Internet Freedom Protest on Saturday, February 11th 2012 against ACTA and TPP, SOPA's Reincarnations

     Guess what, we beat SOPA back a little, and PIPA is pretty much crushed. But the big-name companies are not giving up. There are two new trade agreements on international license that those who supported SOPA and PIPA are trying to put into place (please read Jan 28th's blog for info on those bills), and they are ACTA and TPP. I don't know how to make this shorter for all of you with 2-second attention spans, so bear with me, I'll explain.

     ACTA is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This will be a multi-national agreement to establish international standards for intellectual property.

     That basically means that ACTA wants to criminalize users for anything that even remotely resembles stealing of intellectual property (no more shares from YouTube videos on your Facebook page, no sir). They want the internet providers to help keep tabs on people to make sure the trade agreements aren't being violated (spying while you browse) and it basically makes it much easier for media companies to sue sites out of existence and to jail their founders. (Think, Megaupload and Kim Dotcom) Did I forget to mention that amatuer works that receive commercial status could be put behind bars? Seriously, if you receive compensation for stuff you post on YouTube, jail time for you, think of all the artists and Vloggers that started as amatuers on YouTube, but are now big names. Jail....now does that seem right?

     Wow, so we fought and put down SOPA, and the big companies responded by putting into motion a GLOBAL agreement. This thing has actually been in the works since 2008, why may you ask haven't we heard about it before? Because not until Japan and some smaller countries signed the agreement did they even put any of this out there for the public. All meetings and conventions on the subject have been closed to the public and public interest groups, and they've been keeping their mouths shut about it. The other reason that nobody has heard of it is that it's a global trade agreement, meaning that this doesn't even have to go through Congress, it kind of skirts around it.

     The agreement (ACTA) was signed on 1 October 2011 by Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States. In January 2012, the European and 22 of its member states signed as well, bringing the total number of signatories to 31. After ratification by 6 states, the convention will come into force. We have until March 31st, to let them know that we won't stand for this.

Now for the Most Important Stuff:
     There are a bunch of protests tomorrow, Saturday, February 11th 2012 all across Europe, as they haven't ratified the ACTA yet, and we need to lend our voices, let them know this isn't right. All the protests have gotten leaders in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia to back out of the ACTA, now the protest is planned in over 200 cities in Europe and the US, let's support them! If we do, by sending millions of emails to the key decision makers, we can start tipping the scales like we did on SOPA and beat this.

 Go to http://fightforthefuture.org/ to find out more information, and to add your voice to the protest, please go to http://killacta.org/#code. We are American, we know how to fight for freedom, so let's go out there and win it back!

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Sources:

1. For more information on ACTA, read these excellent articles from Techdirt and La Quadrature du Net. For information on TPP, read this Ars Technica piece. For video, watch this.

2. Obama's signing of ACTA may have been unconstitutional. See Anti-counterfeiting agreement raises constitutional concerns and Techdirt.

3. Hollywood gets to party with TPP negotiators, public interest groups get thrown out of the hotel.

4. Ars Technica: Czech, Slovak governments backing away from ACTA, too.

SOPA and PIPA, crushing America one bit at a time

For those of you who haven't been following the SOPA and PIPA debacle, you should. If you don't know what they are, you can read all about what's going on at Gizmodo, just click on the link I've included.

Here's the shortened version from Gizmodo, in case the article is too long for you to read.

• SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is an anti-piracy bill working its way through Congress that would grant content creators extraordinary power over the internet which would go almost comedically unchecked to the point of potentially creating an "Internet Blacklist" while exacting a huge cost from nearly every site you use daily and potentially disappearing your entire digital life while still managing to be both unnecessary and ineffective but stands a shockingly good chance of passing unless we do something about it.

If you want a less opinionated version that's harder to understand but has more facts, please check out the news article from C-Net here.

SOPA contains anti-circumvention language that would essentially allow for government control over essential privacy software such as VPNs, proxies, and even something as fundamental as SSH. SOPA also provides for an incredibly broad right of private action that would allow content owners to interfere with the operations of payment processors and social media services such as Twitter.

The basic theory behind this is that users of the internet and creators of sharing websites are illegally stealing media and information, as well as helping to distribute payment info, and and are distributing it to the public. The creators of SOPA think that everyone needs to pay for the information and entertainment they are getting, and want this bill to help them shut down the 'rogue websites'. Good right? Everyone gets what they deserve?

Yes, it theory. The ugly side to it is that the content creators get to shut down ANYTHING that they think is infringement, including links, pictures, fan sites, most stuff on YouTube, and then severely limiting everything else that comes through. Too bad we can't get the creators of this bill to focus on shutting down the porn industry instead. We'd have a 100% cleaner America in no time! Instead, they have to try and get rid of all free entertainment and most of the information, something that the internet is known for.

Here's my theory, all purchases of media jumps by 150% in the next few months as people rush out to buy all their favorite videos and TV shows they can no longer access for free. Then, as that spike wears off, media and entertainment purchases drop by 100-250% from what they are NOW, severely damaging the entertainment industry. How many of us have gone to uploading sites to watch our favorite videos or catch the latest episodes of some TV show? I know I have, several times. Now think about how that free sharing of information has actually boosted the amount you've spent on media and entertainment. I would never have started watching British Comedy, I've spent over $100 on stuff that I probably illegally saw first, but then poured that money back into the entertainment industry. It's like free advertising! Why would they get rid of that?

Here's some things I think everyone should know about this stuff.

• PIPA wanted to introduce something called the Internet Death Penalty, that would basically kill off any websites that PIPA deems as having any infringment whatsoever
• The infringement includes everything from links to references, meaning that in the future, this blog may get banned just because I am mentioning news articles and illegal sites
• An awesome Senator,  Senator Ron Wyden was instrumental in stopping this bill from going forward, please read the news article on how he managed to acheive this.
• This is the same bill that is currently in effect in China, Iran, and Syria. Wow, we really want to imitate those countries right (think sarcasm here)?

So if you're against censorship, please go to americancensorship.org to stop this, I just have an opinion, but 24+ million internet users can't be wrong, lets keep America and the Internet free.