newer version see http://pad.constantvzw.org:8000/ACTA2
EXPRESSION OF CONCERN WITH REGARD TO THE ACTA-DECLARATION
This expression of concern has been sent to:
*[local member of EU parliament, Belgium]
*[local member of EU parliament, Spain]
*[local member of EU parliament, The Netherlands]
*[local member of EU parliament, France]
*[local member of EU parliament, UK]
*[local member of EU parliament, Hungary]
*...
-> add members of national parliaments too!
[Jara places this somewhere: Cultural artefacts are social agents]
INTRODUCTION
Who we are: members of European medialabs, digital artists, new media artists, creatives, makers and thinkers - a community of curiosity. We are members of a large community whose members are curious to learn from each others' practice. Our Libre-practice reflects our belief in open sharing of knowledge, tools, the freedom of participation in all common interests. We use digital and networked tools on a daily basis to exchange knowledge. We see a high potential of using digital tools to improve accessibility and enhance participation.
http://constantvzw.org/verlag/spip.php?page=article&id_article=110
*LABtoLAB is a network initiated by 4 European "laboratory-organisations" that aims to create a platform for :
OR
*Many of us are members of four European "laboratory-organisations" which initiated LABtoLAB network to create a platform for:
- sharing experiences and ways of doings;
- studying specific cases;
- exploring the role of the lab in offering spaces for collaborative learning and knowledge exchange;
- examining the possibilities of life-long learning in the context of the lab.
Our work is recognized by our peers, cultural institutions, national and European authorities, global participants.
LABtoLAB initiative is supported by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme Grundtvig.
Among the program's aims: improve the quality and amount of co-operation between adult education organisations ; develop innovative adult education and management practices, and encourage widespread implementation of them; ensure that people on the margins of society have access to adult education ; support innovative ICT-based educational content, services and practices etc.
////// So why give us money to work if draft laws makes this work - access to knowledge and culture - impossible?
Our concerns are your concerns.
Attilla Nemes with Attila Bujdosó and Catherine Lenoble
CONCERNS
0. We promote free culture!
former title: ACTA threatens Free Culture (we've first have to prove it! which articles?
Peter wrote: Labs connected through LABtoLAB support free culture for ideological as well as practical reasons. We find it important that users of technological tools are empowered and motivated to understand tools and technology by using them freely. In our daily work we organise workshops that contribute to the spreading of knowledge. In educational terms: Promoting 'Media literacy' demands that people who are interested in learning the basic principles and techniques that are fundamental to the softwares we daily use can be enabled to take resonsibility, on all levels, for the tools they work with, for the data they process, for the media they use to convey their messages with.
Olivier says: contents creation and contents technical broadcast are two different domains which need one another, but none should prevail over the other
ACTA gives responsibilities to ISPs to control the data traffic and the softwares and protocols that are used on servers. This scrutiny right deprives the end-user of its own responsibility
We believe this denies people the right to apply technology the way the think is best. It limits opportunities for individual development and artistic expression.
Empowering people to take responsibility for their own platforms, for setting up their proper means of communication is vital to a real culture of exchange. A culture that is 'free' as in 'free speech'.
Acta gives ISP's more responsibilities
Dissemination of free culture requires free tools, the dissemination of the latter is endangered by ACTA (see 6). By technically making the tools illegal, it slows down the spreading of free culture through digital networks.
This accessible and free culture is important to ensure a future in which people are knowledgeable in using computers, the internet, the softwares, and in which 'Digital Fractures' ) no longer exist.
(Olivier says 'fracture numerique' is a term used by Chirac to point to people suffering from digital accidents
We are for a free culture.
Understood as a culture that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media, we need a legal framework for that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_movement
Social and technological advances make it possible for a growing part of humanity to access, create, modify, publish and distribute various kinds of works - artworks, scientific and educational materials, software, articles - in short: anything that can be represented in digital form. Many communities have formed to exercise those new possibilities and create a wealth of collectively re-usable works.
Most authors, whatever their field of activity, whatever their amateur or professional status, have a genuine interest in favoring an ecosystem where works can be spread, re-used and derived in creative ways. The easier it is to re-use and derive works, the richer our cultures become. http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
We believe in the free exchange of Cultural Goods
Do we promote the free an exchange of cultural goods ? / means of production? maybe through applying open content licenses.
