"DRM is the future."

--Steve Ballmer

THE ACTA is a major, but nonetheless secret, plot. Those involved in this profit-elevating, rights-degrading conspiracy prefer to keep it quiet -- almost invisible -- until it's too late. For more people to understand such abuse of the law that's taking place behind their backs, the best one can do is spread the knowledge. We wrote about this yesterday and linked to a chain of related posts [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11].

Here is a video about it. There's exaggeration here, but by making a strong point it might alarm people, who must fight the ACTA now. If not through purely legal means, ACTA can imperil Free software and perfectly free art (creativity) in pragmatic means, i.e. inconvenience and limitation.

Direct link

Sparked initially by FFII, vocal protests against the ACTA have just reached Heise.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) has strongly criticised the secret negotiations concerning the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the package of measures for counteracting infringements of the rights to intangible goods considered by the EU Commission. The foundation considers it particularly questionable that Brussels intends to renegotiate the current liability regulations and exemptions for internet providers in the E-Commerce Directive.

Glyn Moody wrote about this too.

Basically, it's a case of the lady protesting too much: earnestly assuring us that it doesn't intend to bring in a shopping list of legal nasties - criminalisation of infringement, summary injunctions for those *suspected* of infringing, "three strikes and you're out", etc. - but convincing no one.

[...]

And yet, strangely, getting rid of monopolies is something that the people working so feverishly on ACTA simply cannot contemplate - despite all the economic evidence that it is the solution to so many of the the problems they claim to be addressing.

Counterfeiting bad, monopolies good.

In the following bunch of videos, Dan Gillmor explains what is wrong and what people should do.

Spread knowledge about the ACTA. It's the best way to fight it right now. ⬆

"We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is "stolen"."

--Steve Ballmer