WIPO Music Control Treaty Ratified 261
Greyfox writes: "Here's one that slipped through the cracks. The WIPO (You know, that unelected, unaccountable organization that lives in the Corporate back pockets) has ratified a anti-music piracy treaty which will go into effect on May 20. It apparently has anti-circumvention measures similar to the DMCA and will carry the force of law in the USA and other member countries." We had a more informative story about these two treaties a few months ago. The only new information is that the Phonograms and Performances Treaty now has enough signatures to go into effect in May.
Good thing we have Bush in charge (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good thing we have Bush in charge (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good thing we have Bush in charge (Score:2)
Correct. Keep in mind that it was the Clinton administration who helped to bring us DMCA in the first place as a means of setting an example for international law. The Dem's get most of the hollywood soft-money, so go figure. The same administration also tried to parcel off pieces of the US land to the United Nations. Disagree with Bush and the republicans all you may, but at least they take a firm stance on state sovereignty.
Re:Good thing we have Bush in charge (Score:2)
Re:Good thing we have Bush in charge (Score:2)
The fact is, Enron lied to all of its shareholders. It was not possible to make a rational decision regarding the value of their stock because the true value of the company was hidden.
While you are enough of an elitist to gain comfort from the intelligence of your abusers, I suspect that for most people the fact that they were ripped of by geniuses is cold comfort indeed.I'm having trouble reconciling these: (Score:4, Interesting)
from the referenced CNN article:
Does it have the "force of law," or does it simply mean that nations have agreed to enact laws aligned with the treaty?
Not that the intellectual "property" goons at the media empires have a prayer in the long run, anyway. They can't get away with selling bandwidth to the public on one hand and locking up content on the other. They're mutually exclusive.
Re:I'm having trouble reconciling these: (Score:1)
heh (Score:1)
obviously this takes some doing since they didn't create the medium.. and they're using their armies of lawyers to fight their battles for them..
Re:heh (Score:1)
And most of us just keep on lapping it up...
Re:heh (Score:1)
Sad, and true.
Re:heh (Score:2)
Re:I'm having trouble reconciling these: (Score:4, Informative)
For those of you who can't open MSWord .docs here are the countries signed on:
Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Namibia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Panama, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, European Communities (50).Albania, Argentina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gabon, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mali, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Saint Lucia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, United States of America (28).
Regards
Re:I'm having trouble reconciling these: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'm having trouble reconciling these: (Score:2)
At least in the USA.... (Score:2)
OBDisclaimer: I am not a lawyer, I picked all this up from "Ally McBeal."
Re:At least in the USA.... (Score:2)
Of course, the Senate doesn't always ratify treaties that we sign. There are a couple of cold war era treaties regarding nuclear weapons and such that we signed as a country but were never ratified by the Senate.
Mr. Spey
Re:At least in the USA.... (Score:2, Interesting)
WIPO and WTO are essentially legislative bodies given teeth by treaties.
The difference is? A *treaty* is a fixed agreement, whereas WIPO/WTO is an amorphous, unelected, non-democratic body with the "power" to pass legislation with the same power as the US constitution? I claim that a treaty and WIPO/WTO are two completley different animals, and thus that line of the document does not apply.
I think any of our founding fathers would cringe at the situation we're in
Re:At least in the USA.... (Score:2, Informative)
That's why there is the DMCA. It exists to enforce a treaty and supply punishment.
A Lawyer's Guess: Treaties vs. Law (Score:2, Informative)
So the WIPO treaties may recognize rights, but they don't offer significant remedies to enforce them.
I can't imagine a treaty with operative anti-circumvention provisions couldn't get through WIPO without more noise than we've heard... though I'll have to take a look at them.
Besides, if it was really bad, we would be knee-deep in indignant press releases from the EFF.
Re:I'm having trouble reconciling these: (Score:2, Interesting)
Get caught running ftp, scp or some p2p system and you're already a suspect.
Then would cable modems/DSL/satellite connections continue to be worth $50-$60 per month? Granted, this is anecdotal, but I don't know anyone paying for broadband who isn't pulling gigabytes per month from p2p networks or wherever of content of at least questionable legality. And these aren't all geeks, either. A good portion are your run of the mill administrators, clerks, what have you.
If all I was going to do was read email and post to Slashdot, I could sure get along fine with dialup access. I can share content just fine on CDRs if broadband is QoSd and TOSd to that degree.
Re:I'm having trouble reconciling these: (Score:1)
Re:I'm having trouble reconciling these: (Score:1)
The Question Is? (Score:1)
Re:The Question Is? (Score:1)
I pleadge alegence to the flag, which is copywrited, patented, and trademarked by Liberty OmniCorp, 2002, of the United Corporate States of America, and to the corporate republic, for which it stands, one nation, under CEO, with power and profits for big business.
