Re: Anti Acta
Subject: Re: Anti Acta
From: Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com>
Date: 8/25/10, 19:23
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>

I had not heard of it either, so it may well be that these folks will perform a public service by calling attention to it. 

In addition to coverage in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement, these links look promising:

This is a Canadian law professor who is following the story: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

This website follows intellectual property issues, this post appeared to be the most recent one relating to ACTA: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/07/29/civil-society-groups-warn-eu-on-acta/

This Wikipedia article is about the current law in the US related to digital misappropriation of content: the biggest problem with the law from the entertainment/music industry's point of view is that it shields middle men (ISP) from liability if they agree to to take down pirated content when they learn of it--the industry wants the ISPs as well as the end-users to have greater exposure. http://techdirt.com/articles/20100824/00341310747.shtml

I have not yet seen a clearcut statement as to why the treaty is being negotiated in secret.  Aside from shielding those in power in the respective governments from internet-user backlash as they try to please the moneyed stakeholders, I suppose it is also possible that it is being done in a closed forum for the sake of efficiency--meaning to get it done with out being slowed down by public involvement, so the negotiators do not have to start over each time a government changes leaders.

See also: http://www.eff.org/issues/acta

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20003005-38.html

http://arstechnica.com/staff/upstairs/2010/04/ars-colloquium-the-official-acta-treaty-and-your-reaction.ars

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201274/disagreements_on_transparency_fail_to_stop_acta_treaty_leak.html

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/201001_acta.pdf_as_text  <--- this is pretty tough to make sense of, maybe Mirna can point us to a better source in which to read the actual text of the treaty proposal in its latest form  -- here is one analysis of it: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/eff-analysis-officially-released-acta-text  The following link, at the end of the sentence after this one, appears to be a more readable copy of the text of the proposed treaty -- if you do interviews you might ask interviewees to cite the specific provisions of the treaty by Article and Subarticle numbers as they discuss perceived problems posed by the treaty.  You might also get Mirna to confirm that this the latest version of the treaty: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2010/april/tradoc_146029.pdf   Here is on dated July: http://www.scribd.com/full/34371127?access_key=key-1qj9zj06yipam330irxd  <--- found this one via reddit

There is a reddit on ACTA: http://www.reddit.com/r/ACTA/

This is pretty old now: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_plurilateral_intellectual_property_trade_agreement_%282007%29

I think it would make a lot of sense for you to do some writing about this; this is of much greater importance than whether building a Moslem YMCA in lower Manhattan is nice or not.  You might start with some interviews, as suggest by the chan guy below, until you get a good feel for the issues and where you stand on the issues, if anywhere.



On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
This is the fellow I told you about who launched Chanology. I hadn't even heard of ACTA for some reason, but I'm going to look into it a bit more.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anonymous <anonymous@whyweprotest.net>
Date: Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:13 AM
Subject: Anti Acta
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>


Just wanted to give you a heads up.  There are multiple groups of people working on various anti-acta movements.  One of them has a website up like everyone else, but is planning to mirror some of what chanology did.

I offered to get their press release out to the press for them and make sure some people watched the video when it goes up.  That should be within the next couple days.

If all goes well and people are really interested and you or anyone else ends up wanting to talk to them I can get you direct contact with the right people.  If it goes quick and you want a first interview sort of thing and can get it up onto huffpo or anywhere else good that would be awesome.





--
Regards,

Barrett Brown
512-560-2302