Mike Gerwitz

“ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a proposed enforcement treaty between United States, the European Community, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and Mexico, with Canada set to join any day now.” – More information here

The name of the treaty sounds innocent enough, but what are they not telling you? This is just another addition to the huge string of laws recently forced upon us by corrupt governments and corporations to take away our liberties. For what? Money, as always.

What makes this law so bad? I just want to highlight a few points. I quote ars technica with the following details with what the treaty may cause:

• Require Internet Service Providers to monitor all consumers’ Internet communications, terminate their customers’ Internet connections based on rights-holders’ repeated allegation of copyright infringement, and divulge the identity of alleged copyright infringers possibly without judicial process
• Interfere with fair use of copyrighted materials
• Criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing
• Interfere with legitimate parallel trade in goods, including the resale of brand-name pharmaceutical products
• Impose liability on manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), if those APIs are used to make counterfeits
• Improperly criminalize acts not done for commercial purpose and with no public health consequences
• Improperly divert public resources into enforcement of private rights

What does this mean for the average computer user? Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing will become unlawful, knocking out a huge chunk of collaborative file sharing, including Bittorrent. Some may consider this a good thing – after all, files are often unlawfully distributed using these services. But not always. Venues like bittorrent help reduce costs by allowing for the legal distribution of files, such as free software or your own personal files. Corporations also use it to cut costs of file distribution (let’s take the popular example of Blizzard’s use of bittorrent to distribute World of Warcraft files to their users).

File sharing itself is not illegal! It is how some use it is that is. You should not criminalize an entire right for the sake of hindering pirates, which will simply find another venue. Crackers use computers to steal account information and steal identities – why not make computers illegal? The internet’s being used to download all these illegal files, why not abolish the internet? How soon before they begin taking away additional rights simply so corporations will stop fussing because their multi-billion profits are not enough?

Think of this like prohibition. The law was repealed because you cannot force people to behave. You cannot take away the right to free will – people will do what they want despite the laws. It’s the same with drugs – they’re illegal, yet still used. And what do we do? Waste countless tax dollars putting druggies in prison while that space and money could be put to much better use to catch actual criminals! (I highly recommend reading the lyrics to Prison Song by System of a Down for an excellent demonstration of this point.)

If this law passes – what will happen? The “good guys” will get screwed. We will be down a major, cheap venue for distributing our software when we may not have the money or resources to use other services. Businesses and corporations will also be forced to pay higher distribution costs. What about the pirates? What about those who are actually breaking the law? That won’t stop them. Hell, it may not even hinder them. They’ll come up with another method before the law is even passed. There already are plenty of other methods that are not P2P. You are loosing your right because others do not know how to behave and it’s not even going to stop them!

If you don’t know what DRM is yet (which may be surprising considering how often it is seen all over this website), I encourage you to take a look. Digital Right Management, more appropriately called Digital Restrictions Management, is seen all over, and is growing. With DRM, your computer, your devices, your software tells you what to do. It says, “oh, I don’t want you to do that” or “oh, you can only play this song this many times”. It restricts you. You should tell your computer what to do, not the other way around. It’s just another ploy to further remove our rights – to control our lives.

This treaty would enforce the use of DRM. You would not be able to buy any music that is not encrypted with DRM – meaning you cannot share it with your friends, you can’t transfer it to another device without your computer’s permission, and sometimes if you upgrade your computer you will be denied the right to listen to your own music! You will also only be able to play the music on DRM-compatible devices. Free software cannot play DRM-encrypted music. You will be eating out of the palms of the corporations.

I’m sure many recognize the recent release of the game Spore by EA Games. It was a very controversial release because it incorporated DRM to a ridiculous degree, needing to “call home” every once in a while (it may have been 10 days) to re-activate. This means that in the future, once the activation server was taken down, Spore would no longer be playable. It was as if you were renting the game, not purchasing it. Because EA tried to control its users, they ended up making Spore the most pirated game of 2008 – exactly the opposite effect they had intended. The point – you cannot control people. They will rebel. You need to focus on the problem under the peoples’ own terms or you’ll just make things worse. Now imagine what something like the ACTA will do. Probably make things worse.

Let’s not forget about the mention of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) monitoring their customers’ connections for illegal material. Such plans are already attempting to be forced upon the users of other countries, such as the UK and Australia. What does this mean? Well, putting aside the fact that you are being spied on without a warrant, the software used to track your connection will slow down your connection speeds. This affects everyone – regardless of whether or not you are doing anything illegal. As if the connection monitoring wasn’t bad enough.

The world’s governments need to prioritize and stop taking from us our liberties! Before you know it, they’ll all be gone. You have to help put a stop to it before it’s too late – before you wake up one morning and realize you have nothing left and are powerless to do anything about it. Stop letting your government and your corporations boss you around. Some may not think technology right are such a big deal – but keep in mind. Technology already rules society, and it’s only going to continue to take more control. We’re becoming increasingly dependant on technology and we cannot allow it to enslave us.

Please read more information about this treaty here.

Tagged: Free Software, FSF, liberties