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ACTA Text Leaks; US Caves On ISPs, Seeks Super-DMCA 246

An anonymous reader writes "Given the history of ACTA leaks, to no one's surprise, the latest version of the draft agreement (PDF) was leaked last night on KEI's website. The new version — which reflects changes made during an intense week of negotiations last month in Washington — shows a draft agreement that is much closer to becoming reality. Perhaps the most important story of the latest draft is how the countries are close to agreement on the Internet enforcement chapter. In the face of opposition, the US has dropped its demands on secondary liability for ISPs but is still holding out hope of establishing a super-DMCA with digital lock rules that go beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and were even rejected by US courts."
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ACTA Text Leaks; US Caves On ISPs, Seeks Super-DMCA

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  • by DarkKnightRadick ( 268025 ) <the_spoon.geo@yahoo.com> on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:17AM (#33488318) Homepage Journal

    We only get once chance to defeat ACTA.

    • by Dr_Barnowl ( 709838 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:36AM (#33488426)

      Unless we defeat it. Then we'll get another chance, ad infinitum, like one of those timeless creatures of evil that will never truly die.

      • by capnkr ( 1153623 )

        Unless we defeat it. Then we'll get another chance, ad infinitum, like one of those timeless creatures of evil that will never truly die.

        Dammit. I thought we'd heard the last of SCO and Darl...

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's the price of Liberty, eternal vigilance.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by daem0n1x ( 748565 )
      Hey, you should be glad you don't live in Cuba, with all that Internet censorship and vigilance. Democracy rules!
    • by phoomp ( 1098855 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @11:04AM (#33489074)
      What is this "chance to defeat ACTA" of which you speak? The process has been specifically designed to keep us excluded it's too far along to change. At this point, the best we can hope for is wisdom from countries that are less concerned about the freedoms of their corporations and more concerned about the freedoms of their citizens.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        What is this "chance to defeat ACTA" of which you speak? The process has been specifically designed to keep us excluded it's too far along to change.

        At this point, the best we can hope for is wisdom from countries that are less concerned about the freedoms of their corporations and more concerned about the freedoms of their citizens.

        You're obviously new to Earth.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        'The process has been specifically designed to keep us excluded it's too far along to change'

        You FORCE inclusion of yourself by holding the fucks responsible for this hostage or killing them outright.

        Let me point you to the two places you need to go - Hollywood, and the Northeastern USA.

        These two places are responsible for this. If you KILL THEM, this nonsense will go away.

        It's that simple.

    • by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Monday September 06, 2010 @02:13PM (#33490854) Homepage Journal

      "We only get once chance to defeat ACTA."

      No we don't. We have several chances, the most likely one being a full-out armed insurgence against the government.

      Remember Mr Discovery Building and what he said? There will be bloodshed coming very soon.

  • Surely not (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:20AM (#33488338)

    ACTA Text Leaks

    Surely not. That would be infringing their copyright.

  • **sigh** (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skyride ( 1436439 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:22AM (#33488344)
    The goverment officials dealing with this have absolutely no understanding of how this law will affect the world for generations to come.

    We're getting awfully close to needing the 4th box...
    • Re:**sigh** (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:25AM (#33488360)

      The US isn't the world. China won't give a shit, and they are building the military hardware to allow them to continue not giving a shit for generations to come.

      • ACTA is discussed by:

        Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.

        Which is pretty much the more important countries and factions of the world.

        ACTA isn't JUST about internet filesharing, but also about counterfeint pharmacuticals and other stuff. So keep that in context/

        • Re:**sigh** (Score:5, Insightful)

          by nabsltd ( 1313397 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @11:37AM (#33489376)

          ACTA isn't JUST about internet filesharing, but also about counterfeint pharmacuticals and other stuff.

          You, sir, are the dream of the ACTA negotiators.

          The whole point of bundling "file sharing" with "counterfeit pharmaceuticals" is so that you can get the same sort of penalties for both. I don't think anyone will disagree that labeling sugar pills as some vital drug is a huge danger, but the way ACTA is written, a generic is also considered "counterfeit". Likewise all the following are treated the same by ACTA:

          • file sharing
          • copying DVDs
          • copying DVDs and selling them
          • creating your own DVD, labeling it as if it were the legitimate DVD and selling it
    • Re:**sigh** (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rotide ( 1015173 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:28AM (#33488374)
      Sure they do. Their children, children's children, and so on will benefit from all the money the corporate lobbying has brought. Oh, you mean the world that also resides outside the paid for politicians? The officials don't really pay much attention unless it's election time. Damnit, I wish that was hyperbole.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      4th box ...

