US And Europe Move On To TAFTA: Yet Another Chance To Push Through ACTA/SOPA Style IP Maximalism
from the it-never-ends dept
ACTA and SOPA may have flopped, but minor setbacks like that won't stop the onslaught of abuses from the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries looking to use the international treaty process to try to pressure everyone to keep ratcheting up protectionist laws concerning copyright, patents and trademarks. Obviously, we've been talking about the still worrisome TPP agreement involving a bunch of Pacific Rim countries, but it's not stopping there. Back in October, we warned that the US and EU were preparing a new trade agreement as well, and the preliminary plans noted that it would include a "high level of intellectual property protection, including enforcement."More details are starting to come out as the main EU negotiator for ACTA, Karel de Gucht, came to DC to see about getting things kicked off, on an agreement that's being called TAFTA -- the Trans Atlantic "Free Trade" Agreement. Of course, instead of recognizing the lessons from previous failed efforts to push for broken maximalist policies, it appears that the plan is to try, try again. Some are already saying that this is "the opportunity to try to set the gold standard" in copyright, patent and trademark protection. The goal, as with ACTA and TPP is to ratchet up the laws, and then put tons of pressure on China and India to "respect" those laws. To put it mildly: this is stupid. Both of those countries recognize how protectionism works. We've already seen that China is becoming exceptionally good at using patent laws to basically punish foreign companies, while helping domestic Chinese companies. It seems downright idiotic to provide them with even more tools to do so.
Of course, the real questions are why do we keep letting our governments negotiate these kinds of deals, and why do we let them do so in secret?
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Filed Under: acta, copyright, europe, free trade agreements, international agreements, ip, sopa, tafta, treaties, us
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Executive pushes for international agreements then comes back to the Congress/Senate and say "See? We are bound by those agreements, we must adjust our domestic laws to fit them as every other nation will do it". Never thought of it this way. Scary.
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Why should they care about being called out about it? Anyone who could stop them is already on their payroll.
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the only good part would have been he would be a first term president so he would have to move under cover to try for a second....
Need a none of the above vote
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How do you know? The point is that Obama was a known factor. Those who voted for him also voted for his existing policies, including his policies on copyright.
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Yes, the internet no longer being a lawless Wild West. Everyone knew it was inevitable, but now we're subject to daily whining about it here on Techdirt.
And if you reply to this, you should mention that you've admitted to being a pirate.
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Second, there is a great deal of respected historical research on this topic, and it's pretty well established that with the exception of a literally one or two places, the "lawless wild west" in the sense most people think of it (thanks to TV and movies) never actually existed. By all measures (crime rates, etc.), the "wild west" was about as lawless as the modern west is.
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But yes, it is true. The internet never has been a lawless "Wild West" and the Wild West itself wasn't a "lawless" place.
Part of the reason, and I've researched this before, is that the Wild West era took place immediately after the Civil War. So what you had were vast numbers of people who had seen the most vicious war fought within this country ever, all of whom survived and quite readily knew how to take care of themselves and survive. Meaning, even if law enforcement couldn't solve a case or catch a criminal, you can be damn sure the average joe could, and as such crime became much riskier due to the fact that the person you were committing a crime against literally was in no mood for your bullshit and wasn't going to stand idly by and let you get away with it. In point of fact, if anything, the Wild West was actually a much more civilized time for this very reason. People respected the rule of law, and with the exception of a handful of individuals and towns, the majority of the Wild West was actually a decent place to live, with people helping one another as they could and prospects in general looking good (at least when put in perspective of "Holy shit! We just fought a war amongst ourselves!).
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Executive pushes for international agreements then comes back to the Congress/Senate and say "See? We are bound by those agreements, we must adjust our domestic laws to fit them as every other nation will do it". Never thought of it this way. Scary."
Took you that long to figure it out? That's how we got the DCMA.
International trade agreements are a wonderful way for industries to protect their pet laws from dreadful diseases like that nasty vox populi that killed SOPA.
