Our Internet Freedom Threatened by Secretly Negotiated Copyright Treaty

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...t-sopa-was-bad-just-wait-until-you-meet-acta/ is a link to article entitled "If You Thought Sopa Was Bad Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA!"

But exactly what is ACTA? Video explains at this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Xg_C2YmG0&feature=player_embedded

EDIT: Since it has become an issue, I would like to remind everyone at the beginning of this thread I have posted that the Hot topic arena QUOTE: "As the title suggest, and as stated above, is a sub-board dedicated to non-astrological talks on interesting, important or controversial topics" Any non astrological comments welcomed - if you would prefer to discuss this topic in relation to astrology, then there is the option of starting your own thread - thanks everyone!

I can't wait until you find out about FEMA...

MSO said:

I can't wait until you find out about FEMA...

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Haha, no kidding. Don't sleep on those FEMA camps

They've been trying to pass this ACTA bill through for years, but with the recent government crackdowns in the U.S. it just might go through this time.

JUPITERASC said:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...t-sopa-was-bad-just-wait-until-you-meet-acta/ is a link to article entitled "If You Thought Sopa Was Bad Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA!"

But exactly what is ACTA? Video explains at this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Xg_C2YmG0&feature=player_embedded

Click to expand...

Thanks for the links.

Makes me shudder though, but I do feel they may actually try to shut us down. Too much freedom of information out there to liberate closed doors for their liking. For, if we have freedom of choice, awareness of what actually does go on and how we are being manipulated, and if we share this information with our friends.. all that empowerment threatens their very base of stability. Uranus square Pluto....

Let people make silly unnecessary laws and let people enforce them. As long as we have these wuss laws, most people won't possibly become disillusioned and realize just how unbreakable and extreme the real laws are. Information is unstoppable. Once it stops, a concept dies. Concepts never die, thus information never stops. Anyone who tries to make wuss laws like this will have to face the real laws eventually if the real laws allow the wuss laws at all.

Yes, this is more philosophy than politics, but that's what politics is based on nowadays, right?

I just wonder it I'll ever use the internet at all, should this law pass. Or how significant it will impact us?

Ugh, this is terrible. And to think that Obama signed ACTA in October 2011, and I only knew about it yesterday. It is clear that the people don't count in this politico-economic system.

However, Congress did not ratify it yet.

But Congress will have to ignore bullies like Chris Dodd (a former senator who became an MPAA lobbyist...hello revolving door!) and their lobby money in order to listen to the people.

SOPA and PIPA were not passed because of Silicon Valley's influence on politicians. For once, an economic interest actually looked out for the average person, which is extremely rare.

At this rate, I really wonder how many laws were intended to protect petty economic interests, and how many laws were intended to protect the general public.

Here's how I think ACTA will impact the internet:
-ISPs will have to police the internet more on the look-out for copyright infringement in order to stay open
-Selling generic drugs over the internet will be forbidden in order to protect the patents of big pharma
-Selling organic reusable seed over the internet will be criminalized in order to protect Monsanto's GMO seeds

Well, Pluto in Capricorn is revealing our institutions to be against the average person's interest. So on the one hand it is a shock, but at the same time it is not.

All the brouhaha about SOPA and PIPA made me realize that record companies and movie companies cannot be trusted. Hollywood cannot bear the fact that people would rather choose what to watch and listen to instead of having a middle-man decide what to watch and listen to.

People-chosen playlists are better than the stuff chosen by record labels (yes, libraries have legal options such as freegal, but the selection is apparently limited).

With the development of legal options such as KeyholeTV (a Japanese government project where people can watch live Japanese TV all over the world, including anime. The only thing is that one has to get up early for some shows, and the audio and video quality are less than ideal. So maybe DVR options can help), repressive laws are totally unnecessary.

Creators are not losing their livelihoods (Kate Covington is coming out with a CD as a result of her popularity on Youtube, and her music is excellent, inspired from animes and video games...), but the concept of a middle-man may be a thing of the past.

