The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) might have a slight bias when it comes to reporting on stuff that is happening on the web but when they have post that is basically highlighting the responses to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’s request for submissions regarding its Joint Strategic Plan for intellectual property enforcement it’s worth looking at. Especially when you read the obvious wishlist from entertainment trade organizations (mouthpieces) like the RIAA and MPAA.

While there are days where what comes out of these organizations doesn’t surprise me in the least (hint: ACTA) this laundry list of ways that the RIAA and MPAA want to screw the consumer even more does surprise me considering how blatant the attempt is.

Here’s the list courtesy of the EFF:

• Anti-infringement software for home computers - in other words they want the legal right to install spyware on your computer that will scan and identify infringing files – and possible delete the files automatically.
  

  There are several technologies and methods that can be used by network administrators and providers…these include [consumer] tools for managing copyright infringement from the home (based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware).

• Pervasive copyright filtering – to force network operators to institute filters on their networks to filter out any infringing files.
  

  Network administrators and providers should be encouraged to implement those solutions that are available and reasonable to address infringement on their networks. [This suggestion is preceded by a list of filtering methods, like protocol filtering, fingerprint-based filtering, bandwidth throttling, etc.]

• Intimidate and propagandize travelers at the border – to be given the right to have border guards seize and search all electronic devices like iPods and laptops for ‘pirated’ material.
  

  Customs authorities should be encouraged to do more to educate the traveling public and entrants into the United States about these issues. In particular, points of entry into the United States are underused venues for educating the public about the threat to our economy (and to public safety) posed by counterfeit and pirate products. Customs forms should be amended to require the disclosure of pirate or counterfeit items being brought into the United States.

• Bully countries that have tech friendly policies – The idea here is to force countries like Canada to copy and enforce all the guidelines and laws that the US has in regards to copyright and intellectual property. This is also one of the reasons that ACTA came into being in the first as a way to end run local country laws and force draconian laws on countries that normally wouldn’t do so.
  

  The government should develop a process to identify those online sites that are most significantly engaged in conducting or facilitating the theft of intellectual property. Among other uses, this identification would be valuable in the interagency process that culminates in the annual Special 301 report, listing countries that fail to provide adequate and effective protection to U.S. intellectual property rights holders. Special 301 could provide a focus on those countries where companies engaged in systematic online theft of U.S. copyrighted materials are registered or operated, or where their sites are hosted. Targeting such companies and websites in the Special 301 report would put the countries involved on notice that dealing with such hotbeds of copyright theft will be an important topic of bilateral engagement with the U.S. in the year to come. (As noted above, while many of these sites are located outside the U.S., their ability to distribute pirate content in the U.S. depends on U.S.-based ISP communications facilities and services and U.S.-based server farms operated commercially by U.S.-based companies.)

• Federal agents working on Hollywood’s clock – the use of ‘deputized’ Federal agents, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to provide muscle during the big summertime blockbuster season because we all know those cammers out there are a dangerous bunch.
  

  The planned release of a blockbuster motion picture should be acknowledged as an event that attracts the focused efforts of copyright thieves, who will seek to obtain and distribute pre-release versions and/or to undermine legitimate release by unauthorized distribution through other channels. Enforcement agencies (notably within DOJ and DHS) should plan a similarly focused preventive and responsive strategy. An interagency task force should work with industry to coordinate and make advance plans to try to interdict these most damaging forms of copyright theft, and to react swiftly with enforcement actions where necessary.

Gee doesn’t that leave you all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that the money we spend on movies and music is being spent in such a great way .. not to mention tax-payer dollars.

RIAA & MPAA wishlist to screw the consumer is a post from: The Inquisitr

Dear President Obama,

I am writing this open letter to you in the hopes that you might be able to explain why it is that the United States Government is so actively trying to hide all information regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

I remember when you were elected as the president of your great country that I, like a lot of people suddenly had high hopes for the United States after the dark years of the Bush Administration. You see even though I might be a Canadian the fact that for the first time in its history your country saw past the color barrier and elected a black president. That, on top of your election platform, gave not only your country great pause but the rest of the world as well.

But increasingly the hopes and dreams of your election seem to becoming more of an illusion. I’m not referring to your recent healthcare victory but rather your government’s stance on matters that are going to have far ranging effects on the world as a whole.

Sure everyone is pre-occupied with your recent discussions regarding the nuclear issue which I must say is providing great cover for what is potentially the most far ranging slaughter of copyright and intellectual property laws we have ever seen. Yet your government is doing everything it can to make sure that any agreements reached remain a secret.

