ACTA

chief364

So basically the efforts to stop SOPA and PIPA worked, but this whole ACTA thing was already negotiated behind our backs?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=citzRjwk-sQ

Local H Jay

quit tryin to acta fool

Lord_Asmodeus

awhaha?

I haven't heard of it.

Which must mean it's PURE EVIL.

The Cow King

Each country that accepted the treaty thing still has to ratify it and then make laws.

So while its been signed there is still a bunch of law making to do.

Sweeney Tom

ACTA is an international trade agreement currently being negotiated by the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia as well as a few other countries, whose aim is to enforce copyright and tackle counterfeited goods (hence its acronym: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement).

The main problem with this treaty is that all the negotiations are done secretly. Leaked documents show that one of the major goal of the treaty is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies under the form of three-strikes schemes and net filtering practices.

Well this is shit

Clint Eastwood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA7gnSyuIik

I hope nobody made this joke already!

Sweeney Tom

Clint Eastwood wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA7gnSyuIik

I hope nobody made this joke already!

Some guy did

But it lacked the video, so this is the best use of the joke

chief364

Here's some links about it. Scary stuff.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/175737/stop-acta-why-the-global-big-brother-of-internet-censorship-must-be-crushed/

http://www.thedailyaztec.com/2012/01/acta-has-same-dangers-as-pipa-and-sopa/

DJ Eebs

hahaha shit

The Cow King

That being said fuck this shit

Clint Eastwood

if acta gets rid of 4chan or reddit then i am okay with it

Vann Diras

Clint Eastwood wrote:

if acta gets rid of 4chan or reddit then i am okay with it

keep your chin up, maybe it'll get rid of both!

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Druhim

Sweeney Tom wrote: »

ACTA is an international trade agreement currently being negotiated by the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia as well as a few other countries, whose aim is to enforce copyright and tackle counterfeited goods (hence its acronym: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement).

The main problem with this treaty is that all the negotiations are done secretly. Leaked documents show that one of the major goal of the treaty is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies under the form of three-strikes schemes and net filtering practices.

Well this is shit

Oh look, here's ST taking overreacting to something that he couldn't be arsed to think critically about.

Druhim

Though to be fair, plenty of you are being silly and just taking this at face value without asking some important critical questions. Shame on y'all.

DJ Eebs

and there's druhim being kind of a cock about things

see, I can do it too!

mensch-o-matic

Ugh I'm not gonna lie whenever I see a sensationalized article I automatically dismiss it, even when there's somewhat reasonable complaints about it

Brolo

Druhim wrote:

Sweeney Tom wrote: »

ACTA is an international trade agreement currently being negotiated by the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia as well as a few other countries, whose aim is to enforce copyright and tackle counterfeited goods (hence its acronym: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement).

The main problem with this treaty is that all the negotiations are done secretly. Leaked documents show that one of the major goal of the treaty is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies under the form of three-strikes schemes and net filtering practices.

Well this is shit

Oh look, here's ST taking overreacting to something that he couldn't be arsed to think critically about.

well

secret negotiations about creating new laws to govern technology usage is pretty shitty

DJ Eebs

more like you'll take a cock for $2 every day BLAMMO

Druhim

If the alternative is just swallowing stuff like this credulously, I'll take being a cock for $200 any day.

Mr Fuzzbutt

Druhim wrote:

Sweeney Tom wrote: »

ACTA is an international trade agreement currently being negotiated by the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia as well as a few other countries, whose aim is to enforce copyright and tackle counterfeited goods (hence its acronym: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement).

The main problem with this treaty is that all the negotiations are done secretly. Leaked documents show that one of the major goal of the treaty is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies under the form of three-strikes schemes and net filtering practices.

Well this is shit

Oh look, here's ST taking overreacting to something that he couldn't be arsed to think critically about.

And that's overreacting to a 4-word post.

Raijin Quickfoot

The last time someone linked me to anything about ACTA it contained the term "big brother" in a serious manner so I immediately dismissed it.

Druhim

The Geebs That Is A Pony wrote: »

more like you'll take a cock for $2 every day BLAMMO

Are you kidding? That's a steal for a good cock. Of course I'll buy.

