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ACTA is the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a wide-ranging attempt to standardise international copyright laws, protect intellectual property and better care for business patents and the work of artists. That’s what it says on the posters, at least.
The first thing to know about ACTA is we’ve already agreed to be part of it, whether you like it or not. The UK signed up to it, along with much of Europe at the end of January, while the US, Canada, Japan and many others have been onboard since last year.
The treaty hasn’t yet been ratified by the EU, though, but that’s scheduled to happen by around June of this year. If you care about stopping ACTA, that’s how long you’ve got to work on your placards.
The big idea of ACTA in a nutshell, according to the European Commission’s pages on the legislation, is to harmonise intellectual property rights around the world, making it easier for an author in France to call for justice against a pirate making copes available in Singapore.
Or making it easier for a man in Hollywood to stop you downloading Transformers, you might say.
However, the ACTA of today is not quite the beast it could’ve been. Earlier versions of the treaty contained provision for a “three strikes” rule, which could’ve seen particularly vigorous — or unlucky — file sharers lose their internet connections. That’s now been removed from current version of the framework, as has a requirement for ISPs to monitor the traffic of its users.
In fact, much of the anti-ACTA content out there online seems to be based on these earlier versions of the act, and for once we ought to be grateful for the EU in standing up to the US and lessening the scope of the original demands.
The EU is also determined to battle the anti-ACTA internet crusaders as well. It’s put together a PDF highlighting the 10 Myths About ACTA, correcting the many incorrect assumptions out there about the act. But this document itself is controversial, with anti-ACTA campaigners claiming it’s full of half-truths and misdirection.
It’s a very big mess.
The key worry for activists is the scope of ACTA. It aims to allow for enforcement of “infringement of copyright or related rights over digital networks” a term so vague it could conceivably apply to anything from sharing Spider-Man 4 or 5 or whatever we’re up to now over Bittorrent, or simply uploading a copyrighted photo to your blog.
Another vague area is that of the fines that would be calculated for those found in breach. ACTA’s wording states that wronged copyright holders can ask for “lost profits, the value of the infringed goods or services measured by the market price, or the suggested retail price” from those found guilty.
Value of goods and retail prices are one thing, but how would a company go about charging a user for the “lost profits” it suffered because some MP3s were downloaded?
Also, ACTA campaigners point out that despite claims ACTA wants to protect against large-scale piracy and IP theft, there’s no actual stated minimum size in the policy document. So it’s entirely possible individuals could be plucked out of the haystack to be made examples of.
Obviously we’re not standing up for the rights of pirates to do as they wish here, but you can’t help but feel worried when media companies are handed the right to set their own fines and aim their guns on anyone, even a casual stealer of only a handful of tunes.
…and includes the some clauses that put all that power in the hands of private companies…
Oh and how about this intimidating footnote in the ACTA document, which hints about ACTA giving the law the power to take your computer if you’re deemed an offender:
“…judicial authorities have the authority to order that materials and implements, the predominant use of which has been in the manufacture or creation of such infringing goods, be, without undue delay and without compensation of any sort, destroyed or disposed of outside the channels of commerce in such a manner as to minimize the risks of further infringements.”
And according to European Digital Rights, ACTA “would place the regulation of free speech in the hands of private companies” thanks to the way it asks non-governmental groups in charge of policing online material.
One of the most high-level tirades against ACTA has come from MEP Kader Arif, who was part of the ACTA committee. Arif resigned as the European Parliament’s rapporteur of the ACTA agreement, saying in a super-aggressive personal news post: “I condemn the whole process which led to the signature of this agreement.”
Arif then confirmed the feelings of many anti-ACTA campaigners, pointing out there was “no consultation of the civil society” and a complete “lack of transparency” during the four-year creation of the agreement.
He finished his attack on his own work by saying: “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 will not take part in this masquerade.”
Amazing words. He’s slagging off his own homework. We now have a man of ours onboard — the new rapporteur is Scottish MEP David Martin, who says he will be “open and transparent in my deliberations” about whether ACTA implies with existing EU law.
