Displaying items by tag: TPP

After a long and complicated battle Kim Dotcom and the other Megaupload employees (Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato, and Bram van der Kolk) might have lost an important battle. A district judge, Judge Nevin Dawson, has ruled that the US can present an extradition request for the four. Further Judge Dawson feels that none of the legal arguments brought forth by Dotcom and the others is sufficient to deny the request.

It looks like the US wants to export something new to the world, now we are not talking about a technology. We are talking about our draconian copyright laws. You remember those nasty laws that the entertainment industry and software companies keep extending and expanding. For years our government has tried to be the police for these groups with laws like SOPA, PIPA Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection act and more. Well they are trying to force other countries to adopt these same rules and using trade agreements to do it. They have already been stopped once with ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) when they tried to remove the rights of individual countries to establish their own laws and are at it again with the Trans Pacific Partnership.

As predicted Judge David Harvey (who called the US “The Enemy” in Copyright Law) has stepped down from presiding over the Dotcom extradition case. Yesterday we reported on Harvey’s views of the US Government’s (and entertainment industry’s) efforts to force US copyright laws on foreign countries as a requirement of trade agreements. This move, by the US, has sparked quite a bit of debate including whether the US Trade Rep has the authority to enact these deals without congressional oversight. With ACTA and TPP the USTR has had more meetings with the entertainment industry than with the congressional bodies that are supposed to handle oversight on these treaties.

We have previously reported that the US entertainment industry is trying very hard to push their version of the “law” out to the rest of the world. They have, quite literally, spent billions of dollars lobbying and campaigning to get the laws made in their favor. Now the fact that these laws include exceptionally oppressive measures, remove due process and also make even the most mundane violations into major crimes does not concern them. All they want to do is make sure that they keep control of the content and the money it brings in.

In what can only be described as a “the pot calling the kettle” style move corporations, the US Congress and the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) have all gotten together to keep the Internet Free. When we first read the headlines about the UN having a conference in Dubai to discuss the possibility of moving governance of some aspects of the Internet to them (actually the ITU) we chuckled a little bit. When we heard the garbage spewing from members of congress and the FCC we began to outright laugh.

The EU Parliament will be voting on ACTA this week. If you have been living under a rock lately ACTA (Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement) is a US backed bit of legislation that wants to establish better control over the internet for copyright holders. The agreement has been the subject of controversy not only for the oppressive terms, but also for the secretive way in which it has been presented. In many cases only certain members of a country’s government have been given access why the copyright lobbies have had full access and a hand in setting it up.

ACTA is in the news again today as we hear from more than a few people on the implications of the treaty and what consequences it might have. Interestingly it looks like ACTA was originally designed to handle the large scale manufacture and distribution of counterfeit physical products (for prescription drugs actually). Some have suggested that the import of items (like the fake Gucci and Fendi bags you can find for sale on some street corners…) has a drastic impact on the sales and profit of those companies. This is the same logic that is put forward for the theft of virtual property like IP, music, and videos.

In mid-January the battle over SOPA and PIPA hit a peak with an unprecedented show of opposition. We saw Wikipedia go dark for the day while other large site put black censored bars over their logos. At the end of this the SOPA and PIPA backers in the Senate and the House of Representatives decided they needed to change their direction. Lamar Smith, the sponsor for SOPA made the official announcement that SOPA was being shelved. Many hailed this announcement as a victory, but it seems they did not see the finger crossed behind Smith’s back.

I love old sayings. One reason is that some are just plain funny, but another is that so many are true. In this case the old saying is “If you squeeze something too tight it will slip out between your fingers”. This is exactly what is happening with the tight internet controls that are being worked on right now.  As Google, Twitter and others are working on hiding dissenting topics and tweets that governments do not want visible in their countries people like the TOR (The Onion Router) Project are working to get around those restrictions.