And, Of Course, ACTA Leaks: Some Good, Plenty Of Bad

from the this-is-not-a-good-idea dept

Tue, Sep 7th 2010 2:53am — Mike Masnick

I imagine it will come as little surprise to anyone, but over the weekend, the latest draft of ACTA leaked. You can read it in wiki format over here. While it is "cleaned up" a lot from the last version, and appears close to being done, there are still some pretty big areas of disagreement. Specifically, the EU is still holding out for ACTA to cover patents as well as copyrights and trademarks, while the US doesn't want patents included for a variety of reasons. Also, as expected, the US has dropped explicit secondary liability language, but includes plenty of other vague language about anti-circumvention and "cooperative efforts within the business community," that you should be worried about. The "cooperative efforts" is code words for "ISPs should become entertainment industry cops." It's not direct secondary liability, but there's enough wiggle room there that it won't take long for the entertainment industry and its "friends" to start pointing out that ISPs that don't kick people off the internet, or don't hand over names of people, aren't making those "cooperative efforts." Just wait and see. In the meantime, considering the amount of research that has come out this year alone suggesting that neither counterfeiting nor copyright infringement are the big problems they're made out to be, why hasn't anyone asked the participating countries to explain why ACTA is needed in the face of this new evidence?

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Filed Under: acta, anti-circumvention, copyright, eu, leak, secondary liability, us

7 Comments

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Blatant Coward (profile), 7 Sep 2010 @ 3:39am

Because the whole point is to stop children from counterfeiting porn! Duuuuh!
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2010 @ 4:17am

I'm glad at least someone is thinking of the children.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2010 @ 4:26am

Good
ACTA can't finish fast enough. Anyone who makes content covered by it really doesn't care about our culture anyway. And the faster it comes out and starts making life miserable for those who made it possible by seeing Avatar 80+ times, the sooner people will start to fight back against it when their fan forums get shut down.
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Nick Coghlan, 7 Sep 2010 @ 4:41am

Asking government why ACTA is needed
I actually just wrote to my local member over here in Australia to ask basically that question (pointing to your two summary articles rather than trying to explain the whole deal myself).

I doubt I'll get anything more useful back than a meaningless form letter, but who knows, she may surprise me. If I get a useful response back, I'll pass it on.
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Comboman, 7 Sep 2010 @ 5:28am

Anti-circumvention
What's just as significant in this new leak is that the US is still pushing for anti-circumvention to include cases that do not involve infringement (which seems to directly contradict the recent ruling of the 5th circuit court of appeals).
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2010 @ 5:56am

just the other day I saw an article about how treaties are good and all. I think it was on CNN. They also mentioned how judges are instructed to to rule in accord to international treaties that are the de facto law of the land, the treaty in question? Human Rights.

The government is using treaties to bypass congress.

ACTA is not target at pirates, is target at competitors. Pirates have nothing to fear from ACTA although it says is about them, even the police may infringe the law with ACTA.

Maybe it is the best law ever, because it will expose those countries to such an extent that in the future they will have to reconsider their positions, when everyone is laughing at them and can't do nothing to stop others and facing fierce competition from other countries that have more man power they they have combined.

Another trillion dollars will be expent on useless enforcement of out of control behavior.
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Greevar (profile), 7 Sep 2010 @ 6:10am

Copyright is become more like censorship
They're scared to death that people are realizing how irrelevant the publishers and gatekeepers are. They're so scared that they're trying to pass this boondoggle of a treaty that screams of desperation. They're scared because without copyright in the first place, the publishers would never have been able to make any money the way they do, because their business model is fundamentally flawed. This is what you get when those that have become accustomed to power face the possibility of loosing it. To quote Super Troopers: "Desperation is a stinky cologne!" And the odor is starting to spread.
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