That’s right, with little to no fanfare or coverage in the controlled establishment media, an “agreement” (which is much closer to a treaty than anything else) was signed which undermines everything that the internet was built upon while putting countless other sectors of life in danger.

As I very briefly outlined in an article complimenting a video released in 2010 warning of what ACTA had in store, this also puts farmers worldwide at risk of being unfairly targeted by Monsanto.

It is worth noting that the leader of the United Kingdom’s Pirate Party rightly pointed out in a press release today that “ACTA is an international treaty, disguised as a trade agreement,” adding, “ACTA is, if anything, even more objectionable [than SOPA and PIPA].”

Apparently it is not only internet denizens which are astounded by the fact that ACTA was discussed in secret and passed with no input from the people in several powerful nations.

Indeed, in an act of protest and solidarity with the anti-ACTA community, Polish legislators donned paper Guy Fawkes masks in the Polish Parliament and even more importantly, the European Union’s rapporteur for ACTA resigned in disgust.

Kader Arif, the rapporteur in question, was apparently appalled by the way in which the EU is being pressured into signing onto ACTA.

Arif was even brave enough to go as far as saying that he “will not take part in this masquerade.”

He rightly highlights that, “This agreement might have major consequences on citizens’ lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation.”

I believe that everyone the world over, but especially those in the EU, should applaud Arif for standing up for the real democratic process and not the cheap imitation that is has swept the Western world.

Arif continues, “I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.”

He said that the efforts he witnessed are unprecedented and designed to rush the signing through before the public could be alerted to the dangers of the agreement.

Arif stated that this not only deprived the European Parliament of its right to have input on the signing but also stripped them “of the tools at [the Parliament's] disposal to convey citizens’ legitimate demands.”

Unfortunately, here in the United States, the agreement was signed with no input from the people or our so-called representatives whatsoever.

Obama accomplished this by making an end-run around the constitution by claiming that since it did not modify US law, it need not be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the US Senate.

Furthermore, the Obama administration claims that it is not, in fact, a binding treaty and thus falls under Obama’s executive privilege.

This is patently absurd and representative of the contempt for the opinion of Americans held by the Obama administration, our so-called representatives, and those who dictate policy to these public figures.

“Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers [more commonly referred to as internet service providers in the United States, also known as ISPs] liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications,” Arif said.

He brings up what I think are some of the most important points in this short paragraph, especially the issue of civil liberties and how it connects to the responsibility being placed on the shoulders of ISPs.

These two parts of ACTA are intimately connected because what ISPs would have to do to protect themselves would be an egregious breach of our civil liberties.

In order for ISPs to protect themselves from being targeted under ACTA, they would have to constantly monitor all communications on their networks along with all data stored on their servers.

With all of the Big Brother technology being foisted upon us by what is supposed to be our government and countless large corporations, this seems like the perfect excuse to even further ratchet up the American surveillance state which is quickly going global with the help of companies like Google.

This would require something called “deep packet inspection” which means that they would analyze (and likely record and store for liability purposes) the content of every single e-mail, instant message, along with any other communication in order to make sure that it does not breach ACTA in some way.

Using this level of filtering they could easily track every single website you visit, what you do on the website and how you interact with it, and more, all of which can be stored and handed over to private entities or the government with little to no oversight.

This would similarly imply that companies like Dropbox which remotely store files (a service which I use myself in my writing) would have to inspect all of the files on their servers to make sure that none of them are infringing content.

One aspect of ACTA which makes it far worse than SOPA or PIPA is the fact that it is international in scale.

A corporation half way across the world could come after End the Lie for using their logo as an image associated with an article or even – as insane as this sounds – linking to infringing content.

That’s right, I could get shut down and/or fined for doing nothing other than linking to a site which allegedly has content which is protected under someone’s copyright as could anyone else unfortunate enough to get caught in the sights of someone leveraging the powers under ACTA.

There is also the real danger that this could be used in a targeted manner to stifle dissent.

Say, for instance, a site like mine or any of the other thousands of alternative news websites out there which cite the copyrighted works of others either in whole under Fair Use or excerpted (which is what I do in using quotes from other writers or publications in my work) could be taken down entirely if the copyright holder found a bit of copyrighted material.

