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Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon May 26, 2008 10:02 PM
from the what's-on-your-ipod-eh dept.
from the what's-on-your-ipod-eh dept.
SpaceAdmiral writes "The Canadian government is secretly negotiating to join the US and the EU in an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The agreement would give border guards the power to search iPods and cellphones for illegal downloads, as well as to force ISPs to hand over customer information without a warrant. David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, characterizes ACTA this way: 'If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close.'"
Related Stories
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Technology: Leaked ACTA Treaty to Outlaw P2P? 387 comments
miowpurr writes to tell us that a draft of the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) has been posted on Wikileaks. Among others, Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow has weighed in on the possible ramifications of this treaty. "Among other things, ACTA will outlaw P2P (even when used to share works that are legally available, like my books), and crack down on things like region-free DVD players. All of this is taking place out of the public eye, presumably with the intention of presenting it as a fait accompli just as the ink is drying on the treaty."
[+]
A Look At ACTA Wish Lists For RIAA, BSA, Others 69 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property brings us an analysis of several organizations' goals for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which we've discussed previously. In particular, he points out the anti-privacy views of the Business Software Alliance: "While the ACTA itself is not public, the US Trade Representative has at least released the ACTA comments. While many of them are to be expected, such as the RIAA & co. wanting copyright filters, one item on the BSA's wish list really stands out: 'In a number of European countries one of the biggest impediments to efforts by rights holder to enforce their IP rights on the Internet is the overbroad interpretation of privacy laws by some European authorities.' They want ACTA to 'fix' that by neutering the privacy laws. Given the BSA's other questionable activities, it couldn't hurt to tell their member companies what you think of their participation. After all, organizations like the BSA exist in part to shield their members from bad PR."
Full documents of comments from the various organizations are available at Public Knowledge.
[+]
News: Wikileaks Releases ACTA Negotiations As "0-Day" 105 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks has released a new document about the ACTA negotiations occurring in Washington over the next three days. This might be the shortest time between authorship of a document and its publication on Wikileaks so far. The brief 3-page memo, dated today, could add quite a bit of oil to the fire of the ACTA debate. It is titled Business Perspectives on Border Measures and Civil Enforcement and it contains a set of proposals to the 'ACTA negotiators' issued by 'Concerned business groups operating in ACTA nations.' Among many highly invasive methods and approaches proposed in this memorandum, the reader can find detailed demands for: full disclosure of relevant information by Customs to trademark holders so that they can mount private investigations; disclosure of identities and other information about copyright infringers; and increased inspection of goods. This document is especially important to raise public awareness on these negotiations and their implications for the future." We've been watching ACTA develop for a few months now.
[+]
Patry Copyright Blog Closed 129 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "William Patry, noted copyright expert and Google's top copyright lawyer, has decided to close his personal blog. (For no reason that he has explained, the archives are gone too.) Ordinarily, that wouldn't be very newsworthy, but that little blog has made a lot of news, outing the ACTA treaty and discussing lots of other important pending legislation. Mr. Patry gives two reasons for the closure: his personal views were being attributed to Google, and the current trends in copyright law are too depressing. Though I am not the only one to have done so, as someone who has contributed to that misunderstanding by listing his credentials without a disclaimer, I would like to publicly apologize to him. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to reverse the depressing trends in copyright law that I'm not doing already."
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EFF, Public Knowledge Sue Over Secret IP Pact 104 comments
Cowards Anonymous writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have filed a lawsuit against the Office of the US Trade Representative in an attempt to get the office to turn over information about a secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement treaty being negotiated to step up cross-border enforcement of copyright and piracy laws. ACTA could include an agreement for the US, Canada, the European Commission and other nations to enforce each others' IP laws, with residents of each country subject to criminal charges when violating the IP laws of another country, according to a supposed ACTA discussion paper [PDF] posted on Wikileaks.org in May."
