Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.

[Are_grits_groceries]

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-t...

WTF is going on?

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Intellectual property has become a monster.

We need to rethink it completely.

[JDPriestly]

2. No wonder Obama wanted to keep this secret.

This of course is the reason that the government has taken the right to monitor electronic communications. Terrorism, my eye! No doubt terrorists exist, but it's big business that wants the government to snoop on everyone.

I support the rights of artists and copyright owners to defend their copyrights, but the law provides remedies to companies and individuals whose copyrights are violated, and it should be entirely up to the copyright owner to defend the copyright.

[GA_ArmyVet]

111. Big Bisiness my eye, Its Big Government that

wants that control...and whoever controls it controls information and speech and dissent...Not good..

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. Corporatism IS Fascism

That's just a fact. Somewhere in Hell, I believe Mussolini is actually jealous that he never got to take it that far.

[Echo In Light]

16. Perhaps people weren't as brainwashed by their social climate?

[glitch]

53. Ain't that the TRUTH! nt

[imdjh]

4. Hi, I'm from the RIAA and I'm pathetic.

[MineralMan]

6. I had an RIAA goon come into the office suite my wife and I

used to rent so we could get out of the house to do our magazine writing. The house was smaller than the suite of offices we rented, actually.

Anyhow, I had a multi-disc CD changer in the office running a random play cycle all the time of the music we both liked. We'd swap in discs from time to time to change things up.

RIAA guy said we'd have to pay. I told him it was a private office, not a public business, and that he was trespassing. He left and I never heard from them again.

There was a similar visit from the state sales tax guy. After he found out that we didn't sell anything out of the place except for our writing, he left, too.

[wroberts189]

8. You should never invite a Vampire in....

Don't you watch movies?


How on earth did he show up at your door?

[MineralMan]

11. I didn't invite him in. He just walked into the door to the suite.

Most of the building was taken up by other private offices on the second floor, but there were retail stores on the first floor. I guess the guy figured he could harass some more people by climbing the stairs and walking in some doors. Oh, well.

[Xithras]

13. Probably ASCAP, not the RIAA

The RIAA doesn't care if you play music in your office, so long as the CD is legit. ASCAP, on the other hand, has field agents out hunting for people who play music in commercial establishments without a license. ASCAP are the bastards who sued the Girl Scouts for letting the kids sing Kumbayah at camp without a license, and who regularly sue ANYONE caught singing Happy Birthday in public. They are both "licensed works".

[MineralMan]

20. You know, you're right. I had confused the two

groups. It was about 15 years ago, so...

[shadowknows69]

126. They went after local bars around here for their jukeboxes a few years back.

[ddeclue]

5. No one else will sign such a treaty.

[Posteritatis]

17. I imagine most developed countries will, actually. (nt)

[wroberts189]

7. This means your ISP will now have to watch what you do.

Not that they were not already doing it.

Unconstitutional.

knr

[Orsino]

49. They can't.

Oh, they can block some ports, but they can't sniff everyone's traffic. This would entail building another Internet.

[wroberts189]

59. They are already sniffing all the traffic friend.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Countdown_Telcom_whis...


They store it in one mountain ...And they back it up as well in another.


They have a recording of all your calls ..text messages ..websites.. credit card charges ..everything. Going back several years.


They cannot physically sift through it all ....but if they want to know about you its only a few key strokes.

This is well documented. Which is why the Telcos. needed immunity.

[Orsino]

69. No, they're really not.

I should repeat a distinction here: they can sniff almost anything, but they can't sniff everything, nor can they even store it all to sift later. That would entail building another Internet-sized archive every day.

The RIAA's lawsuits are a different matter. That evidence starts with honeypots, servers that dish up content to entice downloads, said info being used to make ISPs pony up users' identities.

[RaleighNCDUer]

102. they don't need to sniff everything - all they need to do is make you

aware that they MIGHT be sniffing at any time, any place. Paranoia, backed up with a few widely publicized lawsuits, will do the rest.

Why censor anyone when you can get them to censor themselves?

[wroberts189]

106. They are sniffing everything and they are storing it ..with backups.

A massive domestic dragnet.

BELIEVE IT...


fficial&client=firefox-a" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/search?q=massive+domestic+dragnet...




http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/18/eff/index....

[Orsino]

113. Right.

Oh, the chilling effect isn't entirely intentional--they are happier that we don't all know about the monitoring.

The goal is to be able to pop in on nearly anyone when they think they need to.

[wroberts189]

104. Umm ..yes they are... this is a fact. Whistleblowers have come forward.

And they have billions of terabytes of storage. I will post some links when I can.

And not only are they storing it all... they have backups!

You can do a lot with billions of dollars and today's hardware.

