'Son of ACTA' Worse Than Original 288
An anonymous reader writes "TechDirt has the latest on the leaked US proposals for the 'Son of ACTA' treaty and it looks worse than the original. It's practically a checklist for how to kill innovation while making lawyers rich. In particular, they call for expanding what's patentable, blocking people from buying copyrighted goods in other countries and taking them home, expanding liability for ISPs whose users commit acts of infringement, forcing ISPs to identify their users to anyone on demand, and getting rid of third-party patent review while expanding the presumption that they're valid. The only way it could get any worse would be if it were enacted in law."
Beware the simplified summary (Score:5, Informative)
While I hate all this ACTA and related types of laws (DMCA, etc) the summary for this article is not accurate, for example it says it would forbid third party opposition to patents, which it doesn't say, what it actually says is that it prohibits them prior to the grant of a patent. And as someone with a bunch of patents from little startups, thats a good thing actually, as it would be way to easy for big corporations to make small inventors and startups waste money by filling all sorts of third party opposition during the patent prosecution.
In any case, don't believe the summary article, if you care about a particular point follow the links to the full text and read it in the original.
Re:I know I'll get marked troll again... (Score:5, Informative)
Do you know much about how DC works? Seriously I lived there my whole life and I'm tied to the US Federal government closely. I think it's hilarious that people like yourself think there's a huge difference between the two parties. Guess the bullshit machines are working.
Protectionism (Score:4, Informative)
No true free economy allows laws that protect certain markets and business models. Obama is up to his ears in jobs loss. As a consequence these MPAA/RIAA lobbyists go to him claiming that they are loosing billions and millions of jobs in an industry that "can't" be off-shored--nothing like American movies and music.
What's wrong is that he thinks that these efforts will result in recovery of lost jobs and income. In reality, when the economy recovers, if it ever does, these industries (with their protected and outdated business models) will be in control beyond what was intended, and it will have set a precedent for other industries to try the same thing, thus leaving America, and the world, with massive abusive businesses controlling ever more of Congress.
Re:Beware the simplified summary (Score:4, Informative)
Holy shit! That was a fucking mess. English translation follows;
No, it will mean that when a big company gets a patent on basically the same damn thing as you, you will be forced to fight about it after the fact in court. This is something most small businesses cannot afford.