Posts Tagged ‘two cents’

From the United States of America, home of the House on Un-American Activities Committee and the Patriot Act, comes another fine piece of legislation: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, otherwise known as ACTA. Although not legislated, ACTA is currently being negotiated upon by a number of counties, such as the U.S.A, Japan, Australia, the European Commission and Switzerland and set to be proposed at the upcoming G8 summit in Japan. This international treaty would provide measures that aim to protect the intellectual property rights and information based goods over the internet and stem the movement of pirated goods.

With measures that Graeme Philipson of The Sydney Morning Herald described as being “draconian” in his June 10 article Digital copyright: it’s all wrong, the treaty includes provisions that allow for border security in countries involved to have “ex officio authority” to “seize and destroy IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) infringing goods”, be it on any electronic device such as walkman, laptop, phone, anything. By ex officio, it means “authority to act without complaint by right holders”, which leads to a situation in which, according to Phillips:

They need no proof, only suspicion…They would be able to seize any device - laptop, iPod, DVD recorder, mobile phone, etc - and confiscate it or destroy anything on it, merely on suspicion. On the spot, no lawyers, no right of appeal, no nothing.

My two cents on this contentious issue? The fact remains that it is extremely important for record companies, film studios and other corporations that produce the material which we download or buy illegally to sell and profit. Otherwise what incentive is there for them to keep on producing what we download? If they don’t profit, the industry may as well shut down. But has the entertainment industry shut down as a result of piracy and illegal internet downloads? It would appear not. While it is worth noting that the movie industry and music industry has slumped, Many films are still being able to profit despite the vast availability of it to download from the internet. Record companies and singers still continue to sing because they still sell and are able to recoup the production costs. If anything, the only thing dented by illegal internet downloads is the amount of money executives can put in their wallet. And if we take a close look at the proposed treaty and those behind it, we can easily see that this treaty is less to do with intellectual property than with ensuring company execs receive a fatter paycheck. The man behind ACTA is one Rep. Howard Berman, a man who has received close to $200 000 in campaign contributions from the entertainment industry, the top four of which (and were also his top four campaign contributors) were: Time Warner ($21,000), News Corp ($15,000), Sony Corp of America ($14,000) and Walt Disney Co ($13,550). One has to wonder as to why the treaty was organized.

While internet downloads and piracy remains a concern and problem, it is not serious enough to warrant these drastic measures which impose on our civil rights. If you have an internet connection and a computer, then chances are you would have downloaded a song, a movie, a file that was illegal. In today’s society, it is a common norm. Does that mean we all should have to be punished and have our MP3 players, laptops, phones confiscated and destroyed every time we go through an air port? Even though the songs and files were downloaded months before the treaty will be put in place, if it ever is? Illegal files are not downloaded simply to cause mayhem and to bring down companies. They are downloaded because it is cheap and convenient. It is a way of life that has yet to hurt anyone. No major studio has been brought down for any reason other than poor movie choices. ACTA is nothing but a ham-fisted attempt to dissuade people from downloading songs and movies, and forcing them to fork over money, like highway robbery. If anything the treaty will dissuade people from going to the airport

Janson Says: Do we need to protect intellectual property? Yes. Is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement the way to do it? No.

Sources:

• http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_multi-lateral_intellectual_property_trade_agreement_%282007%29
• http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/acta-proposal-2007.pdf
• http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/discussion-paper.html
• http://www.smh.com.au/news/perspectives/digital-copyright-its-all-wrong/2008/06/09/1212863545123.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement#Enforcement