View Full Version : ACTA : Internet Censorship Revisited
andreis
31-01-12, 12:34 PM
Hi everyone
I've already started a thread on this a couple of days ago, but feel that maybe it was too long winded (you can find it here: http://forums.sv650.org/showthread.php?p=2654915) and maybe that's why people didn't respond to it... :confused:
So this time I'll be more concise: YOU NEED TO READ ABOUT IT!!!
Here's a short list of links:
If You Thought SOPA Was Bad, Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/23/if-you-thought-sopa-was-bad-just-wait-until-you-meet-acta/
ACTA vs. SOPA: Five Reasons ACTA is Scarier Threat to Internet Freedom
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/286925/20120124/acta-sopa-reasons-scarier-threat-internet-freedom.htm?cid=2
What's Wrong With ACTA
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number10.1/whats-wrong-with-ACTA
The secret treaty: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and Its Impact on Access to Medicines
http://www.msfaccess.org/content/secret-treaty-anti-counterfeiting-trade-agreement-acta-and-its-impact-access-medicines
yorkie_chris
31-01-12, 12:41 PM
I'm in agreement and have had a whinge to my MEPs about it, for all the good it is likely to do...
andreis
31-01-12, 12:50 PM
I'm in agreement and have had a whinge to my MEPs about it, for all the good it is likely to do...
If only everyone did that, the politicians would see that this is a very sensitive matter and would pay attention to our worries.
This will happen in some form or another.
Pretty sure "Internet2" will be a tightly controlled subscription service at some point.
This will only control port80 HTTP surface web though - deepweb via TOR etc will still be freely accessable in my opinion.
andreis
31-01-12, 01:09 PM
As long as it doesn't happen large scale, it doesn't happen at all. Most restrictive measures can be circumvented. It's when they'll have the ability to shut down sites without a fight that the battle will be lost.
Until then, we can communicate and organize in order to resist censorship.
As a plus, they have a limited window. If they don't manage to censor the internet soon, the business models they use will be completely obsolete with the advent of cloud computing and THEY will be forced to adapt then. Essentially, only the ones that keep an open mind will manage to survive :D
there is only one way to stop acts like this going threw. but it will never ever happen as it will take every single person with an internet account to make it happen. what we all need to do is threaten to cancel our subscriptions and not use the internet. the internet is a multi billion £ economy and hitting them where it hurts is the only answer.
complete global blackout of all telecommunications even for an hour would case enough damage for them to think twice about who they are trying to bully.
side note.. who owns the internet? no one does so how can they pass laws on something that no one owns.
andreis
31-01-12, 01:19 PM
there is only one way to stop acts like this going threw. but it will never ever happen as it will take every single person with an internet account to make it happen. what we all need to do is threaten to cancel our subscriptions and not use the internet. the internet is a multi billion £ economy and hitting them where it hurts is the only answer.
complete global blackout of all telecommunications even for an hour would case enough damage for them to think twice about who they are trying to bully.
You could go at the other end of the scale : Total communications explosion to shut down the servers of the would-be-censors (DDOS attack)... I guess some Anonymous guys would know better than me though ;)
Owenski
31-01-12, 01:23 PM
Im too bone idle to read though pages and pages of propaganda, can someone who understands them for what they are bullet point the proposed legislation for me?
I've had 2 weeks of it from a bloke at work,
Co-Worker (CO): oh its terrible its the end of free speach and the internet as a whole
Me (Me): What do you mean... no more porn?
CO: No more porn, no more football results, no more you tube
Me: why what are they doing?
CO: shutting it all down!!!
ME: WTF, dont talk rubbish - what are they actually proposing
CO: Well I dont know the details but they're shutting it all down!!!
ME: #FACEPALM!
So far all I see is a lot of comotion but no one able to point the way to the fire.
complete global blackout of all telecommunications even for an hour would case enough damage for them to think twice about who they are trying to bully.
You do realise that most people will happily sleep through such legislation being passed and not give a monkeys? Cyber-attacks (which will be classified as terrorism) and internet security breaches will heavily feature in the news over the next couple of years. The general population will welcome better security.
side note.. who owns the internet? no one does so how can they pass laws on something that no one owns.
