Proposed Treaty Turns Internet Into a Virtual Police State
Written by Ben Jones on May 24, 2008Leaked documents are one of the banes of modern western politics. They reveal exercises and actions being proposed that are generally objectionable to the public. Such a leak occurred with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which seeks to turn the internet into a virtual police state.
Again, it’s one of the few bastions of anti-corruption, Wikileaks, that has spilled the beans on this unsavory topic. Yesterday the site revealed a document proposing a treaty that will significantly limit the privacy and rights of Internet users, to the benefit of multimillion dollar companies.
“ACTA” is basically an attempt to criminalize the Internet, thus allowing a virtual police state to occur by the selective prosecuting of crimes. In short, it’s an international treaty, or hopes to be, that will greatly increase already draconian copyright measures, in a poor attempt to appease the copyright and patent industries.
The proposal is based on the assumption that ‘intellectual property rights’ (a term used nine times on the first page of the proposal, and 24 times over the entire 3 ½ page document) trump personal privacy, data protection, probable cause, and lots of other important principles in western democracies.
The measure which has received wider publicity is the so-called ‘Pirate Bay killer’. At the end of page two, there is a list of things that should be included in a signee’s legal framework, and in the section about criminal sanctions it states “significant willful infringements without motivation for financial gain to such an extent as to prejudicially affect the copyright holder (e.g., Internet piracy)”. Think non-profit, personal use file-sharing.
Of course, this could go two ways, as the MPAA, for instance, has been guilty of ‘Internet piracy’ in the past, with it’s university toolkit.
Worst of all though, are the following two points speaking of “establishment and imposition of deterrent-level penalties” and “ex-officio authority to take action against infringers”. It is argued that the current level of penalties aren’t harsh enough (“people are still doing it, so they’re no deterrent”), so there should be room for harsher punishments. Combine this with the ability to prosecute without a rights holder complaint, which means that people could be liable for millions, or imprisoned (they are talking about CRIMINAL enforcement) for sharing Steal this Film, or Paulo Coelho’s books. So, these people actively want you to share would have no say in any such prosecution.
There are some other pure gems proposed, such as “ex officio authority for customs authorities to suspend import, export and trans-shipment of suspected IPR infringing goods”. Given that copyright law is so complex and convoluted, and that judges make mistakes in the cases they hear, this is worrying.
Unsurprisingly, the US patent office is backed up beyond belief and dominated by patent trolls that wait until a successful business is established, before pouncing to clean up. This would mean the death for any new and innovative products, or art. If that wasn’t bad enough, there is a further provision for rights holders to prod customs officials into suspension. Thus, a company can make an allegation, forcing a competitors products to be held in limbo until sorted.
Protest has been swift. TorrentFreak occasional contributor Jamie King wrote on his own blog: “In the form that it currently appears to exist, ACTA would ratchet-up further the rights of Hollywood and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) at the expense of all of our civil liberties. It provisions to criminalize information use practices currently allowed under U.S., European, and international law are completely disproportionate to the ‘problems’ it claims to address.”
Andrew Norton, chairman of the American Pirate Party was much less restrained: “The very existence of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) – be it in policy or just planning, sends one definite message to people around the world; Corruption is rife in the interested countries. There can be no other reason for yet another ‘intellectual property’ (itself a misnomer) law aimed at protecting business interests and expanding government intrusion into the private affairs of it’s citizens, in the name of ‘protection’.”
Of course, the other area most affected by this would be whistle-blower sites like Wikileaks itself. The owner of any leaked document can claim copyright infringement on its publication, and have it pulled. In this, ACTA is a very effective censorship tool. For some reason, though, this aspect has not been widely reported, or even mentioned.
Previously: Bell Opens Video Download Store, but Continues to Throttle BitTorrent
Next: BitTorrent Tracker Insider Infiltrates Anti-Piracy Lobby
140 Responses
Pages: « 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 » Show All
From now on I am using tor and tor only. So they can trying to spy on me noone know what I am doing online.
Please don’t use Tor. That is not what they system was made for.
Get relakks or something but don’t waste people’s bandwidth for your stupid bittorrent needs.
We can still get guns and defend ourselves. That will not be virtual like an intellectual property.
citizens freedom must not be in any circumstance questionable especially when it comes from minorities like NGO’s who have their own interest before anything else.
i wonder what their kids will do in tha world they try to create.
i really hope one of the democratic states will take action against these diseases that shameless attack masses of citizens, be that by harassing them with lawsuits or verbally aggression.
http://www.FreeTheScene.net
This is what I thought last time I heard of this type of insanity:-
I have a cruel streak and want to see this and all their other plans enacted.
