Posted on 10/21/2003 1:18:53 PM PDT by HAL9000
International treaty will force 34 democracies to change copyright, IP laws
DVD backups forbidden, P2P file sharers to become felons
A REPORT from civil liberties organisation IP Justice claims today that a proposed treaty that will affect the 34 democracies in the Western world will mean wide-ranging changes to domestic laws including intellectual property rights.
The organisation said that a draft chapter in the FTTA treaty greatly expands criminal procedures and penalties against IP infringements in North America and the west.
A clause of the treaty will mean that non commercial infringers of peer to peer files will be sent to prison. The IP Justice report says that unless "the second clause to article 4.1 is deleted from the FTAA treaty, Internet music swapping will be a felony throughout the Western Hemisphere in 2005".
The treaty will also prevent people from bypassing technical restrictions on CDs and DVDs, in a way similar to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The draft treaty, says IP Justice, also has new conditions for fair use and personal use which, the organisation claims, will stop consumers from backing up their media collections.
The treaty will also make democracies change their copyright laws to force the term to extend to 70 years after an author dies. This extends the US copyright scheme to the 33 other democracies.
The US Constitution, says IP Justice, forbids companies to copyright facts and scientific data, but this will be overridden by the treaty.
Internet domain names will be decied by ICANN, which IP Justice describes as a "private and unaccountable organisation... ill equipped to determine the limits of freedom of expression rights or the scope of intellectual property rights".
According to Robin Gross, the organisation's executive director, "The FTAA Treaty's IP chapter reads like a 'wish list' for RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft lobbyists".
The treaty is due to go into effect by December 2005. The white paper on IP is here. µ
Idiots. It should read:
The treaty will also prevent people from criminalize bypassing technical restrictions on CDs and DVDs, in a way similar to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Now we'll hear the MP3 idiots scream because corportations have discovered the same short cut in law.
That's an odd reading of the Constitution. The IP provision within the Constitution says that its purpose is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts". By contrast, many things that shouldn't be copyrighted under that standard (paintings, sports broadcasts, etc.) are copyrighted. Somehow.
Secondly, and more fundamentally, there is no such thing as a benefit to a corporation --- it's merely an abbreviation of speech. Corporations are groups of people --- owners, employees, customers, suppliers and other publics --- and it is to them that the benefits and costs accrue.
At the time of Marx, great many corporations were closely held by a few individuals. He and his followers spoke of them as a synonim for "rich." Whatever he said, the use of the word at least was meaningful: with only a few owners, the benefits accrued to a small number of people.
Today, however, the largest companies are publicly traded and owned literally by millions of people, which includes the retired, the widowed and the orphaned. It is to them that the benefits, and costs, acrrue when we speak of "corporate" gains. Corporate "power" is their power as well.
Could you explicate how you deduced that copyrighting paintings and the like is detrimental to the progress of the arts?
You see, you're a dreaded, dirty Communist unless you unconditionally support and applaud all the demands of multi-nationals, monopolies, government sanctioned and protected monopolies, giant corporations, get it?
If you believe the only alternatives are government by Microsoft et al or socialist government, your mind must have been produced by the Dan Rather Show. The founding fathers had a better idea. Study them!
And this, too, you've deduced from the Fathers?
The point was also clear: your imaginary "government by Microsoft" is a socialist --- Marxist-Leninist, actually -- creed.
What is also clear that you substitute references to reveered sources, such as the works of the Fathers, for the ability to think. You don't have to think well --- that's fine. But then you should suspend judgement.
Instead you promulgate here a purely socialist anti-corporate garbage.
P.S. By the way: corporations have explored and settled America. This happened even before our Founding Fathers. It appears it is you who has a gread deal of studying to do. Whether or not you do that, please take your socialism elsewhere.
Your worship of the corporation is noted. Your attempt to brand anyone who does not want corporations writing our laws as "socialist" is ridiculous. As for the founding fathers, I believe Thomas jefferson was one :
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."-- Thomas Jefferson
I beieve Madison was also a founding father:
As the father of the Constitution, President James Madison, wrote, "There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by... corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses."
Didn't mean "art". Means technology. Charts, not paintings. Mechanical diagrams of a piano, not sheet music.
Founders well aware of distinctions.
I know that you confuse the two, but there is a difference between worship and awareness of something.
In an earlier post, I have already replied to the points you've made: in those times, the banks and the corporations were primarily privately owned, whereas it is the public that owns most of our corporations today. Please read that post if you are interested.
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