Another ACTA Leak Discloses Individual Country Data 133
An anonymous reader writes "On the heels of the earlier leak of various country positions on ACTA transparency, today an even bigger leak
has hit the Internet. A new European Union document [PDF] prepared several weeks ago canvasses the Internet and Civil Enforcement chapters, disclosing in complete detail the proposals from the US, and the counter-proposals from the EU, Japan, and other ACTA
participants. The 44-page document also highlights specific concerns of individual countries on a wide range of issues including ISP liability, anti-circumvention rules, and the scope of the treaty. This is probably the most significant leak to date since it goes beyond the transparency debate to include specific country positions and proposals."
Fascinating (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand why diplomats tend to like their meetings and discussions to be private. It's a hard enough dance between a few select people in a government that it doesn't need to be complicated by the public getting involved.
However, in this case, this is hardly a private conversation. Business is involved, pretty much all the world's governments are involved, and the only group not at the table is the largest and the one with the most to lose: actual people. I'd like to see what kind of justification politicians will come up with to argue that corporations can make suggestions, governments can provide input, but god forbid the people actually have a say in the way this sausage is made.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that the end of the Internet as we know it is near. Too many organizations with too much clout have too many reasons to see the current Internet go away. I don't know what will come in its place, but I'm pretty sure I'll look back at the 90s/early 00s with nostalgia.
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early 00s with nostalgia.
Erm, what happened to the late 00s? We're already in 2010...
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FTFY.
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He's right you know. Darknets are probably the only solution - they're better too because they can work on the existing infrastructure.
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Start prepping your soon-to-be-illegal darknets.
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I'm aiming for a VPN/Tunneling SubInternet - i currently do this with friends/family/work - makes life a lot easier.
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Not illegal if I can figure out how to set my WiFi to accept any password with WEP.
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Why not just setup WEP with some crazy password? That way cracking it is the price of admission... it's not like WEP isn't trivial or anything...
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What defines open? I'm not surprised an unprotected network could get you in trouble in many countries but if I'm using WEP it's not unprotected and wouldn't be open would it? I didn't give them the password... Those "malicious hackers" broke into my system and abused it...
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This is all about liability. If your WiFi is open (aka, you are a child-eating terrorist ;) then you can quite easily claim that anything that happened from your IP address was not done by you, but instead by some guest to your network.
However, if you have a protected network, and something is done from the IP address registered to you, you can be sure that you will be held accountable for all the actions being taken from your IP address. Since your network wasn't open, it must have been you.
If they want to
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Aaron Z
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Wait - ordinals? Isn't that a professional baseball team or something? St. Louis Ordinals? You wouldn't want to get in trouble for infringing on their trademark, would you? Yeah, you better use cardinal numbers!
Re:Fascinating (Score:4, Insightful)
On the upside, it could finally reverse the effects of the Eternal September by dramatically upping the level of technical knowledge required to operate anything interesting on the Internet.
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I suggest we just isolate all of them and lock their web browsers to the URL they are probably going to anyways..... 4Chan. (kidding)
Seriously... I *fucking* hope so. It's apathy right now that keeps people from obtaining the skills needed to be creating/operating the kind of networks and infrastructures capable of truly stopping ACTA's goals.
Mesh
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The mesh will never happen. It's a chicken-egg thing. Going point-to-point is too pricey, broadcast has crappy distance, and who get's to pay for the intercity links?
Welcome to Internet 2.0, or as I like to call it, iINTERNET.
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The mesh will never happen. It's a chicken-egg thing. Going point-to-point is too pricey, broadcast has crappy distance, and who get's to pay for the intercity links?
Hummm I tend to recall something called FidoNet which existed, a little over one hundred years ago. It was kind of like a mesh network but wasn't a real time network due to cost. Perhaps we will need to return to our roots for the answer. alas it was so long ago it might be hard to track down those answers.
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Finally we shall realize the Sprawl universe! Corporations will be kings, the government will be little more than a glorified group of pencil pushers, and hackers will glide through cyberspace slicing ICE with hot decks...
