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Full ACTA Leak Online 201

An anonymous reader writes "Following months of small Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement leaks, the full consolidated ACTA text has now been posted online. The consolidated text provides a clear indication of how the negotiations have altered earlier proposals (see this post for links to the early leaks) as well as the first look at several other ACTA elements. For example, last spring it was revealed that several countries had proposed including a de minimus provision to counter fears that the border measures chapter would lead to iPod searching border guards. The leak shows there are four proposals on the table."

Full ACTA Leak Online

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @09:23AM (#31596630)

    The only reason to ever draft laws in anything but plain-text is obfuscation. I'm sick of trying to read the actual text of legislation and only finding PDFs of scanned images of typewritten papers. Seriously, who the fuck still uses a typewriter? All legislation should be written in .txt files, and placed in a web-accessible revision control system. That way, it becomes trivial to discover who is responsible for each and every line of treachery.

  • by Abstrackt (609015) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @09:26AM (#31596654)

    I guess the quality of the scan is too poor and the language/typography too complex for decent OCR recognition.

    Wouldn't it be possible to do distributed proofreading of the OCRd text like they do for Project Gutenberg?

  • by Rivalz (1431453) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @09:26AM (#31596662)
    On page 6, article 2.3 paragraph 2: Where it says materials and implements does that mean if i use a infringing line of code or part to make a product like a Ferrari, then the whole item can possibly be forfeited?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @09:52AM (#31596872)

    The PDF was scanned using XSane version 0.996.

  • by BlackCreek (1004083) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @09:55AM (#31596918)

    What is the exact problem that would be solved by permitting border control staff to rummage through peoples private data?

    The "problem" of a citizen's privacy. Or at least the "problem" of a citizen's perception of having the right to any privacy. I think that is the "problem" they are aiming to solve.

  • by PopeRatzo (965947) * on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @09:58AM (#31596956) Journal

    Border guards are doing well to find their dick with both hands

    Man, I've traveled in parts of Eastern Europe and the Balkans where the border guards are fucking animals.

    The last time I traveled from Sutomore to Sarejevo by car it was less bad, but they still seem to be actively recruiting sociopaths.

  • by SwedishPenguin (1035756) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @10:09AM (#31597100)

    Well, it's great to know what our corrupt EU politicians over here have been up to. EU citizens: remember, this is what your government ministers have agreed to, it's not just some faceless EU bureaucracy. Hold them responsible for their actions in the EU, don't let them hide behind the bureaucracy.

    Article 2.x, option 2 (EU)
    "Each party shall ensure that, where a judicial decision is taken finding infringement of an intellectual property right, the judicial authorities may issue against the infringer an injunction aimed at prohibiting the continuation of the infringement. The parties shall also ensure that right holders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by the third party to infringe an intellectual property right."

  • by Mindcontrolled (1388007) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @10:10AM (#31597120)
    As I read this, not only the product in violation, but also the means of production which are predominantly used to produce the product in question can be forfeited. This is not exactly new, at least in the area of patents. If you build a machine the primary purpose of which is producing something that is patented by someone else, you are indirectly violating that patent. The weird thing is that every other paragraph of this article contains the provision "at the conclusion of civil judicial proceedings", which is missing here.
  • by guruevi (827432) <evi@smokingcube . b e> on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @10:16AM (#31597164) Homepage

    It also circumvents current laws that most countries have regarding home copies (either subsidized through taxes levied on blank media) and fair use by stating that all copies (regardless of commercial gain) are 'illegal'.

  • by Runaway1956 (1322357) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @10:20AM (#31597224) Homepage Journal

    Most concerning to all of us should be, the fact that a separate group of "rights" holders are being defined, and that governments are going to sign away authority and sovereignty to those "rights" holders.

    You think you've seen some crazy shit in the past? Just wait until half the nations on earth are subject to the whims of some greedy sumbitch with a blockbuster movie or two to his name.

    Understand that a treaty supersedes a nation's sovereignty - in effect, you've signed away the right to abjudicate disagreements according to your own law. Those "rights" holders are attempting to dictate to Moscow, Washington, London, and Beijing, just how "intellectual property" will be handled in the future.

    Farewell, Public Domain. From now on, it will all be pubic domain, because those "rights" holders will be sticking it to all of us.

  • Re:Capable? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bob9113 (14996) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @11:00AM (#31597792) Homepage

    It is the idea that all border guards will be able to easily discriminate the legality of content

    "Article 2.7: Ex-Officio Action" [presenting just the US version here]

    "1. Each party shall provide that its customs authorities may act upon their own initiative, to suspend the release of ... suspected pirated copyright goods..."

    The content need not be illegal (nor easily discriminated as such), the guard merely needs to posit suspicion.

  • Re:Capable? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TubeSteak (669689) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @11:27AM (#31598240) Journal

    Parties may consider such goods to be outside the scope of this Agreement

    "may consider" doesn't sound legally binding.
    If the treaty doesn't explicitly say "don't do XYZ" or "you can only do XYZ" then it'll get used to the full letter of the law.
    That's usually how these things go.

  • Damages and DRM (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @11:42AM (#31598474)

    Article 2.2 1 (b)

    in determining the amount of damages for infringement .. its authorities [shall] consider .. the value of the infringed good or service, measured by the market price, [or] the suggested retail price

    Here's the big problem: if the infringing copy does not contain DRM but the retail version does contain DRM, then there is no retail price for the infringing copy to compare to.

    Let's say in 2010 Sony sells a Bluray disc of movie for $20. Let's say you rip the movie, removing the DRM which keeps most people who buy it from being able to play it, and then spread seven billion copies of the .mkv file.

    In the eyes of this treaty, the resulting law is going to value the damages at around $140 billion. But in real life, the damages are $0.00, because Sony doesn't really have a usable product on the market. They haven't lost a single sale. This discrepancy needs to be dealt with.

    The catch is that Sony may in the future lose some sales due to the past infringement. Suppose in 2012 Sony decides to enter the market and start selling the movie without DRM. Why buy Sony's non-DRM copy of the movie in 2012 if you downloaded it in 2010 for free? That's a problem and clearly something has gone wrong.

    But we've got to remember that the purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to release creative works. If Sony doesn't really release the movie until 2012, then it doesn't make any sense for them to have a copyright in 2010, so those unauthorized copies shouldn't be considered infringing. And this is where copyright law really breaks down, because it considers the work to be copyrighted as of 2010, and considers a DRMed copy to be a real publication, and even contains other weirdnesses to not only allow DRM, but legitimize and endorse it. In US, the very act of removing the DRM is prohibited. That's just insane.

    ACTA is too soon. We need to repair copyright law before we pass a treaty like this. But if we must have ACTA, then it needs to contain a provision that copyright should not be granted or enforced, when the holder doesn't make a good faith effort to get the work onto the market. DRM should mean no copyright. Add that provision, and everyone -- publishers, consumers, and public domain trawlers a hundred years in the future -- wins. Without that provision, ACTA is worse than useless, because it only compounds the error in existing copyright law.

    Do not support this treaty without that provision. If your Senator votes to ratify it, vote him out. If the president doesn't tell his commerce people to make that a top priority, vote him out too. As is, the treaty just isn't being proposed with any good faith at all.

  • by DragonWriter (970822) on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @12:26PM (#31599254)

    But then they'd only need half as many politicians to accomplish the task.

    Actually, no. It wouldn't affect the number of politicians needed. What it would reduce is the depth of analytical staff needed to comprehend laws, which would then shift the balance of power away from groups with lots of money to spend on policy in a particular area, because then they wouldn't be as easily able to mislead as to what legislation would actually do.
