Full ACTA Leak Online 201
An anonymous reader writes "Following months of small Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement leaks,
the full
consolidated ACTA text has now been posted online. The consolidated
text provides a clear indication of how the negotiations have altered
earlier proposals (see this post for
links to the early leaks) as well as the first look at several
other ACTA elements. For example, last spring it was revealed
that several countries had proposed including a de minimus provision to
counter fears that the border measures chapter would lead to iPod
searching border guards. The leak shows there are four
proposals on the table."
Short summary of the treaty (Score:5, Funny)
All your files are belong to us.
Global Fascism Acid Test (Score:5, Insightful)
This has the hallmarks of an acid test. Global law negotiations done in secret, under the guise of treaty...exactly the way we don't want it to go. From here there will be more laws in secret and the only way you'll find out you've violated them is that you don't have the required permit on your passport and you're accosted at the border. This is exactly how the global fascists (corpratists) want it. Without control over global travel, they cannot control the flow of goods and information. Each intersection of borders is a profit gradient. If goods are allowed to pass by osmosis, they lose all the leverage they could use to pump wealth back and forth between countries while taking a cut off the top. Sooner or later, they have it all.
There are basically two forks in this road: one, where there is a single world democracy with the corporations below that rule of law and the other where there are separate country laws (like there are now) and the corporations flit above them BUT prohibit the individual. That's where we're headed now.
Re:Short summary of the treaty (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the US will be the ones that lose the most when ACTA gets enacted.
Let's look at how copyright is enforced (or not). You will notice that in countries like the USA, the EU countries, Australia, Japan, in short, every country that doesn't really have any real problems, you have pretty good copyright and IP enforcement (good from the IP holders perspective). You don't really have a lot of power to get your IP enforced in countries that either have real problems (like, say, most countries ending in -stan) or countries that actually benefit from pretty much ignoring IP laws altogether (like, say, China).
Do you think that will change when ACTA gets ratified?
The US will have to enforce the IP of those countries. And they will, because these countries can and of course will prod them to. Can you imagine getting a DMCA takedown notice from China because they claim the rights to all film shot by a chinese citizen, and that dissident happens to be one? Think that's impossible?
In return you get zip, nada, rien from China. Yes, they'll sign it and yes, they'll even pay lip service to it. Copying is still sky high? Boo hoo. We are really sorry. We will even stage a token sting. And even punish the guy(s) we catch to the utmost extent. Want him hanged? No problem, think we care or what? Satisfied? Ok, now buzz off.
Re:Short summary of the treaty (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't change the fact that *classifying* the sucker on grounds of national security is a bunch of bullshit.
Re:Short summary of the treaty (Score:4, Informative)
If we, as Americans, had a lick of sense, we would stop buying things made in China, Pakistan, India, etc. Everything made in China, and half of everything made in the rest of the third world is junk. Hell, half of what comes from China is actually deadly. But, we keep buying. DUHHH!!!
That would be sensible if we weren't in the worst recession since the great depression. Nobody has as much money as they used to; most of us are just getting by, people are losing their jobs, etc. The choice is third world junk or nothing.
Re:Short summary of the treaty (Score:4, Insightful)
The choice is third world junk or nothing.
I've found that in some cases, the "nothing" is actually the better alternative here. Rather than buying a cheap piece of crap that I can barely afford right now, I make a conscious decision to hold off and simply do without for a few months or maybe even forever. It's not always easy, but it brings a remarkable sense of peace when you figure out a way to be okay with less.
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One or more of you parents and/or grandparents passed a little bit of wisdom on to you. I have to wonder where all the rest of America's parents and grandparents are. No one can "do without" these days, it seems. They can't even budget something down the road a month or two, let alone "do without". Insanity, I say.
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Passing on wisdom to kids? Isn't that what TV, and now the Internet, is for?
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Yes, maybe in most cases. But if your kid makes you a grandpa, somebody has to buy a crib and baby clothes, and that's usually grandma and grandpa. You can't save up for kids' clothes, or school supplies. And to someone making less than I do, the American made Apple (full of third world parts in any case) is a popor choice when a Chinese model that IBM used to sell costs half as much. A dollar I save is an extra dollar I can spend.
