Leaked web censorship plans. (copy and spread)
Copy and spread!
"Leaked web censorship plans"
Yesterday, new plans for website censorship were leaked to digital rights campaigner James Firth. Yet again the leaked plans were written by copyright lobby groups, and had been presented to Culture Minister Ed Vaizey marked “confidential”.
The public weren’t meant to see these censorship plans. Copyright lobbyists want the minister to agree to “industry self-regulation”, where “experts” appointed by film, record and TV executives would decide what Internet sites would be banned in the UK.
With a fig leaf of judicial oversight, these sites would be banned without any hope of a trial or meaningful court procedure. Ask your MP to prevent these dangerous plans.
Last month, a report from the United Nations stated plainly that such website bans would risk severe impacts on our freedom of expression unless strictly controlled and approved by courts.
The same report condemned the UK for its plans to disconnect users for downloading copyright material. The author, Frank La Rue, said he was “alarmed” by the UK's Digital Economy Act and said we should repeal it as an infringement of our free expression.
Please tell your MP about these illegal plans
Please write to your MP to let them know that the UK is heading towards Internet censorship and breaches of fundamental rights. Let them know that plans are being drafted by entertainment lobbyists, who are trying to hide them from the public. Our free speech is in danger.
Thank you
Jim Killock, Executive Director
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Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om internet, censorship, censur, politik, storbritannien, england, politics,Sign the petition on making ACTA-papers public.
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PublicACTA - The Wellington Declaration
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IT-news, CE, Hax, AFS.
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ACTA - The consolidated text.
Someone has had the courage to leak the Consolidated ACTA-text to La Quadrature du Net.
Read bout it here.
download the pdf here.
Or download it on The Pirate Bay here.
Linkwall:
Dagens Juridik, Metro, SvD, HAX, Geeky, kryptoblog.
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ACTA falling apart thanks to Internet Activism?
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been one of the biggest topics of discussion in the realm of internet user rights, intellectual property discussions and legal circles that deal with these issues. Early on, it was the ultra-secret agreement that virtually no one knew about until there was an explosion of publicity online when the documents leaked on various whistle blower sites including Wikileaks.
Things were never really the same since.
[...]
Human rights and online rights organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation issued letter writing campaigns pressuring the government to release any official papers on the treaty, but to no avail. The European Union at one point refuted some of the suggestions made by the draft documents that leaked, but since there was no evidence to back up their position, it was extremely difficult to believe them.
[...]
Canadian MPs have been voicing their concerns and one MP, NDP MP Charlie Angus, even recently launched his own Facebook account which calls for the end of the secrecy surrounding ACTA. In Europe, MEPs were raising concerns including recently Heidi Hautala. Late last year, US senators also raised concerns about ACTA.
[...]
All in all, this might be a beginning sign that ACTA could end up being something very few even remotely predicted – a dud. It’s all thanks to ongoing criticism, overwhelming and unprecedented secrecy and disunity from within the negotiations themselves (how long have they been going and what about the rumours that negotiations could be going in to 2011?) that might very well sink ACTA into irrelevancy. At there very least, there are some signs of this happening.
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Human Rights-Lawyer booed on by industry-people at a public ACTA-Meeting.
The same industry-delegates also questioned why everyday-people was allowed in and even had a woman escorted out when she tried to twitter about the meeting.
Outrageous that these undemocratic industry-lobbyists have insight on the ACTA-agreement and the public don't.
Link1.
Link2 (google-translated from spanish)
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Bulgaria is not Big Brother, 2010 is not 1984.
From the Black Monday Network.
For immediate release
On January 14th , 2010 there will be a massive protest around the Parliament building in Sofia under the slogan “Bulgaria is not Big Brother, 2010 is not 1984”.
The protest will unite citizens, political parties and many organizations around their demand against the latest change in the data retention legislation.
The draft Law, which was passed on December 22nd , 2009, contains provisions, allowing the Ministry of Interior and many other agencies to execute continuous and uncontrolled monitoring of the behaviour, movement and other information on any Bulgarian citizen, regardless if he is or is not guilty of any crime. This preconditions the reversing of the “innocent until proven guilty” concept, which is a founding concept of the Bulgarian Constitution as well as of a number of European documents for human rights protection.
Here are some points of the proposal:
1. The Ministry of Interior will have access through a direct interface to the data for the calls and the mobile devices positioning of every single citizen without any legal reason. Court order is required, but the term “interface” is also introduced and this gives the agencies direct and untraceable access to the general national database for every one of us, rendering useless the control, exercised by the Court and the Parliament.
2. Another odd requirement, which is introduced in spite of the Directive, is that traffic data may be retained for crimes with more than 2 years imprisonment, which is practically almost any crime. Even odder is the fact that the Law specifically says that these traffic data can be used in relation to computer crimes, provided for in the Penal Code, which soon will include the vague subject of computer piracy.
The other key issue, which we fight against, is the too big and wrongful extension of the Directive, requiring the insertion of similar matter in the Bulgarian legislation, thus giving a legal reason to the Ministry of Interior to enter the general data base any time it wishes.
Of course, there are many other problems, because the legislative framework on data retention itself violates our rights and it is no surprise that it is being abolished in many countries. We, in Bulgaria, will continue to work for this.