How exactly is ACTA disrupting this
We use and develop free cultural works.
Works
If ACTA had been in power, would Wikipedia have existed?
[TRYING TO INTEGRATE POINT 7 IN THIS; FLIP IT TO POSITIVE]
PETER Olivier
1. Patents, Intellectual Property (IP) infringement and counterfeiting should not be confused *
ACTA is an amalgame: counterfeiting is not relative to patent (idea) but to form counterfeiting: protecting from dangerous products is not equal to track down (any kind of) IP infringement.
Why this confusion, mixing is problematic?
The assimilation of all IP infringement to counterfeiting makes it difficult to respond adequately to a situation. It favors simple responses, makes it hard to be nuanced in a context where nuances make a lot of difference. In the cultural field, quotes, appropriations, mixing, parodies are key elements in many works.
Why this amalgame is dangerous? By making IP infringement an act of counterfeiting, it makes it possible to punish with higher sanctions: destruction of products, but also destruction of plants of production.
Example from FFII text:
"Ambiguous cases of trademark confusion are not counterfeiting, they are business conflicts. Like the conflict between Apple Corps Ltd, founded by The Beatles, and Apple Computer Inc. By addressing all infringements, ACTA sees Apple Computer Inc. as a counterfeiter. There is no reason to seize Apple computers, laptops and iPhones at the border or to destroy Apple Computers Inc's production facilities. Apple Computer Inc. is a company, not a criminal organisation. Business conflicts can be solved by paying a reasonable sum of money." we could find examples in artistic practices: illegal art, etc.
Disproportonality
[THIS WE WILL WORK ON LATER]
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2. Cultural practice is not just about commerce
EU enforcement is based on an assumption of proportionality, for it to work you need a definition of the crime. Commercial abuse is the starting point, but what is commercial? What is non-commercial?
Lack of a clear definition of this difference while is used all the time. Nothing is not commercial; specify this for cultural practice: for medialabs it is important that not all digital practice is defined according to commercial interests, vocabulary.
-culture as a collective issue produced by everybody, not only by a few profesionals that get paid for producing cultural 'contents' and the rest are reduced to a homogeneous mass of spectators / clients (?). It's important to acknowledge that culture is mostly produced by non paid praticioners. (and the internet is an extraordinary field to see this).
-economy, market, wealth and even commerce can be more than maximazing benefits.
the need of other indicators than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (gross national happiness (GNH) ???)
applied to Medialabs more concretely:
wealth of networks -> wealth of cultural environments, new methodologies, and figures that take digital world as an example for developing practices and projects within the physical world. This creates wealth in a different sense, maybe non-direclty, but definitely in a strong shape.
"ACTA's criminal measures criminalise ordinary companies and individuals. ACTA can be used to criminalise newspapers revealing a document, office workers forwarding a file and private downloaders. A whistle blower or weblog author revealing a document in the public interest, may easily be prosecutable, for instance if the webpage contains advertisements. Remixers and others sharing a file are included if there is an advantage. This advantage may be "indirect", a concept too unclear to incorporate in criminal law: it may be fulfilled by others. ACTA is not limited to large scale activity, as claimed earlier by the Commission. There is no de minimis exception either."
(FFII)
Notes
// We need to argue for a more subtle, layered understanding of economy
// amateurism/professionalism and link to media literacy (just by using technology you create culture)
// commercial is not well-defined that means risk but also provides a grey zone for activity
Jara Rocha
Marcos García
Laura Fernández
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3. Cultural heritage deserves to be used
In our practice, to be able to re-mix and work with cultural heritage since it helps building our historical memory and identity, even more if this heritage is accessible through internet, reinforcing the political power of citizens. To stimulate a cultural dynamics, we need to encourage re-use especially when they are probably not under copyright. Not lively. Now, the digital documents that are in the public domain can be accessed, tagged, connected, commented and self-organized collaboratively by users, becoming a collective work of mantaining alive and updated a quality public respository or archive of information.
Also, we think that it is important to recognize, highlight and assimilate the potential of the new ways of collective production through the use of new technologies of information and communication.
EU wants to stimulate citizens to enjoy and validate their heritage. For that purpose they need to feel themselves part of the process, not invited neither scared of it.
