Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

[Chiikaboom]

Well then, i guess im stuck in Canadia for the rest of my life.

[dragontamer5788]

Hmm... I'm concerned, but I will give the benefit of the doubt to our leaders. I'll assume that they have Warez in mind and not the legal gray areas such as Fansubs, AMVs, Reverse Engineering, etc. etc.

I am concerned about privacy issues... as well as practicality issues. (Lets see them try to scan an encrypted hard drive before an airport flight). I'm concerned with P2P programs such as Bittorrent (which is very legal, as http://www.bittorrent.com/ demonstrates).

Ultimately, I feel that while pirating is wrong... there has not been an adequate solution to the problem. I feel that most of my other rights reign supreme. Privacy, DRM, P2P, Encryption... If they take away Encryption and Reverse Engineering from computer scientists / engineers to enforce this act, I'm going to do something about it. As for the clause in question:

Significant willful infringements without motivation for financial gain to such an extent as to prejudicially affect the copyright owner

I think it is pretty clear that the above clause is targeting warez sites specifically. AMVs as far as I know do not affect the copyright owner to the extent that these sites do. My primary concern with this clause is the fate of Fansubs, which will probably be thrown out with the dirty water.

Fortunately, Fansubbers can host it themselves easily with Bittorrent. Which gets me to another fear...

Authority to seize and destroy IPR infringing goods and equipment and materials used to make them

Remedies against circumvention of technological protection measures used by copyright owners and the trafficking of circumvention devices

This is dangerous, extremely dangerous. Perhaps the most dangerous thing to this community. They are enforcing ****ing DRM back on us.

DeCSS, the algorithm used to decrypt DVDs, falls under the above two clauses in some degree (moreso on the 2nd one). Our ability to rip footage off of DVDs in the first place will be threatened by that clause. In fact, the trafficking of DeCSS when it first came out has a long history: we all know it is morally fine to take a ****ing DVD that you own and play it on a non-compliant DVD player through the magic that is DeCSS.

Excuse me, but I think I have the right to get music I ****ing bought legally and put it on a CD-Rom so I can play in the car. **** you DRM. I hate you. Moving on...

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For an alternative view of this issue, see: http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php. Kinda funny, but I think we all can see why the world governments are beginning to crack down here. They are pretty cocky... but from what I can tell thepiratebay actually isn't doing anything illegal at the moment, due to the intricacies of how Bittorrent works.

As for a bit more of hilarity...

The proliferation of infringements of intellectual property rights ("IPR") particularly in the context of counterfeiting and piracy poses an ever-increasing threat to the sustainable development of the world economy. The consequences of such IPR infringements include
(1) depriving legitimate businesses and their workers of income;
(2) discouraging innovation and creativity;
(3) threatening consumer health and safety;
(4) providing an easy source of revenue for organized crime; and
(5) loss of tax revenue.

Can someone explain to me how downloading movies from thePirateBay will hurt my health and/or threaten my safety? (item 3).

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Anyway, my point is that it is a stretch to think that this would cover AMVs, at least by the way I'm reading it. I'm no lawyer, and I am frankly not as up-to-date to politics as I should be to make a post like this...

Overall, I agree with the concept of the law/treaty, but they are treading on extremely dangerous grounds. Very easily can one of our rights get taken away here. Anyone want to draft up a template letter we can send out together as the AMV community?

The issues we need to push forward are:
1. Protection of our anti-DRM tools -- If we can't rip the DVD in the first place we won't be able to make AMVs. Similarly, if we can't anti-DRM that music you got from iTunes, good luck making an from that.
2. Privacy in the airport -- This is a key issue of course. I don't think it is legal/moral for us to be forced to show our data to airport security.

Anything else here thats particularly dangerous? Thats the most important things that I was able to see.

[Batto!]

so...what happens if they search your laptop and you have a wallpaper that says "this is a bomb"?

[The Origonal Head Hunter]

so...what happens if they search your laptop and you have a wallpaper that says "this is a bomb"?

you should be put in jail just for being an idiot without the foresight to not change it beforehand.

[Pas]

"RIAA and MPAA want to police the Internet"

...



I don't even see that as a feasible option

But, if it is...

