

MPAA/RIAA lose big as US backs copyright "limitations" - mtgx
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/op-ed-eus-rejection-of-acta-subtly-changed-trade-law-landscape/

======
rickmb
I find the notion that the SOPA protest woke up us previously apathetic
Europeans somewhat insultingly US-centric.

Prior to SOPA, resistance against increasingly insane copyright legislation
was considerably more widespread than it was in the US, partially triggered by
events like the trial against the Pirate Bay, Sarkozy's three strikes sell-out
etcetera.

There's a reason why we're the ones with the Pirate parties. We didn't need
major corporations like Google campaigning to wake us up. Yeah, the defeat of
SOPA was a major encouragement and inspiration, but the fight was already on.

~~~
adventureful
Major corporations like Google? That's laughable.

Reddit users did about 100 times more than Google all by themselves.

~~~
aggie
Reddit's campaign may have produced more activists, but Google likely reached
more eyeballs in a matter of hours than Reddit had in the preceding months. In
the end, it was the widespread, mildly (somewhat blindly) anti-SOPA sentiment,
not the loud minority, that turned the tide.

------
ericd
I want to thank the European Parliament and its constituents for giving me
back some faith that the state of the government of the world isn't
monotonically degenerating into a corporate oligarchy, and ArsTechnica for
consistently raising the bar on technical and technical/political reporting in
a sea of mostly superficial blog reporting. What's the best way to throw money
at Ars?

Edit: RE Money Throwing, never mind, there's a big orange Subscribe Now in
Ars' nav.

~~~
Perceval
This isn't Ars reporting. This is a guest piece written by a think tank wonk.
Ars put a disclaimer at the beginning of the article stating that it doesn't
not necessarily represent their views.

~~~
abraham
Ars still gets props for running a piece many outlets wouldn't.

------
fiatmoney
Wow, it's almost as though they're proposing limited Times for copyright,
restricted to protections that actually promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts.

------
pvnick
If anybody deserves to lose big, it's the MPAA/RIAA.

------
DigitalSea
This couldn't have happened to nicer people. Every time the MPPA/RIAA lose big
a thousand kittens die and another lobbyist pushes for another draconian
copyright law over a dinner table at a $10,000 per head benefit dinner. While
it might feel like we've had a few wins lately with ACTA and whatnot, this is
only the beginning the stupidity of the entertainment industry will never
cease, more laws will be proposed and eventually I believe one of them will
get through and once we get one law it opens up the floodgates for more bad
laws, don't you just love the world?

~~~
unimpressive
With each law they fail to get through (And rile up a public policy shitstorm
over.) the chances of them getting the next one through go down.

~~~
mtgx
Rejecting the ACTA treaty with such an overwhelming majority definitely pushed
their plans of passing the TPP (ACTA's successor) treaty at least 2 years
back. And it may even have put doubts in their minds about that their strategy
so far and if it's still the best one to go.

~~~
vidarh
I think the most important part is the idea that it is creating opponents
elsewhere.

E.g. manufacturers that badly wanted the relatively non-controversial anti-
counterfeiting measures in ACTA must now be furious at all the lost effort and
the years wasted because of issues largely unrelated to their own concerns.

If more and more of these companies see RIAA and MPAA's lobbying as
increasingly a threat to their own interests, it is going to have very
interesting effects.

~~~
Kell
We should not forget that ACTA was not just terrible concerning Films and
Music. It was botched on a much larger level. Like "protecting" poor people in
third world countries from fake medicines... that could be harmful to them...
but actually are just generic version of over-protected medicines sold for a
fortune by richer countries, and works just fine at a much lower cost.

So even without the article 27, it should have been stricken down (with small
exceptions like brand protection etc). Let's not have a fight just to save
what concerns us most directly, but for a new conception of copyright, patents
and the entire intellectual property landscape.

------
jacobt
So, what are the limitations exactly?

~~~
einhverfr
There are no "exact" limitations. Rather it has to do with the Bern convention
allowing nations to restrict copyright protection in "special circumstances"
that don't "unduly" interfere with "normal" exploitation of the work by the
rights-holder.

In other words it allows nations to pass laws relating to what constitutes
fair use. I would assume that absent this sort of thing the Bern convention
would allow the WTO to impose sanctions on any nation that decided we were
right regarding Oracle v. Google, Sony v. Connectix, etc.

