(This is all my personal opinion and does not reflect on or speak for Diablofans as a site or the Curse Network)
So we've staved off SOPA and PIPA but ACTA has been lurking around in the shadows. It isn't common for them to throw something up they KNOW will be shot down to lessen awareness of another issue. ACTA is passing in more and more countries. So some of you may be wondering what is ACTA?
ACTA or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreementis an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country who signed the agreement to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever. No warrant needed. This also applies to other countries who signed the treaty. Looking at the list of who has signed this today in a ceremony in Tokyo, the UK, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden all agreed to join ACTA. The other EU states are expected to follow and sign as well. Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US are already signed up to the agreement.
So for example if you live in Sweden and the US decides that an ISP there is hosting copyrighted material the US can have the material pulled down and potentially the ISP end up in very hot water. It also raises some concerns when it comes to privacy.
President Obama signed this agreement back on October 1st, 2011, without consulting congress. He claimed it was a "Executive Agreement" and didn't need to have it confirmed with anyone else. However an executive agreement is not a binding treaty where as the EU and other countries have signed it as so. This means the US government, more specifically the USTR, will be able to ignore whatever they want in it while other countries can't.
To put the cherry on top of this, President Obama does not even have the power to make such an agreement according to some legal scholars and TechDirt.com:
The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.
It's NOT TOO LATE though. ACTA still needs to be ratified by the countries who have joined. This is expected to take several months. Don't let them censor you. Don't let your government hand over power to other governments. Fight to keep your sovereignty. Write or email your government let them know you are not pleased with this agreement. You wouldn't be standing alone, hundreds of thousands of people have joined facebook pages to oppose this, an internet petition has gathered over 220,000 signatures.
Encourage people to read up on the bill itself and about the bill and inform themselves. Rally together once again to show our governments that we won't be censored and we won't allow loosely written agreements to be shoved on us. Get the word out.
A good site along with the others linked in this post to look into ACTA is: http://www.stopacta.info/
Man it's getting tiring fighting this... we need the big companies to help more imo. Aren't the multi-billion dollar ISP's wanting to fight it? Or Google?
It's just hard to fight this when the generation before us has no idea what it means and are just blindly signing shit and believeing what they hear on TV: "Oh those darn software pirates! We gotta get them!"
The awareness over this must grow, and FAST. Its not too late, like you said. The war against SOPA pretty much exploded overnight. We need to move this against ACTA. Spread the word.
Edit: Oops yeah it continues in the comments section
This is the problem imo; certain corporations are willing to push for these treaties/laws and write them (and pay to write them)... while the rest of us want nothing to do with politics or law making because of its crazy process and complication (and we're just not greedy bastards, well some of us...).
I couldn't read that link for very long, just too much legal talk for the average person. Meanwhile though, the other side will have their television stations feeding snappy one liners into people's minds about piracy...
That fact that it's a international agreement just doesn't set well with me. I don't like other countries dictating how laws in mine should work and I assume you all feel pretty much the same.
Why is it that anytime someone trys to prevent piracy in any form you guys bitch bitch bitch?
Before SOPA and PIPA it was DRM. You guys cried and cried and cried about how the corporation was greedy and it was fucking over its actual paying customers.
During the whole SOPA and PIPA debacle you guys cried and cried and cried about how the government was evil and that the companies can handle their own DRM.
After SOPA and PIPA there is now ACTA and you guys cry and cry and cry about how its wrong and going to be abused.
I'm sorry - but this isn't just about freedom of speech or potential abuse of power. This is strictly about people being greedy, whiney little thieves. You want to steal your media, and you don't want anything or anyone preventing it.
Why is it that anytime someone trys to prevent piracy in any form you guys bitch bitch bitch?
Before SOPA and PIPA it was DRM. You guys cried and cried and cried about how the corporation was greedy and it was fucking over its actual paying customers.
During the whole SOPA and PIPA debacle you guys cried and cried and cried about how the government was evil and that the companies can handle their own DRM.
After SOPA and PIPA there is now ACTA and you guys cry and cry and cry about how its wrong and going to be abused.
I'm sorry - but this isn't just about freedom of speech or potential abuse of power. This is strictly about people being greedy, whiney little thieves. You want to steal your media, and you don't want anything or anyone preventing it.