The European Commission will be examining a variety of methods to address the orphan works issue (books, photographs, pamphlets, audio recordings, video, broadcasts and other related ones) in three ways:
a) limitating the access to them and to the “opt-out” licensed works,
b) creating a payment fee to use them
c) extending their copyright and related rights.
However, tools for computer translations of works into different languages are being rapidly improved, and there is growing interest in making digital versions of such works widely available.
¿¿¿Under the Berne Convention, there is greater flexibility in fashioning solutions based upon limitations on remedies than on compulsory licensing of works, particularly if the solution involves free uses of works where owners are never found.??
The provisions in ACTA will make it much more difficult to address the orphan works problem, by closing off one promising avenue for policy intervention.
http://keionline.org/node/992
We support the idea of orphan works and works with no explicit copyright or owner should belong to the public domain and therefore be managed, accessed, re-used and distributed by the collectivity.
Add: what artists wants is good for commons
Nerea, Patricia, Rocío, Irene, Yolanda and María
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4. The process of decisionmaking is unclear *
Full disclosure of documents is only a start? Who negotiates, has mandate, ...
Lack of accountability (what do we mean by that? What do we expect from that?)
No clear way citizens can intervene, respond (What would we imagine as a way to respond?)
To discuss: what is transparency. Representation of civil organisations.
take care we look at effects outside the net, outside ACTA
Who is deciding (we know only which countries)?
How does it keep with, overwrites national laws
To make sure that civil society is informed, is concerned, included in the process.
ACTA is a blank cheque
ACTA will create an ACTA Committee, which anticipates future amendments to ACTA. Requests to include language that the ACTA would operate in an open, inclusive and transparency manner were ignored. It is a shapeshifter, a multi-headed monster.
It can touch all domains, it is not limited
It has so much effect on everyday practices. We can't imagine signing a blank cheque to people who seem to understand so little to the creativity taking place in the digital networks.
See future of the lab text -> democracy, Internet
[THIS WE WILL WORK ON LATER; IT IS A GENERAL POINT]
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5. ACTA complicates international collaboration **
International collaboration is vital for us. We work with countries outside ACTA too. We don't want our collaborators outside ACTA treaty to be complying as a result of our network
Might force non-signing countries to comply.
Example: The fight against climate change will inherit the problems in the software field. In a general way, like trivial patents, amassing of patents, patent trolls, frivolous lawsuits, hampering of follow up innovation and high transaction costs. And in direct ways, there are green software and business patents, e.g. on regulating traffic toll fees based on traffic volume/pollution. And many modern products, like hybrid cars, contain software. To win the fight against climate change, fast diffusion of green technology is needed. Not only policy makers know this, patent trolls know this too.
// also free/unlimited flow of knowledge powers experimentation, innovation, economic growth, etc.
ACTA also evidences a clear lack of awareness on the manner in which green technology in the energy and infrastructure sectors operate. The majority of systems (for example, wind turbines, water turbines, and solar collectors) rely on cross-border up-time-management software and systems. ACTA explicitly and adversely impacts the ability to transmit grid and local data, operate feedback mechanisms to energy suppliers, and operate security protocols across international rail, air, and shipping infrastructure applications. Once again, in an effort to be responsive to the media industry, a far larger component of the global IT infrastructure is being overlooked. This, in the short term, will create unintended liabilities and, in the long term, like we’ve seen in the flow of energy from Russia into Europe, may be the source of highly politicized controversy and impairment.
Countries may do so, but not obliged to and in respect to their laws.
Collaboration with Brazil, India ...