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Submit Your Comments About ACTA 102 comments
alex_guy_CA Notes that the US Trade Representative — who has been negotiating the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement without input from the American people or Congress — is seeking public submissions on how to conduct US foreign copyright policy. This means that Americans can file comments with the USTR asking for ACTA to be made public. Public Knowledge explains the process: "Under the Special 301 process the USTR seeks input from US copyright, trademark, and patent owners about whether policies and practices in foreign countries deny them adequate IP protection. The process has generally been used by IP holders to complain not only about lax enforcement in other countries, but also about limitations and exceptions in their laws that are beneficial to libraries, to education, to innovation, and to the public interest generally. The ability to comment in the Special 301 process is not limited to IP owners only. Any member of the public is free to file comments. If you believe in the importance of balanced copyright policies, file comments with the USTR and make your voice heard. Comments can be filed electronically via http://www.regulations.gov/ docket number USTR-2010-0003. You have to include the term '2010 Special 301 Review' in the 'Type Comment and Upload File' field. ... Deadline for filing is February 16 by 5 pm"
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how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Counterfeiting to me means items produced as a "look a like" or in similar context, without a license to use the trademark. So, candy or tires or even CPUs can be counterfeit. But IP is not, because only counterfeit is reverse engineering. IP generally gets copied exactly. So how the heck is that counterfeit??
The only way they can apply it is if you have counterfeit CDs or DVDs or similar. But that still applies to the media marks, not the IP. The video is not counterfeit, the media is.
Or is someone selling KDE has "Windows Vista"?
Counterfeit and IP don't exactly make sense.
Parent
Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:4, Informative)
Except that private copying of music is legal in Canada [cb-cda.gc.ca].
the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
Sonds to me like the assholes in power are trying to circumvent the laws for the benefit of American corporate interests..
Time to contact your Member of Parliament [parl.gc.ca] and express your displeasure. Snail mail works best, no stamp is needed.
Parent
Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Easy (Score:3, Interesting)
they don't (Score:4, Interesting)
ISP records don't have anything to do with it either. This is naked imperialism - a power grab without disguise. It's not about "protecting" brand names, it's about silencing political dissent.
Parent
This is a little ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)
IPods full of American music smuggled past Canadian customs? I'm sure that's exactly how Canadians are getting illicit copies of American music. (And vice versa.)
Re:This is a little ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)
If you've got a better way to do it, please share... iPod Shuffles are not the most comfortable things to hide in one's ass.
Parent
Re:This is a little ridiculous. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:This is a little ridiculous. (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, besides writing my federal representatives what can I, as a voting citizen, do about this ? Making amendments to the Charter and Constitution is a REALLY BIG DEAL and not easy to do. But signing international treaties which can over rule our most supreme national laws is standard practice.
Parent
This may be a stupid question... (Score:5, Insightful)
They won't, but they needn't care... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now it's up to you to 1. challenge this and 2. provide evidence that either you were NOT speeding, or that you were speeding for a damned good reason which exempts you from getting a ticket.
---
So to get back on-topic...
"How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod"
If it's in the AAC format with Apple's Fairplay DRM - which they license to nobody and all that.. then it's probably legit.
If it's an MP3, it'll get added to the list of 'probably-illegal' bits of music.
"from a song ripped from your private CD collection"
1. Challenge it, 2. provide evidence that you, in fact, are in posession of that CD.
"(which as the RIAA would have us believe, is illegal too)"
If that is indeed the law - which, last time I checked, it's not - yhen you're screwed even in the above case regardless.
"from a song bought from the iTunes store?"
Presuming you purchased an unprotected MP3 - that purchase should be listed in your iTunes Account. 1. Challenge it, 2. provide the evidence - name Apple if you want.
-----
Now, personally, I don't think this will actually be checked all -that- actively. Lines at airports and the like are queued enough as it is and they're strapped for money just to check for things like, you know, actual terrorists, drug smugglers, etc. That's not to say I'm complacent - I already sent in my letter of protest several weeks back, but we're not exactly part of the G8 countries so that's probably going to do fook all good - but I don't think that the first kid with a few MP3s on his system is going to be shipped to Gitmo either.