Awesome..."If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear". Hmm, where have I heard that before?
@Daemaro: I agree with you on the issue, but where is that outrage when the U.S. constantly dictates to other countries ? Want an example? Bush administration limiting medical foreign aid to clinics where they don't teach about abortion/contraception. A little consistency...
Lol... It's our money... Why the hell shouldn't we be able to put stipulations?
Why is it that anytime someone trys to prevent piracy in any form you guys bitch bitch bitch?
Before SOPA and PIPA it was DRM. You guys cried and cried and cried about how the corporation was greedy and it was fucking over its actual paying customers.
During the whole SOPA and PIPA debacle you guys cried and cried and cried about how the government was evil and that the companies can handle their own DRM.
After SOPA and PIPA there is now ACTA and you guys cry and cry and cry about how its wrong and going to be abused.
I'm sorry - but this isn't just about freedom of speech or potential abuse of power. This is strictly about people being greedy, whiney little thieves. You want to steal your media, and you don't want anything or anyone preventing it.
Awesome..."If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear". Hmm, where have I heard that before?
@Daemaro: I agree with you on the issue, but where is that outrage when the U.S. constantly dictates to other countries ? Want an example? Bush administration limiting medical foreign aid to clinics where they don't teach about abortion/contraception. A little consistency...
Lol... It's our money... Why the hell shouldn't we be able to put stipulations?
That's why the world is how it is, it's all about OUR money as you say, never wanting to share or help the poor it's all about how greedy people are and that is the flaw with this world.
LOL okay hippy..... Go bleed your heart somewhere else
Why is it that anytime someone trys to prevent piracy in any form you guys bitch bitch bitch?
Before SOPA and PIPA it was DRM. You guys cried and cried and cried about how the corporation was greedy and it was fucking over its actual paying customers.
During the whole SOPA and PIPA debacle you guys cried and cried and cried about how the government was evil and that the companies can handle their own DRM.
After SOPA and PIPA there is now ACTA and you guys cry and cry and cry about how its wrong and going to be abused.
I'm sorry - but this isn't just about freedom of speech or potential abuse of power. This is strictly about people being greedy, whiney little thieves. You want to steal your media, and you don't want anything or anyone preventing it.
I like how you brought up DRM as an example, because it proved to be more of a nuissance for the buying audience rather than the pirates, it lasted a couple of months but the people who had no intent of buying the games eventually got to play them anyway and the people who had bought them still suffered at the hands of a godawful protection.
Have you read what the laws actually mean? I kinda get the feeling you haven't.
What's your suggestion to combat piracy then? A solution is unfortunately necessary..
The industries creating by the US are far too retarded to adapt and prefer to fuck people in the ass instead of working around a situation and benefit from it. US is against progress and just want easy money, plain fucking simple. Only the giant morons of the industry that are scared of their losses care about this, but who could truly give a fuck? So many people up there deserves to be shot and burried. The world would be better without these fucking companies around.
I think what you have said is a bit racist, your separating human kind in to sub section's and that is something I don't like.
But I guess we can't all have what we want right!
How is that racist at all? It just protects every countries sovereign rights. We start signing treaties with other countries and before long the US would be able to dictate your laws, would you like that? Or any other country. It's like your neighbor coming into your house and putting up a list of what you can and can't do in your own house. It has nothing to do with race.
@Daemaro: I agree with you on the issue, but where is that outrage when the U.S. constantly dictates to other countries ? Want an example? Bush administration limiting medical foreign aid to clinics where they don't teach about abortion/contraception. A little consistency...
Well I mean it is foreign AID, they sort of get to dictate under what stipulation people get it, if at all. However I can't control any of that and I certainly don't approve of anything Bush did.
People gotta understand that piracy is a terrible thing not only for companies but for the consumers too. Piracy represents a zero price competition, which means companies can't compete in entertaiment markets with low production costs (were people are only interested on the media itself, not secondary bonuses like boxes).
A good exemple is netflix. It's a miracle it actually survives since people can freely download any content there instead of paying the mouthly fee. It does because it only provides rather old material (it's cheaper for then to buy and harder for internet uses to find a pirate download - an exception). Without piracy this kind of service would be much more common and viable.