So Hollywood wants to preserve outdated middle-man jobs, even if it means trashing the quality and the freedom of the internet. Historically speaking, Hollywood has been extremely possessive about the use of their creations, even during the era of the videocassette. And yet, creators realize that creativity is built upon prior creativity in many cases (even Andy Warhol's paintings, cover songs, AMVs and parodies).

I have personally decided to focus on creators who are generous with their creations, who do not rely on rigid control freaks to be heard.

Uranus in Aries is giving people the fire needed to rise up against this oppression.

I REALLY hope that my concept of an Idea party will work, I want to change the way politics are discussed. First and foremost, there has to be an economic system that is open to innovation and that benefits the general public. Second, there has to be a real democracy instead of a dictatorship of economic interests.

If the internet becomes as rotten as television, where can people go to congregate, communicate and evolve? How can anti-establishment individuals be heard in politics?

We need a space that is free from corrupt economic interests!!!

ACTA seems over-the-top, but a basic problem remains.

Take a song-writer whose music you just love. If her work gets pirated, she gets no royalties from it. If she has to get a day-job to support herself, she has less time and energy to devote to writing the music you love. So you get less of it.

Take an author whose fiction you can't wait to read. Or a video-game creator, if you prefer. Or a film actor. Somebody will profit from his work. Should it be the creator or the Chinese pirates?

Sure, publishers and studios (and their investors) take their cut. But they also take a lot of the risk in mounting the various productions so that you can enjoy them. If a movie flops, it's their money down the tubes, not the pirates'. And not yours.

BTW, the problem applies to astrologers, as well. Before this site implemented plagiarism rules, a couple of members downloaded or linked material from pirated astrology books. A well-known astrologer contacted the forum to complain. It was her hard work and experience that went into the books, and she justifiably felt cheated of the income that she depended upon-- in order to produce more of the work that thoughtless astrology students were pirating.

How would you solve this problem?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Xg_C2YmG0&feature=player_embedded video explains that the name is misleading - the original idea is to protect intellectual property: but apparently intellectual property isn't really defined in ACTA.

A quote from the explanatory video follows

QUOTE:
"musicians, writers, movie makers, software developers and researchers also lose because they are now held by the same rules. Even parts of sentences could be restricted and made protected by copyright and the whole agreement only benefits a small part of the industry"

waybread said:

ACTA seems over-the-top, but a basic problem remains.

Take a song-writer whose music you just love. If her work gets pirated, she gets no royalties from it. If she has to get a day-job to support herself, she has less time and energy to devote to writing the music you love. So you get less of it.

Take an author whose fiction you can't wait to read. Or a video-game creator, if you prefer. Or a film actor. Somebody will profit from his work. Should it be the creator or the Chinese pirates?

Sure, publishers and studios (and their investors) take their cut. But they also take a lot of the risk in mounting the various productions so that you can enjoy them. If a movie flops, it's their money down the tubes, not the pirates'. And not yours.

BTW, the problem applies to astrologers, as well. Before this site implemented plagiarism rules, a couple of members downloaded or linked material from pirated astrology books. A well-known astrologer contacted the forum to complain. It was her hard work and experience that went into the books, and she justifiably felt cheated of the income that she depended upon-- in order to produce more of the work that thoughtless astrology students were pirating.

How would you solve this problem?

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Are you aware of how small a percentage of royalties the creator of a creative work usually gets from that work? The majority of profit goes to the distributing agency.

Yes, of course I am aware. But this doesn't mean artists should get less income due to free-for-all piracy. See also my point above about those who take the risks to pay for artistic productions, without knowing whether or not they will lose their money.

Personally, I think it should be illegal to sell something that doesn't tangibly exist (e.g. information). The more free is your information, the more free are you.

Mark, we've debated this issue thoroughly via pms. How do you propose that struggling artists support themselves if their work is available for piracy?

"Tangible" really isn't the operative word for information. Ideas exist without being tangible.

Mark said:

Personally, I think it should be illegal to sell something that doesn't tangibly exist (e.g. information). The more free is your information, the more free are you.