You may well think ACTA is just the rest of the world trying to get excited about something and find an excuse for a good street riot like the Americans did with SOPA, but the more you read about it the more you recoil in horror at the thought of an internet censor machine run by copyright holders that can’t be reasoned with.
The worry is that, as we’ve seen before with the UK’s Cleanfeed ISP-level child porn filter which has since been turned to other tasks, ACTA could be used to censor web sites. Plus make one copyright claim and any content would have to be pulled.
Read more about ACTA and its implications over at the UK IP Office or get the view from Brussels via the EC ACTA site, or, if you really have the time, explore the full text of the ACTA agreement [PDF], but that last one’s pretty heavy going.
And if you’re really against it you could always attend the Stop ACTA demo in London this Saturday or, er, vote for UKIP.
Image credit: Stop ACTA
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Sounds pretty fair to me. If you are the owner of something, don’t you deserve to be able to protect yourself from freetards copying it and getting it for free?
So if I put up a video review of me playing a video game, your saying that I’m stealing?!?
Or make a video of all my ROFL antics, then use a song for the background on youtube I’m a pirate?
No argument here that copyright holders should be able to protect themselves and their rights, but it’s how those laws and legislation are enforced.
The intent of vs the spirit of vs the letter of those laws need to be tight and strict, otherwise it will be abused by those that have the power (and the money) to do so. Much like we see today in various countries (ahem USA…) where single mums are being prosecuted based on the flimsiest of evidence. Plus the bully tacticts (pay up this $illogical amount or we sue you for this $illogical amount.
The only thing I see going for this, is the regulation across countries of copyright law. Whether that is good or bad, only time and the number or violent protests will tell.
Without looking into it oh so much further (don’t have time or the inclination. Just tell me what I can and can’t do when and if it’s in place), my comments are just like pissing in the ocean. Feels good, but doesn’t do anything to stem the tide…
;P
Stealing a CD from the internet should in my eyes be treated the same as stealing a CD from a shop.
I know what point you are trying to make, but I want to be the first to point out that stealing a physical CD really is not the same as copying the music from a CD on the internet. The difference is the lack of physical product in the latter, as the shop does not have a product to sell after I steal it. I’m depriving someone who would buy it. One is theft (criminal), the other is copyright infringement (civil).
My problem is that these sorts of laws have knock-on effects that affect other things other than the thing that the law was passed to stop.
Disclaimer: I have the biggest CD collection in South London* and it threatens to take over my cupboards**. I buy music and have legal music downloads but only at fair prices and I prefer to support musicians, rather than record labels or the RIAA/BPI.
* Unverified
** Ikea wardrobes are tough, but not invincible
Except downloading a CD isn’t a malicious act. Shoplifting, arguably, is. Why on earth would you want to impose the same criminal conviction that shoplifting carries on someone who casually downloads an album from File Sharing Site X?
Under copyright law, it’s the person or persons distributing the CD online who are held accountable.
Stealing, by definition, involves removing something in one person’s possession and taking it for yourself – robbing them of that original item so that they can no longer use it/sell it on/whatever.
Downloading a movie/book/music/game/whatever does not remove the original print from the producers, it does not take a physical product from a shelf so that it cannot be sold and it does not prevent further use/sales of that movie/book/music/game/whatever.
The only impact it has is on the potential revenue lost as a result of someone then not paying for the item they have downloaded. This does not take into account a number of possibilities:
1) That user may never have purchased that item in the first place, thus no money is actually lost on a sale that will never have happened.
2) That user may have already purchased that item, but because the MPAA/RIAA/Similar organisations/studios/producers/etc have made it so restrictive for them to acquire that item in a convenient digital form that suits them and the device/s they own, they’ve had to download it illicitly instead in a format that DOES suit them and the device/s they own.
3) That user may actually then go on to purchase said item after enjoying what they experienced for free.
