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Anti-ACTA Signal Boost
Aug. 16th, 2010 04:03 amI just picked this entry up from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darth_eldritch who picked it up from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom at Anti-Acta. You can copy and paste from this page, or use the easy cut and paste box at the botton of the Anti-Acta page.
ACTA stands for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This is an international agreement that is meant to protect intellectual properties and help combat the business of counterfeit goods and piracy on a global level. Given how prevalent and easy piracy is online, it would seem that this move would be inevitable and you can't really say it's wrong to combat something that basically amounts to theft, can you?
However you feel about piracy, I do think there's one bit of information that especially relevant to fandom: It will make copyright infringement a criminal offense.
The state of fandom in the US is very much a legal-grey area. There are people that will argue fanworks are considered transformative works and can be considered 'fair use', and there are also people that will argue that the use of intellectual property is not transformative enough and thus fanworks are copyright infringement. Either way, there has not been any legal case in the US that has set hard and fast rules on the legality of fandom, so those debates are based on the interpretation of currents laws that were meant to deal with more blatant cases of copyright infringement instead of cases of fans playing around with the source material and sharing their work with others.
But that is only within the US and, if it goes into affect, ACTA will have the ability to go above and beyond the US courts with their own definition of what could be considered "copyright infringement". If a US court were to declare fanworks 'fair use'? The enforcers of ACTA would be able to ignore that and you could get find yourself with a criminal record for your Mieu/Van epic.
That does sound a lot like overly paranoid talk doesn't it? It does sound quite a lot like "The governments of the world are after fandom, oh noes! /tinfoil hat" doesn't it?
With the information available, or especially the disturbing lack of information available, ACTA could very well go into effect as something that could mark fandom as a potentially illegal activity. LJ has already taken cautious actions in regards to fandom in the past and they still engage in the censoring of fandom communities (with the adult flagging of communities likemerlinslash ), and ACTA could give them reason to try and remove fandom communities entirely -- and they wouldn't be the only site on the internet to have reason to do so.
But all of that is just how it might affect fandom. There are plenty of other reasons to worry about ACTA as well. (And if you need to check, this forum post includes links to relevant articles. Do check the forums if you can as there's even more information there, as well as organization for protesting.)
ACTA is still in the negotiation phases so there is the potential that it will end up being something harmless. However, given that it's still being discussed in secret for the sake of "national security" (over a treaty to fight piracy on behalf of companies, not the average citizen) then it's quite possible that ACTA could become something very dangerous.
It's best to make sure the worst doesn't happen.
If you'd like to help right now, you can open http://www.anti-acta.com/reload.php in another tab or window and allow it to refresh. This should help put anti.acta.com on the top of Google's search and help spread awareness.
More information about protesting will be coming up, most likely in the forums. The dates are currently October 29th for the US (before the elections on November 2nd) and November 5th for everyone. If you're interested, make sure to keep either of those days free.
darth_eldritch who picked it up from metafandom at Anti-Acta. You can copy and paste from this page, or use the easy cut and paste box at the botton of the Anti-Acta page.ACTA stands for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This is an international agreement that is meant to protect intellectual properties and help combat the business of counterfeit goods and piracy on a global level. Given how prevalent and easy piracy is online, it would seem that this move would be inevitable and you can't really say it's wrong to combat something that basically amounts to theft, can you?
However you feel about piracy, I do think there's one bit of information that especially relevant to fandom: It will make copyright infringement a criminal offense.
The state of fandom in the US is very much a legal-grey area. There are people that will argue fanworks are considered transformative works and can be considered 'fair use', and there are also people that will argue that the use of intellectual property is not transformative enough and thus fanworks are copyright infringement. Either way, there has not been any legal case in the US that has set hard and fast rules on the legality of fandom, so those debates are based on the interpretation of currents laws that were meant to deal with more blatant cases of copyright infringement instead of cases of fans playing around with the source material and sharing their work with others.
But that is only within the US and, if it goes into affect, ACTA will have the ability to go above and beyond the US courts with their own definition of what could be considered "copyright infringement". If a US court were to declare fanworks 'fair use'? The enforcers of ACTA would be able to ignore that and you could get find yourself with a criminal record for your Mieu/Van epic.
That does sound a lot like overly paranoid talk doesn't it? It does sound quite a lot like "The governments of the world are after fandom, oh noes! /tinfoil hat" doesn't it?
With the information available, or especially the disturbing lack of information available, ACTA could very well go into effect as something that could mark fandom as a potentially illegal activity. LJ has already taken cautious actions in regards to fandom in the past and they still engage in the censoring of fandom communities (with the adult flagging of communities like
merlinslash ), and ACTA could give them reason to try and remove fandom communities entirely -- and they wouldn't be the only site on the internet to have reason to do so.But all of that is just how it might affect fandom. There are plenty of other reasons to worry about ACTA as well. (And if you need to check, this forum post includes links to relevant articles. Do check the forums if you can as there's even more information there, as well as organization for protesting.)
ACTA is still in the negotiation phases so there is the potential that it will end up being something harmless. However, given that it's still being discussed in secret for the sake of "national security" (over a treaty to fight piracy on behalf of companies, not the average citizen) then it's quite possible that ACTA could become something very dangerous.
It's best to make sure the worst doesn't happen.
If you'd like to help right now, you can open http://www.anti-acta.com/reload.php in another tab or window and allow it to refresh. This should help put anti.acta.com on the top of Google's search and help spread awareness.
More information about protesting will be coming up, most likely in the forums. The dates are currently October 29th for the US (before the elections on November 2nd) and November 5th for everyone. If you're interested, make sure to keep either of those days free.