...an hyperbole, yes. But it seems to be getting closer and closer to the hyperbole with frightening speed.
The Truth about WIPO (Score:5, Insightful)
WIPO is a treaty. If one of the 177 countries is unhappy about being part of the WIPO treaty, they can leave. So the fact that a country is part of WIPO is indicitive of the will of the lawmaking body of the country. Furthermore, the treaty had to be ratified by each country, so it was elected. And to say that it lives in corporate back pockets indicates that you don't know much about WIPO. While it has capitalist goals, it is by no means controled by any company in any country.
That's what your government wants you to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you trolling?
This treaty has been SHOVED down the throats of the "177 countries" by threats of catastrophic loss of trade agreements and obscene tolls by the USA. It's a "you're either with out entertainment industry or you're against us" treaty.
Re:That's what your government wants you to believ (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The Truth about WIPO (Score:1)
Re:The Truth about WIPO (Score:1)
Just look at the Ucraina (Score:3, Insightful)
USA waves the boycott-flag, you have a choice not to sign the treaty?!
johnboy
that's true (Score:2)
Re:that's true (Score:3, Insightful)
The treaty-making process doesn't allow the same level of scrutiny -- the Executive branch is involved in their creation and the Senate gets little more choice than approve/deny. The House of Representatives (which tends to be closer to the public in terms of receiving feedback) has no place in the process whatsoever. The gist of this (even excluding the harm done to non-American participants) is that law is being made without the benefit of the full set of protections written into the US constitution, and thus that even if that segment of the public that cares is opposed to such a treaty, it's harder for that fact to reach those involved (and easier for those responsible for ratification to call destructive clauses something they couldn't get rid of lest the baby go with the bathwater -- after all, they only had the ability to confirm or deny the whole treaty!)
In short, making law via treaties is a loophole entirely unanticipated by the Constitution, and an amendment (or Supreme Court ruling) is needed to abolish it.
Re:that's true (Score:2)
Probably a cop-out, but nonetheless potentially confusing to your lawmakers (you can be sure they feel the pressure to pass the law...).
The Truth about Economic Agreements (Score:5, Informative)
Your argument is missing some distinctions.
First, "countries" are not atomic entities. There are interest groups within them. The RIAA/MPAA + media giants have their allies within many of the signatory countries. They would like nothing more than to control content and the means of distributing content completely. They would also like to control prices, limit competition, and some guranteed income in the form of hardware taxes.
These groups have the advantage of money and organization, but the disadvanatge that many of them live in democratic countries. So to get what they want, they have to do an end run around the democratic process. One way to do this is with economic treaties, which are negotiated in secret, by the very groups who will benefit most from them, and are then passed on to legislatures to be rubber stamped.
Why do the legislatures rubber stamp them? Well, for one thing, the lawmakers tend to be predisposed to favor this stuff in the first place, due to a variety of filters. For instance, in the US, to even be eligable to make a run for congress requires that you raise about $1,000,000/year from wealthy individuals. This means that our representatives are not exactly a "cross-section" of the population. So the lawmakers don't view the public as some group to be served, but as an annoying constituency which should be kept quiet and under control. I'm generalizing here, but the principle is fairly accuarate. In other countries there are other filters, of varying restrictiveness.
Moreover, the media doesn't highlight these amendments. Where was the huge public debate about the Telecommunications Act? Where was the public debate about the DMCA? Why do these agreements slip under the radar? There is little discussion of them in the media -- unless through leaks or lack of control word spreads anyways, and then there is a rush to defend them. So the Nafta debate, which was caused only because Perot -- who can buy his own air time -- forced the issue onto the airwaves. And then there was a rush by the NYTimes, Washington Post, etc. to villify him and to not present the opposing views.
Finally there is the method of bundling, by which these agreements are presented to congress without possibility to amend them, as part of a larger package, for a straight up or down vote. Threats of boycotts, higher tariffs, cutting of loans/aid are big clubs than can be used against other countries to get them to sign. But the key point is that the legislatures generally want to sign these things, and the aforementioned threats are provided as cover for them to say to their citizens -- "we had to do it."
At the end of the day, you end up paying taxes when you buy a hard drive, and the police can arrest you for reverse engineering, even if your goal is to interoperate, or just provide a lower price substitute.
