Oddly I seem to read somewhere ACTA passed. ACTA is practically the same as SOPA, anyone know anything about this? Edit: Someone sent me this https://www.facebook.com/events/238684302878490/ And it's around the net too.
sopa, pipa, acta, what next.. okay. i am a little late to the party.. i always used to laugh at the pathetic efforts of the content industry to MAKE EVEN MORE MONEY...using their age-old thickheaded business model, unhindered by any innovation. stupid, of course, but that is with the doubtfull benefit of hindsight.. last week i began to get worried, over the sopa issue. reading up on it i have since found out about acta, and the eu idea of the right to be forgotten. and i saw mu closed down, and other sites self-censoring. these pathetic efforts are pathetic no longer.. undemocratic, yes. [acta was concocted behind closed doors, for example,] pathetic no, alas.. a temporary succes against just one of these efforts will not protect us against a flood of such legislation coming our way, i feel. for they will keep on coming. and you just can`t win them all, now can you? losing even one may be the end of the road.. so i think opposing every drop of this flood as it is let lose on us, just as they come along, is a losing battle, and not worth the [massive!] effort required.. something else is needed. in the 17th century, international law was accepted, that sovereign states had to keep their hands off ships sailing in international waters, under another flag then their own. perhaps now is the time to agree that sovereign states have got to keep their hands off servers on the www that do not reside in their territory? just wonder what you think..
I don't like this sopa/pipa/etc...stuff. In my opinion it is simple: you put your stuff on the internet => free stuff.
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate By Timothy B. Lee Over the vocal protests of opponents, 22 European nations signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on Thursday. A statement by the Japanese foreign ministry, which hosted the signing ceremony, indicated that the remaining EU member states were expected to sign the agreement "on the completion of respective domestic procedures." The United States, Canada, Japan, and several other nations signed the agreement in October. The move sparked protests in Europe. Thousands of Poles took to the streets in protest, and more than a dozen members of the Polish parliament donned Guy Fawkes masks to express their displeasure at the signing. Kader Arif, a French member of the European Parliament from the Socialist Party, had been assigned to be a rapporteur on ACTA, meaning that he was asked to study the issue and deliver a report on the subject. But he resigned in protest on Thursday. ”I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement," he said, according to one translation. "No inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.” He denounced "never-before-seen maneuvers from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted. I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade." The United States signed onto the agreement in October. Ordinarily, treaties need to be submitted to the US Senate for ratification, but the Obama administration has adopted the novel (and, some have argued, constitutionally dubious) approach of declaring ACTA an "executive agreement" that can be adopted unilaterally by the executive branch, as it ostensibly does not alter existing US law. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) raised concerns about the constitutionality of this tactic back in October. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) joined the chorus of criticism this week when he called ACTA "more dangerous than SOPA" at a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "It’s not coming to me for a vote," he said. "It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it." The version of ACTA that ultimately got adopted is not nearly as bad is it could have been, though serious flaws remain. But regardless of the merits of the treaty itself, the non-transparent process by which ACTA has been pushed through the US and European political systems remains hard to defend. Photograph by Alexey Sidorenko Source
still wide awake, aint you, r29k? read about this Kader Arif person this afternoon.. it will not further his political career, i found myself thinking. but it was a good thing he did..he earned my respect by bringing it out in the open. from the inside out.. but i still find myself wondering, why our posts about restrictions imposed by sovereign states upon the www are spread here over so many threads.. so many people here offered valuable opinions, gorski, hannibal lecter, acrsn, redroad, to name just a few, [no i don`t worship the admin gods on a daily basis, ancestor [v], sorry] but unless we find a common thread, they fail to communicate amongst themselves..missed chance i think.. regards, nodnar
i suspect it is being shoved down the other end but a whole new forum is an idea, except that we would never all meet there, and a forum tends to cost like hell.. and i would be very much surprised if such a forum were not in place already..
Would be nice if Chit Chat could have a sub section where all the serious discussions are put so it would be quick to access. Similar to how you have Application Software and then Microsoft Office sub section.
thanks for picking this up. in a proactive way, on your own initiative, makes a man feel at home here..
I don't phear SOPA as much, I find ACTA ratification much more dangerous, end of personal freedom as it was known till today, not only on internee.
All anti this and that is driven by profit loss. It is the Haves that are intent on keeping the Have Nots in subjugation. Without all their monies, there is no rule/control. They need this money/power to further rape/pillage/plunder the world village. Without it, they are only Human (equal to all) and this they cannot abide. Gotta get some rest; I'm starting to get on my own nerves.