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My pitchfork is in need of servicing and my torch is beginning to burn out. I cannot even fathom a guess at the number of calls and letters I have written on various pieces of legislation.
Not to mention I am fairly certain that its all part of their plan to wear us down to this point until we simply quit fighting.
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I'm still looking forward to a return to the premise of science and useful arts which somehow got mangled into profit and old farts.
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To change analogies a little, when a weed grows in your garden, cutting off the visible part does no good. Unless you pull it up by the root, it will grow back, again and again. And the root of this neverending parade of copyright abuse proposals is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Everything that's evil and offensive in SOPA and ACTA and the TPP already exists in the DMCA, just at a smaller scale. And until we pull up the root and kill it, the weeds will keep growing back.
If we're going to accomplish anything meaningful, the first thing to be done is to repeal and reverse the DMCA. No more DMCA takedowns on accusation alone with no evidence and no due process. No more legal protection for hacking other people's computers and calling it DRM. And no more foundation upon which to build greater abuses in the future.
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I still believe that the general strike is among the few effective weapons. It's very well understood and it works well enough that it's met with paramilitary force every time it's tried.
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Just once I'd like to hear that one of these free trade agreements actually include something about free trade.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go brush my teeth...
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would be a change to NOT include something that was going to benefit the US entertainment industries without screwing the people over at the same time, just to stop those industries from joining the world in the digital age
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For example: "free-trade" becomes "mercantilist bullshit".
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I want my viewpoint to be challenged, not reinforced! If you're going to take the time to go to this site, skim headlines, and post disparaging remarks, put some freakin' effort into it!
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Oh how I wish we had OotB back! That guy delivered quality incoherent rage soaped in insanity.
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The problem is that you don't want them to do it privately either.
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Protectionism works against free trade.
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This, quite simply, won't work.
China already manufactures the vast majority of electronic devices for the entire world. How are you going to pressure the guy that builds your everything? Ah, maybe you'll use your mighty industrial infrastructure. Oh wait, your mighty industrial infrastructure was exported to China too. Because the labour is cheaper and the laws are laxer.
Face it, China has the world by the balls, and a toothless piece of paper won't change anything until people actually start moving away from them.
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I suppose you could say the real goal is to ratchet up their own laws, but US law enforcement hardly needs legal justification to act.
Perhaps the people who wrote ACTA/TPP/etc. are chuffed that the public rose up against them, and are determined to prove they aren't beholden to the proletariat? There's doubtless some irrational reason behind their irrational behavior...
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I think it's fairly unlikely that China would subscribe to strong scarce-IP culture, unless there were something else the rest of the world might have to offer China, that China doesn't already have, on China's own terms. Something on the order of the Louisiana Purchase.
But, the bottom line raison d'etre of modern economics, protecting the purchasing power of incumbent creditors as informed by the "3% annual growth, forever" evangelists, would be met even if only the smaller but important economies (Australia, Japan, Korea, Egypt, Norway) joined up in strong scarce-IP culture.
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motivation
A related question: How many of the backers of ACTA/SOPA did we actually vote out of office?
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Everybody's got one.
The Internet's whack-a-mole is overreaching copyright trade agreements like SOPA/PIPA/TPP et al.
Everybody's got a whack-a-mole I guess...
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The internet's whack-a-mole is trying to prevent the widespread societal damage being caused by the "content industry"'s whack-a-mole game.
In other words, the "content industry" is engaging in a completely optional and self-proclaimed war. The internet is trying to prevent it (and everyone else) from being collateral damage in that madness.
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And yeah, the Internet's war is a war of self-defense (more or less).
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TAFTA
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Data sticks in 10-12 years will be in the quad (q-byte) range, making the distribution of all music and video from the past a simple thing. Bit torrent is implementing a distributed private network system that you need to be invited into. Add encryption on top of that and you have private interlinked darknets galore. All this leads to the obvious conclusion that any RIAA or MPAA based laws will be ineffectual and impossible to enforce.
All in all, it doesn't matter if they get one, or even all of these treaties enacted. Advances in technology will cause them to fail horribly.
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De Gucht
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