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
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> “Don’t get me wrong, this is worrying, but the UK and EU would never agree to such a draconian Treaty.”
The UK? They’re the ones with cameras everywhere! I’m sure they’ll welcome it.
If this goes through mark my words: NO MORE YOUTUBE. They want to censor this 08′ election from the public. OBAMA is dominating the internet, they want control! They want to take our freedoms and institute their New World Order!
If this law is passed - bye bye Democracy, hello Facism 2.0.
http://www.civil-liberties.com/pages/prophesy.html
Stopping piracy is not the primary motivation behind this proposed treaty; that is merely a misdirection, a red herring.
The real reason for such a treaty is to control everything people think, say or do both online and offline.
Think of the worst aspects of 1984, Brazil, Minority Report and the Matrix, and you’ll realize why this must never see the light of day.
The bad thing about international treaties is that they override the U.S. constitution.
Fascism. Plain and simple.
Refuse! Resist!
“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.”
They can’t prosecute you for sharing files that are not illegal to share. If they are proposing that this will make it possible for authorities to prosecute people for sharing legal files then I don’t think this will make it. There crap laws proposed all the time that goes nowhere. The prehistoric music industry realizes that they’re going extinct so they’re lobbying for some stupid shit like this. I’m not worried about this since I highly doubt it’ll go anywhere.
Will China/Russia save free thought from the power controlling money hoarders/power controllers? Please just kill off our leaders, Please. They are the worthless filth of the world.
[quote]Will China/Russia save free thought from the power controlling money hoarders/power controllers? [/quote]
No. Russia is controlled by same multi-billionaires. (well not same ppl, but with same mindset)
This would be fantastic. The internet is overrated anyways. Everyone wants to stick their finger in someone else’s butthole but they don’t like their buttholes to get touched. I say cut off everyones fingers. Don’t be stingy with your butthole.
I violated ‘intellectual property rights’ at LEAST 24 times this week, Im to good to get caught and im not alone.
FCUK the ATCA!!
Amen ;)
Is kommunism really winning???
> “If this goes through mark my words: NO MORE YOUTUBE. They want to censor this 08′ election from the public. OBAMA is dominating the internet, they want control! They want to take our freedoms and institute their New World Order!”
Stop acting like Obama is anything new or different. He is the same as all the others, voting for him will not change anything.
> “Is kommunism really winning???”
This is capitalism, and it is unfortunately winning against the forces of freedom.
YOU DOWNLOAD TORRENT ILLEGAL
YOU GET BULLET TO HEAD
THIS WILL COME SOON
I WAIT FOR THIS
While I still have the right to freedom of speech.
This marks the begining of the end for freedom. It shows that democracy is no more. Welcome to the totalitarian dictatorship of America.
God help us all.
It’s really funny that people can say that the government is stupid to try to make such laws and treaties. Guys, what we are doing IS illegal. Don’t come and say that ripping movies and music, TV Shows, etc is legal. Ok it does some publicity, but it IS illegal, and it DOES cost some money to artists etc. Yes there are some nice people that buy most of the music they download, but come on, it is like one person on a million.
There is hope so long as the government has more (Wikki)leaks than an American vacationing in Tijuana who insists on drinking the local tap water!
@ 93
Stupid cunt, speak for yourself, do not use “WE” while exposing your mindless blabber. Advocating governments eh? Go f*ck yourself twat.
fellow ‘pirates’
A Lot of good ideas and passionate debate on this thread.
The establishment trade on FEAR. Politicians used to sell us dreams and now it’s nightmares, (poverty, extremism, terrorism, environmental catastrophe, space invaders etc) that way they keep us under manners and bog us down with ‘politricks’
But globalisation and the internet have presented us,(the masses),with the power to hit them where it hurts…As consumers we can bring the corporations to their knees.
For example lets say that we built, a networked community with the sole purpose of boycotting products, companies and even politicians and we decided to stop buying a particular brand for a month,(for whatever reason),it wouldn’t take long for that company to feel the pressure if the ‘community’ was 100 million strong.
I agree that we need a new kind of politics. Not Labour/Conservative, Democrat/Republican or even ‘Green’ as they all work for the interests of big corporations but a powerful force of our own to make genuine change happen.
The establishment only care about MONEY so we know their weakness all we need to do is exploit it.
A Revolution is necessary and it needs to be global. We must unite and REBEL TOGETHER otherwise our future, (under this continued oppression), will be bleak. Divide and Conquer is the oldest trick in the book and they have been playing it on us for centuries.
maybe the place to start this global paradigm shift could be a simple forum where we could lay down the foundations/manifesto and seed it from there?
This must be the web 2.0 that everyone is talking about…
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