Comment: Five bad things about ACTA

Stopping copy medicines, counterfeiting. On the surface this sounds like a good thing. But ACTA is far more than this, argues IT student

by Darius Maciulevicius

Abolishing and preventing the sale of generic medicines, stopping copyright infringement and counterfeiting. This is what ACTA claims to be.

The brilliance in this is the combination of these three particular issues to play on people’s psychology. Piracy issues are made to seem as threatening as the sale of counterfeit medicines.

ACTA, in my opinion should not be passed because:

Three strikes, you are out

First. You can say bye bye to privacy.

It will monitor network traffic. Part of ACTA is the three strikes you are out rule. You are penalized after three warnings and to execute these warnings your traffic log will be monitored constantly.

Censorship

Second. Implementing ACTA is going the way of China, which is censorship.

Content distributors, meaning large companies, will be given more or less a free hand to close down whatever they don’t like.

They have a similar clause in the SOPA (online piracy act in the US, ed.), which states that if the site has potential to share illegal material it can be closed down. But by that rule almost everything on the Internet can be closed down. In ACTA, even a tiny banner in the background can amount to copyright infringement. Minute details.

More harm than good

Third This is basically going to impede any kind of small content creators, like people who have YouTube channels.

Fourth. It is like swatting a fly with a nuke. ACTA is so obscure and far reaching that it can have a severe cascading effect leading ultimately to the complete breakdown of the internet. This is of course a little bit of an overexaggeration, but legally they will have the right to do it.

Would you like to give this right to the record companies?

Profits will be made anyway

Fifth , it will do more harm than good. People who have been downloading illegal content before ACTA will now have two options: 1) pay and download and, 2) pay for a service for access to a server in a country, where this law has not been implemented, which will be cheaper and anonymous.

Profits will be made. But just not by the record/movie industries that have put so much effort into ACTA. Instead resourceful IT companies providing the above-mentioned option.

Conclusion: ACTA is a really bad idea.

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

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