ACTA: the end of internet as we know it

The internet as we know it is at risk. The world governments are collaborating in secret to write the ACTA (Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) Treaty.

They say this treaty is to combat piracy, but like many security measures it endangers far more than it protects. In its current form, the treaty allows the government to violate your privacy, and your right to Free Speech, by allowing them to seize and destroy your electronics, without a search warrant on ANY suspicion of copyright infringement. It also allows governments to block any website they wish, meaning that even this site might be erased. You can read a detailed copy of the most recently leaked copy of the proposed treaty at anti-acta.com and see for yourself. WhiteHouse.gov also has a page dedicated to ACTA. This is a real thing, and it is really going to happen unless we do something about it.


1. Send emails and/or call your local Senators. It can be difficult for our elected officials to know what the people want, so make it clear to them that the profits of a few do not outweigh the freedoms of all.

2. Consider getting involved in the anti-acta movement. You can visit their website, or PM me for information about how to connect with others who care about the future of the internet.

Sorry if this is a little preachy, internet freedom is a subject near and dear to my heart.

Yeah I just heard about this the other day.

Wikipedia:
"ACTA would establish a new international legal framework that countries can join on a voluntary basis."

I didn't even know something like this was possible. So what exactly does it take for a country to get on board? I imagine here in America all it would need is the support of the executive branch, and unfortunately I believe the Obama administration wouldn't hesitate in signing on.

On a personal note, being mainly interested in music, I'd always hoped that piracy would evolve into something beneficial to the artists and revamp the music industry into something more local and less corporate. Perhaps there's still hope for change outside the realm of piracy, though.

america would be in as soon as it is approved, there one of the countries organising it. same goes for Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and Switzerland

Obama is unfortunately one of the strongest supporters of this garbage. I really wanted to vote for him a second time too. What's terrifying is that even there's a provision which says no country needs to enforce any portions of the treaty that violate their laws or constitution, treaties like this are outside of the normal realm of law, meaning they supersede your constitutional rights. Even though the government can choose not to enforce those bits, history is pretty rife with examples of what governments do when they get a chance to misbehave.

The most terrifying consequence of all this to me is that user generated content on the internet will become a thing of the past. When every YouTube, Flickr, pastebin, and whathaveyou is legally responsible for the copyright infringement that happens on their site, do you really think they'll be able to stay afloat? They will be forced either to give up on the entire concept of user generated content or risk billions of dollars in fines.

Well US companies are the ones who are hurt the most from copy right issues, since other countries are always stealing our stuff. So it isn't a big surprise that the US is backing this.

For us to be a part of something like this, it has to pass congress. So if congress doesn't pass it with a two thirds vote, it doesn't matter what Obama wants, it wont happen. Also, there is no such thing a treaties that override the constitution. A treaty that goes directly against it, is automatically invalid.

you got some documentation to back that up?

Which part?

The part where you say treaties are automatically null and void if they violate the constitution.

Preliminary Analysis of the Officially Released ACTA Text | Electronic Frontier Foundation Here's the EFF's breakdown of the latest released draft from April 2010, it includes a lot of the language about how the international treaty would be stepping on the toes of the US courts and there isn't much they could do about it.

Anon will have this down by Saturday.

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Originally Posted by Odd_Nonposter

Anon will have this down by Saturday.

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I dunno, this isn't a thirteen year old girl screaming about AIDS on youtube...

It is not really about having documentation as much as understanding how our government works. Our country is based around the constitution and its the highest legal document in the land. Every one has to follow its rules, and nothing can go above it.

Even if both houses of congress passes a law, and the president signs it, it can not over rule the constitution. If they want to over ride something they need to make an amendment, which takes a two third votes in both houses and then passed by three 75% of the states.

it's not a law, there's your problem.

I really suggest you take some time to read over the proposed wording and the analysis that the lawyers at EFF and other organizations have put into this.