I recommend reading an article about the derailed Multilateral Agreement on Investements [zmag.org] to see this dynamic at work. In the case of the MAI, media leaks, mostly on the internet, launched a grassroots effort to oppose the provisions of the MAI. This resulted in derailing the agreement as more and more of the provisions came to light, and public hearings in several countries were called. A brief excerpt:
The [Wall Street] journal goes on to urge that it will be necessary "to drum up business support" so as to beat back the hordes [of people opposed to the MAI]. Until now, business hasn't recognized the severity of the threat. And it is severe indeed. "Veteran trade diplomats" warn that with "growing demands for greater openness and accountability," it is becoming "harder for negotiators to do deals behind closed doors and submit them for rubber-stamping by parliaments." "Instead, they face pressure to gain wider popular legitimacy for their actions by explaining and defending them in public," no easy task when the hordes are concerned about "social and economic security," and when the impact of trade agreements "on ordinary people's lives...risks stirring up popular resentment" and "sensitivities over issues such as enviromental and food safety standards." It might even become impossible "to resist demands for direct participation by lobby groups in WTO decisions, which would violate one of the body's central principles": "'This is the place where governments collude in private against their domestic pressure groups,' says a former WTO official."
Re:The Truth about Economic Agreements (Score:2)
i get really sick and tired about hearing about how stupid our elected officials are, how stupid juries are, how stupid are, etc. then someone claims to want a "cross-section" of the population in congress or running the country, which would put all those "stupid" people in positions of influence.
later on: "At the end of the day, you end up paying taxes when you buy a hard drive..."
so what? i pay taxes when i buy milk at the convenience store. what's the problem?
jon
Re:The Truth about Economic Agreements (Score:2)
Re:The Truth about Economic Agreements (Score:3, Insightful)
1) I didn't say that they were stupid -- my point was that the topics of debate were limited because of these filters. It's not a personal critique one way or another. Suppose a candidate wants to, say, limit IP rights and reform patent laws significantly. Well -- who would donate to his campaign? How would he raise the money needed to run? He wouldn't and so our representatives don't hold these opinions. So they support things like WIPO. I think that's a fairly straightforward remark.
so what? i pay taxes when i buy milk at the convenience store. what's the problem?
2) I was talking about paying "taxes" which are surcharges on storage media. The money goes to the content cartels. I'm not against paying taxes either, but they shouldn't go to private, unacountable monopolies. And I should have some say in how the money is spent. And the process should be decided on democratically. Is the saying "No taxation without representation" to radical for you?
Re:The Truth about Economic Agreements (Score:2)
my point is that
jon
Re:The Truth about Economic Agreements (Score:2)
so is there really a storage-media tax these days, or is it just the hard drive manufacturers adding a surcharge to compensate for lawsuits? or something else entirely?
jon
Re:The Truth about Economic Agreements (Score:2)
The situation with international organzations as they stand right now is somewhat comprable to the situation in the former european colonies; locals had no official say in the running of their state. Until the second world war, the political focus of activists was mainly integration within the colonial government (i.e. more civil service positions, limited influence in the lawmaking process). After ww2, that focus shifted to control of the government (i.e. elections & self-government); it was the second focus which brought about real emancipation of the colonized. There is a parallel to this in WIPO: as it stands, people want more access and influence in the decision-making process. That's all well and good, but a much better goal (in my mind) would be to have direct representation in the bodies: voting for your UN rep, etc. While this won't solve all problems, it would be a much more elegant system than the current undemocratic resolution-writing/democratic ratification that currently exists.
hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes:) I am an American. The little I know of the situation in the EU is that there are similar filters. There they take the form of a more class(and so wealth) based beauracracy which is so byzantine that no one can police it, and removed from popular influence by ever-increasing administrative layers. In the third world, with exceptions, politics are much more violent and dealing with popular pressures is not so much of an issue.
That's 1/177 down. The parent's post is still accurate: WIPO resolutions, like those of all other international bodies, require ratification by member-states before they have force of law. Think of WIPO et al like you would the W3C
Here in California, we have some direct democracy in the form of propositions each election cycle. We're routinely blitzed by commercials from groups such as "Concerned Citizens for Environmental Responsibility". If you read the bylaws of these groups, they claim to be just that -- a grassroots campaign to educate the public about environmental issues. But it's easy to see that the above group, say, is actually a front for oil companies who want to enable off shore drilling. It only exists to pass/derail some resolution and has a membership which you can count on your hand. Now, you can argue that if we democratically elect members to this group of concerned citizens, that the organization might be reformed and would then serve some useful purpose. I just have no idea why anyone would want to do that (see end of rant).
This is pretty much the case with WIPO. Statements like "the US is only 1/177 of WIPO" " and "Corporations influence it only to the extent that they influence the member states" are only true in the actual WIPO bylaws, and --possibly -- some political science articles.
