Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.
boingboing.net
boingboing.net
If this treaty goes through it very well could be the harbinger of the widespread adoption of darknets, better censorship-resistant networks, and even more creative use of cryptography and networking technologies.
Rather than trying to affect legislative change (which is a viable strategy too), some may wish to consider disruptive technologies which will render treaties such as this irrelevant.
The internet is different. It's something people use and rely on every day. If encryption is outlawed, there are no more cell-phone networks, online banking, online shopping, credit card transactions, wifi, etc. Most people are not going to be too happy about that.
Censoring the Internet or going after file-sharers is also not going to work. IPv4's "keyspace" of unique addresses is too small; as soon as disconnections become legal, bittorrent clients will start forging the UDP source IPs. (Some ISPs have egress filtering, but does every ISP on the entire planet? If not, then anyone can make it look like you are sharing a file anytime they want.)
To make this treaty take effect in the US as written, the Constitution will have to be rewritten. Politicians are much too lazy for that, so I am not worried.
Don't be so sure. It's not like they don't ignore the Constitution when they feel like it.
South America is the ideal expat location for those who can afford it.
I know I'd be happy to defend original political speech against a bogus takedown notice... not because I'm patriotic or altruistic, but because the publicity would be priceless. this is America, and my customers are nerds; being at the center of some scandal where the feds were trying to shut down some opposing political viewpoint would be incredible, from a self-promotion standpoint.
America becomes a bad place when you want some kind of commercial speech (or when your 'political' speech is commercial... but even then, so long as it's clear you have a valid claim and are not just copying someone else's copywritten work, it's pretty easy to find a provider willing to fight for you in order to garner the positive publicity.)
I might be willing to stand up for political speech, but I'm going to cooperate with taking down customers who want to violate trademarks to sell knock-off goods (knock-off goods are fine, just don't violate trademarks.) I'm also not going to spend a penny defending people who want to share movies or other copywritten data. Right or wrong, that's not a fight I can win here in America.
I keep telling my customers this; if you want to say something politically controversial, do so here. if you want to copy the latest movies, etc... host in eastern Europe or china, and don't involve me.
What if my political speech is about health care reform? It's not commercial, but it offends some pretty deep pockets - in that case, given enough lawyers (and there are always enough lawyers!), I worry that this kind of law could and would be used to shut me up. No burden of proof.
The DMCA has some fraud provisions that allow this kind of thing to be whacked, but I don't know the actual whack statistics.
Geeks don't like the government (right now) because there has been a successful couple of decades of anti-government propaganda. Would opposing Anthem be as good for your PR as that? I don't believe it would be. Yet Anthem is arguably a pretty dangerous actor in our current political sphere.
But what I'm saying is that while there is a pretty big downside to standing up to bullshit takedown notices, there is also a pretty big upside. Would I personally take the risk? heh. well, it would depend on how strong I thought the case was. But probably; Like many entrepreneurs, I'm something of a glory hound and I have a moderate-to-high risk tolerance. My expectation would be that it wouldn't go to court. see what happened with ralph lauen and bong-boing:
http://boingboing.net/2009/10/06/the-criticism-that-r.html
On the other hand, I do get a whole lot of obviously legitimate takedown notices. I've had several cases of some company selling knock off designer stuff who not only used the trade mark without permission, but who copied the legitimate website wholesale.
I mean, I know jack about designer clothing, and I think knock-off goods are perfectly legitimate, but I think it's pretty important to protect trademarks.
"The only solution"? Not hardly.
Lampposts, rope, politicians. Some assembly required.
Dude, they have 50 years of tech advantage over the pitchfork wielders. We are truly fucked if the military and police do not mutiny
If we are talking about treason - which hanging politicians from a lamp post would be - it won't be crowd control with tear gas and riot shields. It will be some police/military with guns vs citizens/police/military with guns.
Fortunately this law will not require that level of trouble. It is so draconian that it will not pass - so long as it is made public. The only way the government can control us is through secrecy. When something is so obviously against the public interest it won't be passed if enough people fight against it. The reason the Patriot act and others stood was because they just didn't effect enough people. If you start talking about losing your internet because your son posted a YouTube clip, voters will get mad.
tear gas and shields is the OLD stuff. The new stuff hasn't been widely utilized, but it IS widely in place and police and military have been trained on it.
The purpose of these non-lethal riot control methods is to destroy the power of assembly without losing the hearts and minds of the masses.
LRAD is one of the most widely known riot control technologies that is totally TV-friendly. The TV can't even tell that it is being used - in fact unless it is used on you you don't even realize it is being used.
This can be deployed from all kinds of platforms that impersonalize it.
If the public doesn't complain about waterboarding they aren't going to complain about LRAD. And yet LRAD will totally destroy a peaceful demonstration.
You're right that we should be able to get former military and police on our side, but we better hope they mutiny and are able to steal technology.
Sometimes engineers forget not every problem has a technological solution. Picking the right out cropping of rocks to defend yourself from has more value than millions of dollars in tech if you can extract the right price from the people attacking you.