You no longer can buy an American made TV. Do without just because they don't
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"The advice to "buy American" is a bit too late."
No, not at all. I've been hearing that advice since about 1970-something. I've heeded it as much as possible. These days, it isn't as possible as it was in the '70's and '80's, but you can still go a long way on it. Those things that you can't find made in America, shop around for European, or south America.
But, whatever you do, don't allow yourself to fall into that rut of buying the cheapest thing possible. I've harped on the fact that various countri
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If we, as Americans, had a lick of sense, we would stop buying things made in China
That would be sensible if we weren't in the worst recession since the great depression.
So the solution to the recession is to send what money you do have to another country?
Re:Short summary of the treaty (Score:4, Insightful)
So the solution to the recession is to send what money you do have to another country?
The middle class can't solve the recession, only the rich 5% who control 95% of the wealth can do that. The Waltons choose where your goods come from, as do those who own Best Buy, Target, etc.
I'm too old to tilt at windmills. I leave that to the younger folks; I've tilted at anough windmillls in my life to know that resistance is futile.
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I am a cyborg, you insensitive clod! Most geezers are.
You will be assimilated.
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If you're going to count false teeth and hearing aids as making you a cyborg, why not count fillings and glasses?
It's not true that most geezers wear pacemakers. That's definitely a minority.
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It's not true that the managers count just dollars. They count sales, too. But only for the most recent quarter and the current one.
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But we can't have much effect on the members of our class in other countries. Not unless we go there personally.
Besides, there aren't actually members of our class in most other nations. Most nations divide society differently than most other nations.
We can easily and with (almost) mutual understanding talk about nations. Classes within the society are something else. They are a social creation and only exist within the society that created them. Other societies divide the world differently. (I think
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/201001_acta.pdf_as_text (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/201001_acta.pdf_as_text [swpat.org]
I'm typing up the whole thing, for easier reading, searching, copying
Re:http://en.swpat.org/wiki/201001_acta.pdf_as_tex (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/201001_acta.pdf_as_text [swpat.org]
I'm typing up the whole thing, for easier reading, searching, copying
Cool, Thank you. - And yes, please keep all of the original errors and typos, Law droids have all sorts of fun with those. "For lack of a comma the land was lost" and all of that..
Re:http://en.swpat.org/wiki/201001_acta.pdf_as_tex (Score:5, Informative)
Searchable text mirror: http://www.exstatic.org.nyud.net:8080/201001_acta.pdf_as_text.html [nyud.net]
Rehosted on my website and then put into the nyud system, should be able to handle it.
I just hate hotfile and rapidshare type sites. No I don't want to wait 30 seconds or become a premium member.
Re:http://en.swpat.org/wiki/201001_acta.pdf_as_tex (Score:4, Informative)
http://skipscreen.com/ [skipscreen.com]
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Thanks very much! Glad to know the Internet isn't all 4chan trolls and hot grits chasers
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Mirrors, in case it's slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
Here's some mirrors of the original document, in case the original site is slashdotted:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28853862/201001-acta [scribd.com]
http://www.mediafire.com/?wdnjg2nrmne [mediafire.com]
http://rapidshare.com/files/367572656/201001_acta.pdf [rapidshare.com]
http://hotfile.com/dl/34373604/038b957/201001_acta.pdf.html [hotfile.com]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You are not the only one, the telecomix/werebuild cluster has started up a transcription effort together with la Quadrature at this faxpad [faxpad.org] as well. The finished pages are available at the wiki. [werebuild.eu]
In thruth, it is almost finished, with only about 5-10 pages left.
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You're awesome. I've skimmed through the PDF, but it's positively crap. I owe you a little something toward your next pair of glasses, after you've read and transcribed all that mess!
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The only reason to ever draft laws in anything but plain-text is obfuscation. I'm sick of trying to read the actual text of legislation and only finding PDFs of scanned images of typewritten papers. Seriously, who the fuck still uses a typewriter? All legislation should be written in .txt files, and placed in a web-accessible revision control system. That way, it becomes trivial to discover who is responsible for each and every line of treachery.
