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A perfect example of how "democracy dies in darkness". They will keep pushing anti-consumer laws through the backdoor of "free trade" agreements, until we stop
by car_analogy 4y ago
A perfect example of how "democracy dies in darkness". They will keep pushing anti-consumer laws through the backdoor of "free trade" agreements, until we stop it by requiring that:
Before any international agreement may be ratified, [our country] must pass all the laws needed to comply with that agreement ahead of time, through regular democratic processes.
- mistermann 4y agoAdvocates of democracy would have us believe that this is the will of the people...and if it isn't, we can simply elect different people. It's our most sacred institution, and should be supported as such.
- bitdivision 4y agoThis FTA is between the UK and Australia. I'm under the impression that both the UK and Australia currently have laws allowing them to comply with this agreement, so adding a requirement like this wouldn't change anything here.
- nicoburns 4y ago> adding a requirement like this wouldn't change anything here It does change something. It makes it much harder for that law to be changed in future.
- gpm 4y agoThe requirement they are referring to is > must pass all the laws needed to comply with that agreement ahead of time Which is already met, so it wouldn't change anything.
- sudosysgen 4y agoIf they ever decide to change the laws, they will have to renegotiate the agreement, which is a change.
- zarzavat 4y agoNone of the branches of the UK governmental system care about international law, so this is not an impediment. The judicial system is constitutionally required to ignore it. The legislature is mostly controlled by the executive. And the executive only respects international agreements when they are convenient.
- swarnie 4y agoIt changes nothing in reality. I can't get to torrent search engines in the UK. I double click Nordvpn.com/bigmoney and then click "connect". I can now get to the torrent search engine without issue, even while connecting to a UK node.... Its a lot of words to add maybe three seconds of delay to my web browsing experience.
- rpmisms 4y agoI do love Erik. Best ads on Youtube, next to the Internet Historian.
- ATsch 4y agoMaking such a requirement sounds like a very speedy way to find yourself suddenly very restricted by US sanctions and notice a mysterious uptick in discussions about the democratic illegitimacy of your last election. Of course the World Bank and IMF will be happy to help you out of you drop them again though. That is to say, very few countries actually have a choice on agreeing to "free trade" policies, local laws aren't really enough to resist that.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoIt seriously disgusts me that copyright holders can use the might of the US government to cause such damage to other countries as punishment for not upholding their imaginary monopolies.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoRussia is currently at a perfect position to fight back against this. I'm no fan of Kremlin, dictatorship, or wars, but if an ordinary country wants to rebel against the international "copyright" cartel, they would face sanctions. Russia is already under enough sanctions that no more can be realistically added, and it also has an existing pirate culture and a developed network infrastructure. I would be happy to see if they start sponsoring pirate groups to undermine the right holders from "unfriendly countries" as a form of economic warfare. It's already legalized for certain classes of software[1], but I think it has not yet formally extended into other types of content. 1. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5240942 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5240942
- TheAceOfHearts 4y agoWell, there's already rutracker for one thing.
- d0mine 4y agorutracker doesn't accept connections from Russia
- kofejnik 4y agoNo, rutracker is blocked in RU
- d0mine 4y agohttps://eais.rkn.gov.ru/en/#form https://eais.rkn.gov.ru/en/#form says that rutracker.org is not blacklisted.
- orbital-decay 4y agoIt's blocked and inaccessible without circumvention. The list you linked to is provided by the regulatory body; it's incomplete and can't be searched by keyword to list specific page blocks. (blocking a single page means blocking the entire HTTPS website, obviously) This one [1] is from Roskomsvoboda (a domestic EFF-like organization) and is much more complete. The rutracker.org itself is listed on last pages as unblocked, but that's purely technical and is done to update the IP address. Generally, there's no way to tell if a site is blocked except to test it from inside the country, that's true for every national firewall. Moreover, Rutracker itself never blocked Russian IPs to signal anything, that was a fake started by Forbes (yes, really) and reposted by everyone else. Rutracker fought a DDoS attack for a couple days and was always open otherwise, and still is. You can open it from inside Russia without any VPN if you use a DPI circumvention tool or find a rare ISP that doesn't enforce the national blacklist. The same can be said about the supposed legalization of piracy in Russia, which didn't happen and never even been taken seriously, it was just media overreacting to everything. I guess plenty of people were mislead by this and still believe it. I also strongly disagree with @grishka above - copyright was extremely strictly enforced, our copyright agencies put MAFIAA to shame, sadly. It might change now, of course, but still didn't. The copyright was enforced for organizations, though - we never had warning letters for torrenting like in some countries, for example. [1] https://reestr.rublacklist.net/search/?q=rutracker.org https://reestr.rublacklist.net/search/?q=rutracker.org
- JohnHaugeland 4y agotoday i saw someone on HN call piracy controls "anti-consumer laws"
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoSeems strictly true assuming they're using 'pirating' to mean copyright infringement?
