Last Updated on: 3rd June 2020, 09:10 am
One thing that’s been lost in all the talk about SOPA and PIPA and their dangers is that they aren’t the only pieces of poorly thought out and unimaginably damaging policy being hashed out by industry and world governments.
If you’ve never heard of it, meet ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. It’s got all the internet and inovation crippling of SOPA, with a little bit…who am I kidding, a lot of surveillance thrown in. And unlike SOPA/PIPA, this isn’t a strictly made in the USA deal. In a way I suppose it is since the U.S. routinely tries to force its dumb ideas on the rest of the world, but it’s being secretly negotiated and has been for some time by several countries that would really rather we not find out about it.
The link above goes to a video explaining in basic terms what it is and what it has the potential to do. I’ll also gank the description and embed the video below, since for now it’s still legal for me to do things like that.
If you stood up against SOPA and PIPA, prepare to keep standing. The internet and the future are counting on all of us yet again.
ACTA is one more offensive against the sharing of culture on the Internet. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is an agreement secretly negotiated by a small “club” of like-minded countries (39 countries, including the 27 of the European Union, the United States, Japan, etc). Negotiated instead of being democratically debated, ACTA bypasses parliaments and international organizations to dictate a repressive logic dictated by the entertainment industries.
ACTA would impose new criminal sanctions forcing Internet actors to monitor and censor online communications. It is thus a major threat to freedom of expression online and creates legal uncertainty for Internet companies. In the name of trademarks and patents, it would also hamper access to generic medicines in poor countries.
