There’s a lot of fear going around about ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a plurilateral agreement under the WTO between the US, the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Morocco. Some of the fears look real, some don’t. For example, even though it was negotiated in secret, the text is easily available.
Another false complaint is that it’s another SOPA, when in fact such a claim misses the point. SOPA was a bad bill, as it turned out to be a censorship bill that defied due process, but the intent was to fight the problem of free riding on copyright and trademark. Crossing international boundaries has been a cheap and easy way to cash in on another country’s copyright and trademark laws without having to abide by them. SOPA tried to fix that in a crude, rude, and ineffective way. ACTA has more options, and doesn’t have to resort to censorship, necessarily.
I’ve just read the treaty. I don’t really see a problem. Even if infringement isn’t ruining the movies and music, trademark and copyright are Constitutional concepts worthy of protection. That’s why some of the anti-SOPA leaders are promoting their own bill.
The pro-liberty position is not one of anarchy. It’s time to get reasonable protections in place. Maybe I missed something, and ACTA is a problem. But the best argument I see against ACTA is that it only includes a few countries, and not those best known for infringement (such as China, either China in fact). ACTA may yet be harmless but ineffective, as opposed to SOPA being harmful and ineffective.
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Some are still worried about the Megaupload takedown (including many the Obama got the concept right when he said “It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated.” Foreign countries should not be allowed to be free riders on American copyright.
So I’m glad to hear that Patrick Leahy is open to SOPA alternatives such as the Ron Wyden/Darrell Issa OPEN Act. Follow the money. If money can’t be made from Americans by selling infringing materials back to Americans, then property rights win the day. And we can achieve that goal without censorship.
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Filesonic stops infringing. I guess the site’s leadership didn’t want to go to jail like Ninjavideo, or get hit like Megaupload did. People put up with ad-laden, obnoxious ‘file sharing’ sites when they want to download something that can’t be distributed legally, by less annoying sites. Everyone knows this.
It’s a good thing that Megaupload was taken down. That was a blow for property rights. But not all in the anti-SOPA coalition support property rights. They don’t want prudent copyright protection laws to fix the problem of foreign free riders, and want us to wink and nod at infringers. Look, even if we repealed the Sonny Bono act, or even the copyright act before that, we’d still have copyrights that needed protection.
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It was a long fight. I can’t tell you how many times I kept saying that SOPA and PROTECT IP were in trouble. But they’re getting shelved now. Sure, there’s whining about it. And the President still is too cowardly to lead.
Now it’s time to move on to the next step, though, and find a sensible way to attack the foreign infringers, who essentially are free riders on the American copyright system, taking advantage of the scarcity imposed by copyright without themselves respecting the rules that create that scarcity.
You can tell who’s trying to make this into a fight against copyright though, by the way Megaupload is being made out as a victim. When Megaupload in fact was a company that was making big bucks as a place you could stash files for broad distribution without regard for copyright, and they’re rightfully being shut down.
So it’s not surprising that the terror group Anonymous is defending them and attacking the United States of America in the process. This is an anti-American lawless band of thugs that needs to be be made to pay. And they always do get caught. We just have to wonder whether there will be a backlash against an open Internet thanks to that anarchist scum.
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