Source: NileBowie
In the wake of a
public outcry against internet regulation bills such as SOPA and PIPA, representatives
of the EU have signed a new and far more threatening legislation yesterday in
Tokyo. Spearheaded by the governments of the United States and Japan and constructed
largely in the absence of public awareness, the measures of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement (ACTA) dramatically alter current international legal framework, while
introducing the first substantial processes of global internet governance. With
complete contempt towards the democratic process, the negotiations
of the treaty were exclusively held between industry representatives and
government officials, while excluding elected representatives and members
of the press from their hearings.
Under the guise of protecting intellectual
property rights, the treaty introduces measures that would allow the private sector
to enforce sweeping central authority over internet content. The ACTA abolishes
all legal oversight involving the removal of content and allows copyright
holders to force ISPs to remove material from the internet, something that
presently requires a court order. ISPs would then be faced with legal
liabilities if they chose not to remove content. Theoretically, personal
blogs can be removed for using company logos without permission or simply linking to copy written material; users could be
criminalized, barred from accessing the internet and even imprisoned for
sharing copyrighted material. Ultimately, these implications would be
starkly detrimental toward the internet as a medium for free speech.
The Obama Administration subverted
the legal necessity of allowing to US Senate to ratify the treaty by
unconstitutionally declaring it an “executive
agreement” before the President promptly
signed it on October 1st, 2011. As a touted constitutional
lawyer, Barack Obama is fully aware that Article 1, Section 8 of
the US Constitution, mandates Congress in dealing with issues of
intellectual property, thus voiding the capacity for the President to issue an
executive agreement. The White House
refused to even disclose details about the legislation to elected officials
and civil libertarians over concern that doing so may incur "damage to the national security."
While some may hang off every word of his sorely insincere speeches and still
be fixated by the promises of hope offered by brand-Obama, his administration
has trampled the constitution and introduced the most comprehensive
authoritarian legislation in America’s history.
In addition to imposing loosely
defined criminal sanctions to average web users, the ACTA treaty will also obligate
ISPs to disclose personal user information to copyright holders. The
measures introduce legislative
processes that contradict the legal framework of participant countries and
allows immigration authorities to search laptops, external hard drives and
Internet-capable devices at airports and border checkpoints. The treaty is not
limited solely to internet-related matters, ACTA would prohibit the production of generic
pharmaceuticals and outlaw the use of certain seeds for crops through
patents, furthering the corporate cartelization of the food and drug supply.
ACTA would allow companies from
any participating country (which include EU member states, the United States,
Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and
Morocco) to shut down websites without any explanation. Hypothetically, nothing
could prevent private Singaporean companies from promptly taking down American websites
that oppose the Singapore Air Force conducting war games on US soil, such
as those conducted in December 2011. By operating outside normal judicial
framework, exporting US copyright law to the rest of the world and mandating private
corporations to conduct surveillance on their users, all prerequisites of democracy,
transparency and self-expression are an afterthought.
The further monopolization of the
existing resources of communication, exchange and expression is ever present in
the form of deceptive new articles of legislation that unanimously call for the
implementation of the same austere censorship measures. Even if the ACTA treaty
is not implemented, the Trans-Pacific
Partnership Agreement (TTP) between Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New
Zealand, Peru, Vietnam and the United States offers more extensive intellectual
property regulations. Leaked documents prepared by the U.S.
Business Coalition (which
have been reportedly drafted by the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufactures of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Motion Picture
Association of America) report that in addition to ACTA-style legislation, the
TTP will impose fines on non-compliant entities and work to extend the general
period of copy write terms on individual products.
Under the sweeping regulations of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, individual infringers will be criminalized and sentenced
with the same severity as large-scale offenders. Within the United States, the
recently announced
Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) H.R. 3782
regulation seeks to install policies largely identical to SOPA and PIPA. The
Obama administration is also working towards an
Internet ID program, which may be mandatory for American citizens and
required when renewing passports, obtaining federal licenses, or applying for
social security. Spreading these dangerous measures to other countries
participating in these treaties would necessitate a binding obligation on the
US to retain these policies, averting any chance of reform.
The ACTA will become law once it
is formally ratified and cleared by the European Parliament in June. By petitioning
members of the European parliament and educating others about the potential
dangers imposed by this legislation, there is a chance of the treaty being rejected.
Upon closer examination of the human condition with all of its inequalities,
food insecurity and dire social issues, our governments have lost their
legitimacy for giving such unwarranted priority to fighting copyright
infringement on behalf of lobbyists from the pharmaceutical
and entertainment industries. The existence of ACTA is a clear statement that
surveillance, regulations and securing further corporate centralization dwarfs
any constructive shift towards stimulating human innovation and self-sufficient
technologies.
When former US National
Security Advisor and Trilateral Commission co-founder, Zbigniew Brzezinski
spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations in 2010, he warned
of a global political awakening beginning to take place. Technology such as file sharing,
blogging, and open source software has the potential to undermine the
oligarchical governing interests seeking to centrally control our society and
enforce the population into being entirely dependent on their commodities. The following excerpt from
Brzezinski’s book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era,
provides invaluable insight into the world being brought in; “The technetronic era involves the gradual
appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by
an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to
assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain
up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about
the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the
authorities.”