Now, with that out of the way, the clauses regarding the restrictions of privacy tools use online (and, possibly, offline; that TrueCrypted drive you've got and such) I find far, far more unsettling (and was the majority of the body of my protest letter; personally I can't really justify saying "I'm only downloading a movie! What's the harm!?", but I did point out the ridiculousness of involving law enforcement officials in this, never mind the penance, and my disagreement with those clauses on those grounds).
I'm still waiting for them to hook this into a "That way we'll get the terrorists, too!"-type defense argument.
But maybe they're not, and they're expecting people, to just fume at the worst bits, then blank those out and just leave it with the anti-piracy bits which might be grudgingly accepted.
Parent
Re:This may be a stupid question... (Score:4, Insightful)
They must be smoking hash was my first thought.
Seriously, how are they going to take my ipod of 8,000+ songs, mp3s, ogg files, Linux .iso images, podcasts, etc., hash them all and compare those to the ones in their database?
I change the ID3v2 tags, add missing ID3v1 tags, store lyrics and album art INTO the actual song file itself, and so on. All of these modifications change the hash. Now because my hash doesn't match theirs, I'm somehow guilty of copyright infringement? I don't think so.
Time to replace the stock firmware on the ipod with one that embeds AES-256 onboard and has to be unlocked before you can play any music from it.
Encryption is the only way to stop this madness.
I have nothing to hide, and therefore they have no reason to look.
Parent
Um, okay... (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just one more excuse to induce more fear in the normal population.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Them: Give us your passwords or we'll confiscate your device.
You: But.. I... I've got to make a flight! I have riii--
Them: That's it, Bob! Tase that fucker and keep his iPod! We'll show this twat what we Canadians are all a-boot!
Parent
Re:I wonder... (Score:4)
Good morning, Guantanamo!
Parent
Illegal Search and Seizure (Score:3, Informative)
Constitution easy to subvert (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And how exactly does that allow a treaty to remove a part of the constitution? (Crappy politicians defining words however the hell they want aside)
See also Reid v. Covert [wikipedia.org]
Re:Constitution easy to subvert (Score:4, Informative)
FALSE. Treaties have the same strength as a law passed by congress, but are not exempt from the Constitution.
"Our constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. It is, consequently, to be regarded in courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision." -- Foster vs Nelson
Parent
Re:Illegal Search and Seizure (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
A few links. (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of these links are several months old; this has been brewing for awhile, and action needs to be taken now to stop it.
So where should Linux Symposium be held now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Will this force Linux conferences to be held outside the US, Canada and the EU? Of course Alan Cox lives in the EU. It really makes one not wish to even travel through the region, which is pretty difficult if you think about air travel hubs, etc.
Economic Big Stick. (Score:5, Informative)
The third page of the article explains how the US is able to get away with such outrageous requests:
So the proposal is, "surrender your citizens rights or we will make it cost you." The answer should be, "without rights, you will just take our money anyway, no thanks."
Parent
CoRaF (Score:5, Insightful)
Paragraph 1 of the Charter says that
Parent
screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
16 hour work days, food that's poison, obesity, insurance and medicine they can't afford. At some point it collapses on itself because there's only so much greed an economy can stand. We are entering a recession [infowars.com] exactly as predicted by Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz in 2006 [prisonplanet.com].
Parent
Re:screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares?
At least we will have all of our needs taken care of by the government.
I mean, what do we need? Food, shelter, and companionship.
All are offered free of charge at your local prison.
Sarcasm (maybe not) aside, I mean, how the *uck can someone tell if my iPod has illegal or legal downloads on it? I can tell you for a fact, that I don't even know which are legal or illegal, they all look the same to me. Well, now some of the low bitrate ones, I might question, but how would anybody else?
Parent
Re:screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:screwed. (Score:4, Informative)
The Register was right in 2003 to be "skeptical" of the merits of any fair use analysis that asserts that space-shifting or format-shifting is a noninfringing use. ... This is particularly the case in today's market, where inexpensive legitimate digital copies of most types of works are readily available, and increasingly can be obtained through online download services. Where a market is functioning to serve the demand otherwise being fulfilled by unauthorized copying, the likelihood that the unauthorized copying is fair use is diminished.
and
Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use.