In reality the US must be atleast 2/3 of WIPO (in terms of influence) and Europe maybe 1/3 -- the rest of the world, including China, constitutes a rounding error. And in terms of corporate influence, it's not only that the actual proposals are negotiated/written by corporate attorneys, many of whom don't even bother to take on govt. jobs, but most top governmental officials are unaware of what these lawyers agree to. This includes congressional chairs of foreign trade, although I imagine that the Bush Administration's top trade executive is occasionally briefed on the matter.
In fact, the very existence of an orginization called "WIPO" already prejudices the situation, since the natural course of all developed countries has been to ignore (foreign) IP laws entirely -- except possibly limited rights of attribution. It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that the US began to pay lip service to any foreign IP rights at all. And not until after WWI, when we confiscated many patents from Germany, did we even begin to take foreign IP rights seriously. Currently, even in the more developed countries, foreign IP rights were (and are) ignored on a selective basis. And so just the desire to codify and enforce IP laws worldwide is already a huge slap in the face of development efforts going on in the third world, and has no popular support in those countries.
This is not like W3C or the UN; and it's difficult to imagine what a "democratic" world wide IP regime might be, other than some statement to the effect of "There should not be a worldwide IP regime".
Re:The Truth about WIPO (Score:2)
Well, ok, to be fair, governments live in corporate back pockets also.
WIPO (Score:2, Informative)
Although the treaties were adopted in 1996, they are only ratified now with the signature of Honduras. The WTTP is basically the DMCA for the rest of the world. It exists to "provide protection for companies in the cultural and information industries".
Good (Score:3, Insightful)
The musicians are just as guilty as the record companies and the RIAA and the rest of them. No-one forces you to sign to Sony Music or Thorn EMI.
There's so much great music out there that's not distributed by the big corps you know, you don't *HAVE* to buy stuff from them.
Let them do wtf they like with their music, who cares, let them drown in their own decadence.
Re:Good (Score:2)
Me to music companies - come on - what are you waiting for? bring it on!
Re:Good (Score:2)
Do I really want to put food in Fred Durse's mouth? Do you really want more Steps & Hear'Say?
Splashing their ill gotten gains around and flaunting themselves living it large and for what, a few plastic pop songs to fill up the airwaves of AOL/TW & Fox & MTV.
Hopefully he'll see how manipulative the process is, in the meantime he can get down the the groove of the chocolate starfish and feel the acceptance of his peers, he even gets some false kudos for having stuff not released here etc.
Do you actually believe the ability to learn some crappy dance routine and wear make up deserves million dollar rewards?
I have argued on
"oh but they entertain millions of people, they deserve it"
well those millions are just gullable dupes, just like me, no er...
Re:Like a bad drug habit... (Score:2)
The artists are hooked on the RIAA, and us consumers (well, not me), are hooked on this weird notion that we just MUST have whatever our favorite artists happen to produce. Everyone's in it together.
You KNOW that the artists aren't going to get clean- they've got too much at stake. The question is, when are the consumers ever going to get clean?
Re:Like a bad drug habit... (Score:2)
"I want to be a pop star" seems an overwhelming dream for the attention starved nobodies.
I've worked in the music business and to my mind talented people are ten a penny. Music is a relatively easy discipline. Sure, touring can be hard work but it's not in the same league as coal mining or sewing Nike trainers together. Most of the crap pumped through the big boy channels is just pretty young things acting as clothes hangers to people like Pete Waterman and Nigel Whatsit (the guy behind Westlife & co).
The TV stations pump it up, hyping away at their new puppets so they can fill their airtime. Cosy deals between the big distributors of content put up invisible trade barriers. Mindless soporific pap to brainwash the nation into thinking that factory work is okay because as least I can fantasize about fucking Kylie when I wtach the Brit Awards tonight.
As you can tell it just doesn't sit happily with me. Bitter? yeah, pint please and a bag of nuts.
Oh fooey.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe (maybe) it will get better before it gets really bad, but reality's shaping up a lot like this. [gnu.org]
Can anybody point a link to a list of all the countries that have so far bought into this?
I heard Ralph Nader speak a few months ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I heard Ralph Nader speak a few months ago... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't agree with everything Nader says but I might if he had an expensive marketing department that specialized in manipulating people's ideas.
I agree that we should value our national sovereignty above any of the Wxx organizations. (Can you imagine Germany suing the USA for copying its jet plane ideas without proper patent licensing during WW2?)