Companies however have to trade only on markets of higher cost goods (where there's weaker competition between then and zero price pirates). Majority of the public is not interested in movies that comes in fancy boxes, this is why piracy is not a good deal for us. This is also why many useful sorftwares used in the industry have ridicolous prices and no good domestical version is ever created for a worthy price - why invest if people will pirate it anyway ?
Another problem of piracy is that companies tryes to defend thenself by risking tatics that are not benefitial for it's consumers. D3 absense of lan mod is a great exemple. Only if better anti-piracy institutions existed, strategies that oftenly hurt the consumers could be avoided.
It's really frustrating too see people associating protection of rights with greedy behavior. You really want people working for you for free ? It's not like companies = black ties bastards sucking money out of you. Companies are made of hundred people who only make money for their living and piracy effects all those people.
I'm not FOR piracy, I'm against broad sweeping agendas and agreements with other countries that aren't passed through congress that can affect the way we run things here. I don't anyone has actually looked at all these recent bills, PIPA, ACTA, SOPA and more and said "No thanks I like my pirating.", at least I hope not. Okay well some probably have, but the broad majority are probably more concerned about the secrecy, the loose phrasing, and the potential to abuse it.
I don't think piracy hurts companies at all. It doesn't really even endanger their ancient business models at this point. They just like to make a fuss about it.
I completlety disagree. This is subject of the very simple economics. Theres a demand and a supply of intelectual goods (inovation, softwares and new technologies). Piracy allows people to obtain those intelectual goods without paying for it. This adversity causes reduction in return of investments which obviously reduces investments in inovation.
Big companies have tools to deal with this issue. They can afford applying user unfriendly strategies that prevent piracy because theres bigger demand for their produces, not to mention bigger companies usually market power. Gladly we are in a D3 forum and i can make my point without drawning utility and demand functions =p
Take D3 and TL2. Blizzard can afford user unfriendly design like no offline mods, no lan and no support for moding, just to prevent piracy. Basically because the "core demand" for D3 (the demand that do not includes presense or absense of those features) is much, much bigger. Like the old statement "people will buy D3 anyway". TL2 would be a 100% ruined game if they choosed to use that strategy, because great part of TL2 demands are actually demand for lan and mods.
Because of piracy, runic games are doomed to loose sales (in Brazil every single lan house has like 30+ copies of pirate TL. There almost a million lan houses in Brazil). This only makes the market a lot harder for smaller and starting coompanies that can react.
One might argue that the opposite also happens: free intelectual goods allows smaller producers to compete with big ones, since big ones loose their intellectual advantage, This is fallacy, since it does do not happen, actually. Whenever big companies realize they're loosing the intellectual advantage they simply quit investing in it. This happen in brazil were a group of chemical students discovered a bunch of agrotoxic formulae via reverse engeering and distribute to popular agronomers. The next mouth all biochemical departments in brazillian rural companies closed cause producers realise there was no legal method to prevent that.
A decade has passed and we haven't created any kind of inovation in the rural business. The popular agronomers are completly fucked up nowdays cause now they have to buy substancies from the U.S, Japan and Australia for much higher price or keep a half assed level of production. The large land however are alive, cause they can afford to buy stuff from other countries.
I understand the thought behind ACTA. Piracy is considered stealing, and we currently don't have adequate laws to combat this type of stealing, so let's make a law that does cater to that need.
The problem I believe, lies in the first part of that statement. "Piracy is considered stealing."
This statement makes a few assumptions;
1) People who pirate a movie/series/game would have otherwise bought this product.
While this is undoubtedly true in some cases, many people (such as myself) wouldn't have bothered in most cases. This means piracy also creates a bigger audience.
2) People who pirate a movie/series/game will not buy a product.
Again, while undoubtedly true in many cases, the popularity of vanity products like collector's editions display our nature in a clear manner. We love being able to show off a collection in a touchable manner. I myself have, for example, pirated the game Dragon Age: Origins, and then bought it because I liked it. The same goes for my DVD collection of House M.D., of which I now own all seasons, but never would have bothered with, if it weren't for piracy.
3) Piracy does not benefit an artist.
Upcoming artists can spread their songs into a huge market, as a side effect of piracy. This means record companies don't dictate what we get to listen to anymore, and anyone with talent can get their name known. Another case in point is the recent succes of Minecraft, which sold numerous copies, even though the owner had declared it to be "ok to pirate it". Due to the piracy, it became an incredibly well known game, that anyone who follows videogames on any sort of level has heard of.
