[FoRK] Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Michael Cummins michael at i-magery.com
Wed Nov 4 09:23:32 PST 2009


I read this on Boing Boing today:  

 

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http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html 

 

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.

 

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret
copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due
to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says: 

 

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed
material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr
or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the
mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any
hope of profitability. 

 

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright
infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be
denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health
information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living
-- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a
trial or counsel. 

 

* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that
require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without
evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in
the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring
material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright. 

 

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful
purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival
preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with
DRM)

------------------------------------------------------------

 

According to Wikipedia, the ACTA begins its 6th round of negotiation today
in Seoul.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

 

I imagine we'll be hearing more about this in the days to come.

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