But if you are going down that road, it is just a matter of how many people you take out before they get you. I won't be getting that enraged about copyright law, ever. If they start infringing on my right to complain about the copyright law, then we're getting warmer but even then not so much. People over react to the problems we have today, when you start infringing on the average person's rights a lot more than this people like me who are generally calm and don't freak out about small infractions will start getting mad, and thats when it will boil over and either a political or violent adjustment to the direction of the country will happen.
They can hold out for a long time with their low tech, but they still take losses at a 50:1 ratio.
You have AR-15s but do you have UAVs? Do you have tanks? Do you even have nukes, for that matter, that ancient 60 year old tech?
You can't win as a collective which means you can't win. Unless you can deploy an army that will actually DEFEAT the opposing army you are talking about Hamas-style resistance. The Palestinians are not winning. They are conquered. It's already over. They are bad people to take advice from.
Your brothers, cousins, and sisters don't understand what is wrong with censoring the internet. They think it's a good thing because they're afraid of pedophiles.
The whole point (as I explained) of modern non-lethal weaponry is that it can be used to enforce bad laws without causing a public uprising. Brothers, cousins, sisters, etc think waterboarding is okay because they watch too much 24. They think anyone who flees in pain due to LRAD is a pussy cause it's just like loud music.
WTF has been going on for the last 40 years? There has been an accelerating decline in liberty since about 1970.
Your sisters, cousins, etc have proven themselves to be easily manipulated idiots.
Intellectuals have proven themselves to be spineless lovers of comfort who will complain but never put anything tangible on the line.
Besides, I think that shooting back is rarely effective in modern warfare; it's all about 'hearts and minds' these days, not about who can kill more of the other dudes.
I think Iran (and Iran's success against the USSR) is a prime example of how 'hearts and minds' is much more important than guns and bombs in modern warfare.
Isn't that what they said about the Viet Cong?
It sure is a hollow victory if your entire country and way of life is destroyed and all your descendants are horribly mutated, etc.
If winning means getting what Vietnam got, I'll take surrender and slavery.
I don't mean to troll, and perhaps I missed the tongue-in-cheek element, but this kind of corny quote means nothing. Canada did not fight a war for the "land of the free" and is doing quite fine in its slavery to the British crown, thank you.
You don't need any of this, In guerrilla warfare mechanized infantry (tanks) are really only good for expensive body armor and neither side could use nukes if they had them (you would just be bombing yourself). Utilizing either would cause to many civilian casualties and the nasty part of guerrilla warfare is that for each 1 killed their are 50 recruits that have seen family and friends die (hardcore). Once this happens you have one of three choices surrender, withdraw or genocide.
1. You can't win through pacifism because of modern anti-protestor technology.
2. You can't win through conventional warfare because you have no collective ability to project power except through the incumbent government.
3. You can't win through guerilla warfare because guerillas never win wars. They just make life really suck for everyone.
I agree that it won't get to that. but if it did, barring massive police/military mutiny, who do you think is going to win that one? If both sides have guns, I'd say it will likely be the side with more training, experience, body armour, huge ammo stock piles and armoured vehicles. Unless the majority of the police/military mutiny I don't think even the US civilian population with your ridiculous amount of guns could prevail.
I'm not worried about the police force. They have shotguns and pistols just like everybody else, and in most cases the enthusiasts have just as much skill as the police.
And the military is tiny, less than 1% of the population. About 50% of the population owns at least 1 gun, and most who own at least 1 own several. If they can barely secure Iraq, there is no way they will secure the USA.
Side note: While I agree this particular article is relevant to HN, its starting to bring out the crazy a bit. Can we have a moratorium on political articles for a day or two to cool it off?
Swat teams are only effective against small groups and individuals - they can't kill 300 million+ people.
Yes I have. That's why I didn't mention riots. I also didn't mention massed assaults on govt installations.
There are ways to lose against a modern military. Don't use them. (BTW - If you think that tanks are decisive, you need to spend some time with Marines.)
Don't you know anyone in the armed forces?
The US Marines (I assume that other countries have similar forces) practice killing tanks with individual weapons. I assume that it's nasty work, but their slogan is something like "Killing tanks is easy and fun."
Tanks have problems in cities and other places with limited visibility and mobility. They can get stuck.
Yes, tanks can blow holes in walls and they have machine guns. However, if they're not moving fast, doctrine says that they require infantry support. I assume that that's because of vulnerabilities.
Militaries "leak" in civil wars, so some of the smaller weapons will be available.
> Don't you know anyone in the armed forces?
No. I am a governmentally recognized pacifist. (That's true. You have to get that recognition if you don't want to serve in the military in Germany (and you happen to be male, healthy and educated).)
Is there a connection between not knowing anyone in the armed forces and being a pacifist?
Are "not military" Germans are generally hostile towards members of their military? How about "recognized pacifists"?
How about police?
Ah, then you're willing to lie down in front of the tanks and "not cooperate", but if that doesn't work....