Re:http://en.swpat.org/wiki/201001_acta.pdf_as_tex (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case, since it was effectively smuggled out, I'd wager that the leak was simply unable to get ahold of the source document and maybe all they had available was some hard copies. FSM bless them for the effort, I sure hope they don't get found out and made dead.
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I guess the quality of the scan is too poor and the language/typography too complex for decent OCR recognition.
Wouldn't it be possible to do distributed proofreading of the OCRd text like they do for Project Gutenberg?
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If you're referring to the health care bill, it went online last Thursday at the latest, and he signed the bill on Tuesday. That's five days on my calendar.
I just thought you'd want to be accurate.
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Capable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Capable? (Score:4, Insightful)
no no.
all your content should of course be DRM'd.
No need for receipts then.
(who wants to bet someone actually proposed this at some point)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Section 2 Options 1,2,3 state that personal baggage of a non-commercial nature do not need to be searched.
Later in that section the only things Border Guards would have control over are items where they have been provided with accurate enough descriptions in order to identify them.
It doesn't look to me that this guards searching your iPod for illegal mp3s. Rather I think this is a truck full of burned DVDs, knockoff designer items, etc.
Re:Capable? (Score:4, Informative)
No you wouldn't. Usually I'd say RTFA, but given the size of the thing, it would be a bit inappropriate.
Please look over Section 2 (all the options have a similar provision)
Where a traveler's personal baggage contains trademark goods or copyright materials of a non-commercial nature within the limits of the duty-free allowance {Aus: or where the copyright materials or trademark goods are sent in small consignments} and there are no material indications to suggest the goods are part of commercial traffic, Parties may consider such goods to be outside the scope of this Agreement.]
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Parties may consider such goods to be outside the scope of this Agreement
"may consider" doesn't sound legally binding.
If the treaty doesn't explicitly say "don't do XYZ" or "you can only do XYZ" then it'll get used to the full letter of the law.
That's usually how these things go.
Re:Capable? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is the idea that all border guards will be able to easily discriminate the legality of content
"Article 2.7: Ex-Officio Action" [presenting just the US version here]
"1. Each party shall provide that its customs authorities may act upon their own initiative, to suspend the release of ... suspected pirated copyright goods..."
The content need not be illegal (nor easily discriminated as such), the guard merely needs to posit suspicion.
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And being in a hurry and having business to attend to at the border often makes it profitable to surrender your goods and just move on.
Origin of the file (kinda) (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if they got the file themselves or if they just released it.
Re:Origin of the file (kinda) (Score:5, Informative)
Brussels, March 22nd, 2010 - With the current debates surrounding the Gallo Report on "Intellectual Property Rights" (IPR) enforcement1 and rumours about an imminent revival of the IPR criminal enforcement directive (IPRED2), a holy war is taking place in the European Parliament. Members of the Parliament are being flooded with false figures and statistics from the entertainment industries' intensive lobbying. They are also being heavily pressured by the French authorities.
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I actually used their political memory section in deciding who to vote for in the last EU Parliement elections ...
then theres only one thing to say (Score:2)
Viva la france !
surrender monkeys as in (Score:5, Informative)
how they occupied entire europe back in 1792 ?
fyi, any serious scholar of military history would be able to say that what befell on france would befall any contemporary nation that happened to be placed geographically same with france. germans gambled on untested military technology, and won their gambit. such gambles cost many nations their freedoms before when tried. however this time it worked.
northern france, poland, western soviet union had geography that was most accommodating to this new kind of war, blitzkrieg, with their open wide fields that allowed big mobility. because it was a fast tactic, until allies were able to develop a counter tactic, germans were done away with northern france, and even later soviets in 1941.
due to geography, blitzkrieg didnt work well in south france, yugoslavia, balkans.
let me break you another fact - by 1940, united states didnt even have a proper medium battle tank, hell they didnt even have light tanks. had germany been a neighbor of usa, all americans would be talking german now. i know this will come as distasteful to a lot of you nationalist americans out there, but its a brutal historic fact.
and on a sidenote, im not french. im just a hobbyist of history.