Re:I heard Ralph Nader speak a few months ago... (Score:2)
And he was worried that global organizations were hurting national sovereignty, if I interpreted his speech correctly. He was talking about organizations like the World Trade Organization whose agreements bind member nations to follow their policy above their own local laws, or be punished. It isn't just the national organiztaions that we must pay attention to now, but international ones like the World Intellectual Property Organizations whose treaties bind their members to follow their laws, for better or for worse.
International organizations probably do hurt your national sovereignty if you are American. But for the many smaller or poorer countries in the world, the international organizations at least allow them to negotiate as a block rather than bidirectionally with the much more powerful western countries. That increases their ability to strike deals in their own favour. Of course the US can always refuse to ratify any that they don't like, such as the Kyoto protocol or the UN Convention on the Rights of Children.
Re:I heard Ralph Nader speak a few months ago... (Score:2)
One of the great advantages of the Net is that it disregards national boundaries. The world is moving away from the narrow perspective of the nation state; its a shame that Mr. Nader is getting himself so mired in this tired idea.
Which is not to say that trans-national organizations like WIPO, WTO and the European Union shouldn't be democratic and transparent: they should. But we should welcome the death of the nation state, not mourn it.
Re:I heard Ralph Nader speak a few months ago... (Score:2)
The leftist support of nationalism is not a support of the nations that exist, but something like admitting that those nations, while messed up, are easier to fix than a world government -- the number of levels of obfuscation, obstruction, and entrenchment are fewer. It's easy to see that politics can be more easily effected by individuals the smaller the scale. Nader didn't do too well nationally, but Green Party candidates have won seats in local government. It's similar on the right.
Perhaps a global government could be set up to allow democratic participation and to not hoard power. But the current is obviously not that government, and the people who are making this new world government have clearly shown that they do not care for democracy. I do think it's a bit negative to then talk down world government entirely... too often, when we see something bad being created we become conservatives. Instead it would be better to offer a different solution, to provide alternatives instead of being reactionary. But I can't blame the naysayers -- first do no harm, after all.
And, of course, a world government tends not to allow alternatives. That's what law is about -- you don't get to choose your law (especially when it covers every part of the globe) and you don't choose whether to obey it. You can't say, "I will work to make this one place better" if it's in conflict with the world government. You can't ban products, you can't even demand they be labelled. Increasingly you cannot try to inform the public about products. You can't decide how information should be free to use. That's what they are doing now, who knows what they'll do later -- I only see it getting worse, not better.
Re:I heard Ralph Nader speak a few months ago... (Score:2)
If that is true, then I'm afraid all Americans are living in a state where they have zero individual freedom. Everything I say is already absolutely prescribed by the government. I cannot be typing this message because obviously it is speaking a truth that the government doesn't want you to hear. I expect the black helicopters will be arriving to whisk me away any second.... Nope, don't hear them...
Oops sorry, this posting is a refutation of your theory.
Paranoid guff about a "One World Government" goes down very well with right-wing conspiracy theorists, but in the real world its just doesn't hold up to a moment's scrutiny.
Re:I heard Ralph Nader speak a few months ago... (Score:2)
it does not follow that "the bigger the size of the jurisdiction, the more tyrannical the government will be." you seem to be thinking that any world government will be necessarily a totalitarian one. not necessarily true.
i am not in favor of world government, but this argument is specious.
jon
Sounds as if they were an external organization... (Score:2)
As in every other case, some viewpoints will be voted down to reach a common result, but that's the reason they bothered to come together in the first place. If everybody was to it their own way anyway, what would be the point?
Of course politicans will try to blame unpopular laws on somebody else, and an international body for which constituents don't vote is a perfect excuse. If you'll let them get off the hook by saying "we had to follow WIPO policy", you've lost already.
Kjella
Re:I heard Ralph Nader speak a few months ago... (Score:2)
Nope. The only enforcement action legal under WTO rules is retalatory trade barriers. Which countries like the U.S. could legally impose unilaterally if there wasn't a WTO.
Here's an analogy. You and a friend form The Dating Club. The club has various rules, one of which is that you can't date someone another memeber is going out with. If you break any of the rules, however, other members of the club are no longer bound by the rule that they can't date people you are going out with.
So, if you aren't a member, the club rules don't protect you from members of the club dating your boy/girlfriend. If you are a member, the only punishment for breaking the rules is that the rules don't protect you from members of the club dating your boy/girlfriend. And if the club ceased to exist tomorrow, no rules would be protecting you from any other people dating your boy/girlfriend.
The only "power" the WTO has is to withdraw its protection, a protection that wouldn't exist if the WTO didn't exist.
WIPO? What is WIPO? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Oooops... should have read the article before posting.
Nevermind.
