Adding Up the Explanations For ACTA's "Shameful Secret" 165
Several sources are reporting on a Google event this week that attempted to bring some transparency to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that has so far been treated like a "shameful secret." Unfortunately, not many concrete details were uncovered, so Ars tried to lay out why there has been so much secrecy, especially from an administration that has been preaching transparency. "The reason for that was obvious: there's little of substance that's known about the treaty, and those lawyers in the room and on the panel who had seen one small part of it were under a nondisclosure agreement. In most contexts, the lack of any hard information might lead to a discussion of mind-numbing generality and irrelevance, but this transparency talk was quite fascinating—in large part because one of the most influential copyright lobbyists in Washington was on the panel attempting to make his case. [...] [MPAA/RIAA Champion Steven] Metalitz took on three other panelists and a moderator, all of whom were less than sympathetic to his positions, and he made the lengthiest case for both ACTA and its secrecy that we have ever heard. It was also surprisingly unconvincing."
Like healthcare (Score:2, Insightful)
I think we can all agree that this is too important to negotiate the details in public.
I still don't see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell a trade treaty is secret. From anyone... let alone the people of the countrys involved in the agreement.
If you can't tell people what's in it. It's most likely not a good thing and we'd like to hang you for it.
Avoid Snake Bites (Score:5, Insightful)
These creeps are not dead and they will try other approaches to take away freedoms that we should all have and cherish. They have redefined piracy in order to make normal and usual human activity a crime. Unless copying is blatantly commercial in nature it should be permitted. The notion that because it is easier to copy because we use computers is no excuse for the current plague of laws. This is almost as absurd as telling drinkers that they could not use a device to lift a drink to their lips because it makes getting drunk easier.
Industry lobbyists hint at the truth of ACTA? (Score:5, Insightful)
...it's clear that many governments don't actually want their own people to see the proposals being made and to shape their outcome.
It goes to show that it really pays to be a lobbyist:
Keeping negotiations secret is how "you get big fees to be a lobbyist," since only the "insiders" have access to the process.
I disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless copying is blatantly commercial in nature it should be permitted.
Well then you can say goodbye to alot of creative endeavors. Why write a book when it will only sell a single copy before being copied all over the internet? I can't make a living off the time spent writing when sales drop. Can't be a very successful band without some form of digital media, whether you're signed or produce it yourself. That won't turn a profit once its all across the web.
This is almost as absurd as telling drinkers that they could not use a device to lift a drink to their lips because it makes getting drunk easier.
No, this is like telling drinkers that they cannot use a device that duplicates the beverage to give to their friends.
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Man, you know that Shakespeare fellow really didn't do ANYTHING because he didn't have copyright over his work. Nor did Van Gogh, or Chopin, or Beethoven, or...
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
The great thing about those works is that they were DIFFICULT TO DUPLICATE.
*Surprisingly* unconvincing? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the summary...
[MPAA/RIAA Champion Steven] Metalitz took on three other panelists and a moderator, all of whom were less than sympathetic to his positions, and he made the lengthiest case for both ACTA and its secrecy that we have ever heard. It was also surprisingly unconvincing.
I'd find it more surprising if he could make a convincing argument for all the secrecy.
Expect no help from Hope and Change! (Score:2, Insightful)
Take a look at which political party [opensecrets.org] the MAFIAA has bought.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
At the other extreme we are moving towards, technologies like restrictive DRM will also make literary and artistic works become lost in the future.
Re:Industry lobbyists hint at the truth of ACTA? (Score:5, Insightful)
It also demonstrates that transnational corporations have been more powerful than any government(s) on earth for some time now.
Really, it's too late to expect government to help us when it comes to standing up to corporate power, because money trumps votes every single time. Any time someone who might pose a threat to corporatist hegemony even comes close to running for national office, they are immediately painted as being nutty, fringe, dangerous (pick your negative smear of choice).
It happened to Dennis Kucinich most recently, and Howard Dean a few years back. If you bring up his name, lots of people will immediately start to say that stuff about him, but if you ask them for an example of a fringe or weird policy he has advocated, at most you'll get "his wife is a hippie" or something equally inane. Howard Dean had his candidacy destroyed because he hollered. Remember how that one noise he made was used by every mainstream media outlet to indicate he was crazy?
There are others: Ralph Nader, even Ross Perot, who, while a businessman himself, had a distinctly populist approach to the balance of government and big business. The press had a field day tearing him up.
