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The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:
• That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
• That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
• That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
• Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
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Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.
Now would be a good time to start creating data stashes. I've been on KeepVid since this article appeared, downloading as many of my favorite videos off youtube as possible onto my external 1TB just in case this thing kills youtube. If you've got any favorite videos, now may be a good time to back them up just in case.
While I've never really supported piracy on principle, copyright laws are a damned mess in the US and are heavily stacked in favor of the corporate holders against everyone else. Until copyright law in the US (and elsewhere) is fixed, I'm siding with the pirates simply because it's the lesser of two unethical parties. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is, like seemingly every other anti-piracy measure taken recently, a massive overstep and instead of effectively curbing piracy will only drive more people to it and further damage copyright. It's following in the footsteps of the MPAA and RIAA (the MPAA recently has started pushing for control over your A/V outputs on your cable/satellite box, for example).
This is big news for anyone that likes the internet, so I figure you should know. This really does put everything from Youtube to Blogger to Flickr at serious risk. No hyperbole.