It's tricky to give a single, universally valid, silver-bullet kinda answer to these complex questions... Internet is a tool that can enable but also potentially harm. It can help harm individuals/groups/Govs by other individuals/groups/Govs. Everybody can potentially be harmed by everybody else. We better remember that before any and all actions we take, since living in a Human society doesn't just mean protecting oneself from the other but also protecting the other from oneself!!! Whether legally or morally, there is no single principle from which to operate in "intellectual property rights" debate, to my mind. I will try to give a few simple examples (and it is always best to demonstrate one's stance on an example), without the jargon of my profession... For instance, I am (among other things) a musician/songwriter. Anyone who ever tried doing anything creative knows just how hard it is, firstly to do something original, secondly to protect one's idea(s) and then get published/"place" one's creation, so it sees the light of day - but in such a way so that you can make a decent living, in order to be able to continue making new stuff, like any baker/blacksmith/farmer/etc... Would I like to see my newly formed band's efforts "pirated" everywhere, so no one buys our songs/CDs, our contract is not renewed, the company that invested in us would have to fold etc.? I think no one would, if they thought about it just a little bit. On the other hand, Sting has tens upon tens of millions in the bank, alone. His accountant stole some 5 or so millions from him without being noticed etc. Sting even kinda bragged about not noticing... To move the game one notch higher: would I even blink if somebody didn't pay for m$'s OS, after they stole lots of other people's ideas, without paying or even acknowledging those guys or asking them to come on-board and help steer Win platform forward, as its stakeholders...??? And especially after all the blue-screens-of-death (Win95, 98, ME etc.) s**te they subjected us to, "earned" so many billions, have a monopolist position in the market and are forcing so many people to buy their SW? Of course not! They will still earn loadsa money, even if many people do not pay for it. Because most people in the wider (non-industrialised) world simply can't pay for it... Another set of issues is stemming from the fact that internet was invented by public, taxpayers' money - but then given away to various corporations, for exploitation of the very same taxpayers, to profit from it pretty well... The state did it. The same state that ordered those corporations now to spy on us (for them), frequently without any proper checks and balances, like in the US, frequently with co-operation of other Govs, eroding the so called negative freedoms we fought so hard to get and value as the minimum without which a free society is not a free society (freedom from state/private corporations intrusion into our privacy, like the sanctity of our homes, private correspondence etc. etc.). In fact, we see more and more insidious ways of intruding into our private and even intimate lives, using the internet. Those ways are open primarily to the state, its agencies and corporations, including these little pearls: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ Find much more here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/ To my mind, these are much more pressing issues to legislate upon and carefully so but... This is but to touch on a few of those issues, underlying the debate, setting it in its wider context, where the fate of much more than internet is being decided, as we fight for our very own souls, for our identity, who we are, what our core values are, what various norms of behaviour ought to be like, in a civilised, free society... So..... My answer for such a complex question would be to have different measures for different phenomena. My criteria would be based on universalisable (to the best of my abilities) principles of behaviour which would not be seriously harmful to the individuals, groups or humanity as a whole. Such actions ("pirating" a piece of SW, for instance) would be OK in my eyes, if and only if those that use the internet to get some well-selling, to them necessary (let's say an OS, security or burning) SW, from a really well established, greatly prospering corporation/company, would be enabled to set themselves up as a student or any kind of contributor to the society, in a variety of ways. Eventually, once feeling respected, recognised and included, such people/groups or even companies would start paying for such a SW and returning back to the society. Starting, struggling artists and similar creative guys, whose stuff we can get from the net for free - I would NOT "pirate"... I might try something out, test it and then buy it, if I think it's really as good as stated. But not purposefully "pirate" them... Established multi-millionaires, however, to my mind, are not exactly harmed by such actions, especially if one is unemployed or a part-timer, student etc. - i.e. short of cash, not living such a great quality of life etc. Neither are the companies who publish their stuff (say, in music industry) seriously harmed, since they earn even more from their work and they have many more artists to exploit... So, if I ever get to a position where I would be a multi-millionaire and my publishing/record company also earned many millions from my "intellectual property" - I would not embarrass myself, like Metallica did, by suing kids, in order to get even more millions... If I were m$ I would not exactly try to sue people in poor countries for "copyright infringements" or try to influence my Gov to pursue a foreign Gov, whose citizens are piss poor... Moreover, speaking on the subject of all kinds of "intellectual property issues", if I were EU/US I would share "clean technology" with Chinas and Indias of this world, doing the manufacturing for all of us, since they are polluting for all of us, in so doing, too... Scales are different, issues are different, poverty and entrenched, established interests are hardly understanding/trusting of each other and rich can barely start to understand the poor - and these are the issues at the core of this. If you are EU/US and you are throwing enormous amounts of food a day, while so many (in EU/US or elsewhere in the world) are starving - what is the right course of action? Telling them they can have it if they have money to pay? In other words, the world is full of inequities of all sorts. And injustice must be resisted! That is how Modernity started, in the first place! That is how Modernity must be maintained and improved upon, too!!! I would remind Americans, for instance, they stood up for their rights, against injustice and oppression - their own Gov at the time - to liberate themselves (of GB). That was in spite of all the "positive laws" of their time. They relied upon their conscience. If it was good for them, at the dawn of Modernity, why wouldn't it be good for us, their kids, as Modern as we are?!? If it was good for Americans then, why not for Americans today? Or anybody in the world, for that matter? Similarly, one must assume that one's conscience is a good place to start fighting injustice of any kind. We must claim that foundation for our actions, once again, even if what we are doing, at times, is illegal, provided our conscience finds that the actions of any Gov (throw "corporations" in that bundle, too - it's rather necessary!) are illegitimate. And we all know that various "acts", rushed through various assemblies around the globe, under pressure from nasty events, not properly debated etc. - really tipped the balance towards Govs and against us, ordinary citizens!!! Such laws, then, were used and abused in all manner of situations that were not envisaged by those laws, in the context that was not warranted by those laws, violating the very spirit of such a law but following it to the letter.... US today is not such a good influence in the world, sadly. In the EU we see similar forces trying to move things away from Social Democracy and more into the Neo-con/Neo-lib, confrontational paradigm, which favours Govs and big business/corporations against its citizens. These processes and institutions, organisations and groups must be resisted, as they are a step back, if not quite a few steps back!!! Ernst Bloch's "Human Dignity and Natural Right" is paradigmatic in this sense, if anyone is interested... P.S. This is not a pre-amble for sociopaths of any sort, since they have no conscience!