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If information does not tangibly exist then what does? If, say, my keyboard is merely the arrangement of various atomic structures that were put into that arrangement via entropic releases of energy that just so happened to follow specific iterations (the processes on the factory floor which changed one conglomeration of atomic force into a different one) then the resulting product is no more real than what it was taken from. Thus if information is not real, that which produced the information i.e. the effort required to produce it, the research/observations made will not be real either since they are merely the product of other things ad nauseum. Thus nothing is real, everything is entirely free of fractal iteration and you can put a price on just about anything merely because all it takes to do so is marking it.

And that's how I can sell you things which are not things and will be an infinite amount of other things once you buy them from me.

The universe is a magical place

[attacking comment deleted by moderator] Plagiarism in today's Internet era is increasingly easy to detect. Being influenced by another artist or author is hardly the same thing as plagiarizing. Some things are in the public domain and some are not.

[provoking comment deleted by moderator]

And in the US, people can get sued for this sort of thing if the privacy invasion has harmed somebody. Historians have been censured for "borrowing" other historians' work without attribution. And so they should. Also, in some cultures "the natives" shrewdly demand modeling fees from tourists who wish to photograph them.

For sure there is a slippery slope argument here, but you have to look at what best protects the creative people. Otherwise you effectively punish them in the name of a non-existent belief in perfect freedom on the Internet.

BTW, anybody here with a gmail account might want to look at Google's new plans to read your e-mail. I find that a lot scarier than protecting a musician's ability to make a living at his work.

waybread: You seem to be ignoring the fact that the "creative people" are the ones who are being "punished" by our current system. The "artists" who create the work are the ones who get paid the least. The unnecessary middle men are the ones who keep the bulk of the money. How do we know they are unnecessary? Because they are trying desperately and repeatedly to take control of the internet, the very thing that antiquated them. If we have the ability to spread information all over the world nearly for free, then why should we spend tons of money supporting an obsolete power structure that is no longer needed? Why is it okay for a poor man to lose a job when it's time for society to change, but a rich man must keep his power structure no matter what? It's time for the old, unnecessary, and oppressive systems to be tossed aside. Who ever said that everyone must always make as much money as possible at all times? That sounds like hell to me.

People who play music for the money, rather than the love of music, usually end up making terrible musicians. People who become doctors for the money, rather than for love of the patients, usually make terrible doctors. People who become politicians for the money and power, rather than for love of the people, make terrible leaders. When money and power are treated as primary motivators, terrible things are just around the corner. Such ridiculous control and exploitation is just the way things happened to turn out for the moment. There is no reason they should stay that way and there are tons of good reasons for change. The status quo is the most cruel and vicious of enemies.

Mark, your second paragraph would seem to contradict your first paragraph.

And nobody is arguing against musicians being paid a fairer share of the income from the distribution of their music! Ditto for any other creative person.

But if their music is pirated, they get paid no money in royalties, &c. Piracy is even less fair to musicians and composers than the current system.

Nor are the middle men totally unnecessary. If you think of what is involved in making a film, a play, organizing a concert tour, or what have you; it all costs a lot of money-- up front. Employees have to be paid, the creative work has to be distributed and marketed, and so on. So who has the funds to pay for a production-- and to take the risk of losing all those funds if it flops? Maybe an artist who has "made it" has sufficient funds to produce his work, but oftentimes the creative people have to rely upon investors.

Mark, read my previous post with the example of a song-writer. If her music can just be taken by other people for free, then she cannot make a living from her song-writing. She has to do some other kind of work to keep a roof over her head and bread on the table. Her "day job" cuts into the time and energy she has to produce the very music her "fans" decide to pirate. So now her fans get less of this song-writer's music. Way to go. In this example, the song-writer doesn't write songs "for the money"-- this is preposterous, as composing doesn't work this way.

I am sorry that you hate rich people.

Many dedicated professionals are not motivated by money. You try getting an undergraduate degree, a medical school degree, and internship, a residency and then set up a practice with no resources. Many MDs have huge student loans to repay; and then the fees they can charge are set by HMOs or the government.

The idea of a "free" Internet is naive. There is no such thing as a free lunch.