Well, 'they' don't own our country. 'They' don't own us - yet we allow them to pass laws on us. But as long as we have a 5 yearly sham where 2 'competing' parties argue about the tax on cigarettes, thats alright because we live in a democracy.
Legislation for internet censorship / copyright protection etc will be passed, sooner rather than later.
Are you still going on about this?
Many large ISPs have been intercepting your traffic for years by doing transparent caching/proxying of your connections. If you think they don't already look at the data and use it to their advantage, you are wrong.
Sure, it's not great having this mandated, but at the moment anyone in the transit-path between you and your destination on the internet can log and modify any webpage they see fit, other than https sites.
Recent breaches at various certificate authorities, means that it's entirely possible that some SSL sites can (and have) been compromised by MITM attacks too. Sure the breaches at the CAs were supposedly carried out by various countries.
Anyone with enough money could probably bribe themselves a cert for any site, then it's just a case of finding the targets and intercepting/re-writing the traffic. It's a lot of effot and ballache to do, but it's entirely possible. In fact if many companies routinely do it a different way to view what their employees are doing on the internet, even on SSL sites.
Now, accept the Internet is insecure and it's easy for your ISP to track you and go and have some toast.
Now, accept the Internet is insecure and it's easy for your ISP to track you and go and have some toast.
Was anybody actually debating this?
andreis
31-01-12, 01:52 PM
Their proposal, the last I saw it, contained the following :
1. ISPs would be forced to inspect your traffic and report any copyright violations to the owning companies.
2. Companies that would receive the reports from ISPs that some person infringed on their copyrights would be able to impose compensation of loses and (for grave violations) jail the person. That is correct, a private corporation would be allowed to be judge&jury. The compensations would be mostly fixed. If I remember correctly, to the tune of 150k $ / violation. So 10 songs downloaded of the tinternet without copyright permission would get you 1.5mil $ without requiring a judge to see the evidence.
3. Sites that might post copyright infringing materials (including catch phrases or such), such as user generated content sites, would be asked to censor the publishing of that content and upon refusal or inability to do so, would be shut down. This would put great strain on start-ups because this sort of policing takes great effort to enforce, which most start-ups would not be able to pull out.
4. Seeds and medicine copyrights would be imposed in a much stricter manner (relating especially to generalistic products - think aspirin like) in developing countries. This will hamper development of local crop growers and local pharmaceutical companies. This is essentially the internationalisation of patents.
The fact of the matter is that most of this would benefit the large companies focused on content and would be very detrimental to most of the rest. So the laws would only benefit a very small percentage of the ones affected.
What I am not aware of is the current version of the law, but these were the major points. You can watch a video about the law here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlFyoEKV0dE
The video is from September 2011, so it will refer to that version of the agreement. It has evolved since.
This is the latest version I could find : http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2011/may/tradoc_147937.pdf
Owenski
31-01-12, 02:36 PM
Their proposal, the last I saw it, contained the following :
1. ISPs would be forced to inspect your traffic and report any copyright violations to the owning companies.
I thought this was already the case,
2. Companies that would receive the reports from ISPs that some person infringed on their copyrights would be able to impose compensation of loses and (for grave violations) jail the person. That is correct, a private corporation would be allowed to be judge&jury. The compensations would be mostly fixed. If I remember correctly, to the tune of 150k $ / violation. So 10 songs downloaded of the tinternet without copyright permission would get you 1.5mil $ without requiring a judge to see the evidence.
Thats just dumb,
a) $150,000 per violation is completly unbalanced to the scale of the offence.
b) You couldnt possibly jail the amount of people who commit this office on a daily basis.
Either that missunderstood or miscalculated, either way thats not even pheasable to enforce. The having not seen evidence part is reason enough to see its BS thanks to our civil rights since magna carter
3. Sites that might post copyright infringing materials (including catch phrases or such), such as user generated content sites, would be asked to censor the publishing of that content and upon refusal or inability to do so, would be shut down. This would put great strain on start-ups because this sort of policing takes great effort to enforce, which most start-ups would not be able to pull out.