VoproSTEIN

My first thought was "Well of course those diplomats aren't democratically elected."

Also I can't get over how he says "patents." I keep wanting to hear patients.

chief364

Also, Obama already signed it.

Raijin Quickfoot

chief364 wrote:

Also, Obama already signed it.

Thanks, Obama

Local H Jay

damn shadow goverment, taking down my AMVs
it's art dammit

Druhim

Oh no! An international trade agreement! We all know those are ironclad and no one ever ignores them!

Garlic Bread

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMRXGnGrHak

mensch-o-matic

Raijin Quickfoot wrote:

The last time someone linked me to anything about ACTA it contained the term "big brother" in a serious manner so I immediately dismissed it.

I was just about to say

chief364 wrote:

Here's some links about it. Scary stuff.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/175737/stop-acta-why-the-global-big-brother-of-internet-censorship-must-be-crushed/

http://www.thedailyaztec.com/2012/01/acta-has-same-dangers-as-pipa-and-sopa/

I looked through the less obnoxious second link and

ACTA’s scope is far wider than SOPA or PIPA. It aims to stop the “proliferation of counterfeit and pirated goods, as well as of services that share infringing material.” This includes knockoff Louis Vuitton purses and cheap counterfeit medicine in developing nations. It also means any website or program that could potentially be used to infringe copyrighted material, from sites with links for music downloads to music-burning software, would be automatically outlawed.

what? can someone link me to a deconstruction of this treaty that isnt mainly scary hand-waving and what-ifs?

I mean Ubik says its cool and I generally trust him blindly but I am trying to be Aware

Raijin Quickfoot

Hey guys, I just wanted to say (before they shut us down sometime in the next 36 hours) that it's been a hell of a ride. I'll miss all of you very much.

Garlic Bread

The government shut down WebMD

Xehalus

He says patents like a jackass and claims ACTA is avoiding the democratic process, but apparently the British Parliament is voting on it... ok?

chief364

@mensch-o-matic I was hoping somebody here could explain it to me without being sensational.

Garlic Bread

The Lion King has taught me that anyone that says "sensational" is a homosexual

chief364

@Keith good thing I typed it.

DJ Eebs

nope, still counts, here, make out with this cutout of neil patrick harris

Garlic Bread

chief364 wrote:

@Keith good thing I typed it.

Is it?

Is it?

Brolo

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/acta-is-here.ars/3

ACTA's effects


How will ACTA be used? Probably in the same way that the DMCA has been used: as a worldwide stick to beat through a US-centric version of copyright and IP law. This is especially true of the Internet section, which the US drafted.

When the DMCA was considered back in 2005, its lead architect Bruce Lehman appeared before Congress to explain how the law could be used.

"When that legislation is in effect, then we will have a template that we can use, that the Trade Representative can use, that we in the Commerce Department can use, the State Department can use, when we are in negotiations with other governments to advise them as to what they need to do to implement their responsibilities in these treaties to provide effective remedies... the moment we pull up on the pressure, usually, there's a sliding back."

He later commented, "I should say that for the most part these treaties will cause other countries to bring their laws up to US standards, even, for example, in countries that have fairly extensive protections, such as European countries. They have concepts in their law that make it easier in a digital environment to make unauthorized use of a copyrighted work."

ACTA will certainly be used the same way. It's being considered by a handful of countries and does not even include the main sources of "counterfeiting." But with the agreement in place and a permanent ACTA committee set up to administer it and accept new members, the treaty will be extended to the rest of the world—prenegotiated.

As the group IP Justice warned back in 2008, "After the multilateral treaty's scope and priorities are negotiated by the few countries invited to participate in the early discussions, ACTA's text will be 'locked' and other countries who are later 'invited' to sign-on to the pact will not be able to renegotiate its terms. It is claimed that signing-on to the trade agreement will be 'voluntary,' but few countries will have the muscle to refuse an 'invitation' to join, once the rules have been set by the select few conducting the negotiations."

