PIPA
ACTA
These are the four letter words of our time. Okay, they're acronyms - but still akin to four letter words; of the very worst kind.
SOPA = Stop Online Piracy Act
PIPA = Protect Intellectual Property Act (much longer, pedantic title, but who cares)
ACTA = Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
Three pieces of legislation or agreements that are a total assault on Internet freedom, privacy and right to free speech as we know it.
Legislators and political leaders bray on and on about how the laws and agreements would be there to protect artists and writers (and billion-dollar corporations, of course) from intellectual property assaults and 'misuse' by websites and bloggers and individual users online. Supporters of ACTA stated how the agreement was tabled "as a response to "the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works," whilst Wikipedia reported how PIPA would have "the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S."
SOPA and PIPA are American(-corporatist) products, whilst ACTA is an agreement between Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States, whilst the European Union and 22 of its member states signed up to it in January of this year as well.
All to 'protect' intellectual property, of course.
The online community saw it all for what it was and thought differently. Rather strongly.
On January 18th Wikipedia shut down for a day, as did many other sites on the Web in protest against what they see as government and corporatist infringements on free exchange of ideas and creativity on the Internet. As reported by that stalwart of establishment so-called journalism, The Washington Post:
"Around the country, Americans woke up without some of the oddball essentials of online life. No Wikipedia. No Reddit, a compendium of links to stories and funny pictures that draws millions a day. And no I Can Has Cheezburger?, the world’s best-known collection of funny cat pictures."
No Wired and a host of other popular sites either, and Firefox and Google both blacked out certain parts of their landing pages to protest what they also saw as online censorship.
I have no doubt that the vociferous backlash from the online community against these travesties of 'intellectual property protection' caught legislators and their corporate pimps by surprise. Both U.S. bills have been shelved (for now, only for now), whilst ACTA has come under big opposition, most especially from a surprising quarter in the EU (see my next post).
Shutting down websites (including blogs just like mine, by the way) for 'illegal' posts, uploads and even links in the name of protecting IP is nothing more than government and corporatist censorship masquerading as 'protection.'
How will sites be monitored for these alleged IP infringements?
Where will the line be drawn on what constitutes 'intellectual property' and the sanctity of copyright (at all costs)?
Why should corporations like those in the movie, recording and porn industries have copyrights that can be endlessly renewed, going well beyond the 50 years limit that used to be normative in copyright law?
What is this really all about?
This is an assault and a colonization by governments and corporations of that last bastion of true democracy and capitalism on Earth - the Internet.
We're all a threat to them - and they know it. That is why we must fight, fight, fight these bastards, so that they leave us the hell alone in the only place where we have some semblance of freedom.
As far as the Internet is concerned, a luta continua!
Do you get my point?
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