Maybe I'm an optimist, but I really feel the cat's out of the bag here - technology will always trump legislation.
This treaty will make the Internet just like today's air travel. Do you think technology will trump that?
...ever wondered how GOOG Books works?
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_multi-lateral_int...
LOL! Court of HN says NO!
That is not democracy. Not even close.
Political dissent is not just something done by free Tibetans way off in the distance, and it's not the exclusive purview of dedicated activists who have the time to set up darknets. Political dissent is everybody feeling free enough to disagree with the powers that be. This really and truly endangers that, and it's incredibly, incredibly stupid for the American government even to consider it. That the Obama Administration is not only considering it, but actively supporting it by keeping the process secret for as long as humanly possible is profoundly disappointing.
There is the need for dissent within in the political sphere for this treaty, and I'm certain that many activists will take this strategy up. There's also room for technological dissent; for citizens to develop strategies and technologies to mitigate the effects if this treaty does go into effect.
We're all in the same boat.
Why is that not democracy? What does democracy have to do with it? I often see the word "democracy" used as if it means "freedom".
In any case, I would make the stronger point that you can't really have freedom with democracy.
[1] The Rise of Illiberal Democracy, Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, November/December 1997
democracy = everybody gets a vote. If we where a democracy, I did not get to vote, because I was not allowed to see the text of the subject to make an informed decision.
Anyway, we are not a democracy we are a republic which is evident by the fact that I did not get a vote on the issue. The elected leaders did and this is the problem with a republic over a democracy, someone is doing the voting for you and after that someone has received your vote to put them their they tend to forget about the people that got them there.
Not really, even the Constitution is amendable by a super majority. You should have said a simple majority.
Since you can't have government by, for, and of the people without freedom, and you can't be free if you don't have power over the government, I don't feel too bad about conflating the two. Do you have a counterexample? What non-democratic form of government do you consider free?
I guess, in a larger sense, I take it as given that a democratic and free society is a basic requirement for human progress. Do you think you'd get far with a startup in a less egalitarian society? You might, but the fact that your grandfather didn't know the right people's grandfathers is going to really weigh you down. It's only the basic assumption of equality of all people that make it possible for most to start anything new. And I do take it for granted that everyone here believes that starting new things is the way to go.
So, OK, we can posit an egalitarian, "free" society where only an elite have political power. I honestly don't believe that's an actual possibility - what's to stop the political elite from taxing you at 99% of your income as soon as they think your widget would be fun to have?
Nothing.
This probably deserves a lot more thought and space than I can fit in this margin.
It's not at all clear that America was supposed to be about this, even if that is what they teach in schools today. However since it's not really relevant I won't argue the point further.
> Do you have a counterexample? What non-democratic form of government do you consider free?
Many monarchies and similar governments throughout history have allowed more freedom for their citizens than today's democracies. Of course, no one is completely free under any of these governments (certainly not a democratic one).
> I guess, in a larger sense, I take it as given that a democratic and free society is a basic requirement for human progress...that make it possible for most to start anything new.
You really, really shouldn't take that as a given, especially that "democratic" part. It is understandable, though, that many people believe this -- considering it's essentially what has been taught in schools for the last century or so. Do you really believe enterprise did not flourish in the West until after the rise of democracy? That is not what history shows.
> what's to stop the political elite from taxing you at 99% of your income as soon as they think your widget would be fun to have? Nothing.
Not that I want your hypothetical to come true, but it is worth considering that tax rates in monarchies were generally quite low (<10%), especially when compared to the tax rates in today's democracies. There are well-understood reasons for this if you are interested.
That's kind of where a link would go.
I can't tell whether you're a monarchist or a libertarian, but your overall stance appears to be out-and-out libertarianism. To which I can only say: show me one. Show me a successful stateless nation (Afghanistan is the only one that springs to mind), and I'll subscribe to your newsletter. In the meantime, I'm standing over here in the corner with Churchill. You know the quote.
The same goes for monarchy. Show me an absolute monarchy that stays a good place for more than a generation or two - long enough for the good king to die and his half-wit nephew to take over - and I might give you that one, too. In the meantime, the raging free-for-all that America started out being is a pretty good start on a system that takes the human reality, that political power does in fact and will always in fact exist, and guides society away from the feudalism that both monarchy and libertarianism necessarily approach.
Both monarchists and libertarians seem to think they'll be the ones in the 0.5% on top. The odds are against you.
I personally think America will totter back from this brink, as well, and clearly there are problems all around us. But to say that democracy itself is the root? No. You're going to have to be more eloquent.
You doubt that people wanted to move to the old European monarchies? Even if we're only talking about the present, I'm not a fan, but there are plenty of people who would love to move to the UAE.
> In the meantime, I'm standing over here in the corner with Churchill. You know the quote.
Yes, I know the quote, but I'm not sure you do. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571797
> Both monarchists and libertarians seem to think they'll be the ones in the 0.5% on top. The odds are against you.