I don’t wish to justify piracy, because I believe that if you have the means to purchase something you want – you should. If you like a product, you should be supporting the people who produced it. However, it’s just plain, factually inaccurate to claim that piracy is, firstly, stealing, and secondly that it does half as much harm to the economy or to jobs as the MPAA and RIAA are campaigning for you to believe.
People who sell copyrighted material illegally, sure. They’re proper criminals who are doing definite financial harm (though, arguably, more so to us via dodging VAT than anything else). But the normal people that do the vast amount of file sharing? They mostly do so because it’s the only way they can consume their digital content in a suitable and useful manner – pretty much exclusively at the fault of organisations like the MPAA and RIAA themselves – and, for the most part, the effect they have on the sales of those goods are negligible, and could be quite easily combated by providing solid, DRM free, open format, digital means of consumption of those goods, legally and at a fair price. NOT by throwing money around at politicians and nuking the Internet.
But then, that’s why it’s pretty clear that it’s those digital channels of legal, easy-access content that are the real enemies of the MPAA/RIAA, not pirates. ‘Cos they have it within their power to give people what they want and actually fight the effects of piracy – it’d just mean surrendering their enforced cuts on the sale of physical goods.
1) A person who steals a physical item may or may not have bought the item. What a person might do in the future has no place in the decision as to whether what they actually did is wrong.
2)The only people who have a right to decide whether their work is available is themselves. You don’t get to tell an author that because they haven’t published their book in your country that you are just going to take it.
3)So if I stole a Jaguar and enjoyed it and I then bought another one, that would make the original offence ok.
Far too many people make far too many airy fairy excuses for what boils down to them not being willing to pay for other people’s hard work and the modern obsession with self entitlement.
You are not standing up against censorship, you are not sticking it to big business, you are not being ‘disruptive’. You are taking for free what you what and never mind the people who’s hard work made it.
1) The difference being that stealing that physical item prevents it from being sold – there’s a genuine loss. Downloading something is not preventing any actual sale. The two are not the same.
2) It’s not normally the author, or otherwise creators of the product that have any say in it. It’s generally just business people in suits wanting to extort as much money out of various markets for their own pockets. I’m sure that if you asked most authors whether or not they’d like people to be able to read their book – that they’d legitimately paid for at least once – they’d be happy to distribute it any way possible. The problem is the middle man that is denying that opportunity for both. This is what encourages a lot of piracy. Not just people wanting to be cheap – but people wanting to use their product how they like after paying for it.
3) Again, stealing a physical product is different to downloading a digital copy. If you steal a Jag, then buy a second one, that first one is still gone and a loss has been made. If you download a movie, enjoy it, and buy it as a direct result, that sale has been made (possibly a sale that may never have otherwise taken place) and no loss has been made.
I’m not justifying piracy, standing against censorship or any such ‘airy fairy’ thing. I’m simply saying that stealing a physical item and downloading a digital copy of something are two different things and it’s simply inaccurate (and rather ludicrous) to compare the two or treat digital piracy as if it’s the same as stealing a car or shoplifting.
Sorry, but the “That user may never have purchased that item in the first place” excuse is the lamest of the freetards excuses.
Clearly if you steal it, it’s because you want it, and had it not been up for grabs illegally, you would have bought it.
Me, I buy CD’s I’m not paying for digital music in lossy formats that cost the same as the CD, that to me is insanity. When I buy the CD, I can rip it into whatever format I choose. I rarely play CD’s these days, just the digital copies of them. I have never downloaded music, either legally or illegally (I did buy 3x copies of Rage Against The Machine a couple of years back from Amazon, as I had a digital voucher from another purchase).
It is complete wrong to state that if someone couldn’t illegally download something then they would buy it, many reports have disproved this, it is purely illogical to state what you state. As it is purely a matter of simple access, it is like saying that if people couldn’t watch porn freely on the Internet that everyone would run down the sex shop.
