FSF Starts Anti-ACTA Campaign

judgecorp writes "Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman has said in a blog post that the ACTA file-sharing proposals punish users unfairly. He wrote, 'Any time there is a proposal to change things for the worse, the obvious way to oppose it is to campaign for the status quo. To campaign for the status quo suggests the approach of singing its praises; thus, praising WIPO is a natural way to highlight how ACTA is a step for the worse. However, where there have been previous changes for the worse, lauding the status quo tends to legitimize them. The past 20 years have seen global waves of harmful changes in copyright law — some promoted by WIPO. To confront a further assault by presenting the status quo as ideal means we stop fighting to reverse them. It means that our adversaries need only propose a further affront to our rights to gain our acceptance of their last affront. Instead of making the status quo our ideal, we should demand positive changes to recover freedoms already lost.' The FSF has launched a petition against the ACTA proposals."

Re:Status.... Um.... What?

[Darkness404]

That may be true but really, almost every one of his predictions has come true in one way or another. As much as I really would like to dismiss him as having unworkable policies, he has been spot on for almost everything.

Also known as the Overton Window

[commodore64_love]

"praising WIPO is a natural way to highlight how ACTA is a step for the worse. However, where there have been previous changes for the worse, lauding the status quo tends to legitimize them"

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window [wikipedia.org]

Re:Effectiveness of petitions

[Misch]

The EFF is doing a little more in the way of advocacy, but for some reason the Obama administration has decided to defend the Bush administration classification of information related to ACTA.

The EFF and Public Knowledge announced today [eff.org] that they dropped a lawsuit against the US Trade Representative to release background documents related to ACTA.

if you didn't want a flame response

[circletimessquare]

you wouldn't call yourself the velvet flamebait

and here's my flame free rebuttal:

world before internet: 99% of artists were poor. 0.9% one hit wonders signed contracts with distributors in which they got pennies and a ride in a limo for a few months. 0.1% muscled in on the distributor's game and made fair money

world after internet: 99% artists are still poor (this is the way it always was and always will be). 0.5% make enough contact over the internet with their fans to make some money from gigs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail [wikipedia.org] ). another 0.4% realize enough revenue from ancillary means to be moderately financially successful. the final 0.1% are still making u2 and jayz money, from all their tie-ins

sure, the ancillary revenues are tiny fractions of what the marketplace was like before the internet, but artists still make more because mos tof the cash in the pre-internet world went to distributors anyways

your problem is you fall for the contrived bullshit concept that distributors not making money anymore is the same as artists not making money anymore

but, don't believe me that distributors are a joke and artists should just go it out on their own, listen to an actual artist:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10272490.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Radiohead's Thom Yorke warns of 'sinking' record labels

Radiohead singer Thom Yorke has told aspiring musicians to avoid the "sinking ship" of major record labels.

Giving advice to young artists in a new school textbook, he said: "When the corporate industry dies it will be no great loss to the world.

"So, I guess I would say, don't tie yourself to the sinking ship because, believe me, it's sinking."

Radiohead were signed to EMI for 12 years but released their last album In Rainbows via their own website in 2007.

EMI is now in a particularly precarious position, with major debts and restructuring issues following a takeover by private equity firm Terra Firma in 2007.

The songwriter made his comments in the Rax Active Citizenship Toolkit, published next month by New Internationalist magazine for students of GCSE Citizenship Studies.

'Matter of time'

In the interview, carried out in February, Yorke said the fate of new artists was "an obsession" of bandmate Ed O'Brien, who is a leading member of lobby group the Featured Artists' Coalition.

Yorke said: "When we discuss it, he says it's simply a matter of time - months rather than years - before the music business establishment completely folds.

"He is involved in trying to build a world where artists would finally get paid. But we are up against the self-protecting interests of that industry."

Radiohead are currently working on new material, but it is not known how they will release it.

Yorke has recently been performing with a new band, Atoms For Peace, and is playing a solo show at the Big Chill festival in Herefordshire in August.

so please stop swallowing the contrived lie that artists need distributors. its tired. its false. its a dead fake maneuver you are either intellectually being dishonest about or are actually quite cluelessly naive about

the truth is, distributors are parasites that only existed because someone had to manufacture the media. the internet has made that process defunct, and so distributors themselves are now defunct, no matter how hard they try to grandfather themselves into our cultural space with bullshit legal maneuvers that are destined to fail regardless

Re:I will do my civic duty and sign these petition

[alexo]

Canada's new law that forbids breaking DRM, lobbied for by US groups, pressured for by the US ambassador, and written up by RIAA.

It's not a law yet, it is only a bill (C-31) but unless you (Canadians) get off your collective fat asses and start making noise about it, it will be.

Re:I will do my civic duty and sign these petition

[Kalriath]

This isn't a "law" this is an agreement, meaning it basically passes without the consent of the people. Essentially the US is letting other countries write the laws for us. This is exactly what the founding fathers warned us about with "Free Trade With All, Entangling Alliances With None".

That's not actually true. The US is the one writing and pushing ACTA, and is having it written as a treaty so that it can do an end run around it's own laws that would prevent something like it passing. It's ingenious really. Can't pass a law? Get it written as a treaty and have someone else pass it for you!

Re:Status.... Um.... What?

[Darkness404]

Well, the primary thing that I can think of is "TiVoizion" (see http://gplv3.fsf.org/pipermail/info-gplv3/2006-February/000001.html [fsf.org] ) of taking Open Source software and then bundling it with restrictions in the hardware to prevent you from actually using the software, just look at Android for a major example and phones like the Motorola Backflip in particular.

Then look at the article on Trusted Computing ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html [gnu.org] ) and then look at the Kindle remotely deleting copies of purchased e-books, restrictions on various cell phones, etc.

Also, look at some of the articles on non-free file formats, the same things RMS was predicting has come true not in file formats but in social networking sites like Facebook, the root cause being the same: when you entrust your information to a format you can't control you lose control of that information.

Then of course the things against software patents, the Java trap is now quickly coming to "the Cloud" and controlled marketplaces like Apple's App store, etc.