Friends don’t spy on friends
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- The Berne Convention was formed to protect intellectual property.
It’s been quoted by most American politicians for the last 10 years as the reason America needs to get tough with the P2P community.
It’s interesting that the United States only became a signatory to the convention on March the 1, 1989, a mere six months after the first news story surfaced about Echelon in 1988 (scroll down to the August 18 entry).
In other words, prior to that date, the United States didn’t recognise the validity of Intellectual Property outside its borders.
With its penetrative Deep Packet Inspection policies, implemented initially through Echelon, then via triplet encryption keys in windows, and now Ak — and some hardware vendors — it could be argued the US still doesn’t recognize the value of Intellectual Property, except where it pertains to the wealth and well being of its natives, office holders or corporate entities.
Many wonder why the European Parliament is concerned about Intellectual Property protection (ACTA).
An article from ZDNet explains part of the nature of the problem »»»
Duncan Campbell’s Scientific and Technical Options Assessment (STOA) April 2000 report to the European Union entitled Interception Capabilities 2000 states that those governments implicated in Echelon routinely monitor commercial communications. This report also states that in the US a process was developed “whereby NSA data could be used to support commercial and economic interests.”
The US didn’t count on hundreds of thousands of young hackers finding extraordinary methods of obfuscating, encrypting and misleading DPI into not being able to read the commercial data therein.
Therefore it had no choice. It had to drag in the RIAA.
Our guess is that the conversation went something like this »»»
Now look here RIAA. Our economy is going to go belly up unless you can convince the world to stop using P2P.
How can we compete against the whole world unless we can read their confidential business plans?
We’ve fixed Microsoft Windows, but we just can’t get into that open source Linux stuff.
You guys created this mess by suing Napster. Now fix it. And you can’t tell them that it’s because we can’t read their emails to each other. You have to come up with another reason.
For countries to continue to kowtow to US demands to criminalise intellectual property sharing, they must demand that Echelon data be freely shared with all signatories to the Berne convention.
And if the US really is more concerned with illegal file sharing than it is with snooping on the world’s population, it will of course immediately comply.
In other words, the USA should clean up in its own backyard before it can justify its pontification attitude to foreign Governments.
The first thing to remember is: friends don’t spy on friends.
Wake up world – smell the coffee!
The US stance on Intellectual Property protection is “Do as I say, not as I do”.
Does anyone else see a problem with this?
Or am I all alone on this little island.
Tom Koltai – p2pnet
[Koltai is an economist in Sydney Australia. He's says he's been online for 26 years, has run several ISPs and, "lobbied governments in four countries to prevent Internet restrictive usage legislation from being enacted". He says he's a strong believer in P2P, "as being a technological requirement to fully exploit the convergence of telephony with computers and remove the last barriers to human communication and interaction".]
May, 2009
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Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
May 4th, 2009 at 9:36 am
“With its penetrative Deep Packet Inspection policies, implemented initially through Echelon, then via triplet encryption keys in”
End of sentence is missing.
May 4th, 2009 at 9:41 am
^^ Fixed. Thanks.
Cheers!
May 4th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Okay, I promise I’ll be nice this time (smirk)
1. The Berne Convention is a pernicious piece of shit as far as legislation goes, in that it allows — in principle — for perpetual copyright terms, thus abandoning the notion of the “Public Domain” at root. True, no nation has actually DONE perpetual copyright terms (at least not on paper, even though the Eldred decision pretty much gets the same effect by way of allowing retroactive increase to arbitrary length, just so it’s still listed as a “limited time” every step of the way.
So the Berne Convention is dangerous bullshit in itself.
2. The U.S. violating International Law? Heaven forbid!
(Didn’t I read something about the Bush administration frantically redefining stuff so as to not qualify as “torture”?)
Not to beat a dead horse, but the Berne Convention and Eldred decision are two examples where governments intervened, supposedly to solve a “problem”, and it hasn’t turned out to be that good of a deal.
They also say that, thanks to international treaties, they can’t fix it.
Just something to consider when you advocate that government “fix” DPI/Net Neutrality.
Okay….I’m done now
(Really, don’t mind me — I haven’t slept in 72 hours at this point, so I might be a bit edgy.)
Insomnia sucks.
May 4th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
The more a government’s reason in being is to protect and enforce corporate interests, the more its citizens become the enemy. We are not the enemy.
May 4th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
It is the intellectual property owners which will cause there own demise. And here is how. The Burne convention, the federal laws all count on one prevailing fact.
That is that no intellectual property owner will ever abuse the right. On April 10, 1997 directv used there intellectual property right to reach in to My Box and take the programming I paid for away. (Luaces V. Directv Miami 1997) They were sued and paid 11 million to 31 states for what was called a bait and switch. So the intellectual property right owner can and has used their right to commit crimes of theft and bait and switch. There are unrecognized victims when such crimes are committed. Our system permits intellectual property rights owners to commit such crimes because they hold the right. Sounds crazy but true!
Now that we can see how intellectual property rights owners can use a right to commit crime, now comes the second aspect. When an American takes lawful action to defend from the crime perpetrated by the intellectual property rights owner, the intellectual property rights owner can use intellectual property laws to sue people for interfering with property rights when they try and stop a theft.
In time, there will become enough abuses on the part of intellectual property owners that courts will realize that an intellectual property rights owner who uses there right to steal or perpetrate theft cannot be allowed to continue to steal. That the intellectual property rights owner cannot profit in a later lawsuit against people for having tried to stop crimes where unlawful use of intellectual property rights were used to carry out the crime against a consumer.
May 4th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
If you read just a small part of the Echelon info, its not hard to see why alot of our governments would want DPI in place.
With the advent of VOIP, they are no longer in a position to easily monitor our voice comunications.
It might sound alarmist (flame on) but DPI is likely a whole different and dangerous can of worms than anyone so far is imagining.
And I can imagine quite a lot!
May 5th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
The real prooblem facing Government today is that the Internet has reached critical chaotic mass.
In other words – whereas ten years ago, the internet was a way for small companies to hawk their wares to a wider audoence and become bigger companies (thereby increasing the tax basket) today, the Internet allows individuals to find and interact with other individuals on a global basis and air their opinions publicly with no censorship.
When the Che’s of the world find and interact with each other – public opinion insurgence is but moments away.
Comments like those above – are the new food for inquiring mnds – many of whom were born in the decade ecelon was first turned on.
These generations have never had the benefit of being able to communicate electronically without being eavesdropped on.
I have – and I can tell you – it is good. Not having to watch my P’s and Q’s for fear of adding to the file of a “Person of Interst” was a fine feeling.
These days – everything I write via the Internet is analysed before I press the send button – is this the sentence that will have me arrested? Are these the words that will have some Government Department ring another and say – “OK Get Koltai again – he still hasnt learnt his lesson”.
Echelon, Deep Packet Inspection and similar activities are the beginings of removal of human basic rights – that is – the freedom of speech and to express ones opinion without fear of imprisonment or personal harm.
The real danger of the “Copyright wars” is that they are being used as a justification for the implementation of a whole host of “Human Rights” removal initiatives.