not a single element. (Score:3, Informative)
at that point (ie up to 1941) united states didnt have any solid combined arms to stand up to what germans had invented.
aircraft were subpar (not totally inferior, but subpar) tactics were obsolete, bombers were inferior, (b17s didnt come into being until 1941 proper), no tanks, outdated infantry tactics, no close support. you can count many things.
usa had taken a lot of lessons from what befell on france, britain and russia up till the time she joined the war. and even in 1941, allies were still not on par
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rather appallingly, u.s. didnt do enough for those oceans. it had some battleships, many obsolete, and only 2 aircraft carriers. japanese totally outclassed united states in generaly capability.
however pearl harbor didnt do much to prolong the war. actually, by the time it happened, so much construction was put into motion that even if japanese sank every single floating battleship and a/c usa had, they would still be outnumbered 2 to 1 in 1 years' time, and 4 to 1 in 1.5 years' time.
i read a research publi
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Most likely not, no one was paying any attention to what the Germans was up to - after WW round 1 the neighbours told Germany they weren't allowed to rebuild their military, Hitler had his own opinion about that - also, another tactic Hitler used with great succes against France was to drive around their main line of defense.
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The Russians had some idea, they were allowing the Germans to conduct training operations on Russian territory.
One Small Leap (Score:5, Insightful)
a companies bad busines model (Score:2)
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"clearly"? ... considering how far this has already gone, I am guessing it's not quite clear enough.
Am I reading this right? (Score:3, Interesting)
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if it's brutal enough I might not be against this one :D
Some Microsoft programmer grabs a small chunk of GPLed code and well...
But it probably doesn't mean that since that would be the most dangerous to companies which create large monolithic expensive projects.
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That is how I read the thing. All your "poisoned fruits" are belong to us!
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Will Someone Please!!!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone with some music talent should put out a song with the text of the agreement used as lyrics, and charge the negotiators with international copyright infringement and distribution! NOW!
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Those laws could be used against someone who was powerless, but the current negotiators could not be touched, and neither could their governments, agents, assigns, etc.
Who'd bring the prosecution? Who'd pay for it? Who'd hear the case?
If you expect any justice, go read the history of the SCO vs IBM case, which is currently on hold until the SCO vs Novell case is settled. Notice how much it has already cost IBM, and calculate how much they will recover in damages.
PETITION EU PARLIAMENT - NOW ! (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.secure.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/petition/secured/submit.do?language=EN [europa.eu]
if you are living in an Eu member country, Eu member candidate country, or a resident of an Eu member country, or working for a company that has its quarters in an Eu member country, you have the right to petition European Parliament.
This is not your ordinary online petition page - this is an official petition page, petitions of which are each processed by real bureaucrats and acted upon, if you give your credentials correctly. (Name surname and so on). Its serious shit.
As of this moment, the affiliates of american media cartels are flooding Eu parliament members with the falsified and baseless statistics they have been using to fool the senators in united states. Eu parliament members are generally much more informed than u.s. senators, however it is much better not to leave anything to chance.
So, if you fulfill any of the above conditions, you should fill a petition urging European Parliament to side with the people rather than the corporate interests, and you should inform them about the falsified statistics that media cartels are using. If you have any links to the various realistic statistics that were made by independent organizations, you can also forward the information to them. (like the p2p research done in netherlands a while ago).
Eu parliament already basically blocked some draconian items in the acta treaty. they did it with great majority. so they DO listen and heed people. If Eu parliament shoots acta down totally, then there is no way in hell that it can come into being, because since china and russia would never accept and enforce it, (and noone can force them to do so), if you add europe to that it basically makes approx 4/7th of world population.
Go for it. time is now.
Re:PETITION EU PARLIAMENT - NOW ! (Score:5, Informative)
This works, people. I've used the EU parliament's petition page before (regarding pricing issues with Valve) and I got a three-page semi-personal response. Like OP says, take the time to fill out a petition!
holy crap (Score:3, Informative)
of course it would work. it is the official page to submit a petition. its in equal status as if you went there, and presented a petition on paper. its official, governmental, bureaucratic as it can be.