Parent
Re:screwed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, how about another group of nutjobs - the "Federal Reserve". Since the CPI numbers are meaningless, and the GDP numbers are bogus (compare pre-Clinton and post-Clinton numbers for a good example why), let's look at the relative buying power of the US Dollar, since that's a lot harder to fudge.
Here ya go. [federalreserve.gov]
The numbers to look at are the Broad and Major Currency numbers. These indices are relative to a specific point in time - Jan 97 and Mar 73, respectively).
So, looking at the most recent YOY data (APR-APR) - the US dollar has dropped 9.3% YOY compared to a broad group of our trading partners, and nearly 12% YOY when compared to other major currencies. Contrast this to a 4% YOY (broad) or a 4.7% (major) for the 12 month period before that.
Parent
You don't know what you're talking about (Score:5, Informative)
The exchange rate has little to do with purchasing power, since it is heavily dependent on trade. The exchange rate has gone up because the US has a trade defecit, which is flooding foregin markets with dollars. Add to this the fact that the dollar has long been overvalued, and it's not hard to understand why the exchange rate is falling. It is basically a market correction, which should utimatelly ballance out our trade defecit (as exchange rates fall, imports will decrease and exports will increase).
Relative purchasing power must be determined by compairing some kind of price index (such as the CPI). Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's simply the only way to compare relative purchasing power. The exchange rate only effects the price of imported goods, and therefore does not say a lot about price levels in general. Especially when you consider that China fixes their exchange rate to the dollar, and all petrolium is sold in dollars.
Parent
Re:Economic Big Stick. (Score:5, Informative)
What amazes me is it says about searching iPod's for illegal content... And in Canada currently it's LEGAL to download music. (Despite the CRIA's objections.)
For so long I've been proud to live in Canada, but with that fucktard Harper at the helm they're trying more and more to make it America 2.
Parent
Re:Economic Big Stick. (Score:5, Insightful)
What amazes me is how they figure they can identify illegal content.
Seriously, how the hell can a border services agent tell that the MP3s on my iPod have all been legally ripped from CDs I have purchased? They can't. I buy probably close to about $1000 CDN in CDs each year, all of which end up ripped and played on my iPods or in mixes.
If they simply look and say anything which isn't an AAC bought from the iTunes store then they'll be flagging a tremendous amount of people for no good reason.
There is simply no way that from an iPod you can verify the pedigree of the songs on it.
Amen to that. Harper et al are really sucking up to Bush just far too much. Though, I must say I reserve some bile for the asshat American government (NOT everyday Americans, for you knee jerk mods) for shoving these &*^%&*(^ laws down everyone's throats. America's chief export nowadays seems to be laws to protect the *AA's and screw the rest of us.
This really is appalling.
Cheers
Parent
Re:Probably Related, EU Software Patent Treaty. (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt any explanation could be more accurate and simple at the same time.
Parent
What "Free Trade" Looks Like. (Score:5, Insightful)
Software patents are one small but important piece of the IP Empire which demands universally oppressive laws.
The list goes on and on but it has one common theme, your rights mean nothing, shut up and get back to work for the man.
Parent
Re:Probably Related, EU Software Patent Treaty. (Score:5, Interesting)
Avoid the proxies in Sweden etc. as they are subject to EU law, Switzerland is not subject to EU law and do no reveal your identity to anyone.
Parent
Re:The real answer (Score:5, Informative)
In the European Union, much local film and art music is produced with the support of state subsidies. Private patronage isn't as big here as in the U.S. If a government is committed to keeping the arts strong, and if it fairly distributes money evenly to all artists instead of just those a government official favours, then things work very well even without the notion of copyright. France is an excellent example of how state arts funding works well when certain arts are important but not always economically profitable. IRCAM is now in its third decade of generous state funding.
Parent
Re:I am no political scientist (Score:5, Insightful)
It is just more stupid American foreign policy.
