Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad. 775
Jamie found a Boing Boing story that will probably get your blood to at least a simmer. It says "The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to 'national security' concerns, has leaked. It's bad." You can read the original leaked document or the summary. If passed, the internet will never be the same. Thank goodness it's hidden from public scrutiny for National Security.
Copyright (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I warned you all (Score:5, Funny)
You all laughed at me
Yes...yes we did.
Re:So Where Exactly is this 'Leaked' Document? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if all else fails, we can make this thing sound so horrible that any politician that touches it would be publicly shamed. They can't prove us wrong unless they publicize the details of the treaty... ...
I read part of the treaty, and the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" will allow American children extradited to Japan if they watch an animated Japanese video!
Re:Copyright (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's money vs. the serfs. Didn't you get the memo?
Re:What are the chances of this being adopted? (Score:5, Funny)
Priceless.
Re:Copyright (Score:3, Funny)
No, they won't give us the memo, they say it's a matter of "national security" and that we should just trust them.
Re:This proves one thing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So Where Exactly is this 'Leaked' Document? (Score:5, Funny)
I use the internet outside, you insensitive clod!
Re:Copyright (Score:3, Funny)
Yes. We the people, in order to create a more perfect union...starting with those who have money. once perfected, we will implement this system in a few test markets, and, if it goes well, it will go "live" shortly afterward.
Re:This proves one thing (Score:5, Funny)
*I* voted for Osama bin Laden. Sure, he would put me to the sword, but at least he wouldn't raise my taxes!
Re:So what's new? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So Where Exactly is this 'Leaked' Document? (Score:1, Funny)
My dream! It can finally come true!
Re:So Where Exactly is this 'Leaked' Document? (Score:3, Funny)
Or even force the Senate to ratify it. Until it's ratified by the Senate, by 2/3 vote, a treaty has no legal standing in the United States. Thus, you only need to get 34 Senators to vote against ratification to prevent a treaty from coming into effect.
Don't count on MAFIAA to forget to pay off that many senators.
Re:This proves one thing (Score:5, Funny)
I voted for Kodos.
.
Re:This proves one thing (Score:3, Funny)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Re:This proves one thing (Score:4, Funny)
Foo?
Re:This proves one thing (Score:1, Funny)
Re:OH NOES (Score:3, Funny)
Are you kidding me? Bush was a gold mine for the comedic industry!
Re:What are the chances of this being adopted? (Score:3, Funny)
Above all, will it even work?
May be it will work out fine. Suppose that the treaty will pass and that the law enforcement and the courts will start enforcing these laws in earnest. I suspect that it will make all proprietary material simply too expensive to handle. Copying digital data is very, very cheap. If the laws become effective, copying proprietary content will become risky, and therefore expensive. But copying properly licensed content (e.g. CC-SA) will not be risky or expensive. Guess what will happen next.
Again: imagine that you are in a world where joining an illegal torrent will likely result in you being banned from the Internet, fined, or thrown in jail. The most obvious prediction I can make about art is that CC-SA content will be all over the Internet, while the proprietary content will become a tiny niche. Since the "goodness" of art is subjective, this transition is painless for us as a society.
The picture is even better in the commodity software department. We all know that that running proprietary software brings about licensing problems. But, even more importantly, people begin to recognize that non-free software is utterly untrustworthy, i.e. no one knows what it really does. There is only one way left to prop up the proprietary commodity software, and that is to outlaw free-as-in-freedom computing. But that will not happen, since copyleft is already entrenched in the industry which is orders of magnitude bigger (read: has more cash) than the content industry. Jokes aside, we all know this is the year of GNU/Linux on desktop, folks. If you disagree, I suggest you start short-selling Dell asap.
The government is actually pretty slick, if you think about it. They are taking the lobbyists' cash and making copyright stronger, just as they are transitioning away from the proprietary software.
Re:This proves one thing (Score:1, Funny)
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." Abraham Lincoln.
Sadly that has long since perished and is now a rotted corpse.
Nah, it's just pining for the fjords.
Re:So what's new? (Score:3, Funny)
USA doesn't have presidents. They have president-like spokespersons.
Obama isn't the president, his teleprompters are. Without them, he cannot talk. Watch his speaches, and play the teleprompter ping-pong game. From the way he tracks the teleprompters, figure out which side earns a point. I wouldn't make a drinking game out of it, because alcohol poisoning is a very bad thing.
Re:So Where Exactly is this 'Leaked' Document? (Score:4, Funny)
Don't worry, I'll start up a protest group called "Don't Shut Down Facebook!" and try to get a million people to join it. I'm sure that will help a lot.
Re:So what's new? (Score:3, Funny)
I always forget that Slashdot kills newlines unless you do them twice
Slashdot kills newlines unless you set your posting type to Plain Old Text. Otherwise it assumes you have HTML and you know how to use it.