IMPORTANT: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

[Afronaught]

If you Live in the United states, Please send this letter to your senators

Subject: Please investigate the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

Dear [name of your senator]

I am a constituent and I'm very concerned about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that is currently being negotiated by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.  As an avid supporter of technology and the Internet, I'm concerned about reports that the trade agreement being negotiated  behind closed doors may contain provisions that could harm my civil liberties and privacy rights, and damage the environment for innovation and technological development within the United States.

I am particularly disturbed that such a wide-reaching treaty is being rushed through negotiations by the end of this year, with no Congressional debate or oversight and no opportunity for meaningful public consultation.

I urge you to:

(1)    request more information about the content of ACTA from the Office of the United States Trade Representative and colleagues on the United States Senate Committees on Finance; on Foreign Relations; and on the Judiciary,  
(2)    furnish your constituents with more information as soon as possible, and 
(3)    call for Senate hearings on this matter before negotiation of the  agreement is finalized by the United States Trade Representative 

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
 [Your Name]
 [Your Address]
 [City, State ZIP]

For People living in Canada:

Dear <Your member of parliament>
Member for <Your riding>

Copyright law, and the changes proposed in Bill C-60 from the last parliament, are of concern to me.  While Bill C-60 died on the order paper when the election was called, we are worried that similar provisions will be contained in a future bill. While copyright is most often described as a balance between the interests of creators and the interests of the general public, the debate has been dominated by special interest industry lobby groups representing intermediaries (people who are neither creators nor the general public).

Bill C-60 may have been supported by these industry intermediaries, but was highly controversial with creators, and not supported by users. Industry lobby groups such as the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) can no more legitimately claim to politically represent the interests of creators than the owners of the major banks can claim to politically represent the interests of people who have bank accounts.

One of the many controversial aspects involved the legal protection of technical measures used by copyright holders.  It may be appropriate to protect technical measures applied by copyright holders to their own content.  What cannot be allowed is the legal protection of technical measures that affect devices that they do not own (e.g. my home computer).

The Sony-BMG case, which infected hundreds of thousands of networks of computers with a "RootKit" and "SpyWare", resulted in many lawsuits against Sony-BMG.  Speaking to a group of copyright holders about this issue, Stewart Baker, Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary for policy, said, "It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days."

Not only should we not be protecting this abuse of technical measures, but we should be passing laws which clearly make it illegal to apply a technical measure to something without the informed consent of the owner.

Thousands of Canadians, including hundreds of people who are in creative or innovation industries, have signed the "Petition for Users' Rights" which articulates a more balanced vision. Creators support this balance as they realize that creativity builds on the past, and that the protection of Creators' Rights includes the protection of Users' Rights.  In order for there to be a future generation of creators we must limit the control of past creator or non-creator copyright holders.


English Petition text http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/petition_en.pdf

French Petition text http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/petition_fr.pdf

More information on the petition http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/

Do you support this balanced vision?

Would you be willing to meet with me and/or members of our community to discuss these issues?

Sincerely,

<yourname>
<youraddress>
<your postal code>

Constituent of <Your riding>

For People in the United Kingdom, you can write a letter to your MP, to find out who to write to. Go to this Link:
http://www.writetothem.com/

[Private_Ale]

Copied to the announcement forum for better visibility and so that non-members can view and act.

[Afronaught]

Good Idea

The revolution will be televised

[Afronaught]

IMPORTANT Information you need to know:


What is ACTA?

If you live in The United States, the European Union, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico. The ACTA will allow your Government to:

• Censor the internet.
• Search your iPods and computers randomly without giving a reason.
• Confiscate your iPods and computers without giving a reason
• Monitor what you do online
• Block websites deemed "unacceptable", without limit
• Ban p2p clients, like uTorrent
• Force ISPs to PERMANENTLY Ban you from using the internet, without a trial.
• Arrest you based on the content you search.

More detail?

