Act against ACTA

The First Amendment, specifically freedom of speech and of the press, is under attack by a coalition of international leaders including our own President Barrack Obama. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, henceforth referred to as ACTA, is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. ACTA is intended to establish an international legal framework for copyright and trademark protection. It has only recently been disclosed to the public but many early drafts have been 'leaked'. Aside from ACTA's stated purpose it has many side effects such as

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

In addition ACTA would effectively create cyber thought crime such as searching google for copyrighted material, consequently censoring the internet and creating a doorway for the full takedown of and or circumvention of the First Amendment. As an international treaty ACTA resides above constitutional law and supercedes our rights as US citizens effectively nullifying the protection granted by the First Amendment.

As a means of "Acting Out Against ACTA" we plan to make a petition, to subsequently be sent to the White House and addressed to the President, creating informationaal fliers or leaflets to be distributed alongside the petition, creating a video documentary of the petition procedures and making posters to hang in and around the student union.

We want Congress to know that we oppose this measure. Do not allow it to pass.