Huh... Except for that last part and the crazy space people we're not that far away. Man I wanted an Ono-Sendai when I was a kid.
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I'm pretty sure I'll look back at the 90s/early 00s with nostalgia.
I already look back at the 80s/early 90s with nostalgia.
Re:Fascinating (Score:4, Interesting)
That these documents have been purposefully leaked and there is indication of opposition to it's content is proof of the exact opposite. It is pretty much certain that in most modern democratic countries that most of the conditions of ACTA would be opposed by the general public and result in disruptive public opposition.
The reality is, it is too late to try a force this through, to force the will of the corrupt minority against the will of the democratic majority. Not that this effort should be ignored or the the perpetrators of it should be publicly exposed and called to account for their corrupt activities, their intent to purposefully subvert the growing public expression of democracy.
A full public investigation should be made of who was involved, who sponsored and supported that involvement, who actually wrote up those bits of proposed corrupt legislation, what private interests were involved whilst 99.99etc percent of the electorate were specifically excluded and, of course what criminal prosecutions need to be considered.
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Have you ever heard the phrase "If you want a puppy, ask for a horse"? This will be cut up and re-worded to sound less offensive than it is, and will pass through anyway. Or, it'll creep up to this current standard after a neutered version has been drafted.
Don't for one second think that we have any say. Any. We lost that say when the UK became bi-partisan like the US (Tories and Labour), and Europe is impotent (
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This will get a title like "child-pornography and terrorism prevention and cute puppy feeding initiative" and anyone who opposes it will be labeled as a terrorist, baby-rapist, puppy starver.
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And who is going to investigate? Who is going to expose? Fox, CNN, the Guardian, are all owned by the corporates. They stand to lose if this is investigated, so don't expect them to investigate. NPR and BBC? They're government, and also stand to lose if this is investigated.
Nobody will get in trouble over this. The corporates will get what they want, as always.
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We (the global collective population of the globe) have more guns.
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If by we you mean the Americans, Canadians, Swiss, Israelis, and Finns, then yes, yes we do.
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Funny thing about those splodey things at 30,000 feet - they suck for taking and holding territory.
Now, if you just want to firebomb Dresden again, be my guest - those'll work perfect. If you want to actually control the land you purport to govern you need men on the ground. That's why we have that whole surge thingy in Iraq, despite our preponderance of the aforementioned 'splodey thingies.
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all secret so everyone gets to blame unspecified others. When it comes to publish this thing governments will be disowning provisions they worked very hard to put in place. Why couldn't the public participate? Well YOUR government fought hard for that but the others wouldn't let them, of course.
Governments are supposed to have power because they also have accountability, but that requires transparency. Even if all the politicians really were doing their very best with only our interests at heart that would not be good enough. They must be seen to be doing so, just like justice must be seen to be done, an agent must be seen to act on behalf of his principal and a professional must be seen to be independent.
We give them some room for national security and so on, in the hope that the bond of trust is so sacrosanct they would be unable to break it, or at least that someone would feel it and the truth would come out. Naive perhaps, but it's happening right here with these leaks. There's a good egg somewhere.
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That's the Third Estate you're talking about.
Re: Not Fascinating but Depressing (Score:2, Insightful)
For those of us who love what the internet has to offer in terms of information, entertainment and news the very idea of the Internet becoming "the CorporateNet" is depressing.
After the takeover we will still be able to do many things - after we have logged in with our credit card.
Then CorporateNet can charge us for every download and access (and it will not be cheap!)
What can we do? If we fight like hell we can delay things for a while, but eventually money will rule out. So be prepared.
Re:Fascinating (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see what kind of justification politicians will come up with to argue that corporations can make suggestions, governments can provide input, but god forbid the people actually have a say in the way this sausage is made.
Easy - the people already had their say when they elected said politicians.
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Easy - the people already had their say when they elected said politicians.
You really think my one vote trumps the billions of corporate dollars that go into corporate-sponsored political propaganda? The media are controlled by the corporations, and the only information you're going to get about the candidates is from them. You're going to vote for who they want you to vote for, and you'll do so logically and rationally.