[Orsino]

112. Billions of terabytes are vastly insufficient.

They can't monitor everywhere, and don't see everything.

[wroberts189]

114. Umm .. yes they can. It is a fact .. I have posted links in this thread.

Then try trillions. Semantics... a couple billion dollars buys a lot of hard drives as well as other things.


Their problem is sifting through it all but they are working on it... if they have not already perfected it.

They got fiber taps into everything. They really do.

This is not paranoia ... this is easily researched fact. ACLU ..EFF .. all has this is well documented.

Sometimes I really wish I could say more but I cannot. Trust me though.. they record every electronic transmission. And they can break SSL and encryption easily.

They just arrested someone based on their text messaging alone. They had a complete history of them all.

Why do you think telco. immunity passed?

[Orsino]

124. I can say more, and I say they can't do what we imagine they can do.

I don't doubt they can watch an awful lot of traffic. they cannot see everything, and can't archive it to sniff it later.

[wroberts189]

125. They can see EVERYTHING and are recording it.

Spend a little time on the ACLU and EFF websites. You will see.

On edit ..how do you know they cannot?

[Orsino]

127. There are far too many access points for our all-seeing masters...

...to be truly all-seeing. I don't doubt that they're all up in the Tier 1 providers domestically, and internationally where they can get away with it, but the Internet simply isn't sufficiently hierarchical to make this practical. They can choose from among a lot of traffic if they feel like monitoring, but their work is going to rely heavily on tips from other intelligence sources.

And they may be archiving a helluva lot more traffic, but they aren't backing up the Internet every second. That kind of storage doesn't exist, and by the time it does, the Internet itself will also have grown exponentially.

I'll say again that they can see almost anything domestically, given time to set up and inclination, and they can sniff quite a bit of traffic more proactively, but they can't see everything, and they can't store much of it. I don't say these things to minimize the evil that is government spying, but only to underscore that these are people doing the spying: a limited number of people, with technology that sounds awesome but is still inadequate for looking into all traffic.

[wroberts189]

128. Everyone but Qwest signed on to illegal spying....

So they put the CEO in jail ... found some skeletons in his closet. I have no doubt it was retribution.

Now they are signed up. And they all got immunity.

I wish I had some links to back up my claims but I did not bookmark them. If I find some I will send them. But they do have this capability and the storage capacity. They may filter out some stuff.. agreed.

What shocked me the most is they have the capacity for backups.

I have a T1 with Qwest...but it runs through AT&T fiber. Same thing if I bought it through Sprint. They got sniffit rooms at every major junction.

[Orsino]

129. Well, as I said, the Internet (fortunately) isn't very hierarchical.

If you picture the ISPs' interconnections as roughly pyramidal, there is lots of lateral peering as well as the vertical provider-customer hook-ups.

For many of the same reasons that the Internet is survivable, it's to a certain extent uncontrollable--and much of it is still not visible in anything close to real-time by the all-seeing eye at the top.

[WinkyDink]

83. And yet nobody knows what Bush and Cheney were really up to. Sure.

[Occulus]

93. They don't need to do that.

All they need to do is charge you for access to types of content. Then they can sniff the people that pay for those tiers.

I don't think this is about copyright at all. I think this is really about network neutrality, because this treaty cannot possibly be enforced with network neutrality in place, and "they" have been after that for a few years now.

[phasma ex machina]

95. They would actually need to build another planet to hold all of the SIGINT people ...

on the back end to sniff everyone's packets.

[wroberts189]

105. Not exactly....

They do not need people to look at it... they just need to tap into a few fiber lines and store it. Then when they want info on you they use their own version of google. Calling up all electronic data associated with you.


This is very real and the technology has existed for a while.

This very thread and my post will be recorded as soon as I hit "post message"

[phasma ex machina]

123. Yeah, I get the "Raytheon Silent Runner" business. The premise stated "everybody."

All surveillance requires human interpretation. Even Echelon eventually elevated supposedly suspicious conversations to human analysts. Ergo, neo-Stasi voyeurs with a lust to simultaneously monitor "everybody" will need to assign at least one snitch to every soul on earth.

Regarding your point:

1. Most every device connected to the Inet functions as an independent memory cell.

2. Raytheon's Silent Runner circa 2000. Years ago an ex employee disclosed to me Raytheon's fetish of electronically monitoring the whereabouts, within a few inches, of every employee on its premises.

Moral of the story: keep a low profile, keep it anonymous, and keep it in a Faraday cage. LOL.

[cbdo2007]

9. This doesn't sound legit.

[wroberts189]

14. Ya know.. you are right.. we have all been fooled here many times.

By anti-Obama "leaks" which then turn out to be false.


Lets hear what Gibbs has to say about it before we all go ballistic cause we think they are taking the scissors over to the Constitution again..