In conclusion, while I do think it's a good idea to keep hitting the brakes on illegal piracy, the focus should be on keeping it on a slowburner, preventing sites from going overboard. In this respect I fully understand the legal actions taken against megaupload, and perhaps even piratebay.
We're playing a game, us against the huge corporations. ACTA would disrupt the balance of the board.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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So we've staved off SOPA and PIPA but ACTA has been lurking around in the shadows. It isn't common for them to throw something up they KNOW will be shot down to lessen awareness of another issue. ACTA is passing in more and more countries. So some of you may be wondering what is ACTA?
ACTA or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country who signed the agreement to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever. No warrant needed. This also applies to other countries who signed the treaty. Looking at the list of who has signed this today in a ceremony in Tokyo, the UK, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden all agreed to join ACTA. The other EU states are expected to follow and sign as well. Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US are already signed up to the agreement.
So for example if you live in Sweden and the US decides that an ISP there is hosting copyrighted material the US can have the material pulled down and potentially the ISP end up in very hot water. It also raises some concerns when it comes to privacy.
President Obama signed this agreement back on October 1st, 2011, without consulting congress. He claimed it was a "Executive Agreement" and didn't need to have it confirmed with anyone else. However an executive agreement is not a binding treaty where as the EU and other countries have signed it as so. This means the US government, more specifically the USTR, will be able to ignore whatever they want in it while other countries can't.
To put the cherry on top of this, President Obama does not even have the power to make such an agreement according to some legal scholars and TechDirt.com:
It's NOT TOO LATE though. ACTA still needs to be ratified by the countries who have joined. This is expected to take several months. Don't let them censor you. Don't let your government hand over power to other governments. Fight to keep your sovereignty. Write or email your government let them know you are not pleased with this agreement. You wouldn't be standing alone, hundreds of thousands of people have joined facebook pages to oppose this, an internet petition has gathered over 220,000 signatures.
Encourage people to read up on the bill itself and about the bill and inform themselves. Rally together once again to show our governments that we won't be censored and we won't allow loosely written agreements to be shoved on us. Get the word out.
A good site along with the others linked in this post to look into ACTA is: http://www.stopacta.info/
D3 Channel: OnetwoD3
Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US are already signed up to the agreement.
Edit: Added that information in the post.
It's just hard to fight this when the generation before us has no idea what it means and are just blindly signing shit and believeing what they hear on TV: "Oh those darn software pirates! We gotta get them!"
D3 Channel: OnetwoD3
This is the problem imo; certain corporations are willing to push for these treaties/laws and write them (and pay to write them)... while the rest of us want nothing to do with politics or law making because of its crazy process and complication (and we're just not greedy bastards, well some of us...).
I couldn't read that link for very long, just too much legal talk for the average person. Meanwhile though, the other side will have their television stations feeding snappy one liners into people's minds about piracy...
D3 Channel: OnetwoD3
A good article about it here, more up to date.
http://www.naturalnews.com/034802_ACTA_counterfeiting_piracy.html
https://www.deviantart.com/aerisot
Before SOPA and PIPA it was DRM. You guys cried and cried and cried about how the corporation was greedy and it was fucking over its actual paying customers.
During the whole SOPA and PIPA debacle you guys cried and cried and cried about how the government was evil and that the companies can handle their own DRM.
After SOPA and PIPA there is now ACTA and you guys cry and cry and cry about how its wrong and going to be abused.
I'm sorry - but this isn't just about freedom of speech or potential abuse of power. This is strictly about people being greedy, whiney little thieves. You want to steal your media, and you don't want anything or anyone preventing it.
How is that racist at all? It just protects every countries sovereign rights. We start signing treaties with other countries and before long the US would be able to dictate your laws, would you like that? Or any other country. It's like your neighbor coming into your house and putting up a list of what you can and can't do in your own house. It has nothing to do with race.
Well I mean it is foreign AID, they sort of get to dictate under what stipulation people get it, if at all. However I can't control any of that and I certainly don't approve of anything Bush did.
A good exemple is netflix. It's a miracle it actually survives since people can freely download any content there instead of paying the mouthly fee. It does because it only provides rather old material (it's cheaper for then to buy and harder for internet uses to find a pirate download - an exception). Without piracy this kind of service would be much more common and viable.