If this is what you believe, I doubt you are familiar with much of the work of either of those groups. Who said anything about the top 0.5%? Do you really think all of the bottom 99.5% in a monarchy were like chattel slaves, but today's bottom 99.5% are free as a bird? Please consider what I wrote earlier -- even the average citizen was more free in many non-democratic countries.
You can if the people don't want freedom--i.e. if the majority of the people want to oppress a minority. You don't have a free society if your 80% white state votes 70-30 to segregate the blacks, for instance.
If the people can be easily convinced to limit their freedom out of fear, you can also have an unfree democracy.
"and you can't be free if you don't have power over the government"
"Do you have a counterexample? What non-democratic form of government do you consider free?"
This is actually questionable as well. Salutary neglect by a foreign imperial power successfully resulted in civil freedom in colonial America and in pre-1997 Hong Kong, for two. I suspect many of Britain's other colonies received similar treatment. The American Revolution was directly caused by a revision in Britain's policy of salutary neglect, but it's questionable 200 years later whether it really left us off any more free.
"So, OK, we can posit an egalitarian, "free" society where only an elite have political power. I honestly don't believe that's an actual possibility - what's to stop the political elite from taxing you at 99% of your income as soon as they think your widget would be fun to have?"
As opposed to a democratic society where an envious populist movement taxes you at 99% of your income as soon as they think you have too much money and are becoming an elitist?
It's only irrelevant if you don't mind breaking the law. If you are trying to be a law abiding citizen the ability to avoid being caught is itself irrelevant.
How can we tell if it's accurate?
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/Mede...
"We conclude that neither Avena nor the President’s Memorandum constitutes directly enforceable federal law that pre-empts state limitations on the filing of successive habeas petitions."
If they want this to become law in the US, they will have to follow the usual process. If they want criminal sanctions without trials, as the treaty proposes, the Constitution will have to be rewritten. (The fact that enforcing these laws will be technically impossible is another annoying issue.)
Your link does not support that claim. What the link says is that some treaties are self-executing. Those are automatically US law. Others are not self-executing, and require legislation to be passed. The ruling is that the Vienna convention is not self-executing, and therefore needs legislation to come into effect.
Whether this particular copyright treaty would be self-executing depends on a court ruling on the details of the treaty. Given that lawyers are involved in drawing it up, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them design it to be self-executing in the USA. As for the Constitution, I'm so used to seeing attempted and actual end runs around it that I wouldn't be confident that it will stop them from enacting the copyright rules they want.
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" is the usual money quote.
But the more I think of it, I believe we'll be alright. Those in the web space have a certain scrappiness to them. I've always disliked rules and bureaucracy. That's why I'm here, and not in a Fortune 500 or jerking off politicians.
I find a way to scoot around bullshit rules now, and I'll scoot around them if this is passed.
Most people I know and work with have one thing in common: their job is to make disruptive technology that people love. Rules or no rules, nothing can stop them, as long as they have the best interest of the user in mind.
Nothing can change that.
Anyone with a 6th grade reading level can see this is true. However, the courts apparently don't have this degree of understanding.
See, for example, the SCOTUS decision in US v Emerson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Emerson ). This case involved the so-called "Lautenberg Amendment", which forever denies access to firearms to anyone who has been the target of a restraining order in a domestic dispute. You'll note that such a restraining order does not involve any sort of due process. Nonetheless, the Court ruled that Dr. Emerson was not deprived of his 2nd Amendment rights.
Why do you think that was? Do you think those reasons apply now?
The situation that applies today is the treaty is being negotiated in secret in order to ratified in as much secrecy as possible and with the hope that once that's done, it can enforced as quietly as possible and the repressive parts of it may be used to make that silence mandatory as well.
-- Contrast this to the US constitution, which involved long and difficult demand before ratification.
i'd agree with "gross abuses" since this is a treaty being crafted in secret, with special "access" given to certain interested parties... basically the government isn't working for the good of the people, but for the good of a few large companies and the detriment of the people.
these are the people that thought the CD would destroy their business. then they thought the DVD would destroy their business. these are the people that want you to pay every single time you watch a movie that you own. they fill the airwaves with Creed and Linkin Park. they don't understand technology in the least. fire probably scares them. and they will be the ones "updating" our copyright law.
I'm going to just install FreeNet now and setup some encryption software now...
At the same time, I can see how startups that are depending on the safe harbor clause to host copyrighted material to attract users would be upset with the rules of the game changing.
Considering that copyright isn't a natural right in the first place, I don't see the problem.
On a more serious note, for profit content is less innovative because it's targeting the widest audience possible. Walking around a book store you can find a lot of bland tasteless garbage to fit even the most snobbish pallet. But, there are other approaches. Wikipedia is a perfect example of what happens when you separate the content creation process from direct monetary gain as is Hacker News and a thousand other places that you never really think about.
PS: I don't care one way or the other, but suggesting that copyright is vital for innovation and creativity is just silly.
Edit: NM, I missed the sarcasm on that one.