[cbdo2007]

18. It appears to me that the first * point is contradicting itself.

It says the ISP's need to police everything, but then says Flickr and Youtube would need to hire lawyers to make sure nothing copyrighted gets through. So is it the ISP's or the sites?

Like the poster said a few posts after mine...from an IT perspective, this doesn't even sound logical/rational to implement, that's why I'm calling BS.

[wroberts189]

21. You are quite correct ..they are not ISP's...

They are simply content providers.


ISP's could not do this... sniff all traffic and decide who is downloading something they should not be? That is like telling your postman you do not want junk mail.

How on earth do they do that?

BTW I am Cisco certified. I build web servers. It has never happened in 15 years that anyone ever posted anything to their website that could get them in trouble... well maybe a few are stretching with an mp3 clip. It happens.. but to hold them or the ISP liable? This is a recipe for intrusive spying.

Ever since Comcast AT&T Verizon took over .. they own pretty much all access to the pipes. I do not think they want to spend the money. Hell.. they do not even tell their customers when they are infected with a spam bot. Just firewall off port 25 outbound for all... kill off your hosting competition under the guise of security.

Comcast was fined by the FCC for blocking Bittorent .. a petty fine but still.

[Madrone]

42. It's not about sniffing traffic.

Read it again - a representative of "the industry" (if this passes) will contact an ISP with an alleged infringement demanding that the customer's internet access be canceled. IF the ISP does not comply the "industry" will charge the ISP with all alleged infringements of the customer.

What you are talking about is NOT going to happen for sure. What this bill is SAYING however is definitely within the realm of possibility. And I guarantee you that no ISP wants to take on the **AAs.

[wroberts189]

55. "That ISPs have to proactively police copyright.. "

Pretty broad statement to me.

[Madrone]

56. That's not what it's said in other articles I've read about this...

But I understand your point. And thankfully that's not feasible.

[wroberts189]

58. "thankfully that's not feasible" ..actually..

Not in the sense that these companies want to spend the money ..yes I would think that is true.

But..

There are indeed things they could do .. block peer to peer with deep packet inspection... a database of hash checksums on known illegal files.. employees sniffing tcp/udp traffic.. etc etc

[Madrone]

60. Oh, I know it's possible.

And thanks to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) the technology is already in place. I work @ an ISP - CALEA is hated by us, but required by law.

But it's not feasible to do that 24/7 on all traffic, to and from every customer.

[wroberts189]

107. They got fiber taps on all major Internet junction points.

And the storage capacity to store it all ...



Why do you think the telecoms needed immunity?

[GOTV]

80. I agree. YouTube, Flickr and Blogger are not examples of ISPs for one thing.

I would think the writers of the original document would know that.

[sixmile]

10. Maybe we could form panel to remove all the advertising and flash programs

from web sites. Even with a high speed connection they slow down my internet experience.

[starroute]

24. If you use Firefox, get the FlashBlock extension

It helps a lot and you can still click on anything you actually want to see -- like embedded videos here at DU. Flash ads were regularly freezing my browser until I installed it.

[wroberts189]

27. thx..nt

[redqueen]

73. Thanks for that tip. (nt)

[CoffeeCat]

12. My husband is the CTO of an ISP...

...and I cannot even fathom how doing this, or enforcing this--is even possible.

They're trying to shut down ISPs, it seems. They'll site the ISP for infractions, pointing fingers
at their blame for the users who are "infringing on a copyright" or other trumped up nonsense.

So, are they planning on us all surfing the Blackwater internet?

Cuz that will be the result. ISPs won't be able to function. Or...at least the ISP
that they decide won't be able to function.

[glitch]

54. They've been attacking independent ISPs for awhile now.

AT&T and Comcast are more easily monitored, apparently.

[kenny blankenship]

100. I ditched AOL for CIA!

You can too. Switching is easy, and there's never been a greater way to save almost some money.

[glitch]

121. Lol! nt

[AndyA]

15. I don't believe this is legitimate.

It would be impossibly expensive to implement. It would take years for the first law suits to even make it through the court systems. The public relations nightmare this would create would do more damage than the problem they're trying to address.

I sure don't purchase CDs like I used to. I have satellite radio, etc., so I just listen to that instead. The music industry has lost my business over the Napster ordeal, and I suspect a lot of other people feel like me as well. I read sales are on a downward trend. I wonder if their greed has anything to do with that.

[MNDemNY]

97. Believe what you will, but wake the fuck up!

[Madrone]

19. SIGN THE PETITION -

http://www.keionline.org/acta-petition

Please.

[Odin2005]

22. Looks like BS to me. Not gonna happen.

[high density]

23. What a load of BS. No ISP can implement this.

This is akin to insisting the water company know if a customer is using the water to drown small children. There's too much random data flowing and the ISPs can't and don't want to be the police of it. Add some scrambling or encryption and it's impossible.

