ACTA: ACTA is an international trade agreement that criminalizes intellectual property theft across borders. Its targets are both those counterfeiting physical goods as well as folks pirating digital content. The U.S. signed it in 2010 along with six other nations, including Japan and Canada. Last week ACTA was in the news as the EU and Poland signed the treaty as well, much to the dismay of some of their citizens and politicians. Other countries have until March of next year to join — and trade groups representing the content industry would dearly like everyone to join.
SOPA/PIPA: The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act were companion bills that were proposed last year in the House and Senate respectively. As of last week, they have been shelved thanks to a massive online and offline protest spearheaded by web giants and communities such as Wikipedia and Reddit.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (or ACTA 2.0): The TPP is currently being negotiated in Los Angles as a wide-reaching trade agreement between Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, and the United States. It includes provisions about everything from labor conditions to tariffs, but it also has provisions on intellectual property, which have caught the eye of consumer-rights groups.
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/30/acta-2-0-is-like-a-backdoor-...
There are worldwide a lot of actions against these new international legal frameworks - even if some of the oritginal most hardest punishments and controls have been retired from the text (or the leaked public version which is no guarantee). In principle there are three main problems
* a law should be set up and controlled by parliament and not like the international free-trade agreements (and the intergouvernmental non-agreements in Europe about the Euro), if there is going to be a new law and punishment you are entitled to have your say in it (through a really democratic parliament)
* a nation shouldn't be 'infected' with bad laws from another country through these secretive international agreements and other nations shouldn't have jurisdiction in or over our own countries (you always know where it starts but never where it ends)
* each individual should have the benefit of the doubt and should keep his privacy and his full democratic rights wherever he lives and whatever he does (even if he is committing a crime, that doesn't make him a person without any rights).
THe basic problem is that the entertainment industry hasn't adapted at all at the new digital environment and isn't willing to adapt and so wants to try to keep things a bit under control with all these controls and new frameworks while they know that it won't change a thing. As long as you can't watch online tv series from the US or other parts of the world at the same time as the home audience and have to wait 6 months to 2 years before you can watch it on your own television, you are creating pirates. As long as you have to pay the same price for the download of a single that has been sold millions of times and has been earned back thousands of times as for a new song that still has to be earned back one percentage of production and marketing costs, you are creating pirates. As long as there are no legal alternatives that are interesting, economical and easy to use, you are creating pirates. And if there is something that is appearing through most of the research is that those who download the most, also spend the most on entertainment but are in fact 'tasting' the free version before buying the full version with all the extra effects and add-ons and so on. Because in the end there is nothing like having the original in your hands.
And maybe there is too much identical crap around that is already boring after having it heard three times or seen once. Which is strange in a connected world where we should have been put into contact with thousands of new musicans, creators, writers and artists inspiring us with different and unexpected emotions and interpretations. The problem here is that the entertainment industry has become sometimes too much of an industry that isn't enough entertaining any more to keep us hooked enough to get out the money.
What people also seem to forget. When I was much younger I went to the library and copied my favourite lp's on those cassettes or I copied the Top of the Pops on the radio, playing it afterwards in my walkman. It seems easier by now, but even than when I had enough pocket money I went to the store and bought that really good lp of Pink Floyd, ACDC and the rest (and I still have them, the originals).
And maybe there is another thing for the entertainment industry, you can't expect people to pay each time again when you have decided to change the format. You went from VHS to DVD (and some other fucked up formats for people who feel themselves losers now) and now we should pay for Blue Ray or from LP to CD to download ? And that for the SAME price for the same artist for the same title ? For what, some better sound, some better effects ? My DVD-CD's are technically so vulnerable that I have to make backups from them if I want to be sure not to 'lose' them untill you come up with another 'Format'.
It is also surprising that it seems possible to do all these things against copythiefs and that the same thing takes years to do even the most simplest things against international cybercrime (and finance them adeaquatly).
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook