If you think the Stop On-line Piracy Act was an infringement of intellectual freedom, wait until you see ACTA.
Congress shelved SOPA, and did the same with PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act).
politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com . . .
Enter ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Like SOPA & PIPA, ACTA is a confusing mess, with even less transparency. And it is even more confusing; for one, it treats counterfeiting and piracy the same, when each is in fact different. One major problem is, because it is an international agreement, no one is sure what effect it will have on US law, or how it will be enforced.
It's not that people are against policing the internet and going after intellectual property pirates, it's just the Administration has been less than transparent about how it wrote the legislation, and several provisions of the Act are unclear. For instance, the sections covering non-commercial file sharing are so vague, that theoretically, you could be sent to jail for downloading a movie for personal viewing. ("Significant willful copyright or related rights infringements that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain.")
Obama has already signed ACTA, even though 75 law professors sent a letter to him voicing their concerns and urging him not to sign.
There are questions as to whether it is even legal for Obama to sign without Congressional consent. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon (a Democrat, wonder of wonders) doesn't think so, and decried the failure to either notify the public of the process or to give them any input into the writing of the act.
tech.fortune.cnn.com . . .
You know Obama; if you can't get it passed legally, just sign over national sovereignty and make it a back-door law.