What's going on? Most likely this is some anti-Obama douche posting delirious dreamings.

[endeavourniche]

25. Not a Dream

It's not a dream. It's already happening. My nephew is being prosecuted right now for infringement. He was first notified by his ISP that a request for monitoring had been made by th RIAA and that he should not upload or download anymore copyrighted material. He continued to do it and is now charged with over 5,000 violations of copyrighted material for "uploading or downloading or making available for uploading or downloading copyrighted intellectual property". The MPAA has also joined in for movies that allegedly were violated.
The point being that this already exists. The ISP monitored my nephew's activity and provided it to the RIAA. Maybe it would not be possible to constantly monitor everyone but it's definitely possible to pick and choose.

By the way, My position is that "sharing" any intellectual property without proper compensation to the owner is a crime and should be prosecuted. When I write a song and have it copyrighted, I own that song and I expect to be compensated for it. Just because there is an internet does not mean that someone has the right to steal. It's not "sharing" it's theft.

[MattBaggins]

28. You nephew didn't upload/download anything

He has a router and modem that he set up right out of the box. He just plugged them in and used them as they are. I am sure he would look confused if an attorney for the RIAA/MPAA ever asked him about P2P, bittorrent, emule, or any such things.

[endeavourniche]

29. Which is of course his defense

and his attorney has challenged RIAA's legal right to ask for monitoring stating that my nephew expects a fair amount of privacy in his home and the RIAA needed to obtain a legal right to invade that privacy. A blatant 4th Amendment violation.

[Madrone]

40. Your nephew's ISP was probably issued a suppeona -

That's why his activity was being monitored. They legally HAD to do it. Your nephew is quite likely - screwed.

[wroberts189]

62. Correct ..But once upon a time they could not do this... now they can....

They wrote the law and handed it to our leaders.

Gross violation of the 4th amendment


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

[wroberts189]

61. +1 and also knr to the OP. nt

[moodforaday]

32. It's not theft

I was agreeing with everything you wrote up until those last words. It's not "theft", because the injured party has not been deprived of anything in its possession. The only loss, if any, is of hypothetical income, and should be proved in court in each individual case.

And while that last description may fit any specific instance of the downloading/sharing someone else's IP, it is still an inaccurate description of the global issue, because poll after poll says people who download (or "pirate", another misnomer) a lot of music also tend to buy more music than those who don't.

I know the media and the corporates call it theft, but that's propaganda that should be resisted, not echoed. It's nowhere near like theft.

...And even if downloading music and movies were theft, rape and murder rolled into one, it's still no excuse for making laws in secret.

[endeavourniche]

33. Agreed on making laws in private should never happen

but just because someone also buys a bicycle does not mean it's OK to steal another one.

[mlevans]

98. I understand where you're coming from on this.

I'm a musician and songwriter myself, and while I appreciate the circulation (sharing, if you will) of my own material, I understand that not all artists feel that way. Be that as it may, my son does download quite a bit of "shared" music, and I'll tell you why. He previews before he buys. When he finds something he likes, he buys it, and he buys any awful lot of the music he downloads. If it doesn't appeal to him, he deletes it. I don't think he is an oddity in this either; I know that many of his friends employ the same mode of operating. You might liken it to them hearing your song on the radio before deciding whether to purchase it or not. But they're not stealing so much as "trying it on for size." Kind of like how you wouldn't buy a pair of shoes if you hadn't determined they were a good fit. Peace.

[high density]

36. ISPs certainly take action on DMCA notices. That's not new.

They have no choice otherwise. The topic of discussion however is expecting that the ISPs (on a worldwide basis) go about this proactively on their own. It's just not possible. For one thing they have no idea what content is protected and what isn't, and there's simply too much data to sift through anyway. In this situation I rather doubt the ISP was doing the monitoring, it was probably the RIAA or a third party hired by them looking at the torrents hosted at a certain IP address. The ISP will warn DMCA offenders and eventually shut them off, but they have better things to do than monitor for the RIAA.

[Madrone]

41. I do not think the proactive take-down by ISPs is the topic of discussion.

I believe the topic is that (if this passes) a RI/MP/MAFIAA representative will be able to contact an ISP with an alleged infringement and demand that the perpetrator's internet connection shut off. IMMEDIATELY. Without proof. Without being convicted of infringement. IF the ISP refuses and leaves the person's account connected the infringements are then levied against the ISP rather than the consumer.


That is all kinds of messed up.

[wroberts189]

57. And what do they use as evidence as to who the customer is?

While some might record everyone's dynamic ip address and time they used it ..they all do not ...and are not required to by law.

