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Son of ACTA: meet the next secret copyright treaty (arstechnica.com)
52 points by chaostheory on March 12, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments


"The US government, still trying to secure final passage for the drafted-in-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)" and "Once again, the chapter was drafted in secret and has been classified for at least four years after negotiations end."

Like a secret law? I thought supposedly classically liberal and democratic countries weren't supposed to have those.

The whole DMCA thing disgusts me. Once I buy something, then I should be held in good faith not to infringe on copyright rights. If I do, then I could see issues, but not before. I suppose the problem is that we've redefined 'infringe' to mean making possible for anyone to infringe, no matter what my intentions were.

This is as if we were to hold gun manufacturers responsible for all gun injury, or auto manufacturers responsible for all car accidents, or construction workers responsible for earthquake damage, or office suppliers responsible for eyes poked out by thrown pencils, or &c., &c., &c., the inane list goes on and on...

Not a lawyer, but required to say so by lawyers.


>Like a secret law? I thought supposedly classically liberal and democratic countries weren't supposed to have those.

This is the US we're talking about though, so I don't get your point.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that both ACTA and TPP were primarily written by the US. In any case, the US is involved, and supporting secret laws is pretty bad for a country that keeps going on about how they support democracy everywhere.

Edit:

  This *is* the US we're talking about though, so I don't get your point.
Did this say 'is' when I first replied? I replied as if it said 'isn't.' It is possible I managed to misread, but I'm fairly sure...


I believe he's being sarcastic.


As I said on Slashdot: I bet the MBAs who were trained to control didn't help. Nor does "shareholder value". Any idea on how to finally fix all this?


"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Use them in that order."




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