Gotta protest. (Score:2)
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Business is involved, pretty much all the world's governments are involved, and the only group not at the table is the largest and the one with the most to lose: actual people.
We're not people, we don't matter. All that matters to the world's governments is the rich. If you have less than five million dollars in the bank, you're not people.
Who cares about us? We don't matter. We've gone back to feudal times, only now we have the illusion of representative democracy.
I do love the title though (Score:3, Funny)
"Special Measures Related to Technological Enforcement Means and the Internet"... ...really? the internet too? I thought it was just gonna shut down my warez BBS, but now they've gone too far
Eh? (Score:5, Funny)
This is probably the most significant leak to date...
Seems like people have forgotten about the R Kelly incident already.
hmm (Score:3, Funny)
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Or come out of your meeting room hand up and then surrender your ACTA. Just remember the two key elements. Hands to be put up and ACTA to be surrendered.
Anyone else think anticircumvention is stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else think anticircumvention is stupid?
Basically, they are saying:
"We can't write working code because the only people willing to write this kind of code are incompetent morons. Skilled engineers think this type of code is a bad idea, and won't touch it. Rather than rethinking our position to be more in line with reality, we want laws that make illegal to circumvent the swiss cheese code that we can actually hire someone to write." ...and now we are trying to foist this stupidity off on the rest of the world?!? No wonder they get upset about their dirty underwear going public.
-- Terry
Re:Anyone else think anticircumvention is stupid? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anti-circumvention is a necessity because unbreakable DRM is an impossible dream; there simply isn't any way to give the user a lock and let them open it without also giving them the key, no matter how much you try and hide it.
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Anti-circumvention is a necessity because unbreakable DRM is an impossible dream
So why does that make anti-circumvention a necessity?
Re:Anyone else think anticircumvention is stupid? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because without it they couldn't stop you from breaking the DRM and disseminating the How-To to a wider audience, who would then be very hard to catch actually infringing. With Anti-Circumvention laws you can both discourage people from breaking the DRM (or at least telling people about it) and take legal action against anyone who does, whether they've actually done anything "illegal" beyond circumventing the DRM or not.
Anti-Circumvention laws are "Attempted Copyright Infringement".
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Because without it they couldn't stop you from breaking the DRM and disseminating the How-To to a wider audience, who would then be very hard to catch actually infringing.
Yeah, that's worked real well. How many tutorials for ripping DVDs [google.com] can you find in a few seconds on Google?
With Anti-Circumvention laws you can both discourage people from breaking the DRM (or at least telling people about it) and take legal action against anyone who does, whether they've actually done anything "illegal" beyond circumventing the DRM or not.
If they haven't done anything beyond circumventing DRM, why should we care? The harm comes from infringing copyrights, not from circumventing DRM. Anti-cirumvention provisions are an "attack the tool" approach that's both ineffective and misguided.
Re:Anyone else think anticircumvention is stupid? (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed, but unfortunately that won't stop them from financially (and/or by incarceration) ruining the lives of anyone they can catch doing it. Things like justice and sound policy are the least of their concerns.
It's like the way the Inquisitors obviously did not believe in the power of their religious message, but that didn't stop them from threatening and torturing (and worse) anyone whom they found inconvenient.
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Infringing upon copyrights is not harmful. It is the current state of copyright law that is harmful in reality. Violating copyrights by file sharing pretty much always helps small artists and may or may not lower revenue for large artists. Diminishing an entitlement granted to some is not harmful.
I know it's nitpicky but its' hard to have honest discussions on this topic and it's one of my pet peeves. Nothing against you, I am just having a digital outburst.
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Unwillingness to adapt fossilized business methods to the new economy. Happens every generation or two
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Well there have been a few companies to add value with DRM, providing features in exchange for the lost utility (I'm thinking Steam here). In exchange for them managing their rights for you, you get to have...your rights managed, in terms of hard disk crashes, multiple computers, etc.
