ACTA (Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement): NAFTA would be proud

[Nitroadict]

It looks like we’ve been having too much freedom on the internet, time to regulate it all:

[ the following is from: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_multi-lateral_intellectual_property_trade_agreement_(2007); this has more detailed information & links ]

In 2007 a select handful of the wealthiest countries began a treaty-making process to create a new global standard for intellectual property rights enforcement, which was called, in a piece of brilliant marketing, the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” (the agreement does not cover currency fraud).

ACTA is spearheaded by the United States along with the European Commission, Japan, and Switzerland — which have large intellectual property industries. Other countries invited to participate in ACTA’s negotiation process are Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand. Noticeably absent from ACTA’s negotiations are leaders from developing countries who hold national policy priorities that differ from the international intellectual property industry.

[ the following is from: http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=ae997868-220b-4dae-bf4f-47f6fc96ce5e ; more general synopsis on the ACTA ]

The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.

The deal could also impose strict regulations on Internet service providers, forcing those companies to hand over customer information without a court order.

Called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the new plan would see Canada join other countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, to form an international coalition against copyright infringement.

The agreement is being structured much like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) except it will create rules and regulations regarding private copying and copyright laws.

The 21st century is off to a rousing start, isn’t it?

[Anonymous_Coward]

Yeah, gotta clamp down on all those pirate linux distribution CDs floating around the net.

[Nitroadict]

@Anonymous Coward

Yeah, gotta clamp down on all those pirate linux distribution CDs floating around the net.

If that happened, I suppose I would have a good reason to learn the command line D:

Although, anoyyingly, my ISP (crockcast) has been throttling things as of late, but I hardly download anything nowadays except for maybe the odd song & streaming media (as well as linux stuff).

I forsee a gigantic headache with this trade agreement, in any case. I’m going to give access to political content that isn’t approved by the state (or coporations, whoever ends up winning the most of the internet) a good 5 years before out-right censoring is enacted.

3 years if enough parents buy into the “think of the children” scares.

[Solreyus]

I guess this is as good at a time as any to advertise this: http://freenetproject.org/ I’ve been meaning to try this out myself sometime.

I especially like the quote they have on the website: "I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she’s too young to have logged on yet. Here’s what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?"

[Solreyus]

3 years if enough parents buy into the “think of the children” scares.

The irony is, if they were really thinking of the children, they would be against this (see quote above).

[Nitroadict]

@Fred Furash

3 years if enough parents buy into the “think of the children” scares.

The irony is, if they were really thinking of the children, they would be against this (see quote above).

Indeed; I’ll probably end up telling to possible grand children all about “flame wars”, “4 Chan”, and “Napster” as bed-time stories.

Last time I attempted freenet, the bloddy thing would not work at all. I think I tried using version 0.5.0. last time… it’s at 0.7.0 so maybe it’ll work this time :.

***Edit: seems to work for me this time, thanks fred.

Honestly though, I really see a type of pseudo-Max Payne-ish type future of isolated darknets & communication hubs on the outskirts of urban areas attempting to fill in for a free internet while ocassioanlly hacking into legitmate systems to update databases, as by then, I’m sure Internet 2.0 (with all the nice DMCA & built-in “protection”) will up and running.

[Anonymous_Coward]

@Fred Furash

I guess this is as good at a time as any to advertise this: http://freenetproject.org/ I’ve been meaning to try this out myself sometime.

I especially like the quote they have on the website: "I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she’s too young to have logged on yet. Here’s what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?"

One of those, maybe freenet, has major support from the Powers That Be™ allegedly so that spies in the field can talk to home base without the ‘host’ country sniffing the data or, in theory, being able to detect the source of the communication.

Data is encrypted between the entry and exit node and the NSA, among others, have some serious bandwidth dedicated to exit nodes to become a preferred exit point. There were also attacks that could determine the source of packets by timing them or something like that.

I’d have to look it up to see if freenet is vunerable to this type of attack though now that I think about it Tor was the government backed one.

A quick google search turned up a freenet/Tor system used by a whistleblower website so YMMV…

[Solreyus]

Woah I didn’t know that, thanks for the heads up!

[Nitroadict]

@Fred Furash

Woah I didn’t know that, thanks for the heads up!

Yeah, I’ll be uninstalling this (didn’t actually use it just yet) until this is confirmed or not.

If things really got desperate concerning throttling with broadband, I’d have no qualms going back to 56k & below communication, even though they do go through telephone lines, the speed I don’t think would be enough of a worry for anyone trying to prevent file-sharing.