Selasa, 24 Januari 2012

If You Thought SOPA Was Bad, Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA !!!



When sites like Wikipedia and Reddit banded together for a major blackout January 18th, the impact was felt all the way to Washington D.C. The blackout had lawmakers running from the controversial anti-piracy legislation, SOPA and PIPA, which critics said threatened freedom of speech online.
Unfortunately for free-speech advocates, censorship is still a serious threat.
Few people have heard of ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but the provisions in the agreement are just as pernicious as anything we saw in SOPA. Worse, the agreement spans virtually all of the countries in the developed world, including all of the EU, the United States, Switzerland and Japan.
Many of these countries have already signed or ratified it, and the cogs are still turning. The treaty has been secretly negotiated behind the scenes, with unelected bureaucrats working closely with entertainment industry lobbyists to craft the provisions in the treaty. The Bush administration started the process, but the Obama administration has aggressively pursued it.
Indeed, we’ve already signed on to the treaty. All it needs now is Senate ratification. The time to stop the treaty is now, and we may need a second global internet blackout to call attention to it.
Here’s a quick video primer:
ACTA bypasses the sovereign laws of participating nations, forcing ISP’s across the globe to adopt these draconian measures.
Worse, it goes much further than the internet, cracking down on generic drugs and making food patents even more radical than they are by enforcing a global standard on seed patents that threatens local farmers and food independence across the developed world.
Despite ACTA’s secrecy, criticism of the agreement has been widespread. Countries like India and Brazil have been vocal opponents of the agreement, claiming that it will do a great deal of harm to emerging economies.
I’ll have more on the agreement as it emerges. But to briefly sum up, ACTA contains global IP provisions as restrictive or worse than anything contained in SOPA and PIPA.
  • ACTA spans virtually all of the developed world, threatening the freedom of the internet as well as access to medication and food. The threat is every bit as real for those countries not involved in the process as the signatories themselves.
  • ACTA has already been signed by many countries including the US, but requires ratification in the EU parliament and the US Senate.
  • The entire monstrosity has been negotiated behind closed doors and kept secret from the public. Technocrats, beholden to the deep pockets of the entertainment lobby, have masked the agreement behind the misnomer of “anti-counterfeiting” when in fact it goes much, much further.
If you thought SOPA would break the internet, ACTA is much worse. And it could become law across the global economy without so much as a murmur of opposition. Read More

What is ACTA?

See the most worrying provisions under discussions and the three core reasons for rejecting ACTA.

Links on ACTA

Quotes on ACTA

Privacy and data protection

Intellectual property must be protected, but it should not be placed above individuals' rights to privacy and data protection.
Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), issued a report on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), claiming that it could prove unworkable under current European Union data protection laws.

Democracy and transparency

ACTA is legislation laundering on an international level of what would be very difficult to get through most Parliaments
Stravros Lambrinidis, Member of European Parliament, S and D, Greece
The European Parliament has had no representation in ACTA negotiations. Just accepting or rejecting an agreement is not an exercise of democracy as under the Lisbon Treaty.
Zuzana Roithova, Member of European Parliament, EPP, Czech Republic

Freedom of expression

It is extremely regrettable that democratic debate has been eliminated from talks that could have a major impact on such a fundamental freedom as free expression.
Reporters without Borders, European Parliament Sakharov Prize Winners

Internet service providers liability

Any measures concerning people's right to go online need to be brought in through the proper democratic channels, not via self-regulation, and made into EU law
Andrea D?Incecco, public affairs manager from EuroISPA (Business association of European Internet Service Providers)
ACTA, by putting pressure on Internet service providers opens the door to private 'three strikes' approaches and generalized surveillance of the Net.
Françoise Castex, Member of European Parliament, S and D, France.
Third party liability for Internet Server Providers is like making the post office responsible for what is inside the letters they send.
Alexander Alvaro, Member of European Parliament, ALDE, Germany.

Access to medicine

We can only assume that the final text could do great harm in developing countries and undermine the balance between the protection of intellectual property and the need to provide affordable medicines for poor people.
Rohit Malpani, OXFAM, from a press release criticising possible impact of ACTA.
We are in danger of ending up with the worst of both worlds, pushing IP rules, which are very effective at stopping access to life-saving drugs but are very bad at stopping or preventing fake drugs.
Michelle Childs of Médecins Sans Frontières, Nobel Peace Prize winners, has issued a very critical statement on ACTA.

Essential readings

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