If this report is accurate, this treaty would be the biggest threat to the startup business that I've seen.
How can we tell if it's accurate?
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...
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.
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.
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...
You can tell it's accurate for the US because the DMCA has codified those provisions here for the better part of a decade.
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.