You realise there are no CC licenses without copyright. That anyone can take my published work and reprint it as their own without any attribution.
Copyright has been much abused by big business, but that's capitalism at work, we shouldn't disavow people of the rights to an interest in the results of their labour.
Copyright only works as a contract between creators and the public. We're doing our part by protecting rights of content creators via the treaties and laws but we are being denied our part of the contract - having works enter the public domain in a timely fashion.
Copyright IMO needs fixing not removing.
Rubish, copyright is completely incompatible with capitalism: copyright consists of government granted monopolies.
Just because the motive of something is profit, it doesn't mean it is capitalism, the motive of taxes is also profit (for special interests), but that doesn't mean they are capitalism at work.
I still contend that the pressure by corporations to increase copyright terms in order to maximise the profitability of held IP assets is "capitalism at work". It is sustained holding of IP away from the public domain preventing others from using that IP [for profitable production]. Smells like capitalism to me.
That's the natural state of things. Changing the social relationship between artist and fan, unilaterally for a whole society as copyright has done, better have some darn good reasons. I am not convinced it's worthwhile.
I still believe that encouraging people to create works by ensuring they have a limited monopoly on commercial exploitation in return for eventual expansion of the public domain is worthy and workable.
If you create a communist society then I can see how copyright is not needed, in the current climate of commerce where I am in Europe (at least) complete dissolution of copyright IMO is to the public detriment.
One simple example might be how to finance a proper dictionary, or indeed any academically rigorous reference work, without allowing the creators of the work the chance to profit from it? How would that work, in say a capitalist society, under your regime?
How many people will pay a few million dollars for a dictionary to be made and then allow copies to anyone else? Copies will be sold with contracts for very high prices and with no chance of entering the public domain except by breach of contract.
Article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights:
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
(Not that this by any means justifies or demands anything like the copyright regime we have now, let alone this ridiculous power-grab extension of it. And people are of course free to waive their rights at any time.)
Look, I just don't agree with you that we are inevitably sliding towards tyranny.
If you struggled like I do to consider that the Man could organise His way out of a paper bag, let alone subjugate us all with tyranny, you might chill out on some of these issues.
Not every battle is worth fighting to the steps of Capitol Hill for, and well, in my opinion this Copyright stuff will get sorted out okay. There are big players on both sides of the argument. I cannot imagine Google being too happy about this Treaty.
You may wish to improve the world or something, but The Man is just a collection of self-interested people responding to economic pressure.
You may not, but history repeats itself and human history is filled with a lot more tyranny than gilded ages. Hell we are only 200 years out of it now. Rome who we modeled ourselves after slid into it and imploded. So all historical relevance leads one to logically consider that it is a slightly higher than average possibility that we will repeat the cycle of history. Did we do so much better this time?
>If you struggled like I do to consider that the Man could organize His way out of a paper bag, let alone subjugate us all with tyranny.
It's happening all around the globe as we speak. It does not take much effort to find tyranny everywhere you look. Just because the 1st world has grown comfortable and detached does not mean that the 3rd world does not still experience it. Many times from 1st world people that are propping up the tyrants.
>Not every battle is worth fighting to the steps of Capitol Hill
Yes it is this is how tyranny works, the slow erosion of rights. One of the greatest quotes ever penned was by Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller in which he said:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
This was in response to the Nazi's tyrannical rule of Germany.
The point being, slow erosion of rights and targeting of other groups is the modus operandi of oppression. It has to be checked at every advance or it becomes that much more difficult to resist.
Have you ever noticed that not one President has ever repealed any powers gained by the executive branch and many times oversteps the allotted powers they are given. Make no mistake about it absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It is human nature, the founding fathers new it and tried to set up a system that would leave it in check. Unfortunately, with the erosion of the state governments and militias as a counterweight and the devastation that Europe felt in 1 and 2 it left the US executive branch with the legislative branch as it's only opposition and much like the senate of Rome we can see how well that counterweight worked.
So you can not agree, but you are disagreeing with a lot of historical evidence to the contrary and are pinning your hopes on the fact that this time above all the rest we got it right.
Me I will remain a paranoid whack job like the founding fathers where and the Jews of Germany where and like the Taiwanese are today.
I am reminded of the post a while ago regarding a man whose family was hounded out of their home at gunpoint by the Feds, and their lives systematically destroyed until he was forced to move out of the country, because one of the companies buying hosting from the host he had founded was found doing fraudulent business.
If we're lucky, we'll die before the countries we love turn to tyranny. Will our children? Will our grandchildren?
I understand the sentiment, but when I look into the face of my son. I hope every day that if it should ever come to armed resistance that it comes to pass in my time and not his. I am a pacifist above all else, but I would rather have the moral obligation and the wages of war payed by my hand rather than that of my namesake.
He did not create this mess and it weighs on my mind that this is the legacy that I will leave him. We should all be ashamed of the legacy we are leaving to our children and if our legacy to them is tyranny, oppression and struggle then may we all be damned.