WIPO got it's eyes on the prize (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that these policies are getting more universal and more severe. Take a look at the article last week about the Chinese government's firewall built by eager US corporations. We're getting to the point where the internet no longer guarantees that information will be free (like speech or beer).
Between laws enforcing intellectual property, technology that can monitor and censor internet traffic, and governments cracking down on terrorism and digital theft, we risk losing the promise of the internet.
International treaties like this one are as important to the slashdot community as anything Bill Gates or George Bush does.
(Now we just have to find effective ways to fight back)
Re:WIPO got it's eyes on the prize (Score:2, Informative)
If only they were so nice.
No, the SOA and CIA go in there and put in a nice fascist puppet government until the dictator feels his police state built by the US is strong enough to resist the US. Then we go replace him with another. And so on. In the name of democracy.
Or if they're lucky, the impoverished nation turns to the IMF to loan them money in return for certain conditions which will lock the country in debt and poverty and reliant on foreign capital.
There are plenty of other versions; consult your local library.
Re:WIPO got it's eyes on the prize (Score:2)
He's a thinker!
De facto organizations (Score:2, Interesting)
compare to DMCA (Score:4, Interesting)
Region codes for music would be an atrocity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Region codes for music would be an atrocity (Score:3, Interesting)
The worst thing about these treaties... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I give up. (Score:3, Insightful)
In the meantime, I plan to move somewhere out of the way and raise sheep. Call me when it's time to mechanically tattoo the barcode on my forehead.
Anti-Music? (Score:5, Funny)
I assume you meant "anti-music-piracy" or "anti music-piracy" but I like your version better.
Seems like all these damned laws are anti-music.
A little Background (Score:4, Interesting)
Scary Part (Score:3, Interesting)
- the performer shall, as regards his live aural performances or perfomances fixed in phonograms, have the right
... to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of his performances that would be prejudicial to his reputation.
So, for example, if I take a video of Eminem and pick out the more inflammatory parts, under the rules of fair use, to demonstrate his use of hate speechHas anyone actually read the thing? (Score:3, Informative)
Here is the only language in the treaty [wipo.org] concerning anti-circumvention measures:
A Contracting Party is a country that has signed the treaty. Note that the above language only requires countries to punish people who used a technological measure to violate a performer's rights, that is, to punish people who use technological measures to do piracy. A signer is not obliged to implement something like the DMCA; a far narrower law would suffice to comply with the treaty.
Re:Have *you* read the thing? (Score:2)
Note the language here: Everything is forbidden unless the government or the "content" provider grants express permission.
This default configuration setting is incorrect, because it is socially oppressive. It is the setting used by totalitarian regimes, both public and private; republican and monarchical. It is an evolutionary dead-end.
The correct configuration setting would be that all uses and actions are permitted unless expressly forbidden by law, or by a contract signed by both parties (none of this shrinkwrap/clickwrap horsesh*t). This setting makes it hard to oppress the populace, which is what you want.
...Unless you're a greedy, power-mongering, little tinpot dictator.
Schwab
For the children (Score:2)
DOWN WITH PHONOGRAPHY!
Where's the Bricker Amendment When you need it? (Score:5, Informative)
This Constitution... and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land.
The Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean that international treaties hold the same weight as the Constitution. [cornell.edu] This means that if a WIPO treaty trumps the First Amendment, you're up a creek.
Back in the 1950's there was a bill floating around Congress known as the Bricker Amendment that would have forbade Congress from ratifying a treaty (only requires 2/3 of the Senate) that would require a constituational amendment to do otherwise (which requires 2/3 of both houses and then 2/3 of the states). It didn't pass. Do a Google for more info.
This means that a group of people who we don't have any control over for six years at a time can trump the Constitution whenever 67 of them agree to. (Yet another reason to repeal the 17th, probably.)
There's been a new interest in the Bricker Amendment in recent years from the political right and other groups, but I don't think anything's been really done about it.
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Perhaps if we all wrote to our Congresscritters [house.gov] and Senators [senate.gov] and bitched about the lack of such a law protecting us from abuses in WIPO and WTO something might get done about it.
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Re:Where's the Bricker Amendment When you need it? (Score:2)
Not so sure about this. I'm no Constitutional scholar, but this Article says to me that federal law (including the Constitution, laws and treaties) all trump state constitutions and laws (since the next part of the text reads, "and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."). As far as the states are concerned, yes, international treaties hold the same weight as the Constitution. However, this does not mean that the treaties can trump the Constitution itself.
