Part of Internet Clamp Down Treaty Leaked...

[TedShatner10]

This is worrying if true and shows the contempt the media corporations have for their consumer base, if it has been drafted in secret and without real consultation. On the other hand if half of this bullcrap is attempted to enforce, alienating tens of millions of people, cost billions, and likely make the piracy problem bigger, then that will be another blow against the current copyright for copyright's sake nonsense:

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

• 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 ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
• 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)

BoingBoing

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

How are you so sure that's real? Sounds like just another wacko conspiracy theory to me.

 

[SeerSGB]

If, IF. it got through the system it could potentially kill online fandom/fansites. If true that is.

Edit to Add: EFF Page this

 

[Mistral]

"You say you want a revolution..."


The revolution will not be televised-it will be blogged.

 

[Ward Fowler]

How are you so sure that's real? Sounds like just another wacko conspiracy theory to me.

It's real, along with the leaked documents. Here's the whole story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

 

[sojourner]

Yay! for Cory and FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). Wow, he's almost as bad as Glen Beck.

 

[Praxius]

That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused

BoingBoing

Yeah good luck with that idea. The Whole World "MUST" adopt US-Style?

Canada's right next door to the US and we're one of the worst for pirating (not to mention the largest amount of pot smokers in all of the developed nations, including those who have it decriminalized, but that's a whole other topic) Yet the US sure hasn't been able to do much about those things in our country and way of life.

If the US can't impose their own crap on Canada of all places, what chance do they have of this ever being "Adopted" by other nations?

Zero

And in regards to shutting down anybody's account based on random acusations without solid proof or proper legal action being followed?

They can try and pull this little stunt, but by the time the first case hits the courts, it'll all be tossed out shortly afterwards and be a complete waste of time due to varrying rights and legal violations.

This report doesn't hold a lot of legitimacy in my eyes, as I haven't heard this report come out anywhere else (And I view a number of news sources from around the world daily) And the fact that it's supposed to be kept under wraps "Due to National Security" (Where'd I hear this a number of times before?) where there doesn't seem to be any warrant or justification of such a claim of risk to the nation..... it sounds like a typical cop out remark used by the government and corrupt news sources to simply say "Trust me" when you have no reason to trust them because they didn't clearly explain themselves in the first place.

Not to mention, based on the various amounts of ways one can download, transfer, share digital files, trying to track all of this would be quite the challenge. I'm sure our country will let the US try this out first and see what not to do.

Added:

Even with the above wiki link, while they claim all of these nations are working together to impliment this plan, it'll still be quite difficult to get it going without it infringing on a number of privacy rights and laws..... no one agreement here will work for all of these said countries and their various laws.

Either way, there's still not much to worry about.

 

[tharpdevenport]

You see, that's the thing -- it doesn't need to be really specific or enforcable, they'd pass it anyway. Current administration wouldn't give a shit, I don't think Bush would have either, and I bet the next one wouldn't as well.

And as for proving the case in court -- it wouldn't get tossed out. All they have to do is bring in your computer for evidence and have someone who knows what they are doing, go threw it, and records from your ISP provider. You'd be amazed at what people like, for example, the F.B.I. can do with computers, or even broken hard drives.


The reality of all this is far, far more against them. You can't jail everybody who breaks the law, even if just a tiny bit. And you can't fine them all, especially when so many are simply unemployed, and going to lose their job as unemployment climbs to 15% in the next few years. And even if some of those can afford to pay, the prosecution would be hard pressed to collect the money. And again, trying to jail them if they donmt' pay ... oh, we'll get new jobs, but it'll be officers to enforce & jail citizens who break this bullshit treaty.


In the end, the companies and studios should let the vast majority of it simply slide; they probably bring far more in sales and commercials during TV programs, than they lose. The only real people here who are criminals, are not the petty people who put excerpts up on YouTube from SNL or "Family Guy", or those who download a show to try it out, but rather those who download hundreds of songs, share them via file trading services, those who do the same with movies, and sell stuff illegally on the black market.

 

[TedShatner10]

The multinational corporations have shown ample demonstration of their arrogance and stupidity, why doubt that they're greedy and crazy enough to enforce this? And they're not fooling me when they still tightly own somebody's works many decades after his/her demise, demonstrating how abused and distorted beyond its original intentions copyright law has been.