How Sweet It Is! Internet Activists Defeat ACTA
Hollywood and the record industry got some serious comeuppance when the European Parliament overwhelmingly defeated a copyright maximalist treaty by a 478 to 39 vote on Wednesday. Ouch! This is a very sweet moment to savor.
The content industries and trade representatives had been negotiating the so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement for six years behind closed doors. Civil society organizations were absolutely barred from the process even though industry players had full and complete access and participation. The proposed changes to copyright law would have empowered copyright industries to throttle free speech on the Internet without due process; allow users to be barred access to Internet accounts; and force Internet service providers to act as copyright police by patrolling users’ web habits.
The idea behind the ACTA treaty was to negotiate a new global standard of strict copyright standards. It was also a sly tactical feint to use international policy venues to help impose stiff copyright rules on the US without having to go through the US Senate for treaty ratification (Obama could simply sign it as an “executive agreement”). The point of this subterfuge was to avoid any bruising public debate about or political fallout from much-hated provisions of the agreement.
The defeat of ACTA is a sweet moment because arrogant trade reps and industry moguls had airily dismissed critics. They thought that their insider access, lobbying dollars and propaganda campaigns could just ram the whole stinkin’ mess through. But after last year's huge Internet mobilization against SOPA and PIPA – the Stop Online Privacy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate – it was clear that Internet users were getting their act together as a political force. That anti-SOPA, anti-PIPA effort stunned Congress; industry-backed legislation that had previously sailed through was stopped dead in its tracks. The spell of the entertainment industry's cozy influence-peddling was broken, at least for a while.
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