      and lots of them.
      ~
  • by aaaaaaargh! ( 1150173 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:29AM (#33488380)

    Now is really the time to get encrypted, decentralized networks with Onion routing working at a practical level and not just for academic enjoyment. I've had great expectations in GNUnet, but apparently it is pretty hard to port. Freenet has also never convinced me whenever I tried it. Are the technical obstacles really so hard to overcome? What about pervasive email encryption with automatic installation and more widespread use of SSL? What is holding all these technologies back?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by disi ( 1465053 )
      To run an Onion node is prohibited in several countries (e.g. in Germany).
      just two examples:
      German police raid home of man who operated Tor server [theregister.co.uk]
      German Cops Raid Home of Wikileaks and Tor Volunteer [wired.com]
      I heard of others in forums, where the police put down whole server farms -.-
      welcome to the real world...
      • WIFI MESH (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cyclomedia ( 882859 )

        Every time someone on slashdot posits a global wireless mesh they get beaten back because of how slow it'll be to transfer several gigs of porn over it. Last I checked the information that we need to know, to liberate from censorship, was basic text, heck a lot of it is currently representable in ASCII. So what if we step back a decade to the age of the text only bulletin board. At least these BBs will be automatically backed up, re-routed and physically located nowhere, so will be uncensorable.

    • by hitmark ( 640295 )

      Not being turned on by default in any of the major os installs?

      If gmail, outlook, and whatever gets used on ox and ubuntu had it enabled by default, so that the public key was attached to every email sent to new address, and every address with a known public key got a encrypted mail, then perhaps it would happen.

      But as it is, people have to make a conscious choice about using encrypted email, and so it just do not happen. Hell, people do not use seat belts even tho it takes perhaps just a extra second or tw

    • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:59AM (#33488556) Homepage

      Encrypted is not really complicated, use https sites and turn encryption on in your torrent client. Anonymity is hard, really hard. For open P2P networks encryption without anonymity doesn't really help anything, everyone can connect and collect data as a peer. Some of the issues are:

      1. Anything like TOR and Freenet has lots of overhead due to relaying
      2. Latency is also hurt, and it's also dangerous for timing attacks
      3. You can collect statistical data, it's difficult to hide patterns
      4. You can "isolate" nodes and then track all their traffic

      On top of that, you get endless amounts of flak for being a "free haven" for all sorts of $boogeymen. That drives away developers, users, funding, everything. Many people would actually prefer they caught "real" criminals rather than create the true information anarchy. Total anonymity means no consequences, so on top of those you get endless waves of spam and trolls and they can post far more offensive things than they could on slashdot. If someone created it, you would long for the good old days when the worst you could get linked to is the goatse.cx guy.

    • by thijsh ( 910751 )
      Problems holding this back now:
      - Onion routing: has too little exit nodes and too many hops severely reducing the available bandwidth. The throughput and latency are too high to replace the internet for anything but basic sites and communication.
      - Pervasive email encryption: requires cooperation from a lot of parties, who have their own interest in reading your mail (Google with advertising for example). It will only work when you can reliably send encrypted mail to anyone and know for sure they will be
      • Another problem with end-to-end encryption of email is that it is largely incompatible with webmail. My mail server uses SMTPS and IMAPS to talk to my client. It will talk TLS to any remote mail server that supports the STARTTLS extension. The only parties that can intercept mail sent in this way are those operating the servers, those who compromise the server, and those who compromise either the sending or receiving client. If you use end-to-end encryption, you reduce this to those who compromise the c

      • by Nursie ( 632944 )

        SSC is only more secure if you've exchanged keys offline, otherwise it doesn't protect against MITM attacks. Somewhat more secure? Maybe, but still wide open.

    • by elucido ( 870205 ) * on Monday September 06, 2010 @10:07AM (#33488624)

      Now is really the time to get encrypted, decentralized networks with Onion routing working at a practical level and not just for academic enjoyment. I've had great expectations in GNUnet, but apparently it is pretty hard to port. Freenet has also never convinced me whenever I tried it. Are the technical obstacles really so hard to overcome? What about pervasive email encryption with automatic installation and more widespread use of SSL? What is holding all these technologies back?

      Once something is made significantly illegal and if the government is motivated enough, they'll pay their informants to infiltrate your private encrypted network and capture the IP addresses that way. The informants will host the exit nodes.

