by tomorrow, mostly all of you will be breaking the law.

[Frontastic]

99.99% of me is outraged, sickened and a little terrified at the implications of the level of power they'll be getting.

But there's that 0.01% which is mildly curious as to what the fallout from this will be like.

Really though, they can't arrest ALL of us... right?

 

[QuantumT]

snip

Ok let me simplify things for you.

You provide one hypothetical situation, it does not make it at all representative of the picture. Here's the real situation.

In 1990, a year when more than 10,000 new cases were reported the World Bank estimated that Brazil would have 1,200,000 in infections by 2000. However, by 2002, there were fewer than 600,000 estimated infections, less than half the prediction after taking the action I mentioned. If you don't think that is positive, I can't do anything for you because you're hopelessly delusional.

Your hypothetical situation would be nice, however the fact is the pharma industry has already created a situation which stifles innovation and has very little incentive to inventors. Your hypothetical point is nice in theory but completely irrelevant to the reality of the situation, on so many levels.

The average cost to develop a drug varies, but is generally around $.5 billion dollars. Note that not all drugs are successful. That money has to come from somewhere.

The fact that people are dying is very relevant. They own the rights to their lives and when you remove that, they lose the ability to recoup their loses due to exploitation and meddling of interest groups whose only interest is profit. Its not for you to tell people they have no right to life and that you own the property of an idea that could save them which they are not allowed to use because you say so.

Their right to life doesn't entitle them to negatively affect my well being. In case that isn't clear in this case I'll take it to the extreme.

Let's say I need a kidney transplant to live. You have two kidneys and can live without one of them. Your argument entitles me to forcibly take one of yours so that I can remain alive.

edit: and here's another hypothetical situation for you. Let's say we just drop all notions of intellectual property. It's suddenly not here. Do you think suddenly innovation lags behind? No, in fact there is much more motivation to stay ahead of the curve, instead of resting on your laurels. Intellectual property arrests and vitiates progress.

Wrong. There is absolutely no motivation to remain ahead of the curve because it's impossible.

Why should I work hard and spend money to develop something, when I could just wait for you to do it and rip you off?

 

[QuantumT]

snip

It was offered more as just a tidbit of information than any level of actual argument. It was meant to address the idea commonly put forth that music piracy directly harms artists.

 

[nono195]

God Dammit. I usually dont comment on these forums because of all these people who post angsty or pseudo-intellectual trash but i have to speak up here. Why does everyone think that this is big corporations faults. They may be evil in many ways but they are right in this. Torrenting and file sharing are huge problems and cost large profit margins on a broad range of industries. I dont necessarily agree with what they are doing but I think that this has gone on far too long and while it may seem terrible something did have to be done.

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

Yo-ho, yo-ho a pirate's life for me.
I steal my pictures,
My music's free.
Oh, a pirate's life for me.

 

[subject_87]

Bear in mind, this'll be pretty much impossible to enforce in America unless it completely ignores its constitution, but I don't think the companies pushing for this are exactly worried about little things like that.

 

[Riobux]

If you're that worried, encrypt your hard drive something crazy. Or emigrate.

If it works for the US, which it likely will, then most western countries will take on at least similar policies.

Sorry to say guys, but your government cares more about businesses than it does about it's people.

 

[no one really]

Let's move on to ACTB...

 

[no one really]

Yo-ho, yo-ho a pirate's life for me.
I steal my pictures,
My music's free.
Oh, a pirate's life for me.

Where can I download that song?

 

[ActionDan]

Well, the EU denied the treaty, so none of that for the EU (which includes the UK) It got denied like 300 and something people to 13.

 

[teh buttpickle]

Any word on when the U.S. would be signing the treaty if it is?

 

[holographicman]

Yo-ho, yo-ho a pirate's life for me.
I steal my pictures,
My music's free.
Oh, a pirate's life for me.

A PIRATES LIFE FOR ME!

 

[MinishArcticFox]

Oh no a piracy crackdown because the government has been so successful with these in the past and I'm sure that they will just crush it this time. Even if this does pass it will just be another hoop to jump through in order to steal over the internet.

 

[FlyAwayAutumn]

Breaking the law?

 

[QuantumT]

One of my problems with this is that, as ACTA currently stated, browsing the internet becomes basically impossible to do legally, as you have to download the page temporarily to your computer, including any copyrighted images that may happen to be on the page. For example, everyone on this forum is technically in violation of the new laws, as the Escapist logo is currently being stored on your computer. Whether or not this is enforced is besides the point, the mere fact that it is allowed is problematic.

 

[Space Spoons]

This, to me, smacks of the "War on Terrorism", as well as the "War on Drugs". The policies they're talking about are backwards, Draconian, and completely unenforceable. Ultimately, all it's going to be is a huge waste of taxpayer money that accomplishes nothing, just like the previous two attempts at combating something that can't be fought traditionally.

Now, I'm not saying piracy is right or anything like that. It's illegal, and I have no sympathy for anyone that gets caught... But you can't stop piracy. You can catch some of the bigger distributors, sure, but there's no way to catch every person who's ever downloaded something illegally. It's idiotic to think so.

Yo-ho, yo-ho a pirate's life for me.
I steal my pictures,
My music's free.
Oh, a pirate's life for me.

We torrent and download and don't give a hoot,
Seed up, me hearties, yo-ho!

Sorry, don't know what came over me.

 

[Sn1P3r M98]

Oh my lord, I never knew about this before. You have a laptop with a pirated game that you take through airport security, they can confiscate it. Even if it is totally clean, they can check and keep everyone in line waiting. So I'll finish with a quote from that anti ACTA sight that was linked to, "We cannot sit by and watch this happen. The Internet is a tremendous source of genuine free speech where ideas and criticisms are not limited by the whims of other people. We must stop this now, before it passes. Before it's too late."