Stupid whiny mega-huge corporations. I've heard mention of this on TorrentFreak, but not much. I really hope somehow this doesn't pass. I'm not for piracy all the time for everything (I'm especially against piracy when it happens to small indie music makers and game makers), but without the magic of ThePirateBay, I wouldn't be a massive fan of Valve right now. Piracy = Free promotion at a slight drain of, what, a few hundred people who won't buy one or two albums?

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Originally Posted by Alric

Even if both houses of congress passes a law, and the president signs it, it can not over rule the constitution.

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Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. I rest my case. Sure, it got repealed, but it was there for a while.

I never said they couldn't pass a law that went against the constitution, I said that the law would be illegal. There is a big difference, because at times the government has over stepped what they are legally allowed to do, and laws have been found unconstitutional before and if they are they get thrown out.

In this case, it doesn't matter if it is a law or not. It can't be enforced. You can't be arrested by international police on American soil, and American police and courts have no authority to hold you based on international laws. With no possible way to enforce it, it means nothing.

there are plenty of unconstitutional things that go on within government, large and small. look at money for instance. but this topic is something we should all be against. the internet is a beautifully free thing. there is a lot of bs but that is fine with me as long as we have an unbridled forum for ideas to be passed upon. look at the internet as a river, there are bullshit ideas on it, but the river is flowing freely. its not a complicated thing until you pollute your mind with the filthy idea that someone or some group has the right answers and no one else does. i know this world has become so fucking cloudy that no one knows what to believe but atleast we are still able to share information freely. freedom is something we should value over breathing.

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Originally Posted by Alric

It is not really about having documentation as much as understanding how our government works. Our country is based around the constitution and its the highest legal document in the land. Every one has to follow its rules, and nothing can go above it.

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Except Bush.

Come on, do you really believe our government couldn't find a work-around?

If they do, it is still illegal. There might seem like there is a gray area in there, where it doesn't matter what is legal or not. Since the government can do illegal things and often does get away with it. However, you will always have that legal defense to use against them in cases such as that. And morally you have every right to break the law and oppose them in matters are done illegally.

I for one welcome this opportunity to go to jail for exercising my fourth and first amendment rights!

...oh wait, no I don't. Nobody remembers about juror nullification and unconstitutional laws never get taken down unless people yell and scream in the streets for years at a time.

If the governments are collaborating in secret then how do people know about it?

Leaked documents.

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Originally Posted by katemorrigan

Leaked documents.

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This information has been freely available for some time. There is no secret government conspiracy here. Media neglect, perhaps, but this information has always been available to those who seek it.

The information that "people are planning something" has been available for years, but the actual wording of the documents was kept from the public until the leak in April 2010, at least that was my understanding of the issue.

I hope it does end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNKZTVvgTjY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Xg_C2YmG0

Global Internet censorship is here. SOPA and PIPA have been stopped (at least for now) in the United States, but a treaty known as ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is far worse than either of them. ACTA was quietly signed by Barack Obama back on October 1st, 2011 and most Americans have never even heard of it. But it could mean the end of the Internet as we know it. This new treaty gives foreign governments and copyright owners incredibly broad powers. If you are alleged to have violated a copyright, your website can be shut down without a trial and police may even show up at your door to take you to prison. It doesn’t even have to be someone in the United States that is accusing you. It could just be a foreign government or a copyright owner halfway across the world that alleges that you have violated a copyright. It doesn’t matter. So far, the U.S., the EU and seven other nations have signed on to ACTA, and the number of participants is expected to continue to grow. The 'powers that be' are obsessed with getting Internet censorship one way or another. The open and free Internet that you and I have been enjoying for all these years is about to change, and not for the better.

So how come the U.S. Senate never voted on ACTA? Doesn’t the U.S. Constitution mandate that all treaties must be approved by a two-thirds vote in the Senate?

Of course it does.