I admit Steam has its issues, but this is the sort of adaption I like to see...realizing that it's no longer all take and no give.
Re:Anyone else think anticircumvention is stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-circumvention provisions, particularly as they have been applied in the US, are often used as an anti-competitive device to block legitimate competitors from making interoperable or replacement products. Anti-circumvention provisions also effectively make legal tasks illegal. E.g., ripping a portion of a DVD for commentary or criticism is allowable under fair use, but the process by which one would do so is illegal because it involves violating the DMCA, even though the end result is not illegal.
Besides, do such provisions actually add anything useful? In order for anti-circumvention to be violated, the underlying work must be copyrighted. In any case of real harm, then the underlying copyright would be infringed as well, in which case you could sue for infringement. If an access control was circumvented but the copyright was NOT infringed, then what harm could there be? On the contrary, it is precisely those situations that we would want to allow for interoperability, etc.
If the argument is because it stops the spread of anti-circumvention tools, it doesn't. Dozens of DMCA-violating tools are a click of a mouse button away from being installed.
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This thinking isn't new. It is the exact same thinking that has been prevalent among law enforcement and the government for as long as I've been working with networked computers. In the early to mid-1990s when I was young and cutting my teeth on all of these systems, there weren't any laws in place to punish offenders. The systems were wide open, using default passwords, hosting services that were wide open, etc. The hardest part of hacking a system was getting access to it, either by finding a dial up
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No, they're saying:
We're probably going to either die or become dramatically weaker in the next few decades because the internet has made our presence superfluous. However, we can make $$$BIG_MONEY for five extra years if we slow the internet down a bit with our sheer number of lawyers.
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Going public and going to be passed as a law for the public.
The fact that a few people are aware and pissed off does not mean that all of the people won't be governed by this new law soon.
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Maybe, but not for the reason you suggest.
The reason they can't write "good" code in this area i
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Your house is the code. Your doors and windows are the DRM. You can add more locks and/or more sophisticated locks, but as long as the door
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No, I should be allowed to break into my own house if I want to. I bought the house (DVD). Just because it came with a lock (DRM), why should I be prohibited from opening it?
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It doesn't make sense to grant a monopoly to market, if the monopoly holder isn't going to sell to that market. If they're going to abstain from doing business (either by refraining from selling DRM-free media, or by making it illegal to use DRMed media), then they have no stake in the market to lose (they'll lose $0 per year due to piracy); granting them copyright is not only pointless, but it will be violated.
And that's the whole crux of the argument against the huge fines imposed - they aren't losing money because they are not even providing a product in the market that the pirates are serving. Hence, the damage supposedly caused is actually non-existent.
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A better analogy would include a car and would go something like this... It would be like if you bought a car that would require an oil change every 6 months but once the 6 months had expired, your car would not work at all until you changed the oil again.
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The analogy which springs to my mind is of a person who picks the locks on the doors or windows of your house, but doesn't steal anything.
To my mind, it's more like someone providing you with tools that would let you open your own windows during times that the window manufacturers didn't want you to.
Sneakernet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Neighborhood wireless BBS? Somebody put up a tower and let people in the neighborhood connect to it with subscriber units?
Group of people rent the fire hall for the weekend and throw down some gigabit switches?
I doubt strongly people will just accept dropping file sharing. Do we start wasting actual police resources in raiding swapping parties and neighborhood wifi meshes?
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Do we start wasting actual police resources in raiding swapping parties and neighborhood wifi meshes?
The most interesting part of this question is the word "we"
Who do you mean by "we"? Who's resources are "we" wasting? My hunch is that the people conducting these negotiations behind closed doors have little if any problem having you spend your own (tax) dollars in order to police your own behaviour, while the "content owners" get free enforcement of their right to make profit.
Oregonians, call Senator Ron Wyden (Score:5, Informative)
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Here's the complete list of Senate Finance Committee members:
http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/committee.htm [senate.gov]
Unfortunately none of them are from my state.
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Chuck is on there, I shot em message on their form.
