Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement 390
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.'"
Probably Related, EU Software Patent Treaty. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you can't buy a law, buy a treaty. This one [slashdot.org] would force software patents on the EU. I am ashamed of my country for pushing things like this and I'm amazed we try given our excessive petrolium consumption, excessive pollution and a war of aggression. Is this GWB's way of getting as much done as he can before leaving office or have all of the world's government become this much less democratic?
how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck This (Score:2, Insightful)
This may be a stupid question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perverse logic to this Intellectual Property stuff (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone who's been blinded by the IP propaganda term [gnu.org] might confuse "fake" handbags with ripped music. The confusion is intentional and it's designed to take rights away.
Even given that, the demand for ISP logs and invasion of Canadian and EU citizen privacy is ballsy.
Constitution easy to subvert (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean the baby boomers?
Re:Illegal Search and Seizure (Score:5, Insightful)
Time for Stephen Harper to go. (Score:1, Insightful)
It'd be nice if this minority government would have an election forced so we could get rid of Stephen "Little George Bush" Harper and his Conservatives. It's no coincidence that all these "Canada trying to get X law put it" stories are coming around now that they're in power.
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck This (Score:3, Insightful)
The real answer is smaller federal government and less laws so that thigns can be decided on a smaller scale or not decided by the government at all. Too bad there aren't any parties that run on that platform in the US.
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:2, Insightful)
Where do you draw the line between whining and merely stating one's opinion? Seems to me like you are a whiny baby-boomer who can't handle the criticism of younger people (I'm 27). See how easy it is to flip that around? I can argue with you and make up negative things about you, rather than actually attacking your opinion with logic.
I got it though, you have enlightened me. The baby boomers were here first so they deserve the chance to not only gobble up the world's resources and pollute the environment, and to write up some draconian laws that will persist and cause the next generations to suffer for decades after they are dead and gone. All so that a few large media corporations (run by baby boomers) can get wealthier and the CEOs can be entombed in large structures with their luxury cars and secretaries.
I got news for you old man, you're gonna die, and your country will be ours. So long. We won't miss you.
Re:Let 'em review (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Probably Related, EU Software Patent Treaty. (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt any explanation could be more accurate and simple at the same time.
Re:I hope they pass it (Score:4, Insightful)
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??????
Re:You mean the country that the baby boomers buil (Score:5, Insightful)
"Generation-Me" indeed.
Why yes, I do have karma to burn.
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.
Bombs maybe, MP3s NO! (Score:2, Insightful)
Terrorism (Score:1, Insightful)
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].
Re:Illegal Search and Seizure (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:how do counterfeiting and copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Illegal Search and Seizure (Score:2, Insightful)
The real answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Repeal copyright. All of it. If they want to fight, give 'em a fight. Let us not piddle about minor interpretations of legalisms. Let's gut the whole thing. Patents too. Both of them were designed to promote progress and now the serve the opposite purpose. They should be done away with.
Patents shall not issue. Copyrights shall not be granted. All patents and copyrights are void. (New amendment)
CoRaF (Score:5, Insightful)
Paragraph 1 of the Charter says that
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.
Re:Fuck This (Score:2, Insightful)
The economic good is created by the entrepreneurs who take those public domain ideas & use them to sell goods & services of course. That's why investing in public domain research is an "infrastructure" investment, not a means of creating direct economic value.
"information based economy" my .com arse (Score:2, Insightful)
Cory doctorow does a good job of tearing this apart in this talk [youtube.com]
Copyrights are imaginary, they are a concept which anyone can readily ignore, and which those with current military parity DO ignore (china, russia).
Re:This is a little ridiculous. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is part of "Make everyone criminal". If not enough people are breaking rules, you invent some more rules that they have to break in order to live comfortably.
It produces fear and guilt and thought fear conformity and obedience (you don't want to stand out and give anyone reason to go harass you because you know there is something to be harassed about). It gives base for bullying inconvenient people: they can use your filled ipod to give you minor bitch slap as well as to do monster process that will ruin you.
Its all about giving your government more tools. The fact that it benefits big media corps is win/win side effect (RIAA is happy and major newspapers/tv channells wont cover this threaty)
Re:They won't, but they needn't care... (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:Probably Related, EU Software Patent Treaty. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pay attention to this shit, because party politics is just another big, fat, red herring the corporate drones are waving in your face. Neither party has your interests at heart.
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
Re:screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Economic Big Stick. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:CoRaF (Score:3, Insightful)
The clause also only applies to some aspects of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Besides, if a government wanted to use a loophole, they'd just invoke the first clause which allows reasonable limitations on said rights and freedoms.
Re:Fuck This (Score:2, Insightful)
What happened to state's rights? It seems like people have completely forgotten about them... I have no doubt that if you asked average joe on the street about it you'd get a blank stare.
I always thought they were a big part of making sure that the different groups of people in a country of this size got what they wanted (You don't like our laws? Try another state's). At least then those corporate guys would have to bribe 50 people instead of just a handful
The ignorance of youth (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought that WE had little respect for our elders, but you punks take the cake (and eat it too). We didn't "sit around protesting", we marched around protesting. And what we protested was what the previous generations had fucked up.
We were being drafted to be cannon fodder for a useless war. Some of us volunteered for that useless war out of patriotism (I did). The protests finally eneded thath war. Meanwhile you little whiners are too busy chasing filthy lucre and getting your nipples pierced and foreheads tattood to care that an oil man becaise President and started a useless war for the sole purpose of enriching himself. At least my dad's generation's rich people who starte dthe Vietnam war thought )prehaps correctly) that they were fighting communism, a laudible goal to them.
My generation's protests stopped the war and made the President resign. Where are your protests of the Iraq war? Your stupid generation doesn't even have to be drafted!
Some of us protested the rape of the environment. We got the Clean Air act and teh Clean Water act passed. We got CFCs banned. What are you gutless wimps doing about global warmning? Buying SUVs!
My generation built sna is still building houses, like the one you live in. The parts of the electrical grid my dad din't build were built by those who followed him.
My dad's generation invented computers, but my generation pur those giant building sized machines on your desktop. My generation put VCRs and CDs and DVDs on the narket. My generation made the entire cell phone infrastructure.
My dad's generation smoked cigarettes. My generation smoked pot. Your generation smokes crack.
Your generation uses my generation's music in their fucktardedly stupid commercials. Neither my nor my dad's generation did that.
My generation was pretty ignorant of history, but we were pikers when it comes to your generation.
What has your generation done, except invent internet trolling?
Re:CoRaF (Score:3, Insightful)
It'll cost you seven figures to get there.
Re:What "Free Trade" Looks Like. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if they would come in through legal channels...they would be treated like any other legal immigrant. I don't think anyone has much a problem with legal immigration into the US.
However, ILLEGAL immigrants have broken the law, and should be arrested, and locked up till deported. That's what the law is supposed to do....
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
umm, assume you are a terrorist and throw you in jail?
Mod parent up. (Score:3, Insightful)