Also other reports have shown that many illegal downloads are also hardcore consumers, and to clamp down on them would hurt the industry.
‘Copyright infringement’, is what it is, it isn’t called ‘copyright theft’ because it isn’t theft, it is a minor infringement. The only way I can steal a film is if I steal the only master copy of a new film and deprive the owner of that, and therefore stop them making money with it, that is theft – this isn’t complexed or hard to understand in any way, infringement isn’t theft, theft isn’t infringement, they are deemed different things under the eyes of the law, and rightfully so, otherwise the world would have gone totally mad.
Sorry, but the “That user may never have purchased that item in the first place” excuse is the lamest of the freetards excuses.
I download a fair share of music to listen to, 99% gets deleted after I listen to it. It saves me the time to go into a record store and listen to it there.
Even the 1% are individual songs that I wouldn’t have bought a whole cd for anyway.
Well I actually don’t have to worry about it at all, since downloading is legal in the Netherlands (ruled by court). For now anyway. We do however pay an extra fee on blank cds and dvds to compensate for “loss of sales”. Yeah, also on dvds I use to store personal stuff like pictures or documents.
1) Yes there is a difference, but that does not make one acceptable and the other unacceptable. If you illegally download you are stealing money from the right holder.
2)The author is the one who hires the business people to advise them and usually have different ones for different countries. If they don’t like the advise they can go to another business who might advise them differently. If you don’t like the advise, tough, it is nothing to do with you. I think you might find that most authors would prefer that you respected them enough to give them money for the months of hard work that they have put in rather than flip them the bird and steal it.
3)How about if I steal a Jag that is sitting in a garage as the owner is not using it and returning it before they decide to use it again. I wonder if I could use that defence in front of a judge. I have never quite got the downloading them buying argument when it comes to films. If you have already downloaded it why would you need to buy it as you already have it.
Yes you are justifying piracy. It is not ludicrous to compare the two things as in both cases you are depriving the rightful owner of something. just because one is physical and the other is intellectual doesn’t make a difference.
So lets suppose it is Sat, 4th Feb 2012, 8:00pm. I want to watch the remake of ‘Brighton Rock’, and I’m not a consumer, so I download it and watch it then delete it from my hard drive – bad person. But what if instead I spotted it was on BBC2 at 9:00pm just before I downloaded it, I watch it and record it at the same time. I like it so much a put the recording away as part of may long term collection. Now which of those two set ups is the worst? Downloading and deleting it, or recording it off TV and keeping it? Considering I was never going to buy this film, what has been deprived from the makers/owners? Who has been hurt? What hurt has been done?
In both cases I have equally infringed on that copyright in a way that I shouldn’t, yet one methodology, which means I have a long term copy of the film to watch, is socially accepted and of no concern to the government or media industry – why is that the case?
the internet is free, so surely laws shouldn’t be forced onto it? some countries don’t class piracy as illegal whereas others do, so which laws rule the internet? surely for a law to be forced on the internet the law shouldn’t be by any other country or company trying to take freedom away from us, but from us offering our freedom. laws shouldn’t be forced onto the internet like ACTA and SOPA and PIPA, the internet should be left alone, its no country or business, so why should anyone have a say what goes on it? the internet is free, it always has been and that’s he way it should stay, countries should stop meddling in affairs just to keep the almost Nazi like music and film industries happy, the internet is ours not theirs, its something they should keep in mind
I feel that a solid international copyright law is needed. I just don’t see a need to charge anything beyond that and infringe on people’s privacy. Also you have to question how much any of this copyright law would be used in reality if brought in – like look at the law regarding recording TV content, you have a right to make and hold a copy of a film or TV show for 28 days only. Yet how many people get convicted 28 days later? None. It is a valid law we have to protect copyright but we don’t use it – otherwise we would be raiding peoples houses left, right and centre, and I think this is how we need to view peoples digital life – people demand and deserve the same sort of privacy, if that be in a home or on computer, and the law needs to respect that.