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6. ACTA threatens our tools / working environment
Tools shape practice & practice shapes tools
Nécessaire pour questionner et nourrir une culture vivante contemporaine en infrastructure digitale qui permet d'activer l'imaginaire de chacun / antibiotique de notre société (innovéé, nourrie en permanence). Pour pouvoir réaliser cela on a besoin de:
* Autonomie:
- les outils: costumize tools for personal projects: pouvoir inventer de nouvelles pratiques qui n'existent pas (encore) dans des offres commerciales
-> droit à l'exploration d'outils/goûts/styles... (ce qu'on n'apprend pas à l'école)
-> processus d'apprentissage: demande un accès au source code
- l'espace de travail: medialabs as isps: importance des espaces d'expérimentation ouvertes aux collaborateurs (serveurs/blogs...) - maîtrise d'environnement (cfr peintre qui peut changer température/lumière de son espace
- les collaborations:
-> tu ne peux plus être que consommateur
-> les aspects multitasking sont tellement larges qu'on rentre en collaboration/dialogue entre praticiens/ingénieurs / multitasking requires collaboration
* Diversité:
- languages réflètent de différentes façons de penser: la diversité permet de changer de perspective, et donc transformer, innover
- outils: combiner plusieurs dans une pratique distribuée, dépenser l'argent ailleurs que dans le paiement des licences (vs un graphiste qui travaille avec un package Adobe et paie une fois la license)
-> signifirait: procédure administrative lourde pour collaborer avec sociétés
* Assurer l'évolution de la pratique (par commentaires, déviations...): partage du résultat permet d'innover sa propre pratique par les retours – 'prendre c'est donner' (commentaires, critiques...)
Contemporary creative work depends largely on digital tools. These tools are cultural objects themselves, and constitute a vital part of creative practice. Because digital tools often suffer from overdetermined functionality and are full of conventions about the way things “ought” to be done, it is important that practitioners take part in their construction. Unavoidably shaped by conventional models of production and distribution, tools condition creative practice in terms of divisions of labour, vocabulary and medium.
Free, Libre and Open Source Software
The proposal of the Free, Libre and Open Source Software movement (F/LOSS) to make source code available under a Free license, interests us at many levels. First of all we find important the principle that both producers and users of software have the right to read, change, distribute and alter the code. To us, securing free knowledge exchange is a prerequisite for any form of innovation. Secondly, the availability of source code allows us to both learn from and take part in the social construction of software. Last but not least, we are inspired by the lively culture of collaborative development that grew out of this radical proposition.
Today, free software tools and dynamics are increasingly present among European medialabs. we use them for our infrastructure of communication, diffusion, interaction and archiving. We use these softwares developed by communities or companies, and we contribute back to the effort: by reporting, debugging, and creating tools or add-ons ourselves.
Distribution
It makes it more difficult to distribute free software: Without file sharing and P2P technologies like BitTorrent, distributing large amounts of free software becomes much harder, and more expensive. BitTorrent is a grassroots protocol that allows everyone to contribute to legally distributing free software.
[How is p2p under threat: why, how will ACTA effect p2p]
"ACTA would require that existing ISP no longer host free software that can access copyrighted media; this would substantially affect many sites that offer free software or host software projects such as SourceForge. Specifically the FSF argues that ACTA will make it more difficult and expensive to distribute free software via file sharing and P2P technologies like BitTorrent, which are currently used to distribute large amounts of free software."
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_World_of_Peer-to-Peer_%28P2P%29/What_is_Peer-to-Peer_%28P2P%29/Shadow_play
Patents
Same situation as innovations counter climate change?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management
http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta
[MIGHT NEED TO MOVE HIGHER UP; SEEMS MOST IMPORTANT ARGUMENT WITH RESPECT TO OUR PRACTICE]
An Mertens, Alex Leray
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7. ACTA supports a culture of fear and suspicion
ACTA contributes to a culture of surveillance and suspicion, in which the freedom that is required to produce free software is seen as dangerous and threatening rather than creative, innovative, and exciting.
Example:
By placing in the hands of the ISP's the responsibility of monitoring the behaviour of the users, it will create an atmosphere of suspicion where the first concern of the ISP will be to protect itself from damages.Therefore, it will stimulate ISPs to take pre-emptive actions: shutting down websites on first notice.
ACTA would create a de facto presumption of infringement
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/three-core-reasons-for-rejecting-acta
Restrictions on limitations to 3rd party liability (ie. limited safe harbour rules for ISPs). For example, in order for ISPs to qualify for a safe harbour, they would be required establish policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP infringing content. Provisions are modeled under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, namely Article 18.10.30. They include policies to terminate subscribers in appropriate circumstances. Notice-and-takedown, which is not currently the law in Canada nor a requirement under WIPO, would also be an ACTA requirement.