Here is an example interface - http://bogomil.info/dr (/Firefox /required).
“Electronic Frontier Bulgaria” is one of the organizations, which initiated the protest and which is leading the fight against Internet and mobile phones tapping since 2008.
We are a part of the core of the protest, which is to be held on January 14th , 2010 at 11 a.m. in front of the Bulgarian Parliament. Our main and sole demand is a change in the draft Electronic Communications Law, ensuring the human rights of all users of Internet and telecommunication services in Bulgaria, including mobile phone talks.
Bogomil “Bogo” Shopov
EFB
+ 359 897 615128 (mobile)
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Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om bulgaria, 2010, 1984, big brother, data retention,The EU demands that Canada changes its IP and copyright-laws.
Proposed EU - Canada Trade Agreement Intellectual Property Chapter Leaks
[...]
What are some of the EU's demands?
- Copyright term extension. The current term of copyright law in Canada is life of the author plus 50 years. This is consistent with the term requirements under the Berne Convention. The EU is demanding that Canada add an additional 20 years by making the term life plus 70 years.
- WIPO ratification. The EU is demanding that Canada respect the rights and obligations under the WIPO Internet treaties. The EU only formally ratified those treaties this week.
- Anti-circumvention provisions. The EU is demanding that Canada implement anti-circumvention provisions that include a ban on the distribution of circumvention devices. There is no such requirement in the WIPO Internet treaties.
- ISP Liability provisions. The EU is demanding statutory provisions on ISP liability where they act as mere conduits, cache content, or host content. ISPs would qualify for a statutory safe harbour in appropriate circumstances. There is no three-strikes and you're out language (which presumably originates with the U.S.).
- Enforcement provisions. The EU is demanding that Canada establish a host of new enforcement provisions including measures to preserve evidence, ordering alleged infringers to disclose information on a wide range of issue, mandate disclosure of banking information in commercial infringement cases, allow for injunctive relief, and destruction of goods. There is also a full section on new border measures requirements.
- Resale rights. The EU is demanding that Canada implement a new resale right that would provide artists with a royalty based on any resales of their works (subsequent to the first sale).
- Making available or distribution rights. The EU is demanding that Canada implement a distribution or making available right to copyright owners.
Now, if the EU demands this of other countries, can countries within the EU avoid changes in their legislation?
I can't see any other way than stone cold lobbyism and activism towards MEP's.
Contact your MEP and ask them/tell them that this isn't right.
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Songwriter's Guild of America against Net Neutrality (and pro-ACTA)
There has been an effort made by some to try to connect the totally unrelated issues of network neutrality and unauthorized file sharing together. There is no connection between the two, but that won't stop busy lobbyists from doing their best to drum up such a connection. Copycense points us to the news that Grover Nordquit's group has decided to push this line of nonsense by parroting claims by the Songwriter's Guild of America (SGA) that accepting net neutrality is akin to encouraging piracy.
How? That's not clear, because there's really no connection at all. The best they can say is that net neutrality would prevent efforts to crack down on file sharing (except, every plan for net neutrality has explicitly had exceptions for such things). I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am not in favor of laws mandating neutrality, but the arguments made by those against it are so over-the-top ridiculous that it's actually making me wonder why. There are reasonable arguments against mandating neutrality, but these groups don't make them.
That it's the SGA making these arguments initially shouldn't come as a surprise. The group has a rather antiquated view of business models and modern technology, and its boss has declared in the past that songwriting would not occur without copyright -- an obviously incorrect statement.
The SGA has become a caricature of itself in the last few years. Rather than admitting that the market is changing and working with songwriters to help them adapt, it has basically decided the only reasonable strategy is to go crying to the government for more protectionism, and greater mandatory licensing fees.
This is an odd group for the anti-net neutrality types to team up with, since most of them claim their reasons for being against net neutrality is to get away from government meddling in the internet industry. And then they go and team up with the SGA, who's entire purpose is to encourage more government meddling in the music business? Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed...
Separately, it's probably worth noting that ITIF, a "think tank" in DC and which has been a huge anti-net neutrality voice, has just come out with a poorly researched, poorly argued, joke of a report on "reducing digital piracy." In it, they promote kicking people off the internet (based on accusations, not convictions) under a three strikes regime, and also that ISPs should filter and monitor their networks to try to stop infringement.
Apparently, ITIF is not a big fan of your privacy... but it's own... well, just try to find out who funds ITIF? That's secret. Funny how that works. Otherwise the report repeats a bunch of sweeping claims that have no support in reality, and does not back them up.
It states, repeatedly, that you can't compete with free, even as many smart businesses do that every day. The report advocates DRM, and amusingly fails to mention the massive failure of every DRM system to date, and the harm it has done to legitimate users. But, of course, it saves most of its focus on supporting "technical measures" from ISPs to inspect your content and stop you if they think you're doing anything wrong. Welcome to the big brother state.
The report also supports ACTA, even though it admits it doesn't know what's included. Basically, it's "recommendations" straight from the entertainment industry, with no basis in reality. And, with a nice "net neutrality" tie-in. Those ties seem likely to get closer, which is unfortunate. Funny that those who keep claiming they want the government to "stay out" of the internet, are so keen to have them very actively involved when it comes to copyright.
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