So you are 100% correct. No proof. Unless the ISP is watching and recording.

[high density]

66. Any ISP is going to log their DHCP addressing to cover their own asses.

Valid law enforcement requests can come and the ISP will have the records of who had what IP for that purpose.

[high density]

65. Like I said, they're already shutting down people without convictions under DMCA.

RIAA sends out a 'bad' IP address to ISP and tells them to shut it down. This is the RIAA and their third parties, not the ISP, doing the snooping for copyrighted material.

The DMCA is bad, but the crazy nonsensical stuff in the OP is something else. There's no concern about it "passing" because I highly doubt it exists and it will not be accepted world-wide.

[Pavulon]

48. Crypto is your friend, and a fat fuck you to sniffers

sure someone can break aes but they will not admit to it or allow it for RIAA MPAA et al.

[wroberts189]

108. +1

[starroute]

26. Treaties have to be ratified by 2/3 of the Senate

And a lot of the techno-libertarians over on the GOP side wouldn't go for this either. Like some of the other posters, I'm not convinced this is real, but even if it is I can't see it getting through.

Passing domestic laws that do some of these things is more of a concern, however. The Democrats are far too beholden to the RIAA/MPAA types who tend to form a major chunk of their donor base. So this is something where we need to maintain vigilance.

[MattBaggins]

31. No they don't

Companies can get together and make interstate commerce "agreements" and hand them to the states to enact. The states themselves agree to them not the Senate. Getting other countries to enact the same laws doesn't require the Senate to even know about it.

Check up on UCITA to get an idea of the bull shit corporations can do.

[Kievan Rus]

30. IP was a good idea until greedy corporate types corrupted it

This is all because some Hollywood primaddonna thinks four mansions aren't enough.

[endeavourniche]

34. I disagree

I make a living as a songwriter. I don't have one mansion let alone four. I just get by like most people. I don't know what the solution to the problem is but I know that people like me that don't make millions are the ones that will no longer be able to make a living in the industry because of "sharing". Nothing burns my ass more than to see someone open a CD binder full of burned CDs with no art work. Now with mp3 players I just assume that at least half of the songs on all mp3 players were never paid for.

[Kievan Rus]

38. And what about the absurd copyright term extensions?

Do we really need to have life plus seventy? THAT is what I'm primarily referring to...and the term extensions were done solely to benefit Korporate Amerika; Disney and $cientology were among the two main advocates of the term extension from first 56 years to life plus fifty, and then again to life plus fifty to life plus seventy.

Our culture sure as hell flourished back when it was just fifty-six years. Hell, it was still just 56 years back in the 1970s...and many classic movies like Network, Jaws, Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever, the Godfather, Rocky were released. In this decade, it's life plus seventy...and every other movie or TV show is a remake or a spinoff. Length of copyright terms has nothing to do with whether creaters will create or not...because quite frankly, it was better back when it was shorter.

[endeavourniche]

91. Agreed

[SouthernLiberal]

101. You would be wrong to assume

That my mp3 player has 50% pirated songs. I have over 8,000 digital music pieces, and every single one was legally obtained. I don't say that I paid for all of them. Several I got for free, from the artist who created them..

Let's make a deal - I won't accuse all musicians of being wealthy money-grubbers, if you won't accuse everyone who listens to digital music of being a thief.

[placton]

35. smile. drink some tea, or wine

this is Obama doing this, so it's all very ok!

[Jim__]

37. "WTF is going on?"

Welcome to the corporate run world.

[ThomCat]

39. Obama is working to give to the internet to corporations,

lock, stock and barrel? Why am I totally not surprised?

Everything he has done has been a series of big gifts to big corporations.

[Medium Baby Jesus]

43. I'm guessing you're afraid

that you won't be able to steal music or software anymore. boo hoo

[Madrone]

46. I'm guessing you think the Patriot Act doesn't go far enough.

You're not a terrorist, after all.

[Codeine]

63. Exactly. I'm not sure when theft

became a progressive value. I work with young people who have never paid for a single piece of music or software in their lives. As someone who respects the work of creative minds I find the wholesale embrace of swiping artistic and technical output to be disturbing.

[MilesColtrane]

75. What's worse is that the vast majority of them see nothing wrong with it.

If you can get it on the internet, it's all good.

[Occulus]

92. I think the copyright issue is a smokescreen

The only way this treaty could ever be enforced is if content were segregated through the elimination of network neutrality.

Do you want to pay $5 extra a month to be able to access Hulu, or Netflix... or even DU, through the connection you already pay for? That's what this is really about. Politicians and corporations alike hate network neutrality (content providers don't like Netflix in particular, because it cuts into their on-demand profits). This treaty will require packet sniffing and other methods not possible if content is not segregated by type. The only way to segregate content by type is to make people pay extra for websites with the content you're looking for.