update recent version of Acta:
Note that neither of these provisions create new substantive obligations. The first provision requires an effort to promote cooperative efforts, not new laws. The second provision is permissive - a party may provide new laws, but is not required to do so.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5352/125/
[TRYING TO INTEGRATE THIS IN POINT 0 and 3]
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SIGNATURES
*IMPORTANT NOTE: do we sign as individuals or as institutions? For our case, as Kitchen Budapest, we (2 Attilas) cannot sign legally any such document so we suggest to sign it as individuals
This statement has been created and signed by participants of LABtoLAB meeting in Brussels, January 2011.*
*LABtoLAB is a network initiated by 4 European "laboratory-organisations" that aims to create a platform for :
instead of organizations, a list of participants (name, title) should be edited! (see SIGNATURES at bottom)
*Medialab Prado (ES)
*An Mertens, Nicolas Maleve, Femke Snelting, Peter Westenberg, Wendy Van Wynsberghe (Constant and Samedies, Belgium)
*Furtherfield (UK)
*PING (FR)
*Kitchen Budapest (HU)
*...
[Who is signing: Medialabs, digital artists, new media artists, creatives, makers with a libre-practice depending on the net.]
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NOTES
Links on samedies wiki: http://samedi.collectifs.net/wiki/index.php?n=Programme.Pr%e9parationSamedieNo34
More?
commercialization vs. file-sharing, knowledge sharing
how it blocks research, creation, cultural production
empowerment not enforcement
collaboration, exchange is essential. Blocking it is counterproductive
1. Confusion
[Attention: We don't want to say: you can do counterfeiting, but keep it away from the net]
"We are in danger of ending up with the worst of both worlds, pushing IP rules, which are very effective at stopping access to life-saving drugs but are very bad at stopping or preventing fake drugs." Michelle Childs of Médecins Sans Frontières, Nobel Peace Prize winners
Why patents are bad
Patents have to be fully excluded from the scope of ACTA. ACTA endangers European SMEs, innovation, technology transfer and human lives. The software field is plagued by patents, infringement is often unavoidable. Software, and products containing software, may be covered by hundreds or thousands of patents. Many of these patents are bad patents, that should never have been granted. No patent office in the world has been able to solve the bad patents problem. It is too expensive. Unavoidable infringements combined with heightened damages gives holders of huge patent portfolios the option to eliminate competition from open source projects, community projects, alternative development models on their own, or by using a proxy, a patent troll. Patent trolls acquire excessive power. Patentee overcompensation also leads to excessive transaction costs and consumer prices.
Inclusion of patents in ACTA does not only lead to problems in the ICT sector. The inclusion of patents in ACTA causes serious issues with regards to access to medicine. Not protected by the Doha Declaration, diffusion of green technology may face worse problems than access to medicine. The heightened damages invoke an accelerated patent arms race, making the problems worse.
[how to speak about the effect on cultural practice, specific effects]
http://action.ffii.org/acta/Analysis
2. Commercial/non-commercial
[do we mean: same law used for non-commercial and commercial use > non-proportional?]
Splitting amateur from professional
How to express the concern that it is an arrangement between many countries, but not all.
7. Free Software
[Why we are we concerned by Free Software being affected?]
1. Digital Rights Management
How is DRM the result of ACTA ... ACTA as a re-introduction of DRM as a standard
It will make it harder for users of free [so ... only for free systems according to FSF?] operating systems to play media: Consumers may no longer be able to buy media without DRM -- and DRMed media cannot be played with free software.
This increases the chances of getting your devices taken away: Portable media players that support free formats are less common than devices which support DRM, such as the iPod. Will this make them suspicious to border guards?
DRM and installing your own system? DRM in chips? Free hardware? Internet of things ... discussion on RFID
Collecting thoughts on DRM & Free Software/GPL3:
http://samedi.collectifs.net/wiki/index.php?n=Programme.DRM?action=edit
Anti-circumvention legislation that establishes a WIPO+ model by adopting both the WIPO Internet Treaties and the language currently found in U.S. free trade agreements that go beyond the WIPO treaty requirements. For example, the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement specifies the permitted exceptions to anti-circumvention rules. These follow the DMCA model (reverse engineering, computer testing, privacy, etc.) and do not include a fair use/fair dealing exception. Moreover, the free trade agreement clauses also include a requirement to ban the distribution of circumvention devices. The current draft does not include any obligation to ensure interoperability of DRM.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/99999/
debat externe au texte
quesion de stephanie position stallman et copyright :
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html
voir aussi Vandana Shiva on ACTA
Latest version of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement 3-12-10
http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/html/147079.htm