I’ve just spent the best part of a month helping to halt the progress of SOPA and PIPA, registering my protest.
Only to discover today in my own jurisdiction here in the EU, that the UK government has just signed through ACTA !
what role did you have to play in the signing of ACTA ?
how did I not hear about this act similar to SOPA and PIPA going on in my own region ?
why was this not publicised ? how come this got signed out of the blue ?
It is not the job of the ISP to act as copyright protection police for the entire media, the cost alone of this will increase the cost of internet access to all, is Acta the euro equivalent of SOPA and PIPA which are designed to allow copyright holders to effectively censor and shape the future of the internet at their will ! The Internet is more and more becoming a walled garden run by corporations. this is not and never will be healthy for innovation, the old school media giants are attempting a coux in internet land, in which they become judge jury and executioner, because they want control of what they perceive to be a distribution medium / cash register they don’t own : the internet, the problem is the internet should represent a great deal more than a cash register.
Piracy has always occured since the days of punch card and cassette tape, its just that the media giants now, have very easy ways due to the internet providing it itself, of measuring digital piracy which they didn’t with other older mediums, except of course with older mediums they just employed a royalty tax on blank media sold in the past, ie a presumption of guilt, if they could, they would just tax isp’s directly. They also make the false presumption that there is a direct correlation between piracy and lost sales, if they were to invent an unpirateable digital media format they would discover that those levels of piracy would not translate directly into in an equal amount sales if piracy was impossible, as the majority of people who do pirate, do not have the disposable income to spend in such a way, they would in most cases consume less media. With an unpirateable digital media format, sales would increase only marginally but not to the extent of the simplistic media interest view, that ‘piracy = lost sales’, this must clearly be recognised for what it is a fallacy. If the media giants want to make the new digital media distribution thing work, then they have to follow the better examples of how to go about it : NetFlix or iTunes for example and they have to win market share on price like every company in the arena, And stop complaining about piracy when they themselves are not offering compelling models for consumers in the digital age.
Secondarily it must be recognised that the media organisations have not been making all necessary measures on their own behalf to protect their works, anti piracy measures today are weaker in some cases than they were in the 80’s for computer games. Thirdly it must be realised that there is plenty of legislation already at their disposal currently, to fight online piracy what with ISP’S having the ability to traffic shape protocols and limit content access : which most ISP’s currently already do ? Therefore adding more additional sweeping powers with ACTA. certainly the prosecution of individuals for downloading say a single MP3 seems the wrong way to go about it. Allowing and aiding with legal measures the prosecution of major distribution websites who profit mainly from pirated media is a different matter, few of these are based in the jurisdiction in which ACTA is sanctioned, and as such the media giants will find it easier to go after the individual consumer. A policing system similar to that, pursued for drugs seems to make sense to me, ie the laws should be bent towards prosecuting those who profit from illegal distribution.
This artificial game … of lets convert the internet into another static cash register retail outlet for the major media international corporates, this is their way of stifling competition and market models, not of their own making, so they can set the price, regardless of the actual distribution costs in this new digital medium, theyre interests are are too vested and too powerful they will use ACTA in an abusive manner.
If you eurocrats prevent us from deporting abu qatada and have just released him into british society ? but are happy to send Gary Mckinnon to the USA over supposed hacking charges your sanity is quite clearly out of whack, quite clearly from my investigation of Gary Mckinnon he used generic software and default password probing, super basic stuff, the USA want to threaten Gary because its easier to intimidate and lock up citizens than bother to implement proper security in the first place, all he did was prove what a joke their security was.
I also have a greater and growing sense that the EU bureaucracy does not democratically represent the will of the british public and never really has done, its just another largely unelected body of people parasitically making a good free living deciding the destiny of millions of people who have little connection to the EU power base.
Imagine If I perceive that democracy in the UK is effectively just a popularity contest run once every four years in which the vested interest power monger set decide to elect a pre-defined group of idiots, to further knacker my country up for the next four years, then do please imagine that my view on the necessity of EU bureaucracy is even dimmer.
Could you provide me with a summarised explanation as to the powers you have just agreed to written in your own words, and a link to the technical document that describes the powers enacted by acta ? Im desperately hoping you have not just signed me up for the euro equivalent of SOPA and PIPA while I was busy defending against those bills for the very benefit of US citizens rights ?
a disgruntled englishman