“Can you imagine your internet service provider policing everything you do online? Can you imagine generic drugs that could save lives being banned? Can you imagine seeds that could feed 1000′s being controlled and withheld in the name of patents? This will become reality with ACTA!!!
ACTA is the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trading Agreement”. Disguised as a Trade Agreement, ACTA goes much, much further than that.
For the past three years, ACTA has been negotiated in secret by 39 countries. But the negotiators are not democratically elected representatives. They don’t represent us, but they’re deciding laws behind our backs.
Bypassing democratic process, they impose new criminal sanctions to stop online file sharing. ACTA aims to make Internet Service & Access Providers legally responsible for what their users do online, turning them into private copyright police and judge, censoring their networks. The chilling effects on Free speech would be terrible.
In the name of patents, ACTA would give large corporations the power to stop generic drugs before they reach the people who need them and stop the use of certain seeds for crops.
The European Parliament will soon vote on ACTA. This VOTE will be the occasion to say NO, once and for all, to this dangerous treaty. As citizens, we must URGE our representatives to reject ACTA!!!
As netzpolitik.org reports the JMStV v2010 was unanimously stopped in NRW today. This is very good news for free speech and free access to information in Germany. As previously reported the consequences for bloggers, webmasters, artists and (new media) investors would have been pretty devastating with the JMStV v2010 in place.
So sanity has prevailed after all. It also seems that politicians are finally starting to understand the dynamics of the net and what the online generation can contribute to that ongoing experiment we call Democracy.
It still remains to be seen how a future version of the JMStV will be drafted and what it might look like: anyone planing an online project in Germany is well advised to follow closely all developments leading towards a JMStV v2011…
See also JMStV vor dem Aus (www.heise.de/tp) for a critical look at the way the JMStV v2010 was drafted. The article basically says that the process was not an open one and that old media (TV) and its close ties to politics had a lot to say. Some of the comments to the article also question the motivation for stopping the JMStV and suggest mainly tactical reasons.
There are lessons to be learned for everyone, that seems pretty clear to me. For me personally one lesson is: even if you live in a supposedly free country like Germany there are certain values like free speech that constantly need to be tested and defended if necessary. JMStV v2010 had the potential of destroying (not only) wide parts of the German blogosphere. In the end sanity prevailed, but things could have gone the other way and this is something that I simply had not anticipated in this country in the year 2010. Everyone needs to keep their eyes of vigilance open at all times from now on.
“Speaking to reporters on a visit to US troops in Afghanistan, Gates smirked on hearing the news. “I hadn’t heard that, but that sounds like good news to me,” he said.”
Since Julian Assange is simply supposed to clear his good name in front of a Swedish court one can only assume that the US defence secretary was glad that this matter can now be cleared up… Right…? Right…?
After Amazon, EveryDNS, Tableau Software, PayPal, Switzerland’s PostFinance and Mastercard now Visa joins the club of “independent” entities that consumers who care about free speech will want to investigate for their business practices and may want to avoid in the future:
The Austrian Green Party wants to set up an association, Freiheit, and a capital company, Freiheit GmbH, for supporting the freedom of the press on the net. In regards to the ongoing infowar:
This is their latest video, total views on YouTube are rising fast for this one at the moment…
Operation Payback – Anonymous Message About ACTA Laws, Internet Censorship and Copyright (1:50)
Update 1:
It’s a bit hard to catch everything that’s being said in the V.O., so here is the text from the video’s YouTube page (click those arrows under the total views number to see it):
“Corrupt governments of the world, we are anonymous. For some time now, voices have been crying out in unison against the new ACTA laws. The gross inadequacies of the new laws being passed internationally have been pointed out repeatedly. Our chief complaint is that such measures would restrict people’s access to the internet.
In these modern times access to the internet is fast becoming a basic human right. Just like any other basic human right, we believe that it is wrong to infringe upon it. To threaten to cut people off from the global consciousness as you have is criminal and abhorrent. To move to censor content on the internet based on your own prejudice is at best laughably impossible, at worst, morally reprehensible.
The unjust restrictions you impose on us will meet with disaster and only strengthen our resolve to disobey and rebel against your tyranny. Such actions taken against you, and those you out source your malignant litigation too, are inevitable, unavoidable and unstoppable.
Posted by vsworks 