That's not all bad; ACTA's process issues have been well-documented, but at least it's not totally one-sided. The ISP safe harbor provisions have been terrifically useful in the US, and the negotiators have worked to develop de minimis provisions that will keep border guards from confiscating your iPod if they suspect it to hold an infringing song. "Three strikes" isn't mandated. But problems remain.

ACTA doesn't export all of US law in this area, though; the world doesn't get huge principles like fair use (which many countries don't have) and key judicial decisions (like the Sony Betamax case which found that a device with "substantial non-infringing uses" could be sold so long as the manufacturer was not inducing infringement).
Take Internet disconnections, for instance. Although the three strikes rules are not mandated by ACTA, early leaked drafts of the Internet chapter showed a footnote in which Internet disconnections were the only suggested way of implementing the provisions. They aren't required, but they were clearly in view; even in the current draft, ACTA does force ISPs to get more involved in the process of dealing with online infringement. In some countries, that's a big change.

As we've already mentioned, the anticircumvention rules in ACTA still may be more strict than those in the earlier WIPO treaties, and leave countries with less wiggle room in implementation.

And provisions like the notice-and-takedown rule will certainly change the practice in countries like Canada, where no such requirement exists and "notice-and-notice" (an infringement notice is forwarded on to the alleged infringer, not simply acted upon) is the current standard.

But let's step back for a minute and look at the larger view. Yes, in general the Internet provisions are an attempt to standardize the world on the DMCA approach to copyright issues online. The law does have problems, but it has certainly not put an end to Internet innovation in the US.

ACTA doesn't export all of US law in this area, though; the world doesn't get huge principles like fair use (which many countries don't have) and key judicial decisions (like the Sony Betamax case which found that a device with "substantial non-infringing uses" could be sold so long as the manufacturer was not inducing infringement). Countries could adopt these, but they aren't requirements.

David Sohn, a lawyer with the Center for Democracy & Technology, describes it to me this way: ACTA is about "exporting all the liability, but not exporting any of the limitations on that liability."

In his view, there's a big risk involving secondary liability. Even ACTA's vaunted safe harbors are a bit sketchy. Leaked drafts required signers to provide "limitations" on the scope of civil remedies. This is apparently intended as an analog to the DMCA's safe harbor rules, but "what the DMCA safe harbor says is that there shall be no monetary liability" for ISPs. ACTA merely says that there must be limits on that liability. What limits? It's up to the countries.

Even exporting more US law, like fair use, wouldn't solve the problem, since many key copyright provisions are judicially defined. "What keeps secondary liability law in the US in check are a set of judicial decisions," says Sohn, but those are difficult to export.

Gary Shaprio, head of the Consumer Electronics Association, said last week, "Perhaps ACTA's most unfortunate provision is the imposition of 'secondary liability'... [ACTA] contains no protections for substantial non-infringing uses, meaning a manufacturer of an MP3 player could be liable for copyright infringement by a single user, even if 3 million other users committed no infringement at all. This is a business-threatening concern for the 2,000 consumer technology companies who are members of CEA."

Though the US does have existing protections in this area, signing onto ACTA may now limit our own ability to change course. For instance, altering the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions currently requires Congress to look at the 1996 WIPO laws and make sure any change is compliant with our obligations; a more restrictive ACTA approach to anti-circumvention might mean that Congress could no longer allow circumvention in cases where the intended use is legal—like format-shifting your DVD collection to your iPod.

As Shapiro put it, "ACTA end-runs Congress by changing US copyright law and stripping Congress of authority to fix problems with copyright statutes."

But the real effects will be felt in other countries, which can now look forward to stricter anti-circumvention rules, the possible requirement for statutory damages (still being debated in the ACTA draft), notice-and-takedown, and more.

MrMonroe

chief364 wrote: »

Also, Obama already signed it.

that he did!

which means it's still not the law!

edit: god fucking damn it Rolo that article was clearly written by someone who doesn't know article 2 section 2 of the United States Constitution from a still from tubgirl

Garlic Bread

MrMonroe wrote:

chief364 wrote: »

Also, Obama already signed it.

that he did!

which means it's still not the law!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6cyDsuNx_U