As a later commenter said, the real point is that the human rights as declared in 1948 were no different (in form and style) to the treaty under discussion here. It was a group of countries getting together to decide the standards in which governments agree to treat their citizens- and each other.
It should also be noted that many of the articles there are broken or ignored- and this treaty seems to ignore Article 6: "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law." which would be suspended given some of the leaked terms.
It says your interests are entitled some protection, but doesn't specify method or compensation.
I find it rather disturbing when someone wants to throw away the UN Declaration of Human Rights because it protects some interests that are against yours.
Here are some examples: Article 23, Article 24, Article 25, Article 26, Article 27, Article 30.
I think it's goals are good, I think they overreached.
On one hand, it aims to safeguard the freedom and dignity of people throughout the world. Doing so sometimes requires using force against oppressive governments.
Yet on the other hand, the UN seeks to protect the sovereignty of the world's nations. How can it protect the sovereignty of a nation against whom it is fighting due to its other mission?
When its soul is built on two mutually contradictory ideals, it can never be anything but a schizophrenic wreck with at least one of those ideals (and more likely, both of them).
1. All the traditional non profit work: WHO, UNICEF, etc -- focus on that and leave the politics out. 2. Political function -- it votes on nothing, and merely serves a forum for countries to discuss issues; all treaties are then signed between those countries the UN is not involved.
Which is directly in opposition to copyright. UDHR seems to stand on the fence on this issue.
For instance: my website allows users to upload profile pictures. From the sound of this, if one of them were to upload a copyrighted picture, _I_ am liable. My website is small right now, so monitoring this is feasible...if it gets much larger, I would need to hire a team of people just to police it.
Obviously, if somebody says "Hey, Ryan, user $foo has uloaded picture $bar, would you mind taking it down?" I will, but if this is the way boingboing is making it sound...it won't be that easy.
It is appropriate to treat copyright infringement in the same way one treats the international opium trade?
yeah, if you are: the RIAA or MPAA a news organization that doesn't want anyone blogging about the truthiness of your reporting a politician receiving money from these groups a politician wanting to censor certain information
i don't like that you merely have to be accused of infringement for bad things to happen. it'd be like getting accused of being a communist in the '50s. this feels like a big step towards global authoritarianism.
America's stupid "War on Drugs" has devastated large parts of the world. Is an equally stupid, and, more laughably, even more doomed to failure "War on Copyright" going to wreck the Internet and possibly freedom itself?
And this is Obama? Who was supposed to be the good guy?
My then-12-year-old daughter said, "So I could say, 'Bush is an idiot' and it would show up on the screen?" (Yeah, my politics is always pretty obvious.)
I laughed and said, "Sure could!"
She thought it over and said, "But would my name be on it? Maybe that wouldn't be a good idea."
I realized at that point that it was safer to express political dissent at that time in freaking Hungary than in the United States of America, and that my daughter knew that. Talk about a blow-your-mind situation.
My wife will talk anybody's ear off about politics face-to-face, and she has entirely radical opinions for our venue of Indiana. But if it's on the record? No way. She says we just don't need that kind of trouble.
People have already been conditioned to accept this stuff as "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."
The cost of doing that may be prohibitive, and the vulnerability to frivolous claims by bigger competitors would mean that any startup dealing with user generated content would have to employ lawyers at all times.
If phone companies were liable for crimes coordinated over their networks, telephony would not exist.
On the contrary, there are lots of startup businesses on the content creation side of the equation that could benefit from this legislation due to the increased risk and difficulty of pirating and distributing copyrighted works.
I've seen artists have their work infringed by others working for large corporations, and their ability to have something done about it quashed by a corporation wielding copyright law (see, for example, Timbaland vs. tempest)
Addendum: it looks like someone (someones?) is going around in this thread blanketing it in votes in favor of stricter copyright. Slightly creepy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Timbaland_plagiarism_contr...
The Pirate Party already has two representatives in the European Parliament, and we've only been in existance since 2006. If we continue to fight, and if people who care abt these issues join us, we'll win. I fully expect that by 2020-2025, the Pirate Party's core beliefs will be the received wisdom throughout the developed world.
You can tell it's accurate for the US because the DMCA has codified those provisions here for the better part of a decade.
Sure, they can try and criminalize half of the internet in one fellow swoop - but that won't change how we do things. There would be a few lawsuits thrown out by sane judges and that's it.
This will give power to easily attack ISPs, and force them to secretly wiretap and censor in order to stay in business.
We can't, but the fact that they're keeping it secret strongly suggests to me that there's some very nasty stuff in it.
As I usually point out on these occasions, one way to stop these anti-freedom laws is to organise politically -- you can find your national Pirate Party at http://www.pp-international.net/
Don't let them take away our internet.
So, say, "three strikes" will get thrown out or, more likely, modified to include an appeal process, and anticircumvention provisions will quietly get ratcheted up as the other side of the "compromise".
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_multi-lateral_int...
