Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Anonymous takes aim over Europe's SOPA (or in our case ACTA)
This is the usual authoritarian government response to any perceived threat or problem: impose ever more draconian, heavy handed restrictions on the traditional hard fought for liberties of the people. The Americans are suffering the Patriot Acts and increasing surveillance and restriction of liberty are proliferating throughout what was once the free world.
Acts of intellectual piracy and theft should be a matter for litigation by the injured parties.
Having said this I have long argued that governments could nevertheless help their small and medium sized companies protect their intellectual property be it patents, trademarks or copyright, through a government sponsored insurance on the lines of the Export Credit Guarantee Scheme that worked so well to encourage small firms to earn much needed export funds for this country.
Although not perfect in that it took six months for the wheels to turn the ECGD gave confidence to small firms that bad overseas debts would be pursued. More to the point rogue overseas defaulters when they learnt that the debt was insured by the government and they would be pursued with all the force that this implied would invariably pay up.
I argued forcibly in IDS's private office, when he led the opposition, with Greg Clarke his PPS, that a similar scheme should be set up to protect British companies' intellectual property, bearing in mind the crippling costs of fighting a patent infringement, trademarks and copyright are relatively straight forward once the infringer knows you will fight it.
Perhaps with our even more desperate need to export to reduce our horrendous national debt it is time for government to give serious thought to this?
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Anonymous takes aim over Europe's SOPA - by Elinor Mills January 27, 2012
Members of Parliament in Poland express their opposition to ACTA by holding paper Guy Fawkes masks in front of their faces. The masks are used by members of Anonymous. Online activists Anonymous are targeting the European Parliament and supporters of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which critics say would curtail freedom of expression and encourage surveillance by service providers.
Copyrightalliance.org was inaccessible today after Anonymous set its sights on the Web site for its pro-ACTA stance. Meanwhile, hackers were
poking at the sites of the European Parliament and governments in the EU, with plans to dig up information on officials that could be released publicly, a source familiar with Anonymous' plans told CNET.
Anonymous has a history of operations against what the group complains are antipiracy efforts that quash rights to freedom of expression on the Internet. The digital activists protested the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which lost steam last week after tech companies demonstrated with a one-day blackout. Following the takedown of popular file-hosting site MegaUpload and its operators, Anonymous launched successful distributed denial of service attacks on the Justice Department, the FBI, Universal Music, the Motion Picture Association of America, and others.
Critics say ACTA is even worse than SOPA in that it allows for closed door negotiations and can't be repealed. The European Parliament is due to vote on ACTA in June. After 22 European Union member states signed ACTA yesterday, the European Parliament's independent monitor for ACTA, Kader Arif of France, resigned today, saying he was opposed to the lack of transparency on the ACTA negotiations, the fact that the public was not consulted, and other unusual "manoeuvres," according to the BBC.
Meanwhile, in Poland, members of Parliament held paper Guy Fawkes masks--the symbol used by Anonymous--in front of their faces to protest ACTA, while Polish citizens demonstrated in the street against ACTA.
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