But Barack Obama has gotten around this by calling ACTA an 'executive agreement', which is a load of crap.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of nonsense we are getting out of Obama on a regular basis now. He has shown endless disdain for the U.S. Constitution.

Some members of Congress are expressing deep alarm over ACTA. For example, U.S. Representative Darrell Issa is calling ACTA 'more dangerous than SOPA'.

There are some members of Congress that are even demanding that ACTA be submitted to the U.S. Senate for a vote. Unfortunately, their voices are very few so far, and ACTA is getting next to no coverage in the mainstream media.

But this new treaty is very, very serious. It basically mandates that all Internet communications be constantly monitored for copyright infringement. Sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter will have to monitor accounts for copyright infringement 24 hours a day.

If you are alleged to have committed a violation, you might not just lose your social media account or your website.

You could potentially be sent to prison.

Yes, seriously.

What we are talking about is Chinese-style Internet censorship for the entire globe.

The following comes from a recent Forbes article….

'Why does ACTA matter to the media and citizens?' writes Alex Howard. “Consider the phrase 'intermediary liability.' That’s the principle that websites on the Internet, like YouTube, Internet service providers, web hosting companies or social networks, should not be held liable for the content created or uploaded by their users.'

The new rules proposed in ACTA essentially transform Western ISPs into something more along the lines of ISPs in China and other more restrictive nations.

One of the worst elements of ACTA is that it would allow accusers of copyright infringement to completely and totally bypass judicial review.

If you don’t think that ACTA will change the Internet, just check out the following excerpt from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson….

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

Big sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter may just decide that it is too much of a hassle to monitor millions of pieces of content. Allowing users to constantly post content on their sites would be a huge risk. In fact, if they are found to be allowing 'copyright infringement', those sites could be permanently shut down.

The American people need to get educated about this new treaty before it is too late. There is still a chance that we could get the U.S. Congress to take action against this new treaty.

Under ACTA, Internet service providers will essentially be required to become the police of the Internet. This was explained in a recent article by Cory Doctorow….

New revelations on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a secretive global copyright being privately negotiated by rich countries away from the UN: ACTA will require ISPs to police trademarks the way they currently police copyright. That means that if someone accuses you of violating a trademark with a web-page, blog-post, video, tweet, etc, your ISP will be required to nuke your material without any further proof, or be found to be responsible for any trademark violations along with you. And of course, trademark violations are much harder to verify than copyright violations, since they often hinge on complex, fact-intensive components like tarnishment, dilution and genericization. Meaning that ISPs are that much more likely to simply take all complaints at face-value, leading to even more easy censorship of the Internet with nothing more than a trumped-up trademark claim.

One of the big problems with ACTA is that it is way too broad and way too vague.

Vague language allows authorities to 'interpret' the law any way that they see fit.

This can often lead to selective enforcement. Websites that authorities like will be left alone, while those that they don’t like will be harassed or completely shut down.

ACTA was written in secret and it has been pushed through very, very quietly. The following comes from a recent CNN article….

Like many trade agreements, ACTA is a confusing mess. Even its signatories don’t agree on how it’s supposed to work. The way it’s been pushed forward has also been unruly — talks have been held in secret, without any kind of legislative oversight or input from citizens or public-interest groups. The public only became aware of it in 2008, a couple of years after discussions began, when Wikileaks published a discussion paper. Since then, drafts of the pact have been released to the public, each successively less onerous to critics. Reportedly, though, big media and pharmaceutical lobbyists have been privy to the talks all along.

Of course – this is a chance for big media and big corporations to take control of the Internet.

The way ACTA has been pushed on us has been absolutely disgusting. In fact, one key EU official that was in charge of investigating ACTA has resigned in protest over how this whole thing has gone down. He says that ACTA is basically being crammed down the throats of the European people….

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.

As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens’ legitimate demands.

Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.

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 will not take part in this masquerade.

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Re-printed from another website. Im sure the copyright holder would have no qualms in infringeing his or her copyright here!