Maybe it's worth toying with the idea of setting up a private ISP—a pre-emptive underground? This situation is absolutely ridiculous.
the only way that i can see this working is a NCLB improvised device-to-device network, which is actually a great idea that the tech giants are terrified of because they want to keep their proprietary lockdowns on everything
One Big Mesh.
Mind you, getting it set up would be a, um, non-trivial exercise.
I know it's a real problem and does deserve attention. But it's one thing if some guy is trying to sell millions of digital copies of the latest Madonna video from some motel in Eastern Europe, but it's quite another if someone uses a few snips of songs in a video he's doing for YouTube!
I've experienced PERSONALLY what I would consider a smart approach and a dumb approach on this.
I did some 30 second little YouTube videos to promote a thing I'm doing... and in a couple of them I used snippets from a couple of popular songs... I'm fairly naive and didn't think much of it because I wasn't selling the videos, but I was promoting my thing (fortunately very benign so that wasn't an issue)! Though it could be a fair concern...
Anyway, to make a long story short...
Their YouTube algorithms or whatever found 'em and did their robot "thing"... but here's the interesting surprise!
On one (with a clip for a Barbara Streisand song) they just added a little button to the bottom of my video identifying the song with a link for purchase! I was fine with that and so were they!(it was Sony) A smart approach!
But for the other, with a great guitar clip from Jeff Beck, they just stripped the audio from my 30 second video... which I suppose was in a way fair... but all that ended up happening is I had a useless video... and they lost an opportunity for some sales... I forgot the publisher on that one... but it was a damn good video!
This obviously doesn't cover all issues but the point is that there are much wiser approaches that this abominable plan.
But politicians are like very stupid carpenters. They only understand hammers... so everything becomes a nail to be pounded into the ground.
We'd like our internet back now.
Sincerely,
The Compter Scientists, the group of people who invented the internet.
edit: I'm specifically talking about in-the-streets-marches kind of thing.
If you believe you can stop this by writing to your congressperson or protesting: why do you think this is being done in secrecy? Obviously, they are fully aware nobody is going to like it. It will be enacted regardless.
That being said, I would still like to do as much as I can to prevent it, or in the case that it's enacted, circumvent it or corrupt it to the point of uselessness. At this stage, I don't think there's much we can do just yet. We also can't be sure this report is accurate.
"According to the French academic Dominique Reynié, between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war.[3]"
Protests don't seem to have a very good track record.
if not, maybe what we need an organization to lobby on our behalf.
maybe a new startup could somehow do this? i don't know how it would get the money to do so...
Once the worm is in the field then how will they tell who are real pirates or hapless victims?
This wouldn't require violating anyone else's machines, but would have much the same effect. (presenting the ISP with the prospect of cutting off a huge percentage of their customers, i.e. revenue)
With today's media, it certainly wouldn't take more than a handful of towns. Most of us probably have enough people in our personal social graph to pull it off.
On a larger scale, organizing a sort of free internet seal of approval for all representatives could be even more powerful. If representatives know that voters would be more likely to vote for candidates with the seal of approval, then they might be persuaded to earn that seal.
Edit: I just wanted to add that while generally I agree that writing letters has little to no effect, I think it's important for people to start DOING something. If it starts with writing letters, maybe the upshot will be that people are embolded to participate in bigger future actions, like taking part in demonstrations and more when the time comes. Cynicism and defeatism aren't the right starting attitudes for a fight. Just my two cents.
The old world of media had a price for each viewer/reader of various mediums. The new world of media also has a price too and the old price doesn't apply. Readers are now usually worth substantially less then they were. An online news impression is worth less than a print one. In parallel, the democratisation of the web has created additional competition that has taken away some eyeballs, especially in the juicy parts of the business (eg classifieds). The effect of aggregators as competitors is an example of the type of effect that hurts them and is related to copyright somehow. This last is a very small & insignificant part of why they are failing.
In some cases, copyright enforcement might theoretically recover some or all of their revenues. Music is an example of this. If people couldn't pirate music, they would probably buy more of it. The move to digital probably affects sales somehow, but it is not necessarily negative. Film, TV, Books etc. are also examples of these cases.
The first type of company has business models made obsolete by technological & cultural changes. The second kind have business models that fail because the lost the ability to enforce copyright. Companies of the first kind usually think that they are of the second. Both types of companies would be happy if the Internet just went away.
I believe the preferred nomenclature is "profiteering gluttons".
I did "The Hacker's Manifesto" for a speech contest in high school...it was just funny and a bit painful when that movie came out.
Hey, maybe you could invent some technology which actually provides some privacy and security instead of all this 80's tech?
Sincerely,
The Users, the group of people who use the Internet on a daily basis.
Edit: What I'm really saying is that if there would have been an implemented, 'universal', solution that takes civil liberties into the digital world, then it would be much harder to take these liberties away. I really don't think most politicians understand neither technology nor the fact that they are in effect infringing civil liberties like anonymity protection, freedom of expression and secrecy of letters. Who's to blame for this? Probably no one and everyone, still sad to see though.
