Fight the ACTA! Thread

En.wikipedia.org

Someone wrote: The leaked document includes a provision to force Internet Service Providers to provide information about suspected copyright infringers without a Warrant, making it easier for the record industry to sue music file sharers and for officials to shut down non-commercial BitTorrent websites such as The Pirate Bay.

Fuck.

(inb4 Torrents are bad, this is potentially quite a bit more serious than that. Think internet Patriot Act. It's bad news for all free software, and certainly isn't good news for the modding community.)

Edited by: Jyffeh

Yeah its total bullshit. They even expect foreign country ISP's to hand over copyright offender information to the US, or so I read in an article on Slashdot about this.

Also, unwarranted laptop searches can be held at any time if it goes through. Get pulled over, laptop check. Go through an airport, laptop check.

The ISPs already slow ones internet down to total gayass during peak times. Screw this. I don't buy shit music/games/software.

Jyffeh wrote: Torrents are bad, this is potentially quite a bit more serious than that. Think internet Patriot Act. It's bad news for all free software, and certainly isn't good news for the modding community.)

Can you elaborate on why you think that the ACTA will be bad for the modding community? Because mods are distributed via torrents? Or because some modders use pirated versions of programms like Photoshop? Or are you refering to the danger that illegal modding (changes to games that the games companies don`t want like the recent Modern Warfare 2 Dedicated Server hacks) won`t happen anymore?

The Free Software Foundation outlines it well here.

woah this isnt looking good for us either. Although we havnt looked at the end file size for SL Im guessing with all our custiom content we are looking atleast 500mb, if we are lucky. and I know how much it sucks trying to direct download large files

Yeah, that is a little worrying, not that I download much, but still. I have a feeling that South Africa will take quite a while to catch up to this. Yippee, I hope

i don't get one thing tho
why does most politicians think torrents are evil? torrents is a peer to peer protocol just like any other :/
sure its used to download illegal things but hell, allot of things are
they could forbid portable hard disks to then, i mean, you plug in, download a game to it and you got it. but yeah :/
seriously, they are driving it to far

I don't like it, but you can't blame them; look at how much shit is pirated.

well, its kinda theyr own fault
games are way to expensive now
i mean, there was a time where 30€ for a game was alot, now its doubled (at least) :/
then activision comes in and will raise the prices to counter piracy, reverse effect, it will only encourage it
and some people only get it for the single player, wich some devs blatantly ignore *glares at IW*
and like i said, they all act like its something from the current generation, while it actualy started with the arrival of portable storage (no not usb sticks, floppy discs and tape recorders)

Sigma wrote: well, its kinda theyr own fault

it's moddb.com's own fault that videos can't be played because people are using add blockers because the Valve L4D2 adds put up a big "you're infected!" sploog on the front page. Let's all shut the site down by flooding it with attacks. If they REALLY wanted people to use the site they wouldn't put ads up, period. Screw they need $$ to keep it running, screw it costs $$! Just like if IW & Activision wanted us to NOT pirate MW2 they would of included dedicated servers but still left it on steam.

dumbest excuse ever for anything. Best way to discourage piracy is to completely block off countries that support it in any way. China has a big piracy problem that they refuse to deal with? Block off their internet to the rest of the world. Australia has a law that allows torrents of copyrighted materials from other countries? Block them off. Let them all suffer in internet blockage hell. What the difference between stealing computer software & nuclear materials? Simple: the people who steal nuclear material don't blame someone else & lie about why they did it.

A sticker shock to all the "games are way to expensive now" noobs: Games are CHEAPER now then they were 20-25 years ago! Games are no more expensive then 10 years ago!

Not saying it's a not a stupid law but pirates (and apparently some people here) give them the ammo they need to justify it!

Edited by: TheHappyFriar

i do realise they need money, i buy the games i think are good, allways did and allways will
they are companies after all, its understandable that they want money, thats why they started the company

if i compare the games of prices of now and a few years back, then they have at least doubled in price
i could find loads of games to cost around 30-40€, now they start at 50-55 (at least)
its the hardware that is the biggest costs
but it does not take away that they try to get games as expensive as possible by any means
lets take modern warfare 2 for example:
they leave out dedicated servers stating that IWNet is just as good as dedicated servers.
now they reintroduce them as a paid, monthly fee :/
then there is dlc (in general) wich is often just lacking
i have nothing against dlc, i actualy support it
but, they force it up for some games (like MW2, don't got the mappack? then your server selection will be limited) or are just downright ripping you off by have a little download which just unlocks some content that was allready on the disk (like DDR (yes i'm bashing one of my favo games >_<) wich has a selection of songs for download wich are 200kb, so all of it was on the disk, so it only needed to be unlocked)

then there is the conversion rates wich is just unfair, maybe not to you fryar and all other US residents.
but the 1$ = 1€ conversion rate is downright stealing
currently 1 US $ = 0.66€
so if i could buy a 50$ game here, then i should pay 33.4€ (estimate)
wrong, we pay 50€, we allmost pay double

so maybe the games over there in the us have become cheaper, but over here, they only become more expensive
sometimes just outright blatant stealing, i mean, 80€ for a normal edition of C&C red alert 3 (thats 119.6$) thats just stealing imo (that and the game was bad anyway :/

with their own fault thing i said, i was referring to the fact that they up the prices so much, people don't want to pay so much just for a game
the monthly ISP fee is cheaper then most games even :/
i'm not saying pirating is the sollution (can't blame the people for earning money) but its starting to get too much

Edited by: Arxae

It's not like anything is going to happen unless you're found guilty in a court of law.

What's that? You ARE guilty?

The issue here is that they are pushing for a net that's too wide - a non-digital analogy would be noting that smuggling happens in vans, so let's make it illegal to drive a van.

Also, do you want the border authorities to spending their time looking for pirated music? That either means:

- they are spending less time looking for important things that actually could kill people
- they are putting more staff on, costing more tax funds
- they are taking longer per person, costing more and making travel even slower

do any of those things seem like worthwhile tradeoffs for catching people with a few dodgy tunes on their MP3 players? (Not to mention how you'd prove the difference between 'downloaded off the internet' and 'ripped off the CD I legally own but left at home cos I don't want to take hundreds of CD's with me on holiday' )

The whole thing looks like an insane waste of government time and money, adding difficulties to a lot of worthy and legitimate activities just to put up some flimsy barriers to piracy that pirates will work around faster than the law can keep up with them. Stupid all round.

and by that, gib has made the best point of the moment :p

I hope the people who decide if it passes or not have the same point of view as you, Gib. Those are great points.

Well hey, if it's not killing people then it can't possibly matter can it? Get some perspective. Customs already check shipping consignments for counterfeit physical goods. This is no different.

It's not like the border controls section of the agreement is about searching your luggage, to pre-empt one response I can think of. In fact according to Wikipedia, "personal baggage that contains goods of a non-commercial nature" is specifically excluded.

Read it again, that's what some countries are pushing for. There's plenty who are wanting a lot more, and a lot of American senators fall into the 'search everything all the time' camp. I'm happy to say the EU are in the saner camp, but American policy tends to have consequences for outside it's borders

All I can see about that is "the U.S. is pushing for broad provisions that cover import, export, and in-transit shipments", which isn't exactly descriptive. But then again it is 12:40 AM.

I looked at their current powers (Washingtonpost.com) and added the logical assumption that any new bill would have at least the same level of intrusiveness, and may even go further.

That sounds pretty bad, but this is an international agreement. No way would American principles be agreed on around the world.