Re:Where's the Bricker Amendment When you need it? (Score:2)
In Missouri v. Holland (the case I linked to in the text you quoted), the Supreme Court ruled that a treaty granted Congress the right to pass laws it otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to pass (because of the Tenth Amendment in this case). Of course the limits of this are fuzzy because the Tenth Amendment talks about stuff that isn't explicitly stated, and it is explicitly stated that Congress has the power to make sure we stay within the bounds of a treaty.
On the flip side, we have Reid v. Covert which says things that are explicity stated in the Constitution still trump treaties. So things are maybe alright again.
Except then we have United States v. Pink, where we learn that executive agreements (like treaties, only they only have an effect as long as the current president agrees to them, and Congress isn't involved) are treated as treaties when looking at the precedent set back by Missouri v. Holland. And this is worrisome in this case because because the First Amendment only keeps Congress from limiting your speech, not the president. Whether or not he'd get impeached after trying it depends on who's in Congress at the time, and we're 0 for 2 so far for convictions in presidential impeachments.
I'm no scholar either, this is just stuff I've pieced together from Google.
Re:Where's the Bricker Amendment When you need it? (Score:2)
Yes, the precedents contradict one another. But basically, the 10th Amendment is considered essentially a dead letter, to bend whenever any other federal power can be brought, however indirectly, upon the matter. So, since making treaties is a granted power, any actions necessary to fulfill them don't violate the 10th.
Re:Where's the Bricker Amendment When you need it? (Score:2)
First off, concerning the part you stressed in the quote, is that saying that a treaty can't be to the contrary of our constitutions or laws, or simply that judges are bound to the various "supreme laws of the land" unless there's something in the constitutions or laws that say otherwise? I've seen interesting claims (though probably unfounded) that this passage gives Congress the ability to pass a law that is explicitly outside the authority of the Supreme Court.
Secondly, the Supreme Court case I linked to (Missouri v. Holland) sets the precedent of the Senate being able to pass treaties that at least give Congress more power than it would have otherwise. Under the Tenth Amendment, Congress did not have the ability to limit the hunting of certain endangered migratory birds (since that right wasn't expressly given to Congress in the Constitution). However, because the Senate ratified a treaty with the UK concerning these birds Congress then had the power to pass laws "nessecary and proper" to stay within the bounds of the treaty (ie. start the Fish and Wildlife Service) according to the Supreme Court.
Whether or not a treaty could give Congress the ability to ignore the First Amendment (or Second, if the UN has its way) as well as the Tenth is unclear at best and will probably require the Supreme Court to decide. Whether such a case would ever get up to the Supreme Court remains to be seen, let alone how the court might decide.
As an example, part of what prompted the Bricker Amendment to be presented to Congress was the position of the political right that joining the UN had trumped Congress' war-making ability and dragged the US into the Korean War in the process. To my knowledge there has never been a court case questioning the legality of getting involved in any UN "peace-keeping" mission, even the on-going Korean War.
WIPO ratified? What about *Congress* (Score:3, Interesting)
is effective or binding unless ratified by Congress?
Now I know that much of the Constitution is
an irrelevant theoretic excercise, since Roosevelt
established an autocratic presidency by threatening
to pack the supreme court in order to get the
grotesquely unconstitutional ruling of washburn
in 1942, but surely this core element of the
document is still in force!
Definitions? (Score:2, Informative)
from Article 2: Definitions...
(b) "phonogram" means the fixation of the sounds of a performance or of other sounds, or of a representation of sounds other than in the form of a fixation incorporated in a cinematographic or other audiovisual work;
(c) "fixation" means the embodiment of sounds, or of the representations thereof, from which they can be perceived, reproduced or communicated through a device;
(d) "producer of a phonogram" means the person, or the legal entity, who or which takes the initiative and has the responsibility for the first fixation of the sounds of a performance or other sounds, or the representations of sounds;
If would appear that if a musician were to make a cassette recording of a song before going into the studio, their producer would in fact not have intellectual property rights to it.
IF this is the case, then the WIPO just managed to shoot themselves in the foot.
Article 21
Reservations
Subject to the provisions of Article 15(3), no reservations to this Treaty shall be permitted.
It would also appear, juding from article 21, that if any section of the treaty conflicts with national law and is struck down, that the entire treaty is rendered null and void. OR (depending on how you read it) that the treaty in fact overrides any national law (DMCA) and in agreeing to this treaty, the nationality agrees to either reform or abolish any law that conflicts with it.
Article 28
Signature of the Treaty
This Treaty shall be open for signature until December 31, 1997, by any Member State of WIPO and by the European Community.
Also going on to Article 28, did the treaty get the required 30 signatures before December 31, 1997?