This from a government that promised its people, and by extension the people of the world, that there would be a new transparency with your government but increasingly we seem to be finding it is actually quite the opposite.

Nowhere is this more evident than when the subject of ACTA comes up as James Love recently found when he requested under your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) only to be told that documents pertaining to ACTA were considered state secrets (pdf of denial letter)

Today we received this letter from the White House, Office of the United States Trade Representative. Our FOIA request was denied on the grounds that the documents are “information that is properly classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.”

As well as Canada’s esteemed Professor of Internet and E-Commerce Law Michael Geist pointed out today that the US is the primary force behind the increasing effort to pull all future discussions surround ACTA back into the shadows

The text of the treaty can be released without regard for the level of agreement on substantive issues.  Yet unlike most other ACTA countries that have called for transparency without condition, the U.S. has set conditions that effectively seeks to trade its willingness to release the text for gains on the substance of the text.  The only thing needed to reach consensus on sharing the text with the public is for the U.S. to give the go-ahead.  This statement indicates they will only do so for a price.

I understand that the entertainment industry are really big contributors to election campaigns but they are also the driving force behind the original drafting of ACTA and its subsequent adoption by various friendly governments around the world – Canada included. However President Obama this self-same group of global entertainment conglomerates are using ACTA to perform an end-run around the laws of your country.

As I pointed out in an earlier post ACTA as an international trade agreement can be used as a great big club against countries who decide at some point that t he rights of the actual creators and the consumers are more important than the entertainment industry’s right to hold all content hostage. That includes the country that you are president of Mr. Obama.

This so-called trade agreement has the potential to forever change the copyright landscape and yet the United States Government sees fit to hide all the dealing to do with it behind a shroud of secrecy. Why is this President Obama especially in light of your promise of change and transparency?

If there was ever a time, ever a reason, for openness and total transparency ACTA is that time. If there was ever a time to keep your word to the American people ACTA is that time.

So how about it President Obama – can we have some of the truth and openness? Or does the entertainment industry truly hold the keys to power?

Sincerely,

Steven Hodson – concerned citizen of Canada who is about to get his rights stomped all over.

Dear President Obama: About this ACTA secrecy thing is a post from: The Inquisitr

I realize that it is common practice come this time of year for us to all sit back and ruminate over all the wonderful and earthshaking things we have written about in the past year and to delve into the murky depths of the future and prognosticate using our incredibly sharp intellect what will happen in the year to come. Well I can’t stand doing that except in very rare occasions – and this is one of those years.

I’m not going to bother looking back because other than increasing pageviews possibly for all of a minute or two it is a boring and pointless exercise mainly because the majority of time, regardless of how we might spin our past words, we’re wrong. No, what I want to do is to look to 2010 and the one thing that will have the most profound effect on our lives and the Web.

It’s a prediction that will come as a result of events that have been happening for some time now but really has culminated in 2009 to create a foundation from which how we use the Web and what we can do there will be forever changed. Changed in such away that we will no longer have the freedoms that we brag about today and seem to think are some sort of inalienable right.

So here’s my one and only prediction for 2010:

This will be the year in which we will see the biggest assault on copyright laws around the world. The end result of the secret war against copyright laws and the consumer will be one of the total annihilation of our copyright laws as we know them.

Sure we have all read posts about how the entertainment industry is trying to get changes made to existing copyright laws in various countries and the response has for the most part been a big *YAWN* and then it’s on to whining and gushing respectively over Twitter and Facebook. The problem is that the movement to gut existing copyright laws, being led by the US entertainment industry, is only a shadow of the real effort that will supersede any local country laws.

This is all being done behind closed doors where even government officials are being required to sign NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreements). Yes, NDAs on the creation of a new global treaty – something that has never been done before because laws and treaties are suppose to be open to public examination and input. This isn’t the case with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) however.

Don’t let the “Anti-Counterfeiting” part fool you either because in reality very little of this global trade agreement has anything to do with fighting piracy and has everything to do with dismantling individual country copyright laws and replacing it with a Universal Trade Agreement. The reason for this backdoor approach is because any and all local country laws would basically have no standing in disputes as they would be governed by the UN/WIPO backed ACTA treaty.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation on ACTA (emphasis is mine):

In October 2007 the United States, the European Community, Switzerland and Japan simultaneously announced that they would negotiate a new intellectual property enforcement treaty, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Canada have joined the negotiations. Although the proposed treaty’s title might suggest that the agreement deals only with counterfeit physical goods (such as medicines), what little information has been made available publicly by negotiating governments about the content of the treaty makes it clear that it will have a far broader scope, and in particular, will deal with new tools targetting “Internet distribution and information technology”.