Just today I read that the the drug war fuelled by America's love of cocaine and marijuana is resulting in thousands of people getting killed in Mexican gang wars over smuggling routes, yet the US War on drugs policy persists, keeping the black market trade the biggest and bloodiest industry in the world.
On the north border they want to remove the rights of people just to make a few cocaine snorting media exec's happy.
And we have seen what US foreign policy has done to the middle east.
Its no wonder so many people hate the US, their politicians have systematically contributed to most of the crap that is currently going on in the world all in the name of consumerism and captialism. Its not about democracy at all, its all about how cheap their gas is and what boat they can buy with their annual bonus.
Parent
Re:I am no political scientist (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fuck This (Score:5, Interesting)
America is moving towards an information economy. Those in power are aware of the transformation and are trying to protect future American interests.
When the manufacturing is all being done in the cheapest places (globalization) America will only have her service economy, IP (If America owns Hollywood, she can buy and sell the world's spare time), and such control over business dealings in foreign lands as her businesses can muster and enforce.
Can you get rich by doing your neighbor's laundry if he is doing your in return? The GDP generated by Americans doing services for Americans is only wealth in terms of employment.
If IP is not protected, the only remaining wealth in America will be foreign businesses. Foreign businesses can be nationalized as soon as America's military isn't a major threat.* So suppose these events happened:
1: Rampant piracy makes ownership of IP moot
2: Japanese, Saudi, or Chinese businesses dump their bonds.
That's it! Those two things would bring America crashing to her knees, and destroy the cultural, economic, and military might of the greatest nation on earth. There really is a 3: profit for many powerful people. This is what America's leaders are doing about the situation:
Hiding the extent of the danger
Misguidedly passing draconian IP protection laws
Maintaining a large, secret technological lead (black tech: its real. No, I don't believe in UFOs)
That's what they're doing. I pass no judgment here, I'm just saying, that is the cause of these actions.
*Did you know that 50% of American businesses overseas (overseas divisions)are owned by the Chinese and theoretically controlled by the Chinese government? Did you know that the Saudis can take controll of foreign firms with the flick of a pen?
Parent
Libertarian horse poop (Score:5, Insightful)
And the music moguls now want to enforce the ability to check on me. With WHAT??? How can a customs agent possibly determine the MP3s that I have are, or are not purchased with validity???? THEY CANNOT!
IP protection isn't the backbone of the US economy. It's an intangibles-fantasy to think so. That's not what my father built, his father built, my mother built, and so on. It's the asset protection mechanism of the nonsensical. It's not innovative, it's not producing return on the intangible asset, it's as flimsy as derivates. Yet I respect the concept of asset ownership, and my rights under the law as a consumer. Now some nitwit's pressured various treaty signators to look at my damn MP3 player-- where's the justice in that??????
Parent
Re:Fuck This (Score:5, Insightful)
There's even a precedent: when America was entering the Industrial Revolution, it built up a great deal of its powerful industrial base by "stealing" inventions from Europe. The European countries protested a lot about the U.S. stealing industrial secrets, but that didn't stop the U.S. from using those ideas to leapfrog its competitors into an economic powerhouse.
Doesn't that sound similar to the relationship that the U.S. has with China right now? What could the U.S. possibly offer China that would be worth China deliberately ignoring all those good inventions that it can use to build itself up?
If America really wanted to maintain a technological lead, it would be investing in educating its citizens in hard math & science, investing in applied research, and helping U.S.-only companies use the fruits of that research.
Instead, we get "leaders" who defund public education & finance anti-science propaganda campaigns, and who seem to think that America can keep a position of "world leadership" by waving its military dick around. Between those kinds of leaders & the idiots who blindly follow them, America has pretty much set itself up to be given the "Most Deserving of Becoming a Has-Been Superpower" award.
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Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean the baby boomers?
Parent
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:5, Insightful)
"Generation-Me" indeed.
Why yes, I do have karma to burn.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope they pass it (Score:4, Insightful)
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