If not then it would appear that the entire teaty is null and our lawmakers have been wasting our money and time
(like this is anything new).
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Treaty? (Score:2)
1). In the US anyway all treaties must be ratified by Congress. It's specified as such in the US Constitution. Anything WIPO does cannot have force of law in the US without ratification by the US Congress. The last time I looked the US Congress was both accountable and elected.
2). The article clearly states that the WIPO treaty does not override national laws.
What happens if the DMCA is ever appealed? (Score:2)
The whole idea of having different branches of government is for accountability and potential abuse of power. Its called checks and balances. Other governments besides the American one state that the police and FBI may only enforce laws only! Not make laws. And the legislative branch may only write laws but NOT enforce them. This protects governments from dictators.
But is there any branch of government that the wipo can be checked and balanced from? The EU also scares me. The officials are not elected but appointed and have no checks or balances either. They could write a dmca equalivant and it WILL NEVER BE APPEALED. Globalization in this style could be disaster. But the scariest of this whole mess is I am conservative and not one of the anti globalization zealots. I hate government interaction but it seems that extreme corporatism is making the governments move so far to the right that they began to resemble the left. Ask any political science professor about this. Politics is like a clock. Someone who is extremely left or right may actually resemble each other more then someone near the center.
As a republican I will proudly support McCain during the next presidential primaries. We need to take our government back from corporate extremists on the far right and left of both parties and end totalitarian globalization now before we lose all our rights!
WPPT/WTTP? (Score:2)
Re:Fuck Globalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Since the US signed the treaty saying they would agree to it. America can walk away from it anytime our government chooses to, however. But until they do, we are obligated to fulfill the terms of the treaty.
Especially when our Constitution overrules it.
Can you show us which part of the Constitution prevents our government from signing treaties?
Re:Fuck Globalism (Score:2)
In the US, signing a treaty is meaningless until it is ratified, as Clinton found out to his dismay.
Re:Fuck Globalism (Score:2)
Take a REAL close look at Article VI. Then look up the Supreme Court decision Missouri v. Holland and look at the ramifications there.
The Constitution doesn't overrule international treaties, it's the other way around.
Right to backup (Score:2)
Re:Right to backup (Score:2, Funny)
For those of you in the hardware side, now's your chance to start a small company, put out a product that is cheap, well-made, reliable, satisfies the consumer need to make fair-use backups, and the need for copyright holders to protect their IP, all so you can grow fast, gain interest, become too big for your own infrastructure, go IPO, put out a crappy but much anticipated encore product because you're now thinly-veiled corporate schills, take a huge loss on R&D, advertising and lose millions, get bought out by a front company for one of the media cartels, and have an entire consumer goods market vanish from the face of the earth under the administration of the new parent company, who promises to develop the product but quietly buries it.
Sweet dreams, Adam Smith. Welcome to the New New Economy.
Re:what's the problem here?? (Score:3, Interesting)
I welcome this... it will start a nice change that will redefine and redesign the world as we know it... and it will destroy the record companies and movie companies.
Re:what's the problem here?? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's just silly. You don't see "Though Shalt Not Kill" engraved on each hand gun; do you?
OT, but can't resist (Score:2)
Hmm. If they can put on cans of insecticide and air freshener, "Do not point at people", why don't they put it on handguns?
Re:what's the problem here?? (Score:2, Insightful)
strained analogies.... (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine if someone looked through your window at the wallpaper in your house, decided it was an ugly color, and then broke into your house to paint all your walls pink. Would that be cool with you??
Oh yeah? How would YOU like it if every time someone flew a white helicopter over your father's tomato farm, a rhinoceros shows up and steps on his bicycle? Yeah, would that be cool with you??
Yeah, I didn't THINK so!
Re:strained analogies.... (Score:2)
Re:It's gonna happen... (Score:3, Interesting)
I do see this whole temperance tripe, et al, causing one of the largest underground movements of all time in the cause of Freedom. Some will get nailed for sure but they can't put everyone in jail.
Flash Forward to 2000 or so:
86,000,000 adults in the USA admit to having used an illegal drug at some point in their life.
1 in 3 young black males are on probation or are under some sort of government supervision.
Millions of people are jailed each year because they excercised their right to choose what goes into their body.
The prison industry is booming, with new facility contstruction at all time highs. Corporation are convincing legislators to let them use prison labor at below minimum wages. Asset forfieture is commonly used to make money for police departments. Assets that are seized cannot be recovered without lengthy legal proceedings even if the person hasn't been charged with a crime. [jlfcatalog.com]
Yep, they can't arrest everyone. They sure can profit from arresting a lot of people though.
Re:Propaganda (Score:2)