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yea it works but you have to supply proper address to get a reply.
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You can (Score:2)
because you are in Eu. go fill it.
who's stopping you (Score:2)
just go fill it. drop that you are an american, and your senators do not listen to you, just ignore you. ask the parliament members to speak on your behalf too.
i assure you it would give great clout to parliament in negotiating with the bastards who were ignoring you.
Injunctions against "intermediaries" (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it's great to know what our corrupt EU politicians over here have been up to. EU citizens: remember, this is what your government ministers have agreed to, it's not just some faceless EU bureaucracy. Hold them responsible for their actions in the EU, don't let them hide behind the bureaucracy.
Article 2.x, option 2 (EU)
"Each party shall ensure that, where a judicial decision is taken finding infringement of an intellectual property right, the judicial authorities may issue against the infringer an injunction aimed at prohibiting the continuation of the infringement. The parties shall also ensure that right holders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by the third party to infringe an intellectual property right."
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Well, you are loud, but typically for loud people, not very well informed and ignorant of that fact.
Yes, they did. but you omitted that the current situation is, that the EU rejects ACTA as a whole. There even was an article here on Slashdot about it.
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The "EU as a whole" did not reject ACTA, the European Parliament did. The council of ministers and the commission are the ones propagating ACTA, and the ones involved in the negotiations. Unfortunately, the European Parliament has a tendency to fold when it come down to it, and the council of ministers usually wins. The council of ministers is composed of national government ministers. The national governments are however rarely held responsible for any of the decisions of the council of ministers, hell mo
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The "EU as a whole" did not reject ACTA, the European Parliament did. The council of ministers and the commission are the ones propagating ACTA, and the ones involved in the negotiations. Unfortunately, the European Parliament has a tendency to fold when it come down to it, and the council of ministers usually wins. The council of ministers is composed of national government ministers. The national governments are however rarely held responsible for any of the decisions of the council of ministers, hell most people probably have no idea what the council of ministers is. That needs to change.
dear swedish penguin,
as of last year, european parliament has the power to ratify any treaty that is made by european commission, including ALl the ministers and bureaucrats and whatnot. furthermore, no treaty, decision can come into being without being ratified by european parliament. AND european parliament can also cancel treaties made prior to acquiring that power. (that was the power they used to cancel SWIFT agreement in which bush&co coerced europe into disclosing bank transfer details europeans
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I know the parliament now has the legal power to not ratify it, but do they have the willpower? The proportion of parties in the parliament is presumably quite close to those in their home parliaments, and since the majority of their home parties are obviously in favor in one way or another (if they weren't, the council of ministers would have put a stop to this a long time ago), do parliamentarians really care enough about the issue to stand up to their parties when it comes down to it? I wouldn't count on
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man, they made the resolution, which includes the declaration to go to court if it is ignored, with 669 to 13 or so majority. and they all voted in line with their parties in their home countries too.
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Well if their home country parties are opposed, who exactly is in favor and continues the negotiations, and who continues to keep the negotiations secret? And who wrote the proposals made by the EU?
Surely, the governments are not working completely outside of the normal "democratic" system?
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you can track it below :
http://votewatch.eu/cx_vote_details.php?id_act=456&lang=en [votewatch.eu]
Not too bad (Score:3, Informative)
After reading through the entire thing it actually doesn't look too bad.
The only major problem I see in it is trying to make 3rd parties liable for people who use their services. I'd recommend pestering your elected representatives and tell them to follow NZ lead on those articles.
The rest of it basically says:
1) make sure its illegal to copy and distribute pirated works.
2) make sure there are tools to enforce those laws.
3) provide these legal tools to foreign copyright holders.
These seem like pretty logical steps. I think the real fight here should be to shorten the absurd copyright lengths currently in use.
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Even if the treaty was blank pages I would be against it. The content of ACTA is irrelevant. The process used to create ACTA goes against what I believe are cornerstones of our society and the treaty should be killed for that alone. Any non-negative or even overtly positive terms of ACTA would not balance out the long term damage to our society caused by allowing ACTA to live.
