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Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.
boingboing ^ | November 3, 2009 | Cory Doctorow

Posted on 11/04/2009 9:35:36 AM PST by antiRepublicrat

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)


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: achillwind; constitution; copyright; copyrightlaw; eussr; privacyrights; treaty
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To: The_Reader_David
I have come to the conclusion that intellectual property law is so corrupt that ‘piracy’ is almost a justifiable act of civil disobedience.

With the new "take from the rich, and give to the poor" method of the Obama Administration, shouldn't we be copying everything we can, and redistributing it, as well?

61 posted on 11/04/2009 10:40:08 AM PST by UCANSEE2
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To: dangerdoc

If I own the materil, is it required that I put DRM on it?


62 posted on 11/04/2009 10:41:08 AM PST by TBP (Obama lies, Granny dies.)
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To: twigs
It also went on in the Clinton administration.

That was the DMCA and the CTEA, a.k.a, "Mickey Mouse Copyright Protection Act" (Mickey's earliest work was about to go into the public domain, so they extended copyright ostensibly to comply with another treaty).

63 posted on 11/04/2009 10:41:53 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: RobRoy

The internet killed Gore, Kerry and Dan Rather. It is killing, as I type this, Gore and Obama. They must stop the free flow of ideas and speech or become obsolete.

“Their strength used to be in an impenetrably huge bureaucracy, against which the average citizen - or even citizen group - was no match. The internet changed all that, and gave us the power we had when government was small.

They must stop the free flow of ideas and speech or be obliterated by truth. They are in a fight for their lives. What they don’t know is a lot of other people feel that way too, which is why there are ammo shortages.”

This was how the Church reacted to the printing press in the 1400’s....how the European Monarch’s reacted to the telephone in the 1890’s and early 1900’s....and now maybe...the internet will be the death of the welfare state?.....


64 posted on 11/04/2009 10:47:06 AM PST by mo
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To: Danae
How does THIS get stopped?

The only way it can be stopped is to convince the Senate not to approve the treaty.

65 posted on 11/04/2009 10:52:00 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: TBP

no


66 posted on 11/04/2009 10:53:43 AM PST by dangerdoc
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To: mlmr

Perhaps the solution will be to just overwhelm the system with copy write infractions. Potentially bog down the courts for centuries.


67 posted on 11/04/2009 11:01:24 AM PST by 1776 Reborn
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To: Nachum

Thank you say I think this is a film you might be interested in watching.

http://bluelori.blogspot.com/2009/10/capitalist-conspiracy-inside-view-of.html

Oh and more on ACTA

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/04/more-on-secret-copyr.html


68 posted on 11/04/2009 11:07:03 AM PST by FromLori (FromLori)
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To: edcoil

copyright bump


69 posted on 11/04/2009 11:12:29 AM PST by Taffini ( Mr. Pippen and Mr. Waffles do not approve)
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To: antiRepublicrat

I believe it was more than that. It was secret and got a lot of frantic emails going to kill it. Mid 1997s. Deliberations were in Europe.


70 posted on 11/04/2009 11:26:52 AM PST by twigs
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To: FromLori
Good stuff fromLori

I think I may have seen the film, but I am watching it again.

Thanks.

71 posted on 11/04/2009 11:40:23 AM PST by Nachum (The complete Obama list at www.nachumlist.com)
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To: twigs
I believe it was more than that. It was secret and got a lot of frantic emails going to kill it. Mid 1997s. Deliberations were in Europe.

That was probably the 1996 WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act, ostensibly the reason for the DMCA and CTEA. It followed the same unconstitutional pattern.

72 posted on 11/04/2009 1:21:00 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: UCANSEE2

But you don’t get it: The Obama administration’s method isn’t take from the rich and give to the poor. It’s take from the productive and give to the unproductive. Defending those whose only contribution to the arts and sciences is making copies of what others have created and then charging people for the right to use it fits perfectly well with the Obama program.

Scientists make new discoveries, write them up, then commercial publishers charge their universities for copies of the paper and will sue if one of their colleagues prints a dozen to hand out to his class. Henry Holt & Co. stops Robert Frost’s 1928 poem “Fire and Ice” from being used as song lyrics in the U.S., even though Frost died in 1968. And record companies who will sue file sharers at the drop of a hat have to be sued by the artists who actually produce their content to get them to pay the royalties the actual artists are due.

Ayn Rand’s ideas are generally almost as toxic and anti-human as those of the left, but she correctly predicted the real dichotomy that collectivism tries to “fix” by force: between producers and non-producers, not between rich and poor.


73 posted on 11/04/2009 4:14:55 PM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: longtermmemmory; antiRepublicrat
Kissinger said you can bypass the constitution via the use of treaties.

Kissinger is not a lawyer, nor even an expert on US Constitutional Law. If he said it, he was mistaken. Numerous of the Founders including Madison and Jefferson commented on the meaning of the Supremacy Clause as it relates to treaties, and the Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions. The existing precedent is essentially that Treaties have the same standing as Federal Law: they are subservient to the Constitution.

The most recent precedent, by a pretty liberal court in 1957 was established in Reid v. Covert. Among many things written there which demolish the claim that a treaty overrides the Constitution, the Court wrote:

"This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty."

74 posted on 11/04/2009 4:38:23 PM PST by FredZarguna (It looks just like a Telefunken U-47. In leather.)
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To: bvw

Thanks for the ping!


75 posted on 11/04/2009 8:52:28 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: antiRepublicrat

Yes, I’m sure that was it.


76 posted on 11/06/2009 8:03:14 AM PST by twigs
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To: RayTheSpook

Onion routed no ISP wimax mesh networks for the win.


77 posted on 11/08/2009 11:22:01 PM PST by Soothesayer9
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To: antiRepublicrat
A little more has come out:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4575/125/

The European Commission analysis of ACTA's Internet chapter has leaked, indicating that the U.S. is seeking to push laws that extend beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and beyond current European Union law (the EC posted the existence of the document last week but refused to make it publicly available). The document contains detailed comments on the U.S. proposal, confirming the U.S. desire to promote a three-strikes and you're out policy, a Global DMCA, harmonized contributory copyright infringement rules, and the establishment of an international notice-and-takedown policy.

Leaked document - get it while it's still available.

That article is from a Canadian viewpoint, but it's pretty damning of what Obama's administration is pushing.

It's scary to think how easy things like this could be used to take a site like Free Republic offline. All of the images, videos, etc., that get posted here could be easily used to not only harm Free Republic, but to go after freepers.
78 posted on 12/01/2009 5:50:46 AM PST by af_vet_rr
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To: antiRepublicrat

I can remember back a little over a year ago when New World Order, One World Government threads were deemed to be tinfoil hat.

Obama is just pushing it along. Copenhagen will be another meeting to sellout the US.

Not so tinfoil hat anymore as we watch it happening.


79 posted on 12/01/2009 5:56:23 AM PST by dforest (Who is the real Jim Thompson? I am.)
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To: af_vet_rr

I think that needs its own post. Ping me when you do it and I’ll send it out to the list.


80 posted on 12/01/2009 8:43:39 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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