Category: Proposals

Proposal to Denounce Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

Passed consensus by the Technology Operations Group 2/8/2012

We propose that the New York City General Assembly take a public stand against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)*.

ACTA is an international agreement between the United States**, the European Union, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Morocco, Singapore and most of the developed countries of the world with virtually no input from the public. It bypasses the laws of participating nations and applies to countries that were never involved in the negotiations. ACTA negotiations have taken place behind closed doors, without disclosure of the details***.

Certain provisions of ACTA are as restrictive or worse than anything contained in Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), proposed by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and extends beyond the United States, into most of the developed countries of the world and the undeveloped countries by proxy.

We should all be very worried about the implications of ACTA and other trade agreements on the global economy, the ripple effects of which would reach all of us regardless of geographical location.

  • ACTA impacts, directly and indirectly, the health, wellbeing and welfare of the poor residing in all developed and undeveloped Countries.
  • ACTA threatens the manufacturing and distribution of generic drugs, farms and farmers and food independence in developed and undeveloped Countries by enforcing seed patents.
  • ACTA threatens our very rights to privacy, our civil liberties, worldwide innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet by forcing ISP’s across the globe to act as Internet police.
  • ACTA all but outlaws the use of copyrighted audio samples in new musical works and live performances.
  • ACTA was not passed in congress and is, therefore, unconstitutional****.

*Final, legally verified Agreement: http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/Final-ACTA-text-following-legal-verification.pdf (http://www NULL.dfat NULL.gov NULL.au/trade/acta/Final-ACTA-text-following-legal-verification NULL.pdf)

**Although the process was begun by the Bush administration, it was ratified October 1, 2011 under the Obama administration (http://www NULL.ustr NULL.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2011/october/partners-sign-groundbreaking-anti-counterfeiting-t), under a procedure that bypassed the need for Senate confirmation.

***Information on ACTA remained secret until a discussion released by Wikileaks on May 8, 2008 (http://wikileaks NULL.org/wiki/ACTA_industry_negotiating_brief_on_Border_Measures_and_Civil_Enforcement_2008), and leaked copies of documents continued to be the only source of information.

****Ron Wyden (http://wyden NULL.senate NULL.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=12a5b1cb-ccb8-4e14-bb84-a11b35b4ec53) issued a statement that if the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) ratifies ACTA without Congress’ consent, it may be circumventing Congress’s Constitutional authority to regulate international commerce and protect intellectual property.

More Information

» English (https://www NULL.accessnow NULL.org/page/-/docs/acta-bklt-d NULL.pdf)
» Español (http://www NULL.manzanamecanica NULL.org/files/ACCESS_EDRI_TACD-por_que_oponerse_al_acta_ES NULL.pdf)

Other Organizations Opposed to ACTA

  • Médecins Sans Frontières (http://www NULL.msf NULL.org/msf/articles/2010/12/ten-stories-that-mattered-in-access-to-medicines-in-2010 NULL.cfm)
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www NULL.eff NULL.org/issues/acta)
  • Free Network Foundation (http://www NULL.freenetworkfoundation NULL.org/)
  • Free Software Foundation (http://www NULL.fsf NULL.org/campaigns/acta)
  • European Digital Rights (http://www NULL.edri NULL.org/edrigram/number10 NULL.1/whats-wrong-with-ACTA)
  • OXFAM (http://www NULL.oxfam NULL.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2010-06-29/acta-could-endanger-lives-people-needing-affordable-medicines)
  • Greens/European Free Alliance (http://rfc NULL.act-on-acta NULL.eu/fundamental-rights)

Friendly Amendments Integrated into Proposal

  • Add language that states since the Senate did not approve the agreement, it is clearly unconstitutional
  • Add list of all the other folks that have come out against ACTA, like Free Network Foundation
  • Fix grammar

Proposed Amendment to the OWS Principles of Solidarity

The Technology Operations working group is proposing the following to the NYC General Assembly:

Proposal

Part 1

An amendment to one point on the Principles of Solidarity.

We propose replacing the following point of unity:

  • “Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source.”

… with this text:

  • “Making technologies, knowledge, and culture open to all to freely access, create, modify, and distribute.”

Part 2

To host the authoritative copy of our official documents on a version control system. Version control will allow us to maintain the documents in a more transparent way, with every edit tracked. It will also allow other occupations to use, modify, and alter the New York City General Assembly’s documents to fit their own unique needs, while maintaining a clear path back to the source document.

Overview

We wish to put forward a wider vision of how openness relates to the “new socio-political and economic alternative” described in the Principles of Solidarity. It’s not only that the source code for software should be public and transparent, but also that it should be available for sharing, modification, and re-use. And this spirit of freedom should extend beyond software, to hardware designs, digitized media including images, audio, and video, data, research papers, and other forms of information that we haven’t yet imagined. Consumers should never have any artificial restrictions placed on their ability to tweak, to remix, to become makers.

As with the original wording, there is no mandate to use only free software, or to make every video occupiers record immediately public. Rather, we want to make it clear that we value freedom and openness in technologies, knowledge, and culture, and that we work towards a world where this freedom can be complete.

Background

We were prompted by an email from the tireless free software pioneer Richard Stallman, who wrote that he was disappointed in the current wording “because ‘open source’ is a right-wing campaign to disconnect our software from our freedom-based philosophy. It was launched in 1998 with the explicit goal of being corporate-friendly. It is ironic that Occupy Wall Street, of all things, advocates open source rather than the free software movement.”

After some discussion (http://www NULL.nycga NULL.net/groups/tech/forum/topic/open-source-flo-and-the-principals-of-solidarity/), we agreed to propose to the GA a change to the wording to include both “free” and “open”. We aren’t doing this because we want to ally ourselves with one side of an old dispute about terminology, but rather because we want to put forward a wider vision of openness than the Principles of Solidarity currently offer.

Tech Ops reached consensus on this proposal Sunday, February 5th, 2012 (http://www NULL.nycga NULL.net/groups/tech/docs/meeting-minutes-tech-ops-2012-02-05 NULL.).