I might sound like some kind of hardliner who is unwilling to compromise, but that's not true at all. Here is
Re:Not too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
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Then you probably shouldn't be entering a trade treaty designed to protect IP...
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What if the investigating official suspect that something is in violation of copyright, but doesn't know?
What proof is required?
What "due process" is required?
I wouldn't say it as "not bad". I'd say it was terrible. But I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps I'm wrong. But I doubt it.
I've started reading the text through ... (Score:2)
As a Canadian I've been dreading our role in these negotiations. I feel that we really haven't pressed our position sufficiently in bilateral treaties with the US when it comes to commerce (this goes back decades). This is exasperated by the current Federal party in power in parliament (though it's a minority), which demonstrably follows the US lead in many areas.
However, it seems that at least in this case, our government (as distinct f
This must be fake (Score:2)
Where's the part that justified the secrecy? I don't see it here. Somebody obviously edited out the part requiring the US to sell puppy shredders to Iran in exchange for releasing hostages. If they edited that out, then who knows what else is inaccurate?
But seriously: let's see who is now going to "walk away from the table" now that the big secret is out of the bag. If we don't see countries withdrawing from the treaty now, then Kirk was lying.
Reality check (Score:2)
First off, anyone under 30 that has ever downloaded music or a movie is never going to accept anything that forces them to pay for crap. This is pretty much everyone under 30 with a computer. Call is 1/10th the population of the planet. And most people under 30 believe that all music, movies, books - media in general - today is crap. So they aren't going to pay.
Governments, on the other hand, look at two things: taxes and GDP. On a tax basis if everyone universally stops paying for media, there will be
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First off, anyone under 30 that has ever downloaded music or a movie is never going to accept anything that forces them to pay for crap.
Generalization. I can just as easily say that most people who use p2p regularly are more active collectors who are more likely to buy something, despite the fact that they can get it for free, because they know that creators have to eat too.
On a tax basis if everyone universally stops paying for media, there will be a huge hit in revenue collected by governments.
Nope. If someone downloads a movie, the money they could have spent on it is more likely to go somewhere else than just sit in their wallet. Net financial effect: Zero.
The rest of your post is pretty much invalidated by the above.
Re:Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
Modded off topic, too bad theres not a -1 Wrong moderation.
Back on topic: There are SOME decent provisions in the ACTA, however on the whole the entire thing needs to be torn up and burned. Start over with something reasonable and above board rather than having all this secrecy surrounding it. Even with leaks we can't trust our governments to continue in this despicable fashion.
Trust your government (Score:5, Insightful)
... Even with leaks we can't trust our governments to continue in this despicable fashion.
On the contrary, I believe that we can put our full trust in the government to continue in a despicable fashion.
Re:Full Consolidated? (Score:5, Informative)
As I understand it, it can be both.
Full = the entirety of it (i.e. not missing any sections)
Consolidated = in one piece, with up to date edits and amendments included.
The latter is typically used with legislation that undergoes amendment. You have the amendment itself, which says thing like "in section 3, omit the words blah and replace with blah" or "section 82(b) is hereby repealed". The amendment is what gets passed, and either a ~consolidated~ version of the full legislation is made (with the changes from the amendment effected), or it's not, and you have to read the original text + the amendment ~together~ to get the full meaning.
So in this case we have the consolidated version (no reference to external modifying documents needed), which is also the full text.
This is why you need version control on laws (Score:4, Funny)
You have the amendment itself, which says thing like "in section 3, omit the words blah and replace with blah" or "section 82(b) is hereby repealed".
If you squint hard enough and replace the arbitrary words with intuitively selected symbols (plus, minus, at, comma), it looks almost like...
A diff.
So... a consolidated version is one with... all patches applied? Like git checkout HEAD?
And they have this cumbersome process automated? Why, we programmers should do that too! It would save lots of effort :)
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Yep good analogy. I'm not a programmer so I guess that didn't spring to mind. But that's exactly what it is.
Programmers and lawyers are the same thing. (Score:2)
Both spend their careers constructing logical arguments to accomplish tasks, and legalese is just another programming language. (Unfortunately, legalese makes COBOL look terse!)
