen any effect from this yet. Maybe there just hasn't been a major case where it can be included, or maybe it's actually a fair law that actually contributes to the UK's privacy so no one is complaining about it.

Either way, there doesn't seem to be any reason to worry as of yet.

 

[ribbit]

My boyfriend hasn't mentioned this at all, and he's from the UK.

So I have to assume that it's rather meaningless.

It's not meaningless, it's just very "hush hush" and was negotiated in secrecy till everyone a part of it were forced to give the details to the public. Not a lot of people even know about it.

 

[CassinoChips]

Hi. This thread is about ACTA, not the EU or hyper-injunctions. Stay on topic from here on out.

 

[Ayumi Hamasaki]

Hi. This thread is about ACTA, not the EU or hyper-injunctions. Stay on topic from here on out.

JESS YOU'RE STILL A MOD AND STILL HAVE THE SAME NAME Sorry that was offtopic too.

It's not meaningless, it's just very "hush hush" and was negotiated in secrecy till everyone a part of it were forced to give the details to the public. Not a lot of people even know about it.

Well I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what happens then. I mean the things that the article said are awful close to the things people were saying about that anti-terrorism law thing Congress passed recently, and a lot of it was misconstrued for dramatic effect.

I do think that secretly negotiating any sort of political reform is the wrong way to go. They should have been upfront about what they were doing, because even if this isn't what some would make it out to be, that's still a huge strike, and only ups believability that is some huge evil legislation.