I seriously doubt major establishment news organizations would ever come under fire for doing such a thing, although independent organizations very well might because they cover much more controversial (and meaningful) material, tend to make some people very unhappy and most importantly do not have the massive infrastructure required to fight such an attack.

I find it quite troubling that this has already been signed by the United States along with the European Union without any meaningful debate or input from those who are affected by the legislation.

Keep in mind this is coming from someone who is not a pirate and someone who does not make money off of hijacking the hard work of others.

I fall into the category of content creator, the exact segment of the population this type of agreement is intended to benefit.

However, I would never put my intellectual property over the right to privacy, truly just law, the system of checks and balances (which is laughable at this point) and the concept of sovereignty.

Furthermore, I think it is quite clear to my readers by now that I am much more interested in raising awareness, working towards solutions and hopefully (slowly) making the world a better place than keeping my writings “exclusive” or “protected.”

This is precisely why I encourage anyone and everyone to post my articles wherever they please, with the only request that you keep my name attached to the article with a link back to the original or to my homepage.

Why? Well, since I am quite far from making any significant income from my work at this point (something which I obviously hope will change soon) I’d like to at least get the satisfaction of knowing that people recognize who created the works that they are reading.

I don’t think that is too much to ask, especially given that larger news agencies which create what I find to be much lower quality content, actually charge people to copy their work.

In no way does it seem reasonable to me to allow ISPs to invade our privacy, put farmers who feed the world in danger of being shut down by ludicrously greedy corporations like Monsanto, or to allow the circumvention of everything that an open society is supposed to be in the name of protecting copyrights.

Unfortunately, since the United States has already signed on to this atrocious agreement, I’m not sure of what exactly we can do to fight it.

One idea that comes to mind is pressuring our so-called representatives into taking Obama to task for not taking this to the Senate to be ratified.

Another would be to step up vocal boycotts against supporters of ACTA in order to show them that we will not allow them to destroy everything that is the internet as we have come to know it.

There are already massive protests being held around the world in opposition to ACTA but since the US has already signed on, it seems our options are a bit more limited.

[...]

ACTA is truly dangerous and the international community needs to stand up and push back against the corporate kleptocrats that seek to eradicate what few freedoms we have left.

***

source: End The Lie

[No Agenda Show - Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak]

play mp3 | shownotes | show archive |

ACTA would establish a new international legal framework that would create its “own governing body outside existing international institutions” such as – the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations.

An open letter signed by many organizations, including Consumers International, EDRi (27 European civil rights and privacy NGOs), the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ASIC (French trade association for web 2.0 companies), and the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), states that “the current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy.” [video link]

http://video.nixxon.net/~riesling/acta/  |  http://www.stop-acta.info/  |

26 Jan 2012:

Other witness statements and hearing transcripts

***

Facebook, Google, Popbitch executives appear

Leveson suggests Facebook and Twitter should be regulated differently from papers

It’s a day of high jinx, high revelry and high people in Australia; a day when a large and vocal majority come together to “celebrate what’s great” about this country. But what is the meaning of all this fanfare? What is the true origin of this passionately marked day of facepaint and binge drinking? Is everyone in Australia so keen on this particular anniversary? To get to bottom of these questions, and more, join your amiable host Robert Foster as he conducts a high-octane, high-frequency satellite link-up with a representative of the Mainstream Australian media: multi-Logie award-winning broadcaster, entertainer, emu-wrangler and true blue Aussie, Kenneth Oathcarn.

WARNING: contains adult Australian vernacular – viewer discretion is strongly advised. [video link]

25 Jan 2012:

Other witness statements and hearing transcripts

***

Leveson inquiry: Bob Crow, Mazher Mahmood

• Bob Crow says he was followed by investigators on holiday
• Claims he was harassed by Sun reporters over strikes
• Mazher Mahmood denies bribing former colleague in 1989
• Letter from Times editor: reporter was told to discover blogger’s identity by legitimate means after admitting email hacking

