» Sun Jun 13, 2010 9:34 am Yes. You read that right. The Anti-Counterfeit-Trade-Agreement is coming within the next month. With this America, EU, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland will all impose idiotic and backwards ways of trying to "stop" copyright infringement.
Probably the biggest effort to "stop" copyright infringement is the "Three Strikes" policy. Under this policy, if your ISP (Internet Service Provider) accuses you of copyright infringement three (3) times, you lose total access to the internet and will go to jail. That is right. Total access to the internet. You will not be able to pay bills through it. Use it for research of any kinda. Be able to shop on the internet. You will be completely barred from the internet. And your possession of copyrighted material doesn't even need to be proved. It is all accusation based.
The worst part of this? It is an international Trade-Agreement. It does not have to go through Congress to pass. As the article says:
U.S. officials have said they do not expect the agreement to require changes to U.S. law so it would not have to be approved by Congress.
If President Obama wants to pass it, all he has to do is sign it and it will be law. And all international treaties/TA are above the laws and constitutions of your country.
So...
How does this affect YOU?
Well, answer these things:
Do you have more than 3 images saved to your HDD?
If so, you are breaking ACTA. Chances are those images are copyrighted, and you have not payed for the rights to have that image saved your hard drive
Have you even ripped songs from a CD, for any reason?
If you, you are, again, breaking ACTA. According to the RIAA, ripping songs from a CD for any reason is "against the wishes of the author", and you are breaking the copyright.
Have you ever ripped a movie to your computer for any reason?
Same as above, really
Do you have any EMUs/ROMs on your computer?
You are breaking ACTA! Yay!
Do you have any pirated material on your computer?
Pretty self-explanatory.
So, what can you do?
You can join the fight:
http://ifmovement.org/
http://www.anti-acta.com/
Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67J5A220100821
Past texts of ACTA
Spread the word, tell everyone you know. We can't let this pass, else it will essentially kill the internet. Yes, piracy is a bad thing, but fighting it like this is just wrong and insane.
