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[Neonivek]

Well here is what I understand

* 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.

-Internet Service Providers are requires to sift through all their materials to see if they are copyrighted

* 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.

-Internet service providers are requires to shut off the internet of an entire household if someone is ACCUSED. (not even convicted)

* 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.

-ISPs must take down copyrighted material upon accusation without legal recourse. (In otherwords "Guilty until proven innocent")

* 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)

-You are unable to modify material from the internet to suit either personal use or to allow the material to be accessed by, for example, the disabled. I believe this also means you cannot translate a book online and then send the translation to someone.
--Yeah this makes no sense to me. That is my best guess.

[Lord Dullard]

How can you make whole-world law?

The UN already does this (or tries), up to and including ordering countries not to research nuclear warfare and other weapons. Why should you be so surprised when quote-on-quote 'worldwide' treaties are made to regulate other things?

[nil]

This is happening under a liberal administration.  Since the conservatives have taken steps of their own to harsh our collective mellows in the past, I think the best choice is to join the Independent Crime Squad.

For the record, just because he's a Democrat doesn't mean he's a liberal.

Shitty treaty, though.  To the darknets!

[Lord Dullard]

Yeah, I just noticed typing in only 'secret copyright treaty leaked' to google actually churns out results. So I'd have to say google isn't being censored as I originally thought - it's just got a shittier search algorithm.

I did exactly the same search as you and I have about 10 500 results ...

Er... yeah. We already covered this?

The law itself is still ridiculously Orwellian and frightening.

[Myroc]

But yes, this law sucks, and will slow down your internet speed to an ungodly slow speed. Besides, what ever happened to the criminal's right to a speedy trial? Innocent untill proven guilty? If the US goes back on those constitutional rights, then who knows what might happen next.

Yeah, this is what bothers me the most. The US was FOUNDED on those principles, and now they throw out a law which says "Up yours" right in it's face?

This has to be some horrible, horrible joke.

[Dasleah]

Nice using yourself as a source there, Mr. Blog. That's real credible.

[Neonivek]

Not a joke the point of some of these laws are two fold
1) They are meant as a "Just in case" leftover law made to be implimented at a much later date (The Patriot Act for example is old!)
2) It is basically a brainstorm pad made to be reworked until it works.

Dang it Barak Obama I am starting to think your an EVIL genius. A lot of these things you tried to do seem to pervert into villainy (actually I am thinking of ONE thing)

This assumes it is real.

[Lord Dullard]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/181312/trade_talks_hone_in_on_internet_abuse_and_isp_liability.html

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

Here's more, if you're one of those people who believes that our wonderful government could never do any wrong.

The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.

Despite the efforts to combat leaks, information on the Internet chapter has begun to emerge (just as they did with the other elements of the treaty).  Sources say that the draft text, modeled on the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement, focuses on following five issues:

1.   Baseline obligations inspired by Article 41 of the TRIPs which focuses on the enforcement of intellectual property.

2.   A requirement to establish third-party liability for copyright infringement.

3.   Restrictions on limitations to 3rd party liability (ie. limited safe harbour rules for ISPs).  For example, in order for ISPs to qualify for a safe harbour, they would be required establish policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP infringing content.  Provisions are modeled under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, namely Article 18.10.30.  They include policies to terminate subscribers in appropriate circumstances.  Notice-and-takedown, which is not currently the law in Canada nor a requirement under WIPO, would also be an ACTA requirement.

4.   Anti-circumvention legislation that establishes a WIPO+ model by adopting both the WIPO Internet Treaties and the language currently found in U.S. free trade agreements that go beyond the WIPO treaty requirements.  For example, the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement specifies the permitted exceptions to anti-circumvention rules.  These follow the DMCA model (reverse engineering, computer testing, privacy, etc.) and do not include a fair use/fair dealing exception.  Moreover, the free trade agreement clauses also include a requirement to ban the distribution of circumvention devices.  The current draft does not include any obligation to ensure interoperability of DRM.

5.   Rights Management provisions, also modeled on U.S. free trade treaty language.

[Itnetlolor]

Has anyone tried to refer this to Snopes.com?

We need to be certain this isn't fake. In a way, I do hope it's fake. It seems too inhumane to be real.

[The Doctor]

I think it's a tactic.

Make an impossibly inhuman law proposal, that there is no way people will get behind.

Then, in a few months or so, "leak" the real law they want, and people will feel that they're really compromising, while instead the first one was intentionally over the top.

Exploiting the whole "lesser of two evils" thing.

[Aqizzar]

I'm seeing a lot of "interpretations" of what this mysterious Treaty From Hell supposedly says.  Is there, like, an actual copy of it somewhere to be read?  Or is this just all stuff posted by some blogger who got it from a guy who knows a guy who totally read the treaty in the secret smoke-filled room it was written in?

Also, it's a treaty, not a law.  It has to actually be ratified by Congress to have any effect, and the U.S. is rather notorious for not only not ratifying treaties that would constitute an international law, but also not enforcing them.  And even if this did somehow get passed, I guarantee the ACLU and EFF are going into action that day.

That also seems like a huge enforcement issue to me.  Who the Hell is actually going to the trouble of sifting through THE ENTIRE INTERNET to shut off access to anyone who might possibly have copyrighted material they can't immediately provide proof of legitimate purchase for?

Yeah, if this thing is even real, it's not getting on the books, it's not going to stay there if it does, and it would be impossible to enforce if it somehow did.

[Leafsnail]

Hmm, I thought those things were only happening in Britain.

By the way, if anyone from my Virgin ISP is reading this: Fuck you.  Stop spying on me and fix my dodgy internet connection, you bastard.

[Lord Dullard]

I just submitted it to Snopes and shall be awaiting their reply. If it IS fake, I'll dance a little jig and have a shot of vodka.

@Aqizzar:

Yeah, you'd think there would be HUGE enforcement issues with this. But then again, just because the Patriot Act allows unwarranted wiretapping doesn't mean every phone line in the entire United States is tapped. It probably just means they'd need much less reason to actually charge someone for copyright-related crimes. That, I suspect, is what this whole ordeal boils down to.

By the way, if you don't think a country CAN'T monitor their entire internet, look up some stuff about how much trouble it is to get around government-enforced censors and spyware in a place like Iran. You'd be amazed.

[Rashilul]

I agree with Aqizzar on this.

[Lord Dullard]

Not that I'm saying there's no possibility that it won't be passed, but... you guys are seriously saying it has to be fake because there's no chance that the same national government that passed the Patriot Act without a national vote could do this?

Hahaha.  Again, I'm not saying there's no chance it's fake, but if you guys think it COULDN'T be real... I call that denial.