And now for ACTA

OK, so this was not what I intended to blog about this morning, but this was just more important:

We defeated SOPA and PIPA, but the battle is not over yet. You have another head on this hydra to slay, and it’s getting frightfully little attention. Feel free to repost this anywhere you like.
ACTA –
1. ACTA isn’t the “European” SOPA. It’s nearly GLOBAL, and will apply to every country that signs the treaty.
2. ACTA is far more aggressive. ACTA will not simply affect websites and have them blocked out of the internet – its measures go as far as surveillance of anything you share through private channels.
3. ACTA doesn’t have a campaign against it that is as wide-spread and organized as the SOPA one. This is DANGEROUS, as there’s less time between now and the final signing of ACTA.
4. ACTA has effects on healthcare, trade, and even tourism.
5. ACTA has to be stopped.
Let’s start spreading the word and organizing a good, solid response to it.
More information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ56UNL5zeo

There is a petition against this one here: http://www.petitiononline.com/stopacta/petition.html

This petition is to stop ACTA(Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement). The ACTA is an international treaty that will create problems such as these.
(Via http://boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html)

” * * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
* * That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
* * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)”

With this petition we hope to stop the unelected officials proposing this treaty, and keep the internet free.
We must also remember this is just the first in may steps to take our other freedoms away.
for more information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XoFGApjhFE
http://ipjustice.org/wp/campaigns/acta/

and again, here’s the URL for the petition http://www.petitiononline.com/stopacta/petition.html

As it says on YouTube “ACTA, SOPA, PIPA all at once as soon as 2012? hit!…. I didn’t beleive in “2012 is the end of the world” until now”

Edited because that petition site seems to be down, and this one goes directly to the UK Government:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/20685/