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It's rare that I create new threads but this is pretty important...
A good comment to pay close attention to:
One for teh lulz:
Anyway, if true, this would certainly cause widespread (forced) change on the internet.
SourceGamePolitics.com said:As the 6th round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations get underway in Seoul, Korea, a dispatch has been sent to President Obama expressing concern over the “lack of transparency and openness” surrounding the initiative.
The letter notes that “Unlike nearly all other multilateral and plurilateral discussions about intellectual property norms, the ACTA negotiations have been held in deep secrecy.”
While a curious mix of entities have been allowed to see ACTA documents, after signing a non-disclosure agreement, the letter states that “there were no opportunities for academic experts or the general public to review the documents,” adding that “very few” public interest or consumer groups were included as well.
Among the signees of the letter were The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), Students for Free Culture and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Countries negotiating the agreement include the U.S., Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Switzerland.
BoingBoing (thanks Torven) sums up a few leaked bullet points from ACTA, among them:
The EFF tears into the leaked material in a post on its website, saying that, “The leaks confirm everything that we feared about the secret ACTA negotiations.”BoingBoing said:• That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
• That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
• Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
They continued:
BoingBoing said:The Internet provisions have nothing to do with addressing counterfeit products, but are all about imposing a set of copyright industry demands on the global Internet, including obligations on ISPs to adopt Three Strikes Internet disconnection policies, and a global expansion of DMCA-style TPM laws.
A good comment to pay close attention to:
GoodRobotUs said:What this seems to be, to me, when combined with the attack on Net Neutrality, is an attempt by larger businesses to turn the Internet into a purely business venture, where the 'great unwashed' are little more than a minority whose opinions are worthless, rather than the large social network it currently is.
Without wanting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, it occurs to me that the last thing any organisation wants, is for customers to communicate with each other and share their experiences. They'd much prefer a feedback page that they can edit to suit themselves, destroying social groups like youTube, famous for exposing several bad practices by companies, attacking people who publicise problems with companies by accusing them of filesharing and having their page removed without trial, and the DRM thing is just a continuation of the attack on personal property, where companies feel they should still own the stuff you've bought, and should control your ability to criticise them.
Austin_Lewis said:I wonder what effect this would have on Ripoffreport.com . That site was a fantastic idea, and it'd be sad to see it go.Neeneko said:It is not just companies.. governments do not want popular access to information either. Even democratic governments are generally against the idea since when it comes down to it, the same kinds of people end up runing things regardless of what structure the government or company takes.
One for teh lulz:
sirdarkat said:And were going to put a Moat around our servers and demand the black knight be kept at the gates ... Ah nothing like going back to the Medieval days and imposing Draconian Laws upon the public. Maybe instead of just take down notices we can use the Pear of Anguish to force people to confess that they are trying to pirate music and movies; if they die they were innocent if they admit to it they were guilty.
Anyway, if true, this would certainly cause widespread (forced) change on the internet.