Maybe I'll give em a call tomorrow as well to voice my opinion.
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None of them are from my state, but it doesn't matter, because Boxer and Feinstein are in Disney's pocket anyways.
Just walk away (Score:5, Insightful)
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more reasonable country, say New Zealand or Canada, I beg you to contact your MPs and demand transparency in this process
Fat chance. The current Canadian government has spent the last 4 years actively dismantling the institutions of democracy and transparency. They love the fact this is all taking place in complete secrecy.
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Fat chance, the New Zealand government has spent the last two years actively dismantling the institutions of democracy and transparency.
I stole the line from the Canadian, but it's just as relevant here.
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History being made. (Score:2)
For good or ill, I sense history being made here, folks. Basically the world is coming to grips with a global communications system, and is hammering out an accord on how it can be used.
Re:History being made. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people are upset because this accord is being hammered out in secret behind closed doors, and citizens of the affected countries are only aware of progress on the treaty through leaks.
There's a correct way to "come to grips" with these problems, and that way is by discussing these issues in the open, and allowing for review and comment on what's going on.
Re:History being made. (Score:5, Insightful)
For good or ill, I sense history being made here, folks.
Me too. This is the DMCA all over again.
Basically the multi-national corporations are coming to grips with a global communications system, and is hammering out an accord on how it can be used.
FTFY.
As long as we do not criminalize (Score:1)
How can you explain your children that they are 'criminals' if they download music or video?
Even for addults it is difficult to understand that downloading a nice song for your music collection has a very high fine.
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How can you explain your children that they are 'criminals' if they download music or video?
You don't. You explain to them that corporations and governments are criminals and then teach them how to defend themselves from them by using darknets, etc.
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By telling them that they're criminals if they don't download and use the original purchased medium [wikipedia.org] instead.
So I guess the way to explain it to the children, is to say that "criminal" is a synonym for person.
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The irony of trying to keep ACTA secret (Score:5, Insightful)
does anyone else find it comic and rather ironic that almost exclusively
because the countries involved have tried to keep this a secret, that ACTA
negotiations now get far more attention than they would otherwise?
I feel this needs even more attention, and more clearly explained and broadly
disseminated explanation of what is at stake both for individuals and for
emerging cultures as they join the ranks of "western" strong-copyright regimes.
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It's just you. If you step out of your basement, you'll notice that not one word about ACTA has made the evening TV news or the local newspaper.
Streisand Effect (Score:1)
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Unfortunately, only on sites like /.
Mainstream press and mainstream people are oblivious.
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Fixed that for you.
Your point would hold if the major news outlets in the US are reporting this story. Instead they focus on what high-profile individual is having extramarital sex with whom.
There is no liberal media; there is only the corporate media, and ACTA serves to further their interes
Government is run too much like a business (Score:3, Insightful)
Business culture has saturated government to the point where it can only communicate via the means established by business. People in government are more comfortable in business meetings and negotiations than they are listening to and communicating with the electorate.
When they have to communicate with the electorate they resort to pure pr or advertising strategies.
Boycott (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one pleasantly surprised by this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been following the whole ACTA fiasco for a while, and was getting increasingly nervous about the whole "behind closed doors" thing. Of course, many of the proposals, particularly from the US, are obviously big-corp-funded crazy talk, and the secrecy of the whole process is abhorrent. However, now that I've seen an official document for the first time, I'm actually pleasantly surprised, in that it's not as bad as I expected.
I find it reassuring that there are quite a few notes where the EU has explicitly disagreed, apparently even indicating that this is not a point on which they will give way in some cases, e.g., on restricting any damages for infringement to actual damages and rejecting any notion of punitive damages entirely, or where they want to insert wording with the anticircumvention provisions to provide for safeguarding the benefits of certain limits on IPR (which would presumably leave open the door to excluding otherwise fair use from the anticircumvention protection).
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On the other hand, the U.S. and Japan governments should be quarantined from the rest of the world.
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2. Make good decisions regarding rubbish law in private, and leak those decisions. ACTA.