- JohnHaugeland 4y agoThat's like saying that murder laws are anti-civilian because murderers are civilians, or that eating plants is deadly because a handful of poisonous plants exist No, a ridiculously overbroad label isn't strictly true. It's strictly false, and the primary example of what strictly false means
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoBracketed numbers, eg (ii) for ease of later reference. Disregarding entirely the morality of the situation, which is immaterial to the statement in question. And disregarding 'making sure creators are reasonably compensated', which is almost tangential (since the earliest eras of man we've had media production, eg cave painting, and so consumers of media, as far as we know without monetary consideration). Those who download material restricted by copyright from torrent sites, without an exception or license are nonetheless media 'consumers'. (i) Copyright laws restrict the activity of these media consumers. (ii) Restricting of media consumption leads, overall, to less media consumption. (iii) Restricting an activity is to be 'anti' that activity. (iv) Conclusion: copyright laws are anti media consumer. (v) Where is your issue with the verity of this? Murder is pro-civilian because it protects civilians, but copyright law doesn't protect media consumers. Your plant analogy seems to be a suggestion that we're making an instance-to-class logical leap (fallacy of accident?). I don't see it, at which step do you think we did that? The argument at hand is more akin to "eating plants will kill some people". I think clause (iii) is the obvious point at which one could challenge this line. You might contend that with no copyright law (2.i) their would be less media production (2.ii) and that this would lead to less consumers (2.iii). But I think this is obviously false, we'd have the same number of consumers but arguably poorer quality media to consume.
- rascul 4y ago> Before any international agreement may be ratified, [our country] must pass all the laws needed to comply with that agreement ahead of time, through regular democratic processes. In the US it must go through the Senate, the President, and depending on things the House may have some say in the funding: > Treaty power is a coordinated effort between the Executive branch and the Senate. The President may form and negotiate, but the treaty must be advised and consented to by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Only after the Senate approves the treaty can the President ratify it. Once it is ratified, it becomes binding on all the states under the Supremacy Clause. While the House of Representatives does not vote on it at all, the supermajority requirement for the Senate's advice and consent to ratification makes it considerably more difficult to rally enough political support for international treaties. Also, if implementation of the treaty requires the expenditure of funds, the House of Representatives may be able to block or at least impede such implementation by refusing to vote for the appropriation of the necessary funds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification#United_States
- car_analogy 4y agoThat's the problem - everything gets packaged into one treaty, under one vote, with a lot of political momentum behind it. Like hiding objectionable laws in 9000 page budget bills. But you raise a good point - without a single-subject rule [1], we would be quickly back to square one, as instead of voting on ratification, there would be a large "Trans Pacific Partnership Omnibus Bill" that would simply have everything thrown in, without giving the public or the system the chance to examine each clause individually. The rot runs deep. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule
- hulitu 4y agoDemocracy is long dead. See Guantanamo, Assange, Snowden.
- google234123 4y agoSociety is long dead in {{this location}}. See {{example rape case}}, {{example murder case}}, {{example burglary case}}.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThe rape, murders, and burglaries would have to be committed every day by the most powerful individuals without any punishment for that analogy to hold, and indeed you would be correct in saying polite society is dead in that case.
- rufus_foreman 4y agoThere is no right to piracy in the constitution of the United States. And I would never vote for such a thing. If you actually care about democracy.
- hedora 4y agoThe public domain still exists. It's functionally equivalent to a right to piracy, and is written into the constitution. Note the phrase "limited times": U.S. Constitution Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
- rufus_foreman 4y agoOh come on. That's such a weak argument. No one is claiming that accessing media that is in the public domain is piracy. We are specifically talking about media that is not in the public domain.
- f1refly 4y agoI think the idea is that we wouldn't need piracy if media would enter the public domain after a sensible amount of time. Now that disney + sony are essentially legislative branches of the us government we can be sure that nothing of value will enter the public domain ever again.
- Xelbair 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act this is what happens when major profitable works hit the public domain deadline.
- hedora 4y agoSo, this right to privacy doesn't exist because it only would apply to things it doesn't apply to? If that's the case, your argument is a tautology: "There's no right to do things that you don't have a right to do."