I find it highly ironic that an anti-piracy bill, ACTA, proposed by the MPAA and RIAA, actually seems to be sparking a discussion and paving a way towards less IP protection, and so might become one of the worst actions RIAA and MPAA took.
Except, of course, if Anonymous planted the idea about ACTA into RIAA's and MPAA's bosses (perhaps inspired by Inception), expecting such an outcome...
I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop. A few petitions, some critical articles (finally) and some minor demonstrations (unlike the US, Europe is used to regular massive demonstrations, strikes, riots etcetera without governments caving in to demands), and one by one politicians are backtracking rapidly.
Yes, there's been an increase in awareness, but I expected things not to get really heated until the EU parliament vote. Not it looks like that will just become a symbolic act to pull the plug. ACTA has become political poison.
I fear that if the technosphere continues to use "privacy" and "freedom of expression" as fig leaves to protest any kind of anti-IP-theft laws, the public will eventually get disenchanted and we'll end up with even worse laws than ACTA & SOPA/PIPA. It's like pro-lifers who extend their disdain for abortion to claim that any kind of birth control is murder.
Plus in the case of ACTA, it is transparently self-serving of Poland and other Eastern European non-ACTA-signatories to oppose ACTA. Those countries, after all, are net consumers of IP.
The Public seems to be fairly on the side of pirates, if the numbers flaunted by MPAA and RIAA etc, are to be believed. by those lobby accounts,piracy is exploding all over, so I would bet the public is concerned with privacy. their own.
All the laws currently debated are either negotiated in secret, or have significant dangers of overreach. As such, "Privacy" and "freedom of expression" are not fig leaves yet.
Perhaps when the conversation is not completely hijacked by MPAA and their ilk. and politicians stop masking these laws as functions of "protecting our children" from online predators (the fig leave du jour for any politician seeking online legislation) We might have a sensible conversation.
In the meantime, many people face the dilemma so comically illustrated by the oatmeal http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones It is ridiculous to expect the public to have continued patience with an industry that insist on playing by rules that only benefit them. If they change, they will get a foothold in the public mind, not before.
"Those countries are (...) net consumers of IP". Seriously.
Only if you discount the entire human history before the last two centuries. Because beyond that, the biggest net consumer of IP in history is the US, and they got it all for free. Now think they have the right to charge the rest of the world for the little bit they added in the past few decades.
This is the great swindle of all IP-laws: it assigns ownership to whoever added the last little piece. Or rather: those few with the money to buy the rights from whoever added the latest piece in the puzzle.
What a surprise it mostly benefits the country that was on the rise just as IP legislation was massively expanded. The same country that is now trying to force draconian IP-protection measures on the rest of the world.
I guess by certain measures every country is a „net consumer of IP” if you just consider Hollywood movies. But I don't like this sweeping generalization. I don't think it serves any purpose. Even the phrase „consumer of IP” doesn't make much sense. What does it mean to „consume IP”? Is China a „consumer of IP” when your product gets cloned?
These kinds of generalizations are a real problem and I'd suggest avoiding them. ACTA creators used them well, by the way — after all, ACTA is officially about „Anti-Counterfeiting”.
Yet one must then ask how it is that Western European countries have joined in with the same concerns about censorship (not just their people but their politicians too).
This seems like an odd attempt to distract from the fundamentally deeper concerns by imagining a horde of pirates ready to gorge on our Western wealth.
Here's a fun fact for our "self-serving non-signatory" colleague: Poland signed ACTA on Jan 26th, while Germany hasn't until now.
Also, you might be interested to know that Poland isn't merely killing ACTA with the use of fig leaves, like US did with SOPA and PIPA. Poland has actually started a public debate - and a loud and mainstream one - not only about ACTA, but about the current IP regime and the sense of existing copyright protections.
(For instance, during the 7-hour meeting mentioned in the article, a govt minister actually suggested that perhaps we should roll back some of the current IP protections, because they don't fit the social media sharing reality.)
So we're not putting the issue to rest, so that it resurfaces later under a different disguise. We're actively taking it apart.
Except, of course, if Anonymous planted the idea about ACTA into RIAA's and MPAA's bosses (perhaps inspired by Inception), expecting such an outcome...