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Actually, no. It wouldn't affect the number of politicians needed. What it would reduce is the depth of analytical staff needed to comprehend laws, which would then shift the balance of power away from groups with lots of money to spend on policy in a particular area, because then they wouldn't be as easily able to mislead as to what legislation would actually do.
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What is the exact problem that would be solved by permitting border control staff to rummage through peoples private data?
The "problem" of a citizen's privacy. Or at least the "problem" of a citizen's perception of having the right to any privacy. I think that is the "problem" they are aiming to solve.
Re:iPod searching border guards? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Ok. You are right, they always had strip-search rights. But it was only from a few years ago, from the terrorist scare, did border guards start caring about the content of a computer. If it was terrorist material.
Now, I will also need to worry about copyright claims over the files I carry. Or if my phone is claimed to infringe on someone's patents.
Re: (Score:2)
largely because they don't actually use them very often, people assume that use of such power is properly regulated. In some countries, it probably is.
Re:iPod searching border guards? (Score:4, Interesting)
Man, I've traveled in parts of Eastern Europe and the Balkans where the border guards are fucking animals.
The last time I traveled from Sutomore to Sarejevo by car it was less bad, but they still seem to be actively recruiting sociopaths.
Re:Safe Harbor Provisions (Score:4, Interesting)
It also circumvents current laws that most countries have regarding home copies (either subsidized through taxes levied on blank media) and fair use by stating that all copies (regardless of commercial gain) are 'illegal'.
Re:Safe Harbor Provisions (Score:5, Interesting)
Most concerning to all of us should be, the fact that a separate group of "rights" holders are being defined, and that governments are going to sign away authority and sovereignty to those "rights" holders.
You think you've seen some crazy shit in the past? Just wait until half the nations on earth are subject to the whims of some greedy sumbitch with a blockbuster movie or two to his name.
Understand that a treaty supersedes a nation's sovereignty - in effect, you've signed away the right to abjudicate disagreements according to your own law. Those "rights" holders are attempting to dictate to Moscow, Washington, London, and Beijing, just how "intellectual property" will be handled in the future.
Farewell, Public Domain. From now on, it will all be pubic domain, because those "rights" holders will be sticking it to all of us.
The Right-Wing nutjobs may have been right? (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Understand that a treaty supersedes a nation's sovereignty - in effect, you've signed away the right to abjudicate disagreements according to your own law. Those "rights" holders are attempting to dictate to Moscow, Washington, London, and Beijing, just how "intellectual property" will be handled in the future.
A treaty does NOT supersede a nations sovereignty. A treaty is an agreement between one or more countries (there have been single nation treaties signed) where all parties agree to do something. There is not force behind that agreement, each country has to decide that they want to follow the agreement and then do so.
There is no force behind the treaty other than the other nations would be upset. Japan ignored several treaties (and then broke them) prior to WWII. The United States ignored many, many trea
the treaty made me do it (Score:2)
Nice summary, but you left out the part after the treaty is signed where a government rams new legislation down the throats of its citizens on the grounds that the previously signed treaty (under secrecy, with little democratic input) obligates the government to pass the Draconian legislation as proposed. Failure to do so will emasculate the country's standing in future treaty negotiations (we won't be regarded as good on our word), so be good little citizens and get out of the way.
They never say "well, we
Re: (Score:2)
Nice summary, but you left out the part after the treaty is signed where a government rams new legislation down the throats of its citizens on the grounds that the previously signed treaty (under secrecy, with little democratic input) obligates the government to pass the Draconian legislation as proposed. Failure to do so will emasculate the country's standing in future treaty negotiations (we won't be regarded as good on our word), so be good little citizens and get out of the way.
My post was to contradict the OP's false statement of:
Understand that a treaty supersedes a nation's sovereignty ...
This statement is simply not true.
My point was that a treaty has no force of law. It does not force anyone to do anything. The action of agreeing to a treaty is entirely divorced from the action of enforcing a treaty. Whats more, any action a government could take in the name of a treaty, they could also take WITHOUT the treaty.
As for ACTA it self, I think any negotiations by the US Government that are held from the US Citizen are by definition