Companies however have to trade only on markets of higher cost goods (where there's weaker competition between then and zero price pirates). Majority of the public is not interested in movies that comes in fancy boxes, this is why piracy is not a good deal for us. This is also why many useful sorftwares used in the industry have ridicolous prices and no good domestical version is ever created for a worthy price - why invest if people will pirate it anyway ?
Another problem of piracy is that companies tryes to defend thenself by risking tatics that are not benefitial for it's consumers. D3 absense of lan mod is a great exemple. Only if better anti-piracy institutions existed, strategies that oftenly hurt the consumers could be avoided.
It's really frustrating too see people associating protection of rights with greedy behavior. You really want people working for you for free ? It's not like companies = black ties bastards sucking money out of you. Companies are made of hundred people who only make money for their living and piracy effects all those people.
I completlety disagree. This is subject of the very simple economics. Theres a demand and a supply of intelectual goods (inovation, softwares and new technologies). Piracy allows people to obtain those intelectual goods without paying for it. This adversity causes reduction in return of investments which obviously reduces investments in inovation.
Big companies have tools to deal with this issue. They can afford applying user unfriendly strategies that prevent piracy because theres bigger demand for their produces, not to mention bigger companies usually market power. Gladly we are in a D3 forum and i can make my point without drawning utility and demand functions =p
Take D3 and TL2. Blizzard can afford user unfriendly design like no offline mods, no lan and no support for moding, just to prevent piracy. Basically because the "core demand" for D3 (the demand that do not includes presense or absense of those features) is much, much bigger. Like the old statement "people will buy D3 anyway". TL2 would be a 100% ruined game if they choosed to use that strategy, because great part of TL2 demands are actually demand for lan and mods.
Because of piracy, runic games are doomed to loose sales (in Brazil every single lan house has like 30+ copies of pirate TL. There almost a million lan houses in Brazil). This only makes the market a lot harder for smaller and starting coompanies that can react.
One might argue that the opposite also happens: free intelectual goods allows smaller producers to compete with big ones, since big ones loose their intellectual advantage, This is fallacy, since it does do not happen, actually. Whenever big companies realize they're loosing the intellectual advantage they simply quit investing in it. This happen in brazil were a group of chemical students discovered a bunch of agrotoxic formulae via reverse engeering and distribute to popular agronomers. The next mouth all biochemical departments in brazillian rural companies closed cause producers realise there was no legal method to prevent that.
A decade has passed and we haven't created any kind of inovation in the rural business. The popular agronomers are completly fucked up nowdays cause now they have to buy substancies from the U.S, Japan and Australia for much higher price or keep a half assed level of production. The large land however are alive, cause they can afford to buy stuff from other countries.
The problem I believe, lies in the first part of that statement. "Piracy is considered stealing."
This statement makes a few assumptions;
1) People who pirate a movie/series/game would have otherwise bought this product.
While this is undoubtedly true in some cases, many people (such as myself) wouldn't have bothered in most cases. This means piracy also creates a bigger audience.
2) People who pirate a movie/series/game will not buy a product.
Again, while undoubtedly true in many cases, the popularity of vanity products like collector's editions display our nature in a clear manner. We love being able to show off a collection in a touchable manner. I myself have, for example, pirated the game Dragon Age: Origins, and then bought it because I liked it. The same goes for my DVD collection of House M.D., of which I now own all seasons, but never would have bothered with, if it weren't for piracy.
3) Piracy does not benefit an artist.
Upcoming artists can spread their songs into a huge market, as a side effect of piracy. This means record companies don't dictate what we get to listen to anymore, and anyone with talent can get their name known. Another case in point is the recent succes of Minecraft, which sold numerous copies, even though the owner had declared it to be "ok to pirate it". Due to the piracy, it became an incredibly well known game, that anyone who follows videogames on any sort of level has heard of.
In conclusion, while I do think it's a good idea to keep hitting the brakes on illegal piracy, the focus should be on keeping it on a slowburner, preventing sites from going overboard. In this respect I fully understand the legal actions taken against megaupload, and perhaps even piratebay.
We're playing a game, us against the huge corporations. ACTA would disrupt the balance of the board.