The last time you checked must have been in the 80s then. If researchers still controlled the development of the internet, would we be having a debate about net neutrality?
Politically I agree with you, but you vastly overestimate the power of researchers.
Sweden rocks as far as a lot of privacy issues go. Sweden (along with a couple other countries) were early adopters for DNSSEC. I wish we could be more like Sweden; the US is not so quick. Verisign (a for profit company) wont deploy DNSSEC on .com and .net until 2011. By contrast domains administered by the US government and a non profit (.gov and .org) are supposed to have it done by the end of this year. I think these differences illustrate nicely the point I was trying to make. Security can sometimes take a back seat on the priorities list, and even the US government and a non profit are far behind countries that choose that make it a priority.
Imagine if PETA activists started nailing the public IP's of meatpacking companies with allegations of copyright infringement...
or imagine that you're in the middle of a complex court fight and your law firm, and most of your lawyers home and mobile ips are shut down in a coordinated attack...
I'm not sure PETA would do that, because they're a legitimate organization that could have action taken against them. But that's an interesting point: if every IP address was reported, how do they enforce or verify it?
Personally, they can pry my internet from my cold dead hands.
I really doubt this is going to be some grand populist legal tool.
And if someone mildly technically knowledgable gets involved you could really cause trouble. Imagine the havoc that could be wreaked by AT&T disconnecting Verizon. Or shutting down Dreamhost.
Instant disconnection on accusal is a recipe for stupid things.
Hell, someone would probably set up a linkbait news posting to a webpage that they claim is protected ip and have a script issue automatic disconnect requests to everyone who views the target page.
sounds like a good way to shut down supporters of XYZ cause
Or, in fact, come from the people it claims to come from.
I'll go out on a limb and predict nothing much comes of this.
Edit: after reading more about it, I learned that ACTA is a treaty process that's been going on for years. It's hard to see how something this draconian ever gets ratified in all these countries.
I don't know who is running the show but obviously this leak has ulterior motives of some kind. The elites are always planning further lock down on their slave populations, it's really just a question of whether the public is sufficiently conditioned to accept it at some particular moment.
DMCA is the new DOS
This is a bad thing.
I am a supporter, generally, of the idea of copyright (it needs a review, sure) but this is just silly...
Seriously, he has been a long time friend of the content industries. Ever since he was nominated I've been looking for something like this to happen.
And the fact that all these insane provisions have survived five previous rounds of negotiation certainly shouldn't provide any comfort.
We are constantly relearning the lesson: don't trust politicians. Democracy is a machine for serving concentrated interests at the expense of the general well-being
Hopefully our champions will stop this. However, there will be no idealistic debate behind the scenes on the topic of what constitutes the public interests. There will only be politicians silently weighing what is in their own personal interest. As it always has been, and as it always will be.
Not if we can help it. If you're in the U.S., please write your representatives and let them know how dangerous this is. This is still a country ruled by its people, for its people. Even if this is a hoax, it will let your elected officials know copyright law is a serious issue in their district, and hopefully treat it as such.
Find out who your reps and senators are at this link, and write! http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
The question is, what comes next. Maybe it's mesh networks, maybe private satellites, maybe something else entirely. Of course, the new network will initially be slow, and for geeks only. Then there will be explosive growth. Then it will be regulated into oblivion. And the cycle will repeat itself.
The potential difference between the old fashioned copyright business and the new wave is growing. In order to keep things balanced as the new wave is gaining more energy the old business must expend an equal amount of energy to compensate for this change.
That's why when old structures are breaking they first resist until the last straw, and then come down collapsing.
I'm not calling BoingBoing a liar, but I find it hard to believe that the U.S. is going to pass laws or engage in treaties that destroy some of its greatest companies. Either these provisions are misunderstood, they are proposed amendments that nobody thinks will be in the final language, or they are interpretations by folks looking to sabotage the negotiations. If I had to guess I'd say the latter, but that's just intuition.
My call based on one article? Flame bait for nerds.
Show me some more sources and we'll see if this develops into something worthy of all the yelling and shouting.
Even if this is true -- multi-source, people. It's much too easy for "leaks" to be more manipulative in nature when the internet is one big echo chamber.
They must think everyone is an idiot if they will believe that.
the reason i ask is that it seems like the rules, as they currently exist, are valid on paper but illegitimate in practice. is it really worth it to extend the illusion of copyright protection to the rest of the planet knowing full well that it's got little hope of succeeding? or is there a way to argue that the system, as it works in the U.S. is a success?
This cannot stand and they can't possibly be stupid enough to try to make it stand!
But beware their "fallback" positions! And the devil is in the details. They may just feel that by putting out such an outrageous proposal they can fall back to a merely disgusting and slimy one.
Is there a confusion between an ISP and a Web site here? I've never heard the term "ISP" applied to companies that just run Web sites.
I hardly think you will be able to convince 10 countries to sign that treaty.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a0nnp/secret_cop...
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/a0o98/obama_admini...
thanks very much