Like you tube/ebay you couldnt employ the required number of people to enforce this so you'd be relying on tip offs/snitching but then you get turf war style antics where people make false reports in order to supress competition... because of that this too would fail.
4. Seeds and medicine copyrights would be imposed in a much stricter manner (relating especially to generalistic products - think aspirin like) in developing countries. This will hamper development of local crop growers and local pharmaceutical companies. This is essentially the internationalisation of patents.
The principal of uniform medicine doesnt seem a bad idea, at least that would mean asprin in UK is the same in Ghana so you know what you're getting and how you may react to ingesting it.
The fact of the matter is that most of this would benefit the large companies focused on content and would be very detrimental to most of the rest. So the laws would only benefit a very small percentage of the ones affected.
This is the big thing then isnt it, this is what makes blue chip remain blue chip and prevents cometative pricing and a fair market... I thought Bill Gates set a precendent on this when fighting for his right to launch windows as a driver supported system.
Im not educated in the in's/outs and I dont pretend to but the red is my understanding of what those proposals mean to the individual.
No I wouldnt support the proposals being passed but mainly because Im not sure if I'd be directly affected or not. I'd rather say no to agreing with something I dont understand, than to not contest it only to find I now can no longer do the things I enjoy... Pretty sure from what you're saying we'd no longer be allowed to have an SV650.org, it would need renaming to "a forum for the bike made in Japan which has 2 cylinders of 325 capacity in a 10 to 2 formation.org"
Pardon my ignorance but if this goes through, what's to stop someone making a "new" internet that is outside the legislation.
In simple terms, instead of "HTTP://" something like "FOFF://" or "FREE://"
there's always a loop hole :-)
C
hardhat_harry
31-01-12, 02:55 PM
You would need a world wide infrastructure to support it
DNS servers and the like
Pardon my ignorance but if this goes through, what's to stop someone making a "new" internet that is outside the legislation.
In simple terms, instead of "HTTP://" something like "FOFF://" or "FREE://"
there's always a loop hole :-)
C
Pardon my ignorance but if this goes through, what's to stop someone making a "new" internet that is outside the legislation.
there already is. Its just not a 'new' internet. In effect, it's the 'old' internet - the internet that existed prior to 'The Eternal September' circa 1993.
andreis
31-01-12, 03:27 PM
1. ISPs would be forced to inspect your traffic and report any copyright violations to the owning companies.
I thought this was already the case,
I believe there's a difference. ISPs currently inform the authorities on your traffic when they are requested to do so by said authorities. This means that the copyright holder has to first file a complaint and then the police would get the authorizations they need to request the logs from the ISP.
Under ACTA, ISPs would inspect your data packages (not just where you're sending and in what amount, as it is now, but also what's inside). They would also be forced to report you to the copyright holder.
2. Companies that would receive the reports from ISPs that some person infringed on their copyrights would be able to impose compensation of loses and (for grave violations) jail the person. That is correct, a private corporation would be allowed to be judge&jury. The compensations would be mostly fixed. If I remember correctly, to the tune of 150k $ / violation. So 10 songs downloaded of the tinternet without copyright permission would get you 1.5mil $ without requiring a judge to see the evidence.
Thats just dumb,
a) $150,000 per violation is completly unbalanced to the scale of the offence.
b) You couldnt possibly jail the amount of people who commit this office on a daily basis.
Either that missunderstood or miscalculated, either way thats not even pheasable to enforce. The having not seen evidence part is reason enough to see its BS thanks to our civil rights since magna carter
Regarding point a) : http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/student-fined-675000-in-music-download-case-1765988.html
And quoting from that piece :
Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful
Regarding b) : Yes, yes you could. It probably wouldn't happen, but 99% of the population is quilty of some copyright violation
Regarding your last remark on this point : THAT is exactly what's wrong with the whole idea. Your rights would be circumvented. It's exactly what is so obscene about it. You can, under current legislation, be fined and/or imprisoned for severe copyright violations, but it has to go through the courts. Under ACTA, private corporations would be able to fine you the amount you owe them.
