ACTA Signed By 8 of 11 Participating Countries 213
Posted
by
timothy
from the authority-to-engage-in-trainwrecks dept.
from the authority-to-engage-in-trainwrecks dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this news on the ACTA treaty, straight from the EFF's release on the news: "On Saturday October 1st, eight countries (the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea) signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in Tokyo, Japan. Three of the participating countries (the European Union, Mexico, and Switzerland) have not yet signed the treaty, but have issued a joint statement affirming their intentions to sign it 'as soon as practicable.' ACTA will remain open for signature until May 2013. While the treaty's title might suggest that it deals only with counterfeit physical goods such as medicines, it is in fact far broader in scope. ACTA contains new potential obligations for Internet intermediaries, requiring them to police the Internet and their users, which in turn pose significant concerns for citizens' privacy, freedom of expression, and fair use rights." Update: 10/20 13:24 GMT by T : As several readers have pointed out, the quoted news from the EFF describes the EU as a country; I'm sure they know it's not.
Countries? (Score:3, Informative)
The EU is not a country.
Re:Countries? (Score:3, Informative)
The EU can sign on the behalf of its member countries, though it doesn't exercise that power often.
Re:Unconstitutional? (Score:4, Informative)
A Treaty signing is meaningless in the USA. A Treaty is NOT binding until it has been ratified by the Senate.
So, no, the fact that Congress didn't approve it in advance is meaningless, since they're not supposed to.
On the other hand, it has no force until the Senate approves it (which it will, almost certainly - there are enough Dems in bed with Hollywood to pass it on their own, even ignoring the Reps who would approve it).
Re:Decentralize and encrypt everything! (Score:2, Informative)
You may be interested in metagovernment [metagovernment.org], which is developing tools toward the same end, but maybe without the file-sharing rampup.
Along a similar line, you might also be interested in their concept of the distributed administration network [metagovernment.org], previously discussed at length on slashdot [slashdot.org]. Admittedly, that is still vaporware, but the alternate system of governance is starting up.
Re:Countries? (Score:2, Informative)
If the US is a country, the EU is a country. Both are collections of states which were once independent nations. The days of dealing seperately with individual European states are numbered. Deal with it.
Re:Unconstitutional? (Score:4, Informative)
In general you're right.
Unfortunately Obama is taking the position that all ACTA's provisions are compatible with existing US Law, so actual ratification is unnecessary.
Look at it this way:
If the Obama administration charges somebody with counterfeiting some product using the US Code the Courts are not gonna let the dude off because ACTA isn't ratified. They're gonna try the guy under the US Code. And, according to Obama, they'll convict if he actually violated ACTA because everything illegal under ACTA is illegal under the current US Code.
The people in charge of judging whether the US is complying with the treaty will have to count the dude's conviction as compliance.
In other words you shouldn't be worried about ACTA. Yopu should be worried that everything ACTA does is already illegal.
Re:Decentralize and encrypt everything! (Score:2, Informative)
You mean like an Invisible Internet Protocol [i2p2.de]?