In Europe, the situation is just as bad. If you can't demonstrate that you're going to be very friendly to the transnationals, you'll never get near a national election.
Any international trade agreement is going to be a disaster, just as NAFTA, CAFTA, and all the others have been. Poor countries will stay poor and the citizens of rich countries will get poorer.
It almost makes me a little optimistic about the teabagger movement in the US. If you can get these people to come out and express their anger at "big government", all you have to do now is fill them in on who the real enemy is and then you've got something. Once they figure out that nobody in government so much as scratches their ass without the corporate elites giving them the OK, and no amount of partisan politics is going to change their situation until there is a big thick wall put up between corporate power and government. There is something very transgressive about going out into the street with a sign and hollering, and it's a waypoint on a continuum that ends up with lighting a torch and a molotov cocktail. The trick now is to dissuade them from their hatred of educated people and their racism, and you've got a group that could be a great ally in what will ultimately be a fight by the working class against transnational corporations who are the real "New World Order".
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
But I can send a jpg of a Van Gogh around with no problem whatsoever. It costs nothing! It is totally making the original painting worth nothing!
Same with music. Same with books. Sell the scarcity. The thing that IS hard to do.
Re:I disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it won't.
I can't make a living off the time spent writing when sales drop.
Alas, those who can't write popular enough books will have to make a living doing something else but that's no different from the current situation.
The biggest pirates I know are also the biggest consumers of legitimate material. You can make a profit even with rampant piracy. Maybe it's not as easy as it was. Why should that matter? The point of copyright is to make it possible to make a living by being creative. Not to make it absolutely certain. It never has done and it never will. Technology sometimes makes it easier and sometimes makes it harder, as does society.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Well then you can say goodbye to alot of creative endeavors.
Goodbye American Idol.
Goodbye John and Kate Plus Eight.
Goodbye I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
Goodbye and good riddance.
Re:I disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The most disturbing point (Score:2, Insightful)
Makes me wish I'd owned land in Utah for that election. I would have made a killing selling "oceanfront property".
Re:Expect no help from Hope and Change! (Score:4, Insightful)
Digital?
You do realize that the democrats and the republicans were both called the democratic-republicans at one point. They are the same party, they represent nearly identical interests and have nearly identical policies. The only differences are cosmetic for the purpose of cornering the market on the votes of the ignorant.
America is a one party nation with two corrupt and necrotic faces taking turns at pretending to represent the people.
Re:I disagree (Score:1, Insightful)
yet the original van gogh is worth lots of money, and your jpg is worthless.
your jpg printed and hung on the wall is still worthless compared to the original.
Good reasons to keep a trade treaty secret (Score:3, Insightful)
There are actually good reasons to keep drafts of a trade treaty secret, or at least to keep Congress from meddling too much in the negotiation of a trade treaty (and one way to accomplish that is secrecy). Often a trade treaty might involve lowering tariffs or other barriers to trade, which result in a net economic benefit to the countries involved as a whole. However, they also hurt specific businesses or industries, which have a strong incentive to mobilize and lobby against lowering tariffs (see, e.g., Chinese tires [nytimes.com]). By keeping a treaty secret until most details have been hammered out, it gives less time for special interests to derail what can potentially be overall a beneficial product.
That said, as Jonathan Band of Policy Bandwidth (one of the panelists) pointed out during the event, ACTA is fundamentally not a trade agreement, and it's dishonest to pretend that it is, even if it has "trade" in the name. ACTA seems to be combination agreement on customs and law enforcement (not trade) and on intellectual property (also not trade). This difference is important, because IP agreements have a much more transparent history than trade agreements. This is something that Jamie Love kept trying to point out to Steve Metalitz; Steve was arguing that ACTA is no less transparent than trade agreement X, but the proper comparison would be any of WIPO's recent work, and the fact that NGOs, business groups, and academics all have access to draft WIPO agreements and resolutions, and their input is taken seriously. Draft texts are even put up on the Internet. That's transparency. It's also precisely the reason why ACTA can't be negotiated in a forum like WIPO.
Re:Like healthcare (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 1: Every hand offered to the Republicans is savagely bitten
Step 2: Every attempt to negotiate results in the bill being crapped in, and zero or nearly-zero Republican votes
Step 3: Wake up and realize "why the hell were we trying to include them in a process they've openly claimed they want to poison by any means possible?"
Step 4: Get things done
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
He published the 18 plays that were the most popular, ie. that made the most money for him. He probably didn't want to publish the other 18 because they were bad and nobody liked them.