[Bongu-san]

1. Protection of our anti-DRM tools -- If we can't rip the DVD in the first place we won't be able to make AMVs. Similarly, if we can't anti-DRM that music you got from iTunes, good luck making an from that.

I think that this would entice those, who would have otherwise bought their sources, download "illegal" sources instead. This anti-copyright infringement technology only makes it harder to do this stuff legally.

The other Aspect that I don't like is the way they can get IPs... I understand that this is to try and fight Piracy, but it can be misused in so many ways...

The real people who profit from piracy will probably get away with this act. It will be the more honest people who’ll take the brunt of it as soon as governments get involved in this..

Even scarier when you consider that hackers can manipulate IP addresses or take over your computer and download illegal files through your computer so that the cops will come to your door and not notice that the hacker got the files.

As for AMVs and the.org...

From the day I started this site, I and everyone else involved knew the days of AMVs were numbered. We knew of all the possible outcomes with AMVs on the web, the most likely was that we would eventually be taken down. I believe that we as a community have done everything that we could to keep AMVs around as long as possible. We have been surprised how long it has lasted so far...

However, even given all that is transpiring, this site will still continue to do its best to preserve the AMV community as best as we can. For now, we can only hope for a miracle that we are somehow overlooked through these very troubling times.

[Kionon]

I will continue to edit as long as it is physically possible for me to do so. I buy CDs, and actually since coming to Japan, I buy MORE DVDs than I ever did. Hell, I just bought the KOR second movie for the THIRD time, and all I wanted was the Twin figures that came in the special R2 box.

Nope, sorry, guys. You can sue me if you want, but unless you're prepared to send in goons to physically restrain me from editing, you can fuck off. Chaotic good, ftw. I'm a moral person; fuck your immoral rules.

[Bauzi]

Heh, might as well just go about arresting everyone then. Hope they have a jail big enough.

Oh no, that's where fines come into play. If this goes through, i'm sure that's what they will do. They'd love that. More money in their pockets.

But lets be serious here, there's no freaking way they can tell the dif between an ripped CD and a DLed one. Hell, you could have just ripped the CD/DVD from your friend. Try as they might, they won't be able to bring us down, so relax. Because if they DO find a AMV on ur laptop or whatever, hey, just say you made the video yourself, with a dvd and cd you own. Oops, they can't do shit. : /

I´m really concerned about this shit. Explain them that you bought the CD, ripped it, but already threw it away, because it´s damaged or you lost it?

I just can´t see this whole situation in an easy way. Ok let´s imagine that this thing goes through and tons of people are getting fines and trouble. So many would complain that they might have to remove it from our law system, but this might take years. .-.

Excuse me, but I think I have the right to get music I ****ing bought legally and put it on a CD-Rom so I can play in the car. **** you DRM. I hate you.

Sumes it up what I think about DRM.

[76]

A British study found that iPods owned by persons 14-24 today contain an average of more than 840 tracks downloaded on file-sharing networks, nearly fifty percent of all music possessed by this segment. The same study also found that 95% of individuals falling under this category have copied music in some way.[12] Thus, some critics argue that the ACTA directly incriminates the ordinary consumer activity

I'm not really that bright when it comes to these sorts of debates, and I'm also very young, so I've got allot to learn before my opinion will ever really matter, but what I do have to say is quite true; If one would stop to think about it.

Though the .Org may get taken down by all this fuss, I doubt that the government will ever really be able to put something like this into motion. The ratio of order to chaos is too out of wack. No matter how many guns the government has, the main population will always overpower them. There just isn't enough government to sort this out. Plain and simple.


Again....ignore me if I'm completely out of place here...>_>

[-GfN-]

Though the .Org may get taken down by all this fuss, I doubt that the government will ever really be able to put something like this into motion. The ratio of order to chaos is too out of wack. No matter how many guns the government has, the main population will always overpower them. There just isn't enough government to sort this out. Plain and simple.

it's mostly about corporations who initiate the lawsuits, not the government.

what I'm worried about the most with this agreement (as I am with all recent ones) is the way the annotation/footnote/appendix section generalizes the already crucial main points and makes the execcution of those subject to interpretation.
It is somewhat comparable to the treaty of lisboa in which the appendix neutralizes lots of its own paragraphs, which seems to be the case with this agreement as well.
this is dangerous as it overpowers those who initiate the actions as mentioned above.