  • by Haedrian ( 1676506 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:33AM (#33488416)

    Since this effects all of us in a huge way, there will be some sort of referendum which will see what the PEOPLE want and not just the corporation-bribed governments.

    Experts say it'll happen on the 30th of Feburary at Half Past Never.

    • Re:And of course... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by v1 ( 525388 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:39AM (#33488438) Homepage Journal

      Not that it's surprising that this happens, but it is a bit surprising that our "diplomats" are allowed to sign agreements that our own court system has already determined to be illegal. Though in this instance it appears they're not just signing off on it, but pushing for it.

      Should try them for treason when they get back stateside ;)

      • Who cares if your American diplomats sign any agreements, it's your government that created and is forcing ACTA on the majority of the world!

        It's not "treason" when your country desires it, at least your court system still believes the US is a republic. For how long is another question.

  • by ciaran_o_riordan ( 662132 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @09:43AM (#33488458) Homepage

    ACTA has many bad parts, such as entrenching DRM and the deadly effects of pharmaceutical patents, but it also has terrible effects for software patents:

    http://en.swpat.org/wiki/ACTA_and_software_patents [swpat.org]

    http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Criminalising_patent_infringement_is_draconian [swpat.org]

    • Those aren't the only bad parts of ACTA. Here are some more odious provisions, in my opinion:

      * ACTA would impose the DMCA's "no circumventing DRM" clause everywhere
      * ACTA imposes 3rd party liability for infringement everywhere (it already exists in the US & much of Europe)
      * ACTA creates ISP safe harbors (plus notice & takedown), but raises the bar for qualification, e.g. ISPs must have some plan to curtail repeat infringement by subscribers
      * ACTA offers statutory damages to copyright holder, as well as actual damages, and as Jammie Thomas can tell you, that wipes out any relevance to damage
      * ACTA targets transferring pharmaceuticals across the border, which is mostly designed to get those going from Canada to the US
      * ACTA requires criminal penalties for "willful" infringers, and their aiders/abettors, which is looser than the current US standard
      * The forfeiture provision for large scale infringers is vague enough to possibly be a problem
      * ACTA has broad

      China, India, Pakistan, Brazil [michaelgeist.ca], New Zealand, & Japan [michaelgeist.ca] really don't like it for a lot of reasons [thestar.com]. To a some extent, the developing world doesn't like it because it would cost policing resources enforcing copyright/trademark when the resources are needed for more important activities, like stopping crimes. The US & Western Europe are the largest proponents.
  • by Eternal Vigilance ( 573501 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @10:27AM (#33488754)

    the US ...is still holding out hope of establishing...rules that go beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and were even rejected by US courts.

    That would be precisely why the forces of intellectual darkness and their minions within the U.S. government are pushing for this with such rabidity, and in such secrecy. Unless it's flat-out unconstitutional (a much, much narrower standard than simply "illegal"), anything in this treaty will supersede U.S. courts and U.S. law.

    "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little...ah, fuck it. We do the unconstitutional immediately, too."

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      That's only if it's ratified in the Senate as a treaty. The Obama administration has already signaled that they want to enact it as an executive agreement if possible.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jambarama ( 784670 )
      I'm not an expert on this, but I believe Presidents can enter into executive agreements with other countries only until the President's actions affect US citizenry. Then we've got an ultra vires issue or presentment problem unless congress passes the agreement.

      Executive agreements obviously cannot violate the Constitution. Since the Reid v. Covert decision, the U.S. has made it explicit that although the U.S. intends to abide by a treaty, if the treaty is ruled in violation of the Constitution by f
  • Enough is enough (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @10:45AM (#33488898) Homepage

    If the DMCA provision passes, I promise that from that point I won't spend a single cent on anything made by anybody who supports or takes advantage of it, and that I will make every effort discourage other people and companies from purchasing those things.

    All my money will instead go on software, hardware and music without DRM and under liberal licenses, as well as organizations that oppose this kind of legislation. I will especially contribute to any attempts to eliminate patents and heavily restrict copyright.

    • Me too!
    • by Dan667 ( 564390 )
      you should just do that anyway. People that are pushing this are doing it for free money, might as well let them know now that your are not going to buy their real product as long as they continue to champion stuff like this.
  • I guess Wikileaks does have to leak out government docs. One more thing...." The British music industry has called for a truce with the technology firms with whom it has till now fought a bitter battle over rights, royalties and file sharing.

    Feargal Sharkey, CEO of lobby group UK Music, told a conference in London this week that it was time for the music and technology industries to set aside their differences and strive instead toward a common goal: nothing less than the total global domination of British

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