In October 2007 the United States, the European Community, Switzerland and Japan simultaneously announced that they would negotiate a new intellectual property enforcement treaty, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Canada have joined the negotiations. Although the proposed treaty’s title might suggest that the agreement deals only with counterfeit physical goods (such as medicines), what little information has been made available publicly by negotiating governments about the content of the treaty makes it clear that it will have a far broader scope, and in particular, will deal with new tools targetting “Internet distribution and information technology”.
In recent years, major U.S. and EU copyright industry rightsholder groups have sought stronger powers to enforce their intellectual property rights across the world to preserve their business models. These efforts have been underway in a number of international fora, including at the World Trade Organization, the World Customs Organization, at the G8 summit, at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement, and at the Intellectual Property Experts’ Group at the Asia Pacific Economic Coalition. Since the conclusion of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Issues of Intellectual Property in 1994 (TRIPS), most new intellectual property enforcement powers have been created outside of the traditional multilateral venues, through bilateral and regional free trade agreements entered into by the United States and the European Community with their respective key trading partners. ACTA is the new frontline in the global IP enforcement agenda.


To date, disturbingly little information has been released about the actual content of the agreement However, despite that, it is clearly on a fast track; treaty proponents want it tabled at the G8 summit in July, and completed by the end of 2008.



Wy sould you care about it?

ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties, for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet, legitimate commerce, and for developing countries’ ability to choose policy options that best suit their domestic priorities and level of economic development.


ACTA is being negotiated by a select group of industrialized countries, outside of existing international multilateral venues for creating new IP norms such as the World Intellectual Property Organization and (since TRIPs) the World Trade Organization. Both civil society and developing countries are intentionally being excluded from these negotiations. While the existing international fora provide (at least to some extent) room for a range of views to be heard and addressed, no such checks and balances will influence the outcome of the ACTA negotiations.



The Fact Sheet published by the USTR, together with the USTR's 2008 "Special 301" report make it clear that the goal is to create a new standard of intellectual property enforcement, above the current internationally-agreed standards in the TRIPs Agreement, and increased international cooperation including sharing of information between signatory countries’ law enforcement agencies. The last 10 bilateral free trade agreements entered into by the United States have required trading partners to adopt intellectual property enforcement obligations that are above those in TRIPs. Even though developing countries are not party to the ACTA negotiations, it is likely that accession to, and implementation of, ACTA by developing countries will be a condition imposed in future free trade agreements, and the subject of evaluation in content industry submissions to the annual Section 301 process and USTR report.


While little information has been made available by the governments negotiating ACTA, a document recently leaked to the public entitled "Discussion Paper on a Possible Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement" from an unknown source gives an indication of what content industry rightsholder groups appear to be asking for – including new legal regimes to "encourage ISPs to cooperate with right holders in the removal of infringing material", criminal measures, and increased border search powers. The Discussion Paper leaves open how Internet Service Providers should be encouraged to identify and remove allegedly infringing material from the Internet. However the same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens' Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the "Three Strikes" /Graduated Response), so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers. While mandating copyright filtering by ISPs will not be technologically effective because it can be defeated by use of encryption, efforts to introduce network level filtering will likely involve deep packet inspection of citizens' Internet communications. This raises considerable concerns for citizens' civil liberties and privacy rights, and the future of Internet innovation.

[Dennis]

I've already e-mailed my elected officials and recommend all other US residents do the same.

If you don't know how...
go here

http://www.congress.org/

or

http://gunowners.org/

They can fix you up in just a few clicks.

[Afronaught]

ACTA is not only limited to Internet use, it affects many other industries; for example if you are a musician and perform cover songs to earn a living, under the terms of “Fair Use”, you have the legal right to do so. However, if the ACTA law is passed, performing a cover of any artist could ...potentially put you at risk of being criminally prosecuted for copyright violation.

[Private_Ale]

Originally Posted by Afronaught

ACTA is not only limited to Internet use, it affects many other industries; for example if you are a musician and perform cover songs to earn a living, under the terms of “Fair Use”, you have the legal right to do so. However, if the ACTA law is passed, performing a cover of any artist could ...potentially put you at risk of being criminally prosecuted for copyright violation.

Ouch

[Hails]

Just posted this thread on my facebook oh the link ment n thread rofl, yea

[Dennis]

Here is a copy of one of the reply's I received.

[Afronaught]

Basicaly... Senator Durbin is going to do nothing unless someone else brings it up...

tell him his a lazy good for nothing bastid