Consumerist Wrote:ACTA—the misleadingly named "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement"—is the worldwide copyright treaty that's being negotiated behind closed doors, and that will create a sort of global DMCA if continues in its current state. Now Wikileaks has posted a draft of the treaty, and Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow gives his take:

    "Among other things, ACTA will outlaw P2P (even when used to share works that are legally available, like my books), and crack down on things like region-free DVD players. All of this is taking place out of the public eye, presumably with the intention of presenting it as a fait accompli just as the ink is drying on the treaty."

Wikileaks points out that the U.S. politician behind ACTA is Howard Berman from California, a Democrat whose top four campaign contributors for 2006 were Time Warner ($21,000), News Corp ($15,000), Sony Corp of America ($14,000), and Walt Disney Co ($13,550).

So what can you do, other than shake your head in disgust? Well, here's a list of members of the subcommittee overseeing the U.S. side of things, so you could start by seeing if your rep is listed and contacting him or her directly. One Boing Boing reader suggests contacting your representative regardless of committee membership—you can find the correct contact information here using your zip code or address.

Man, this is fucked up.
If you live in the US, here's what you should do:
The only really effective way to do stop this is to talk to local congressional representatives. Look up what district you live in, find out who your representative is, and then get their office email (all pretty easy). Then send them an email (as well-written as possible) saying basically the following stuff:
1) You live in their district
2) You strongly oppose laws that would attempt to control copyright infringement by eliminating services and systems which have legitimate and useful applications (e.g. p2p)
3) This issue is very important to you and you will watch to see how they vote on any legislation like the ACTA
4) You would not be able to support any politician who voted in favor of this type of legislation
5) You would tend to support politicians who opposed this type of legislation

It'll take 30 minutes at most, and can stop this sort of shit from happening.

Source: Consumerist

(This post was last modified: 06/06/2008 04:37 PM by Chroma.)