What’s the lesser of the two evils? Trudging to a protest on Saturday or sitting around and eventually voting UKIP? I think I’ll just move somewhere sunny and lawless…
I don’t really consider either of those an evil, one is more proactive and the other is just as much a waste of your time, but you get to stay warm.
I personally feel like everyone is missing the main argument. File sharing is sharing, and these digital laws are different and far more strict than physical ones.
If I buy a DVD or CD I can then share that with anyone I wish to do so by handing it to them. I’m not 100% sure on this but I’m quite sure they are allowed to burn themselves a copy of my CD too, as long as it is for personal use. He can then share his content that he got from my CD with a friend of his. If we so happened to do all this exchange very efficiently does that make it illegal?
This is my understanding of the situation anyway, file sharing sites are just efficient ways of sharing. If I buy a CD can I no longer share it with others?
People bought CDs instead of sharing cassettes of music they ripped from the radio because it was easier, higher quality and in a better format. Instead of bitching at us for sharing OUR mp3s and movies that we bought they should create a better way of distributing them that we are willing to pay for that is better than sharing.
I’m pretty sure sharing physically stuff is actually illegal. Not really cared about by anybody to be honest, but technically.
Well, if that’s true then the law sucks even more than I thought!
Although I’m quietly confident this can’t be the case, surely? Or there is no hope for any of us!
This is both right and wrong, copyright is regarding the rights to copy work – you usually don’t have any other than personal backup. If you give/sell a CD to a friend they can listen to it freely, once they give/sell it back they can’t, if they make a copy (backup) then that is fine, but once they give you back the CD then they don’t have a right to have a backup of something they physically don’t own.
This is the problem with copyright law, the double standards users have, they feel it is OK to copy CDs they own for friends, or keep TV recordings for longer than 28 days, but frown upon someone downloading an illegal song – it is all equally wrong.
I don’t have a problem with people saying copyright is wrong, but I’ve had conversations with people who stand strongly against illegal downloads, then I see a bunch of copies of music and films on a shelf from TV and CDs – double standards.
If ripping a CD is legal, then it’s only just been changed, as about 6 months, it was illegal to even copy a CD to a portable player under current UK law.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/369064/format-shifting-may-finally-be-legalised
I’m not suggesting this is right, but that’s how the law stands. It’s outdated in many ways, and ACTA aim to to sort out what’s fair use, and what’s clearly freetard stealing.
It is still illegal in the UK, but legal under EU law – so you have strong grounds to win a case. But I can’t recall a single case of anyone going to court for making a personal use copy, and therefore certainly don’t know of anyone convicted of such an offence, I would wonder who would want to waste expensive court time on such a stupid case, nor can I imagine what the small fine would be for such a case. If a law isn’t used then is it not decriminalised?
the authnor seems to have slightnly misunderstood the role of MEPs in this process. Khader Arif, as the former rapporteur, had nothing to do with the creation of ACTA, and nor do any other MEPs. The negotiation for the EU was led by the European Commission, and it is the Commission that is currently promoting it. The European Parliament is involved because it has to approve any treaty that the EU signs up to. The rapporteur for this process will release a report on it, but this will not necessarily support signing up to the treaty. Mr Arif seems to have resigned over total disgust at the ACTA process, but being the rapporteur for legislation does not imply support for the European Commission’s position on it.
The problem is with the ever moving tide of technology progression is that assholes are everywhere and even nicking stuff from us. It should be our right whether we want these particular cheapskate mo-fo’s from always wanting a free ticket. If you have a passion for something enough then it shouldn’t worry you to pay for it!
The issue that I have with all these laws is that you don’t know what else they have bundled in with this law, sure they are claiming its to protect copyright holders, but I think its more to do with the fear that governments are not in control of the internet. The internet is adapting and changing to its users need at a rapid rate and governments are freaking out because not all of it is not to their liking. There was a news story out of India where they are telling twitter and facebook to take down content the government find offensive. IOf course they say its for the public good, but i think not.