Hated anti-counterfeiting treaty's myths exploded | Hacker News Reader

Hated anti-counterfeiting treaty's myths exploded

theregister.co.uk

16 pointsmjwalshe9 comments

Wow, that's actually a pretty despicable article. First of all, the register clearly sees whats wrong with a "A mob that's filled with self-righteous fury" yet fails to make the elementary connection that the IP lobby is a much greater, much more furious mob that has been even less discriminating in it's campaign to ruin lives and get what it wants.

Second, sure, some people protest the wrong things, some people make mis-quotes, some people didn't read the 30 page, double spaced, clear english bill. But then again that puts Andrew Orlowski in good company. The bill wreaks of wealthy copyright lobby efforts. It clearly puts copyright in front of human right and is a despicable piece of legislation that no citizen respecting government would ever want.

It's Andrew Orlowski who shills for big content on the Register, and coincidentally is the only Reg author who routinely disables comments on his articles.

The article certainly would be improved by some actual facts. It's just denial and name-calling. Leaves you wanting to wash your brain.

"But I didn't need a bogus technical argument to oppose this flavour of enforcement. SOPA-activists shrieked that web blocking broke DNS, which is a falsehood. Several European countries already implement DNS-level blocking of sites for copyright reasons, and the internet hasn't broken."

Yes. Those European countries, along with China, etc., have broken the internet. Reminds me of that Tim and Eric skit "The Internette". The whole thing fits on a CD, and if you want to shop online, you print out an order form and mail it in! It has 5 songs to choose from! Safe from viruses and hackers! What more could you want?

Yes, fracturing the network and blocking content breaks the internet. It's a step backwards to the days of centralized broadcast channels. Reminds me of the "lend me" feature on Kindles. The entire benefit of ebooks is that they're digital and can be shared. "Allowing" somebody to lend their books puts them back on par with hard copies. It's like "allowing" me to use my car, as long as I hook a horse up to the front of it.

I was with you right up the the false analogy to the "lend me" feature on Kindles. The entire benefit of ebooks is that they're digital, yes. This makes them convenient to buy, to carry around and/or read from multiple devices. Sharing is not implied. The fact that it's easy to copy an ebook doesn't make it lawful. There's still a little thing called copyright, granted by governments to encourage the arts and allow artists to be paid for their work. The extent to which an ebook can be copied should be up to the copyright holder. That doesn't mean that ebooks can't be posted publicly or loaned out, either to a friend or by the public library, as asserted in the better reasoned argument by Richard Stallman. http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/richard-stallman-on-freed... Stallman, at least, is forthright about his desire to eliminate copyright. Authors don't have to agree with him and clearly many - for example, all who sign up with Amazon and price their works at greater than $0 - don't think it is in their interests to do so. Authors don't even necessarily think the Kindle lending feature is a good idea and have to be enticed into the program by the possibility of pro rata royalties.

What an author charges for their book on Amazon doesn't have anything to do with copyright. You can charge a million dollars for a public domain work if you want. I believe a lot more content creators are on my side than you seem to think.

But yes, I have been forthright on these boards before about my desire to eliminate copyright. Sorry if I didn't make that clear in this post.

Also, you are correct, there are many benefits to digital works over their physical analogs. The increased ability to share is only one of them. Personally, however, I think it's the biggest benefit of all. Sort of like how modern cars have electric locks and air conditioning, but still their main benefit is their speed and carrying capacity. Hence my horse analogy. Esstentially, we're already in a post-scarcity society when it comes to information, and that change threatens people. But your mileage seems to vary, and that's cool too. It will be fun to see it all play out.

Real slick tactics media, real slick.

ACTA has been circulating in semi-secrecy for a couple of years now. In the mean time it has been watered down. Activists have spent years rising awareness and now public is outraged due to the process of how ACTA was introduced.

And since ACTA is merely a shadow of its former incarnations, the media have now attacked activists and protesters saying:

"These people are protesting a new agreement that doesn't really change anything, heh what a sore bunch of losers."

Good to see that at least propaganda machine is still working and in pristine condition.

... and much of the "ACTA myth debunking" has in fact been disingenuous or plain dishonest. Glyn Moody [1] has tackled a few of the most obvious ones.

"It's a sign of the European Commission's increasing desperation over ACTA that it has been forced to send out a document entitled "10 Myths About ACTA" [.pdf] that purports to debunk misinformation that is being put around. Unsurprisingly, the EC's document is itself full of misinformation. Here are just a few of the more outrageous examples."

[1] http://zine.openrightsgroup.org/comment/2012/10-myths-about-...

If that's his strongest apology for ACTA, I think I can go back to bed. Kudos to Andrew for not using the word "freetard" in this one.

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