Seriously, ISP’s attempt to filter everything, Internet slows down, Amazon, EBay, ITunes, all start to be crippled.
Then they start kicking people off the net, in their tens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands.
ISP’s start to fold as they go from thousands of customers to tens.
Basically my cruel side would like to see the RIAA and the MPAA get what they want, and then prove them wrong.
Sales still tank, and they fuck the Internet as well.
It’s funny that they think we need their internet. As if we can’t peer to peer share a new one.
We’ll mod out their DRM and wardrive our own underground internet. It’ll be spread out like a torrent swarm. Too numerous to take down. They’ll resort to attacking the electromagnetic spectrum it’s self. But we will shield our selves with faradays cages. Eventually they will mod the entire ionosphere to keep us under-control with ELF frequencies.
I will download one final torrent, carve the McDonalds logo into my chest, and kill my self.
Who, by name, are the individuals who are working on creating ACTA? Which companies, by name?
Only by “enforcing” individual responsibility can we hope to save ourselves from this without an actual war.
ok if you download something maybe we should pay for it… do’h! what am i saying their trying to screw us all. its time for a new revolution ppl i say we throw them all out and start anew….. after all we are the ones that put them in….
peace!!
1984
Suing for sharing free, independent works shall be possible without limits or interference by the owners? What the… is everyone now totally out of their mind!?!
And Wikileaks going down, I couldn’t imagine this… that would feel like a global nuke on people’s right to share and live like they want… (since the internet is now a vital part of many of us)
I got nothing else to say… I just can’t think of any more words to describe this terrible… ’stuff’…
@24, yeah that makes a LOT of sense. How many times do you think humanity would have to hit the proverbial reset button to realize its not the PRACTICES that “corrupt” life but our own NATURE. Apparently you got screwed out of the brain gene.
And this is disturbing, things like this seriously shouldn’t even be considered, lest not enough to have an official outline of a proposition. What I really want to know is who is pushing this through? I mean, really, there’s gotta be some MAFIAA-esque force behind this. Show me the money trail.
EU will never allow our rights to be violated this bad. Thank god I’m European…
Oh wait… I’m atheist.
ha ha ha.. another feable attempt to strike fear into the hearts of pirates and thinkers around the world. I’d LOVE to see them try and censor what we have build up as a community. It simply can’t happen at the rate we are growing in number.
For every security measure, there is an equal vulnerability.
For every mode of sensorship, there are cloaks to hide us.
For every country enforcing internet policia, there will be lawless havens in other countries.
If i could give you all one bit of advice.. don’t stop pirating. there simply arent enough jails to fit the entire internet community in. WE OUTNUMBER THEM.
Our name is legion… for we are many. Like the hydra, our heads will multiply against them.
I say we all move to the land of piracy and bootlegs (Russia) :p
@24
Ah, so with the economic collapse that would come if even 1/2 the workers of the world did what you said, there would be no money for police or firefighters, leaving open many ripe opportunities for more violent forms of criminals to forcefully take control of areas and use intimidation to create even worse life styles for the people they conquer as the entire network that created the internet breaks down.
there are consequences for actions. Think that through before proposing something THAT radical. Collapse of governments leads to violent anarchy, look at what happened when we invaded Iraq. Idealistic-anarchy is not a natural state for humans. Nor is communism. So deal with what we are.
I actually hope it does go through as I’m totally fucking bored here. With any luck it would help spice things up a bit, ya know, make things slightly challenging at least…
@32/36 Cassy/EpochOne
The actual wikileaks page lists a number of names openly supporting (helping to create) this. It even has a section titled “Who is really behind ACTA?” which details to some degree some of the money behind one of the people pushing it. Just look deeper…
Just a minute folks while I load my gun, cos the only thing that those proposing this deserve is a bullet between the eyes. And God damn them all too.
I have to admit something - I’m scared for the future of humanity. This isn’t just a buzz-phrase to make me seem funny on the internet, it’s truly how I feel. I am literally FRIGHTENED.
“Wake up and Quit” is right. I actually have already quit my job. I quit a few years ago. I broke as fuck but I reassure myself that it’s the right thing to do. How can we continue to feed this beast? Once you realize what I have realized, it should make you sick to your stomach. Go watch Mario SAvio’s 1963 speech. He was right all along.
“Andrew Norton, chairman of the American Pirate Party”
Dude, if you’re reading this, we need to gather people in the U.S for such a rally also, and fast. We also need this to be co-ordinated with the other PP groups the world over. I don’t want the peoples internet to be destroyed. This will be the end of the internet as we know it, if it goes through.
3 references to this post
Pages: « 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 » Show All
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.