3. Make good decisions regarding rubbish law in private, and let the law reflect them when applied in court.
4. Make mediocre decisions regarding rubbish law in private, show leniency.
5. Make poor decisions regarding rubb
Outrageous (Score:1)
This article has been posted more than 2 hours ago and only 60 comments so far.
That leaves me voiceless.
Contacting Senators is worthless (Score:2)
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"On this issue, however, I have sent the EFF form in to them about 20 times and have not once received a response."
And you were expecting a response to a form letter why? I'm sure an aide put a tick mark in the appropriate column, assuming they even know about the issue.
"I take that back, the first time I sent it, one of them responded with an email about health care."
So you actually did get a response. Obviously the aide sent the wrong form letter but heck, what's one form letter for another. If you wan
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Thank you for taking the time to contact me with your concerns regarding the ongoing negotiations of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. I appreciate hearing from all Pennsylvanians about the issues that matter most to them.
"I will pretend to listen to you because I like votes."
The protection of intellectual property rights is important to the U.S. economy. Every year industries that rely on these rules, such as pharmaceuticals, entertainment, and high technology, contribute to 40% of all private sector growth, which amounts to almost 20% of Gross Domestic Product. The infringement on intellectual property rights is estimated to cost over $200 billion and around 750,000 high-paying jobs every year. In our current economy, these are worrying figures.
"The protection of intellectual property rights is important to my campaign contributors. Here are some bogus, scary-sounding statistics to cover up my blatant pandering."
The protection of intellectual property rights must strike a balance between necessary safeguards against abuses and policies that promote the free exchange of information so important to innovation.
"We will keep upping the penalties on intellectual property violations until people won't stand for it any more."
Congress has delegated the power to negotiate trade agreements to the Executive Office of the President, and these negotiations have historically been kept private in the initial stages. Despite the deference to the executive branch, Congress must be kept informed about the negotiations. I, too, am concerned about the lack of transparency in recent talks concerning the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement. I am hopeful that the Obama Administration will increase transparency in these discussions.
"I will now pass the buck on the secrecy issue so that no one can hold me responsible."
Please be assured that I will keep your concerns in mind as I continue to follow the progress of the agreement.
"I have already forgotten what you wrote."
Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.
"Please keep voting for me."
If you have access to the Internet, I encourage you to visit my web site, http://casey.senate.gov./ [casey.senate.gov] I invite you to use this online office as a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.
"I will try to s
Go Canada (Score:2)
I imagine various EU members have the most to be pissed about looking at this document. The birthplace of PyratBiran and no outcry? Lots of liberal countries there that have remained silent. I'd be pissed.
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You'd be surprised at which European governments actually support what. For example, the Government of Spain, which call themselves Socialists and everything, are big fans of IP rights, if just because the big media groups help them win elections. They lack the balls to put an actual ban on P2P, but they have no qualms in setting up a rather large tax on pretty much anything that could copy media. Then, they wonder why piracy is rampant over there.
I'm typing a plain text version of the PDF scans (Score:2, Troll)
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/ACTA-6437-10.pdf_as_text [swpat.org]
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Typing? Why not use OCR? I was able to convert the PDF to text in less than a minute (losing formatting.) If I wanted to preserve formatting, it would take maybe 20 minutes.
Social networking (Score:2)
I think we need to make sure the general masses are aware of these closed-door shenanigans, and one vector is the likes of social networking sites. I assume there's already something like a "Stop ACTA" group on Facebook? If not, someone should make one.
It might be one instance where geeks have legitimate cause for using such marketing-demographic-trawling sites as Facebook, twitter, bebo, etc.
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Then join one. A quick facebook search turns up a couple groups (apparently there is a namespace collision with ACTA). Two "Fuck ACTA" (created by same guy?) and one "ACTA Awareness"
We Need To Hire Our Own Lobbists (Score:2, Insightful)
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Trying to fix democracy by utilizing everything that is bad about our current system is not the answer. Although people respond more to mudslinging and scandals which is probably why it works.