Leaked ACTA treaty would totally screw P2P among other things

[thewayne]

A treaty is being circulated, in secret, that could have some pretty amazing ramifications. Among them: all P2P would be illegal, including trading works that are legally available, and region-free DVD would also go bye-bye.

The beauty of this is that it's being done through secret negotiations, not publicly in Congress or the UN. And major backers? Hollywood: music industry, movie industry, attorneys.

From Cory Doctrow's site: "Wikileaks has the full text of a memo concerning the dread Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a draft treaty that does away with those pesky public trade-negotiations at the United Nations (with participation from citizens' groups and public interest groups) in favor of secret, closed-door meetings where entertainment industry giants get to give marching orders to governments in private.

It's some pretty crazy reading -- among other things, ACTA will outlaw P2P (even when used to share works that are legally available, like my books), and crack down on things like region-free DVD players. All of this is taking place out of the public eye, presumably with the intention of presenting it as a fait accompli just as the ink is drying on the treaty. "

Such fun! We've always had the best government that money can buy, it's just inspiring to see it actually at work.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/06/secret-supercopyrigh.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/23/anticounterfeiting-t.html

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/06/211236

Wikileaks is definitely a good thing.

Comments

[silveradept]

If you can't get them by draconian DRM, make it so the law prevents them from doing anything at all. Nice to know that our governments are doing all of this and will tell us about it when they're all done, instead of when this started, so they could have received the appropriate earful about how wrong it is.