ACTA Could Make Nonprofit P2Ps Face Criminal Penalties 149
dan of the north writes "Based on sources and leaked documents, Knowledge Ecology International now asserts that ACTA drafts are in fact 'formally available to cleared corporate lobbyists and informally distributed to corporate lawyers and lobbyists in Europe, Japan, and the US.' — The ACTA proposals currently include language that would make copyright infringement on a 'commercial scale,' even when done with 'no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain,' into a criminal matter. Both KEI and Canadian law professor Michael Geist, who has been working his own sources, say that the current proposals require all signatories to 'establish a laundry list of penalties — including imprisonment — sufficient to deter future acts of infringement.'"
Re:Europe, Japan, and the US......and so? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's just our laws are optional anyway ~
Re:"Criminal Matter" (Score:5, Interesting)
This the other shoe dropping now that the RIAA claims they have stopped filing suits.
The problem here is that citizens of signatory countries will have no recourse within the laws of their own countries since it's a treaty. This will get very ugly if the bastards get their way - and they probably will. This makes me physically ill.
If they could stop the copying... (Score:2, Interesting)
They may not like the result...
The stuff carrying the Free Licenses would get an extra edge...
Some thoughts on a "Copyright Offensive" - http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html [blogspot.com]
drew
Re:It works! (Score:3, Interesting)
You need to realize that this is different. They're not making possession or use of music, films or movies a crime. In contrast to prohibition and the war on drugs, there is and will be a legal alternative, so raising the price of the illegal method of acquisition is exactly what they want and will have the desired effect. How many people are going to work or pay their way into clandestine file sharing clubs when they can get their fix legally at $1 a pop?
ACTA will have extremely undesirable side effects too, but that is of no concern to the people pushing it.
Re:With such a clear definition of the scale requi (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't that bad. We have similar law here in Finland. That part has only ever been applied once: When Finland's largest bit torrent tracker was busted a few years ago. The people who ran it got charged with criminal charges.
In all lesser cases the courts have been sure that individuals downloading music for some personal use and sharing some files hasn't been enough to cause commercial level profit loss for massive record companies. I have heard (from Teosto's - our RIAA - lawyers though that it could be applicable in other special cases. Such as sharing movie before it came to theaters, etc.)
That said, we haven't had those "These 7 songs meant 2 000 000 dollars of profit loss for our company" type of lawyers.
So? (Score:4, Interesting)
They are going after non-profit P2P's. You mean like Shareaza, Kaza, Limewire? Who cares? All that stuff is absolute malware riddled crap. Those networks are not worth anything anyways. While outlawing them is problematic for preserving freedom, it would ultimately protect people. I don't support protecting the stupid out of principle, but we won't miss those networks too terribly. At least I won't have to spend so much effort blocking their installations anymore.
I don't think that this applies to the bittorrent protocol and any of those clients either as that is decentralized. The easy solution is for the client to remove all search abilities. Problem solved. Trackers are another issue, but it's not like any country has had great success shutting down tracker sites and blocking access to them.
In any case, this is moronic. The DMCA prevented companies from manufacturing and selling mod chips in the U.S. The result? Canada gets all the business and it never slowed its pace for a second. You would think that mod chips and pre-modded systems get stopped at the border. Nope.
There will be at least ONE country connected to the Internet that is not a signatory of ACTA. Guess where the repositories and websites will be located? Anyone? Anyone?
Anti-Competitive Harassment. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is not covered in this article, but buried deep in the links, is that this treaty calls for nations to act immediately upon accusations without any burden of proof, and to absolve copyright companies from any responsibility if they engage in false accusations.
Imagine DMCA takedown notices for the physical world. Talk about a cudgel for anti-competitive harassment with impunity.
Re:"Criminal Matter" (Score:3, Interesting)