Professor Michael Geist, Canadian Professor and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has been one of the lone voice foretelling of the dangers to come with ACTA. You can read all his posts on ACTA here, but here are a few snippets:

Given the recent backlash at WIPO, the U.S. is avoiding the U.N. system.  Instead, it has created a new counterfeiting coalition of the willing that includes the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and Canada.  Those countries yesterday simultaneously announced enthusiastic support for a new trade agreement with negotiations to begin next year.  Indeed, International Trade Minister David Emerson’s announcement to the House of Commons brought the MPs to their feet.

This treaty could ultimately prove bigger than WIPO – without the constraints of consensus building, developing countries, and civil society groups, the ACTA could further reshape the IP landscape with tougher enforcement, stronger penalties, and a gradual eradication of the copyright and trademark balance.

- Is ACTA the New WIPO

Rather than negotiating in an international venue such as the United Nations and opening the door to any interested countries, ACTA partners consisted of a small group of countries (Canada, United States, European Union, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Morocco, and Singapore) meeting in secret and opposed broadening the process. The substance of the treaty was also accorded the highest level of secrecy.  Draft documents were not released to the public and even the locations of negotiations were often kept under wraps.  In fact, the U.S. government refused to disclose information about the treaty on national security grounds.

- ACTA Threatens Made-in-Canada Copyright Policy

While the substance of the treaty will remain fodder for much debate, Canadian officials recently hosted a public consultation during which they acknowledged the true motivation behind the ACTA. Senior officials stated that there were really two reasons for the treaty. The first, unsurprisingly, was concerns over counterfeiting. The second was the perceived stalemate at WIPO, where the growing emphasis on the Development Agenda and the heightened participation of developing countries and non-governmental organisations have stymied attempts by countries such as the United States to bull their way toward new treaties with little resistance.

- The ACTA Threat To The Future Of WIPO – Intellectual Property Watch :: Michael Geist

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the assault against copyright laws. It is an attack that is taking place around the world: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the US just to name a few. It is an attack that is taking place behind closed doors under a shroud of secrecy that is being enforced through never before seen NDAs at all levels.

It is planned that all these secret negotiations taking place will finish in 2010 and the world will be presented with a new world wide copyright/IP treaty that has been written and bullied through all levels of individual country governments by the US entertainment industry and their trade groups around the world.

If we think the copyright systems we have in each of our country is draconian I can promise you this – you ain’t seen nothing and if you don’t think this fight over copyright laws isn’t important then you sincerely need to give your head a shake. Under the provisions, that we know of from leaks, of ACTA we will see a sudden shift of power on the Internet. It will no longer be a medium of the people but instead it will be the new money machine of the entertainment industry and any voices against them will suddenly find themselves silenced and bereft of any legal recourse.

It won’t be our Internet anymore. So think about that as you all get woodies about how important Twitter is. Think about it as you bicker over whether RSS is dead, whether blogging is dead, or whether real-time search is the next killer app.

I would like to think that people are smart enough to see the coming danger – especially those of us in the tech industry – and do something to stem this tide. Sadly though we’re too worried about some new shiny toy. Too worried that we don’t have enough followers. Too worried about whether we are among the first to be using some stupid ass service.

The really sad part about this?

I don’t see it changing.

My only prediction for 2010 and it ain’t pretty is a post from: The Inquisitr

Jeff Nolan at Venture Chronicles notes the inconsistencies; a judge refused to dismiss the case against Universal that claims the company issued an improper DMCA claim for a video of a toddler dancing to a Prince song at the same time that companies like DirecTV are adding DRM to lock programming down to a single box for viewing.

As more and more individuals start to fight back against some of the Draconian enforcement of intellectual property laws, however, Fair Use and public domain may win in the end. A small discovery noted nine years ago by a disgruntled former Disney employee may put an end to the endless copyright extensions driven by the Walt Disney Company‘s protection of Mickey Mouse‘s copyright. While only the older “Steamboat Willie” version of Mickey Mouse would enter the public domain if the evidence shows that Disney’s ownership of the copyright is questionable, it would still be a symbolic victory for a country whose intellectual property laws are some of the most convoluted in the world.

On Which Side Will Intellectual Property Laws Fall? is a post from: The Inquisitr