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.
I'm going to just install FreeNet now and setup some encryption software now...
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.
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.