I see this as a stealth attempt against network neutrality, and that's something that affects all internet users, regardless of the legitimacy of their use.

[Shell Beau]

122. I think a lot of teens see nothing wrong with it because

they never had to buy the CD, tape, record. This is they way it has been for them since they probably started really listening to music. They probably don't know, like we did, what it is like to actually go to the music store to find a good CD/tape. And be excited to go do it.

[endeavourniche]

90. Thank You!

[Madrone]

44. Newer, better article regarding this topic -

This one states they are seeking a global 3-strikes policy. 3-strikes before service is terminated. Not as bad as what I'd read earlier - but still - NOT GOOD. Media companies already have too much control in our government - now they're seeking MORE control, and attempting to branch out into other countries.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/policy-launder...

[Pavulon]

50. Will cost billions to US. Why you ask.

as people are forced to use cryptographic technology to continue to download media, us tax payers will have to pay for the NSA to decrypt traffic that is now sent in clear text. Keep that new data center in utah busy determining what screeners and cams you are downloading in all wrapped up in AES256.

Pretty dumb.

[Curtland1015]

45. People actually believe this is going to happen?

This would be political suicide for any President. People don't give a damn about, say, illegal wire tapping, but they would never put up with Youtube getting taken down.

[tonysam]

47. The thing almost sounds like it is a hoax. n/t

[Kievan Rus]

51. Never underestimate the greed of Korporate Amerika

[Occulus]

81. It'll be a LOT easier if they also get rid of net neutrality. For example:

"Well, see, we have to abide by this new international treaty, which includes things like random packet sniffing and policing of content going over our networks. Therefore, we are instituting a new, tiered-pricing ladder to help better protect our customers.

"Beginning March 1, 2010, our pricing will be as follows:

$35.00 .COM PLAN, 5M down/256k up: This is our basic Internet package. Under this plan, you will be able to download up to 10GB (ten gigabytes) per month. If you exceed this amount, you will be billed on a per-kilobyte basis. This plan gives access to .com and .gov addresses only, and then only via ports used by the HTTP protocol.

ADDON PLANS

These plans will allow you to select your favorite web content without paying for internet services you do not require or use. The plans are as follows:

$5: NEWS PLAN. Includes popular news websites such as CNN, MSNBC, and FOX. To qualify as a "news" website, the site must be affiliated with a national media outlet.

$15: GAMING PLAN. This plans allows access to gaming servers provided by Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Crytek, and others. Note, we do not yet support Valve's Steam platform.

$10: PERSONAL INTEREST PLAN. This plan will allow access to personal-interest internet locations, such as catfancy.com, as well as unvetted political content, such as from salon.com or Daily Kos.

$89.95: UNLIMITED PLAN. Go anywhere and download anything! This plan allows unrestricted access to the full internet, and comes with our highest data cap of 50GB (fifty gigabytes) per month.

Cont....

PLEASE NOTE, all our plans (excepting Unlimited) also allow for tiered pricing based on speed as well as data amount. Also, please note we lock-out proxy servers across all our plans. Call now to receive one free addon plan (excepting the Unlimited plan) a month!"

If we lose net neutrality, this is almost certainly what will end up happening. If the content providers are able to segregate users into groups based on their internet use, they will be able to police their content much more effectively than sifting through a vast sea of data, as they would have to today.

It's very very dangerous to pooh-pooh this. I'm afraid we're in the process of losing the internet as we know it. If any of this happens, DU will almost certainly disappear due to a lack of eyeballs. The loss of net neutrality would effectively kill the internet for all content but that which the providers want us to see.

The fact this is being discussed now is no coincidence. The only way the provisions of this treaty become viable is if net neutrality dies, which is something monied interests have sought for some time now. We've fought and won that battle, but we need legislation keeping it in place. Frankly, I'm afraid we're starting to see the end of the internet as we know it. It's important to remember that, although these restrictions in this treaty seem impossible to implement, that's only because they can't compartmentalize the content... yet.

Once they do that, the provisions of this treaty become very doable.

[MNDemNY]

82. Count on it.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

52. Very, very important story here

K&R

Check out the comments here:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

[dreamnightwind]

64. Obama appointed RIAA lawyers to the Justice Dept

Check out these links, a number(at least 5) of RIAA lwayers were appointed to the Department of Justice by Obama. I remember at the time wondering if we were in for something like this, looks like, sadly, my suspicions were correct.

Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

And this one:

Obama Sides With RIAA, Supports $150,000 Fine per Music Track
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Also, for those who say this can't be implemented, that it's technologically unfeasible, I know for a fact that my ISP (Comcast) has a policy of monitoring torrent traffic for filenames that correspond to copyrighted material. They have several strategies for dealing with it when they find it, including throttling the bandwidth of their customer who's on the torrent, or canceling the customer's internet access. I believe they will also bring the customer to the attention of the authorities. Presumably at this point only the worst offenders suffer much in the way of consequences, still, we've all read some of the horror stories of some average kid who gets brought down and billed hundreds of thousands for a few illegal downloads. They like to make examples of a few people to scare the rest of them.

Although I don't support downloading copyrighted material, and I rarely do so, I'm also not perfect, and the current system where the artist gets only a tiny percentage but the organized crime syndicates that to some degree run the recording and motion picture industries get most all of the take is rotten to its very core.

New means of digital distribution have left everything in a mess. The small artists can now deliver directly to customers via the net. They can also copyright their material independently without relying on the official agencies. With the syndicates out of the loop, the copyrighted material can be sold for far less money and the money will go to the right people, the artists. With a poor man's copyright (proof of authorship which can hopefully be defended in court), or some more protected work-around (there are a number of these available these days), the works will fall outside of the scope of official copyrighted material that will be searched for by ISP's or by the government, and so friendly artists could produce and distribute their work free of this intrusive corporate big brother approach.

There is already an excellent model of bands that allow recordings of their live performances to be distributed, freeware style, which has been working quite well for years now. The Grateful Dead were the pioneers of this model, and found that it greatly increased their fan base and overall revenue increased, despite them allowing fans to give away live performance recordings for free. Since then, many many bands have signed on tho this strategy.

These bands, for the most part, allow their performances to be archived on the Live Music Archive, found here:

http://www.archive.org/details/etree

[KharmaTrain]

67. Completely Unenforceable...

The moment someone tries to go after a host site, the files will move offshore to a Russian or Pacific Island domain...this horse has long left the barn.

On another front the RIAA looks like they're going to lose their new draconian royalties policy about "conventional" and internet radio. Their lawyers must be making a ton...and hopefully bankrupting them.

[Are_grits_groceries]

68. Here is another article about it on another thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

I thought it might be a hoax because it was so WTF. Apparently not.

[sofa king]

70. I won't believe it until Ars Technica writes about it.

http://arstechnica.com /

If it's legit, it won't be long before they have something to say.

Honestly, between fascist America which wants to profit off of every button-click a user makes, and no-longer-communist-but-still-an-oligarchy China, which wants to profit off of every good idea someone else ever had, there is pretty much no middle ground left. But still there are ten thousand ways to get on the Internet and raise holy hell without ever revealing your identity or paying a cent, and that will continue growing.

[no limit]

71. Do you have more information on this? How can a secret memo become law?

Seems like a glenn beckish claim.

[Are_grits_groceries]

72. Apparently they are

still negotiating this in S. Korea. I've seen this on a lot of sites, and I don't discount them.

[LSK]

85. when did S. Korea establish US law?????????????

[Occulus]

88. It's an international treaty being discussed there n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

74. He Who Controls the Information Controls the World

[katkat]

76. in defense of protecting intellectual property

I've recently watched two blogs who's authors obviously devote a lot of time and care to their posts have the posts repeatedly lifted onto a pirate site called http://www.gardeningrealm.com /

The idiot site runs the English text though something that garbles it enough so I guess they think the original authors won't find it.

The hosting ISP does -nothing- to stop this. It even has a procedure for making a complaint, if you dig deep enough to find it, but it is very arduous and if the pirate denies stealing, they leave the content up, even though anyone with one functioning brain cell looking at that site and the two being ripped off can see what he's doing.

More power to enforcing copyright law against these refuse piles.

[Occulus]

77. Uh... you'll link to the pirate site, but not the original author?

How are we to know that's a "pirate site"?

[katkat]

130. Occulus

He's stealing from at least two sites.

Here's the original site I read, http://carletongarden.blogspot.com / "Skippy's vegetable garden."

Scroll down to her post Monday, October 26, 2009 garden blog PIRATE site

He stole that post complaining about him, including a -screenshot- of that particular infringement on his part:
http://www.gardeningrealm.com/garden-blog-pirate-site /

Hell, she's started slapping copyright notices on some of her stuff and he posts those (he must have some automatic thing that snarfs up everything she and the other site produces.)

He even stole a photo of Skippy himself:
http://www.gardeningrealm.com/skippy-in-the-garden /

I've posted on her blog, and presto, my comments wind up on his blog.

[rfranklin]

79. As a photographer, I find the disrespect for copyright..

truly astounding. People think now that they can easily copy images they don't have to respect anyone else's livelihood. And they are less willing than ever to pay an adequate fee to buy the copyright. After all, it's just pushing the shutter button, isn't it? And they could be just as skilled if they had a "professional camera."

