SOPA is dead, but the fight against Internet censorship just went global.
ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is SOPA on steroids. It was developed in 2006, first by Japan and the United States, and many of the world’s most developed countries have since jumped on board. In addition to targeting copyright infringement on the Internet, ACTA also attempts to establish international standards for dealing with counterfeit goods and generic medicines. A new global institution presently called the “ACTA Committee” would also be formed if ACTA is ratified, even though a World Intellectual Property Organization already exists.
What is worse is that the United States has already signed on to ACTA, and hardly anyone noticed.
Protecting intellectual property rights, of course, is not the issue here. No one is arguing that artists and copyright-holders should remain unpaid for their work. But shutting down entire websites simply because one user uploaded a copyrighted image or video without due credit is not the way to solve piracy.
ACTA, much like SOPA and PIPA, is a terribly-worded agreement that grossly misrepresents and misunderstands the Internet as a whole. The very nature of ACTA is undemocratic, negotiated behind closed doors rather than being debated openly by international parliaments and organizations.
ACTA was negotiated by a select group of highly-industrialized and wealthy states: the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, South Korea, Morocco and New Zealand. Twenty-two of the European Union’s 27 member states signed on in January.
Unlike the World Intellectual Property Organization, which is an offshoot of the United Nations, the ACTA negotiators met privately and without consultation with other international regulatory bodies. As such, ACTA is not subject to any existing international law.
It is not just New World Order conspiracy theorists who should be worried.
Internationally-binding agreements should not be negotiated behind closed doors. On the international stage, it is absolutely vital that as many members of the public as possible have access to the content of such agreements, because it is not only individuals who are affected. Entire countries can be punished by the international community, who can impose sanctions or even kick certain countries out of future negotiations.
So it is not the liberty of individuals that can be targeted with ACTA; the sovereignty and international clout of states can be jeopardized, as well.
Recently, the website Megaupload was closed down and its leaders arrested for allegedly allowing known links to pirated materials to remain on their website. At the request of the FBI, New Zealand police arrested four men in connection with pirating on Megaupload, including the site’s founder, Kim Dotcom. This shutdown occurred without even the passing of SOPA.
So remind me again why we need regulations like SOPA or ACTA to target pirating websites when international law is already working?
Obviously, pirating remains a major drain on the coffers of the entertainment industries. But there are plenty of underutilized methods of dealing with copyright infringement.
Although most people don’t know this, most of Flickr’s uploaded photos are copyrighted, as well, using the non-profit Creative Commons. Creative Commons provides legally-binding and legally-enforceable copyright licenses for free, with six types of licenses varying from “public domain” to “attribution required, no commercial use or derivatives allowed.”
A cursory search of Flickr will prove that most users have not put their work in the public domain.
I suppose that is one way to solve unemployment: have teams of thousands of anti-pirating goons comb the Internet to make sure that the cat picture Joe Schmo uploaded from his iPhone is not being used without Joe Schmo’s permission. Then they can inform Joe Schmo about copyrighting his cat pictures (sponsored in part by the U.S. Copyright Office) and shutting down icanhazcutepixofkittenswithwords.com.
In short, sites like Flickr that offer copyrights to its members do not contribute to the growing problem of piracy as much as some would have us think. If users were more aware of these copyright measures and policed their communities more thoroughly, Flickr could not be used as a free alternative to paid photographers.
I know it may be asking a bit much of Americans to exert a bit of awareness, but one can dream.
The shutdown of Megaupload shows how dangerous all-encompassing pirating laws can be. Certainly illegally-downloaded materials should be taken down, and the website’s owners arrested for knowingly allowing such downloads.
But while Megaupload was a known source for pirating copyrighted material, it was also a file-sharing service. There were, believe it or not, users who uploaded their own personal videos and music files to Megaupload to share them easily with friends and family. All of those files are now lost.
It is time for international leaders to learn how the Internet works. We should be beyond “the Internet is a series of tubes” levels of ignorance at this point. ACTA even goes so far as to allow a party claiming copyright infringement to name the price of its “losses.” It is extremely difficult to put a price tag on losses due to piracy, because every pirated copy of an album does not equal one lost sale. There is no way of knowing that a person would have bought that album had he not been able to pirate it; perhaps the pirated album introduced the listener to an artist that he or she may never have heard of before. It is impossible to know one way or another, which is why parties claiming infringement should not be allowed to claim one pirated copy as one loss.
ACTA has yet to be put into global effect, but of the 31 signatories, only six need to ratify ACTA for it to become an internationally binding agreement. This makes SOPA and PIPA look like models of legally-upstanding documents. At least the contents of SOPA and PIPA were available to the general public, and created a robust debate among members of Congress and members of the public alike. ACTA is unable to be debated because its contents have just gradually leaked from behind the negotiators’ doors.
All global citizens should be educated as to what pirating means for the well-being of artists, and how simple it is to legally use copyrighted materials.
If there needs to be more concentrated focus on pirating, then allow the International Trade Commission to adopt the OPEN Act, which specifically targets websites that are “dedicated to infringing activity.” Shutting down half the Internet is not the answer.
Kelsey Allagood can be reached at kelsey.allagood@spartans.ut.edu