La Quadrature Du Net has an article out today titled, “A Strategy Looking Through ACTA and Beyond” that I have to say seem blinkered and lacking lateral thinking.
From the article,
“Over the last two weeks, events have radically altered the course of the debate on ACTA and its ratification procedure, both at the EU and Member States levels. The tremendous citizen pressure definitely had an effect and altered the balance of power. Scared that ACTA might promptly be rejected, EU Commissioner De Gucht managed to delay the procedure by one or two years. With clear objectives in mind, it might be time to look also beyond ACTA to understand how we can collectively attempt to protect our freedoms online while fixing the broken copyright regime currently waging war on the free Internet.”
I agree recent events have altered the balance of power, and citizens have been mobilized into action. I wrote this article explaining what I thought could be done with this mobilized citizen force.
I am a supporter of LQDN, but I think they have missed several large elephants in the room with regards to what is “beyond ACTA“.
In this article is what I believe is beyond ACTA, and that article is only the tip of the iceberg I think.
I would like LQDN, other Civil Society organizations, and concerned citizens to expand on that article so we may all know ALL the proposed new and to-be-modified legislations/agreements/Treaties there are being planned by our authorities that will have an impact on our “freedoms online“; their names, the stages at which they are at, time-frames, etc etc [with information via links].
Further, as well as online freedoms, there is a lot of works that needs to be put in to shore up citizens’ data. I have written this article that explains some of the attacks on citizens privacy and this article to try to show some of the ways a netizen could help protect themselves against privacy snooping.
- 1. Copyright needs to be fixed, there is no question on that.
- 2. Online freedoms need to be protected, indeed, expanded.
- 3. Citizens’ data needs more protecting than is currently in place/currently planned.
These are the three issues I think citizens whom were mobilised against ACTA would also feel very strongly about and I think Civil Society organizations like LQDN should help inform them fully regarding these other attacks and deficiencies in citizens’ protection.
For me, the most pressing matter is the proposed Passenger Data Records legislation, for details on that, see this article.
If the above comes across as sharp, I apologize. I am very concerned (and a little emotional) about much more than one Agreement (ACTA, and the footnoted TPP) and trying to get changes to copyright law. I believe there are many more lines of attack being perpetrated on citizens and I think Civil Society and netizens need to become and remain seized of them.
Sincerely,
awbMaven
awbMaven 
Hello,
For “la quadrature”, “free internet” means “free content”(in the sense cost and not freedom, or let’s say in both senses), or with a “global licence”(in the sense tax and not licence/IP rights for some work independantly of machines, editors, etc) to fund authors and creators, or some form of “global sponsorship” “mecenat global” à la Richard Stallman.
Clearly not what I would favor, for me the top priorities should be :
– freedom of expression (no censorship for original work)
– Privacy : and this means not setting up a system relying on some form of global monitoring for it to function (regarding revenues redistribution in particular), but it also means that one private “bookshelf”(list of content free or not bought by an individual) should truly be private.
– content quality (and current content on the web for instance very far from what it could potentially be)
– keeping direct authors/public relationship and leaving to the authors the decision on how and at what price they want to publish their work
– ease of use : not having to deal with files all over the place, ability to constitute oneself a “bookshelf”(disco video shelf), not inherently linked to some tech giant (apple, amz, google, etc)
And for this what is truly lacking is the definition of a new role and role separation :
– one one side “private licence account managers” organisations : holding all content licences for an individual (or group possible also)
– on the other side creators/editors/shops/content holders
A bit more developed below :
And check for instance video at the bottom regarding google play, which basically is setting up such an environment in a monopolistic fashion.
Today everything is somehow “muddied around” with technical buzzwords such as “cloud” and the like which in a way forbid to adress the true questions, which are more related to actors and structure among them.
The switch that is necessary is to move from “files and copies mindset” towards “licence mindset”, or in other words “if I have bought this thing, I can access it and I don’t deal with files”.
This requires the role separation to be clearly defined, as much and — before– technical aspects.