[endeavourniche]

94. Wholeheartedly agree! I am a

professional songwriter. It boggles my mind that anyone can justify theft! Like above in this thread where someone stated that the people who download (without paying) also buy the most music. So what! If I buy 5 cars is it OK if I steal 100 more? Like you said, Astounding.

[wroberts189]

110. I see a lot of sites posting stuff they own copyright on Piratebay to advertise their site. nt

Just put your domain name in the pic. Free advertising.

[BolivarianHero]

78. If Obama supports this, the U.S. needs regime change...

A real President would never support something like this.

[LSK]

84. Theres no such thing as secret treaties, treaties must be passed by Congress

All bills are posted on Thomas.gov

What fucking country do you think this is????

[Occulus]

89. The treaty is being *discussed* in secret

and was leaked because it's very very bad news for internet users everywhere.

As I said elsewhere, this treaty will absolutely require elimination of network neutrality to put into practice. Users' content will have to be segregated in order to effectively sniff for violations. If this goes through as is, you can expect tiered pricing based on accessed content as well as bandwidth and raw data transfer amounts.

Among other things, this will help kill Netflix, because Netflix users will end up paying their providers to access the Netflix site. It will likely be part of a "multimedia internet package" including Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube. And, since they'll probably include hard limits on transfer amounts (after which your connection gets throttled back), you'll probably be practically limited to only three or four films from Netflix a month.

Those are totally arbitrary examples, but network neutrality is the bane of politicians and corporations alike. They would like nothing more than to have a good excuse to segregate content based on tiered pricing schemes for specific types of internet addresses (that's really easy to do, and they don't have to sniff anything except the destination of your request and allow or deny access based on your package), and DRM is the excuse they've chosen.

The sick part is, a lot of people- even DUers- will agree with the stated goal of this treaty until it's too late, because it "cracks down" on "pirates". Copyright isn't the actual goal of this treaty, merely the stated goal. The real target is network neutrality, and this is how they've chosen to fight it- with a plausible excuse, a likely story.

I'm afraid the internet as we know it is doomed if this treaty is accepted.

[demwing]

86. What's the source?

Is it dependable?

[Are_grits_groceries]

96. IDG News is one source.

Also, Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law.
Dr. Geist is keeping an eye on the proceedings and gleaning what he can. IHe is getting some info through leaks.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

[caseymoz]

87. If Obama signs this, his popularity will be 10%

Obama signs this treaty, Obama faces a rebellion. Hollywood and the music industry faces boycotts. I'm not calling for it, I'm just stating it as a fact. The Internet has become that important to people now. For many people, it now means free speech. Some people are addicted to it. They hate the feeling of being monitored.

The ISP's will hardly be able to do the policing called for here. Costs will skyrocket, and they'll be put out of business. Depriving whole families of the Internet is going to create a lot of discontent.

Instead, as one person said, the whole concept of intellectual property must be rethought from scratch. I have some suspicions about Obama. There may be a reason why he is pushing for all the expanded powers that Bush wanted. It may have been this treaty.

[winyanstaz]

99. The New World Order MUST be able to control the internets....

or it will fail.

[YoungAndOutraged]

103. A true artist spits on the idea of being paid for their work

If anything near this gets put into law, I'm pirating everything I see. I wish it was actually illegal for someone calling themselves an artist to receive money for what they produce. That would weed out the pretenders and posers.

[Codeine]

115. Bullshit.

Complete bullshit. Every great artist has been paid for his work if he or she could possibly manage it.

What a childish and stupid viewpoint.

[Uncle Joe]

109. Kicked but too late to recommend.

Thanks for the thread, Are_grits_groceries.

[begin_within]

116. As a copyright owner, I'm glad this is finally being taken seriously.

You probably would never see any intellectual property of any kind if you didn't have copyright law. Ask any artist, composer, musician, author, designer, or any other creative worker. Not only is copyright law necessary but enforcement of it is necessary. It's not just huge corporations, it's millions of individuals who benefit from copyright law and stand to benefit from enforcement of it. I'm terribly sorry if it puts a crimp in your plans to illegally download copyrighted material.

[Codeine]

117. Then you're not a "real" artist.

If you were you'd spit on the notion of being compensated for your efforts.

At least that's what the DU brain trust seems to think.

[begin_within]

118. So are they going to ask

their beloved Bob Dylan, Al Franken, Michael Moore and the Coen Brothers to forfeit all their money earned by producing copyrighted works?

[Codeine]

119. The Beatles spit on the very notion of payment!

I'm sure the person that posted such stupidity expects to get paid at work.

[begin_within]

120. I think their anger at corporations is misdirected

towards all copyright owners in general. Copyright law can also serve to protect artists, writers and other creative types from having corporations rip them off.