24 Jan 2012:

Other witness statements and hearing transcripts

***

Leveson inquiry must address sexist media stereotypes, say women’s groups

Leveson urged to ensure libel law reform is not delayed

Leveson inquiry: Sun executive says sorry for Christopher Jefferies coverage

[...] Even more fundamentally, there is no such thing as creativity that doesn’t rely on the past. Sometimes the links are very subtle and hidden; sometimes they’re out in the open, and we don’t notice them only because we’ve declared Bach and Beethoven “great composers” and forgotten the popular music of their day. Our peculiar post-Romantic notion that all real artists somehow create their works out of nothing is partly to blame. Nothing could be further from the truth. And it’s not just art. In a very rare moment of humility, Isaac Newton said “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

So the notion that creativity can be owned, and that any use of someone else’s ideas requires compensation, is nothing but an attempt to steal all of creativity. Whoever can pay their lawyers the most wins. Anyone smell pirates in the room? I am not willing to sacrifice this generation’s great artists on the altar of Hollywood. I’m not willing to have the next Bach, Beethoven, or Shakespeare post their work online, only to have it taken down because they haven’t paid off a bunch of executives who think they own creativity.

The Constitution of the United States provides a legal basis for copyright and patent, but it’s for a specific purpose: it’s “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” We’ve gone way beyond that now, with patent and copyright piracy: our notion of intellectual property is now hindering both science and art.

In Book IV, section 4, of St. Augustine’s “The City of God”, Augustine tells the parable of a pirate captain who is captured and brought before Alexander the Great. The emperor says “How dare you terrorize the seas”? The pirate captain replies, “How dare you terrorize the whole world? Because I only have one ship, I’m called a pirate; because you have a great navy, you’re called an emperor.” The difference between a pirate and an emperor is one of scale only. And that’s the position we find ourselves in here: the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and its allies have twisted the discussion so we’re talking about the wrong thing. We shouldn’t be talking about the small-scale piracy of individual movies (which probably helps sales in the long run, as we’ve observed in the publishing business). We should be talking about the real piracy, the wholesale takeover of creativity by the media industry. That’s the piracy we should be outlawing.

***

source: On pirates and piracy – O’Reilly Radar

End ACTA and Protect our right to privacy on the Internet.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is a ‘plurilateral’ trade agreement, currently being negotiated between the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. It is somewhat similar to SOPA/PIPA, however ACTA is an executive agreement between countries besides the United States, and it can be passed without the approval from Congress and the Supreme Court. It is potentially hazardous to the Internet we know and how it works.

We need to stop ACTA before it is finally approved by all countries involved. If you value your privacy and you don’t want “Big Brother” watching over you, sign this petition and spread the word. Research ACTA and see just how dangerous it is to the Internet, our privacy, and our liberties.

Sign the petition via whitehouse.gov

Cliffy will be produced by Clock End Films for ABC1. It will be directed by Dean Murphy (Charlie & Boots, Strange Bedfellows) with Nigel Odell (Strange Bedfellows, Long Weekend) as producer. The telemovie has been written by Robert B. Taylor (Muggers).

Casting is currently underway with filming to start in mid April across Albury-Wodonga and regional Victoria.

Carole Sklan, ABC TV’s Head of Fiction said “Few stories capture the public imagination like that of Cliff Young. Nearly 30 years after famously shuffling from Sydney to Melbourne and into Australian folklore, Cliffy continues to fascinate and inspire. We are delighted to be partnering with such an accomplished creative team to bring this iconic tale to ABC TV.”

Producer Nigel Odell said “Dean and I are thrilled to be working with ABC TV to bring to life the story of this Aussie legend. Here is a man, who at the very mention of his name makes people smile. Everyone relates to Cliffy because secretly we all feel we have the ability to do amazing things if only we were given the chance and we love an underdog. He embodies everything we value in Australia and it’s fantastic that ABC TV is giving Australian audiences another chance to celebrate this amazing man and his incredible achievements.”

Set against the backdrop of the early eighties, Cliffy retraces his extraordinary journey from famously training in gumboots among cow paddocks through the epic six day period of the ultra marathon and his emergence as Australia’s most unlikely sporting hero.

Cliffy is a Clock End Films production for ABC1; financed with the support of Film Victoria and ABC Commercial.

***

source: abc.net.au