3. Sites that might post copyright infringing materials (including catch phrases or such), such as user generated content sites, would be asked to censor the publishing of that content and upon refusal or inability to do so, would be shut down. This would put great strain on start-ups because this sort of policing takes great effort to enforce, which most start-ups would not be able to pull out.
Like you tube/ebay you couldnt employ the required number of people to enforce this so you'd be relying on tip offs/snitching but then you get turf war style antics where people make false reports in order to supress competition... because of that this too would fail.
That's the problem. Making sites and ISPs responsible for what their users post/traffic is what will lead to automation of censorship.
You can, under current legislation, ask a site to take down offensive material. This is exactly the snitching you talk about. If someone asks youtube "this video contains copyright infringing material" and youtube looks at the video and agrees, they take down the video (or mute the track if it's just the audio that's infringing). This is already in effect today and no one argues with it.
It's the part were they make them liable for those postings that worries people. Because then, as you say later in the post, sites like the org would be under severe threat.
4. Seeds and medicine copyrights would be imposed in a much stricter manner (relating especially to generalistic products - think aspirin like) in developing countries. This will hamper development of local crop growers and local pharmaceutical companies. This is essentially the internationalisation of patents.
The principal of uniform medicine doesnt seem a bad idea, at least that would mean asprin in UK is the same in Ghana so you know what you're getting and how you may react to ingesting it.
I do agree with you on the desired behavior in medicine, but from what I understood, this type of legislation has a negative side in the states (where patent enforcing is aggressive). Farmers have no resources to enforce the seed purity of their crops. If somehow patented seeds mix with theirs, the patent owning company claims their entire crop (or they have to pay punitive damages). Of course, the owning company has no obligation to guard that their crop doesn't spread seeds to other crops... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser
The fact of the matter is that most of this would benefit the large companies focused on content and would be very detrimental to most of the rest. So the laws would only benefit a very small percentage of the ones affected.
This is the big thing then isnt it, this is what makes blue chip remain blue chip and prevents cometative pricing and a fair market... I thought Bill Gates set a precendent on this when fighting for his right to launch windows as a driver supported system.
Im not educated in the in's/outs and I dont pretend to but the red is my understanding of what those proposals mean to the individual.
No I wouldnt support the proposals being passed but mainly because Im not sure if I'd be directly affected or not. I'd rather say no to agreing with something I dont understand, than to not contest it only to find I now can no longer do the things I enjoy... Pretty sure from what you're saying we'd no longer be allowed to have an SV650.org, it would need renaming to "a forum for the bike made in Japan which has 2 cylinders of 325 capacity in a 10 to 2 formation.org"
Yep, I'm not that well educated on the matter as well and this is the caveat : I have little knowledge of the way this type of legislation will impact us. I know we will be able to circumvent it, but it will impact us in some ways that we are not aware now. And it certainly won't be in a good way for us. It will probably be good for the content mafia though ;)
DJFridge
31-01-12, 10:10 PM
there already is. Its just not a 'new' internet. In effect, it's the 'old' internet - the internet that existed prior to 'The Eternal September' circa 1993.
Forgive my ignorance, but what was "The Eternal September"? You're beginning to sound a bit Matrix
Forgive my ignorance, but what was "The Eternal September"?
Here's wiki explanation of the Eternal September.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
In essence, this was the grand unveiling of the internet (in the form of 'Usenet' - the precursor to forums like this very one!) to the masses. The internet had previously only been accessible to the limited few prior to the invent of the www (and specifically AOLs release of Usenet in 1993 I think).
without wanting to teach you to suck eggs if your knowledge surpasses this - the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the services that runs on the Internet.
Other services exist too. It is the www / http (sometimes known as 'surface web' that will fall subject to any proposed legislation). 'Deep web' (which isn't indexed by Google and other web search engines) will remain as it does now.
timwilky
04-07-12, 01:22 PM
Bloody hell a victory for common sense
ACTA is thrown out by the EU parliament (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18704192)
slark01
04-07-12, 01:57 PM
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Ste.
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