Robocopyright ACTA

This is just too good.

What's worse - ignorance or incompetence?

I don't know what to say. Apparently Sweden is represented by a deaf, dumb and blind guy in the much criticized Acta talks. According to this moron, Stefan Johansson from the Department of Justice (!!!), there's nothing peculiar about the Acta agreement. They're not out to fight non-commercial file-sharing or any other small scale copyright infringements. We can all rest peacefully knowing that our personal integrity and civil liberties will be well taken care of.

– Ja, så är det, dokumentet tar sikte på mer omfattande intrång. Acta tar inte specifikt sikte på fildelning utan på fysiska produkter.

Yeah, right. Either Mr. Johansson has been spending most of his time sleeping during these talks, or he's just hopelessly incompetent. I don't know what is worse. Actabloggen has made a preliminary summary of the recently released documents, and they're not exactly painting a nice picture:

• 
  
  Customs officials will have the right to search through your luggage for any kind of pirated goods, including searching through your electronic devices looking for pirated content.
• 
  
  The "mere conduit" principle will cease to exist, and the ISP's will be held liable for what their users do on the web. In order to avoid liability they will be forced to filter web-pages pointed out by the entertainment mafia to contain infringing material, and they will be forced to terminate user accounts based on allegations from the very same mafia, effectively introducing not only a 3 strikes, but a 1 strike regime!
• 
  
  The most grotesque part is that all these measures are effectively bypassing the code of law. There's no right to have one's case tried by the court of law, there's no presumption of being innocent until proven guilty, it's basically the entertainment mafia playing judge and jury.

I'm guessing we'll see a lot more evil appearing as the Acta agreement is dissected by the community.

Links:
- ArsTechnica has a comprehensive analysis of the entire process behind Acta.
- IDG.se has a few words (in Swedish), although not very comprehensive at all.
- Europaportalen.se (also in Swedish) lets a couple of critical voices be heard.
- Christian Engström, Pirate Party politician and member of the EU parliament, gives his view on the 3 strikes threat.

Photo: chaouki

Hell yeah

A joke, I presume?

"You've got to be kidding me". That was my first thought when reading Henrik Pontén's letter in today's Svenska Dagbladet. Assuming Mr. Pontén is in fact the athor (which I must admit I'm having problems believing) he seriously wants the public to believe that IPRED, IPRED2, FRA, Hadopi, Acta and Datalagringsdirektivet, to mention a few, are just products of our imagination, they're not real, they're not threatening the freedom of speech or personal integrity. And none of them are the result of lobbying efforts from the entertainment industry. Oh, and the industry paying off judges and policemen to win highly questionable lawsuits, that's just part of the whole conspiracy theory against these peaceful "friends of the Internet" (yes, he actually uses this term!).

What kind of drugs is Henrik Pontén on? Or perhaps he's just trying to be funny, or something?

Pontén ends his ridiculous rant with a call for The Pirate Party to explicitly denounce the threats made to him over the last couple of years. As if this political party has somehow been involved in these threats.

If anything Don Pontén and his little Camorra-army should apologize profoundly to all the people whose lives they have ruined or seriously damaged with outrageous threats, lawsuits and compensation claims. Innocent or not, it doesn't matter, pay up or face the consequences.