Poland now soft-pedalling ACTA signing

Im glad you found it funny.


That would indeed be tragic.

I would support legislation that would shut down all sites that condone racism (including this one).

Such an overused word these days. Its definition has been used and abused by lefties like youself it has lost its meaning and is used to smear anyone who doesn't sing along to the same bullshit tune you pedal.

The legislation would be the thin end of the wedge.

I would rather people were able to choose freely which sites to go to, rather than the have governments telling people what's good for them.

And who gets to define what's racist? You? Little dictator?

Sir, you are someone who claims to work in the pûrn industry and considers Poland to be a sh!thole (your words not mine)

frankly your opinion means very little to me

the only thing about you that interests me remotely is why you visit a website focussed on a country which you know nothing about

If you don't like ACTA, don't forget to sign the avaaz petition.

avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet_spread/?fWbmLbb&pv=284

ACTA

i notice that hitler has had his say on this. it's on the share websites, like youtube.

One of the weirder things is that the ACTA legislation allows extradition to the US and trial under their dreadful legal system. They aren't the policeman of the world, but this is certainly an attempt to become so. Their manufacturing industry has died, their financial sector belongs to others and they are trying to promote this shabby piece of legislation to bolster what international income they've still got.

It would be a great shame if Poland (and indeed anywhere) were to subordinate protection of their citizens to protection of foreign commercial interests.

It will be an absolute disgrace if Poland and/or Europe sells their citizens to the US by ratifying this agreement.

The reason why I decided to leave the UK in the first place was because of the governments obsessive pushing of the US agenda onto their citizens , and the continual decimation of privacy laws and big-brother type polices.

I would truly be proud of Poland and Europe if they reject this agreement, and would be proud to call myself Polish and European if I could. As politics stand, I am utterly ashamed to be associated with the UK government, and am ashamed to be a "representative" of them.

I truly hope that common sense wins trough, and the US "intent police" are given the boot. I do not wish to be "policed" by a nation which holds the world record for jailing its citizens.

Well, good thing your view is not shared by everyone.


I visit Europe usually once or twice each year. Poland is one of the countries I've been to and spent a substantial amount of time there.

The Hollywood lobby is obviously very powerful and influential. In an economics sense, the money these businesses are losing on pirating are less than peanuts. And still they are getting this kind of laws going.

It's crazy really.

This view is shared by most of the world, except perhaps China and South Korea, and a few stupid people here and there who would rather let their government control their lives.

And many people who are involved in the content that people wish to steal online. You know, they actually depend on this stuff for their livelihood.

Are they stupid, too? I mean, if there's no jobs for them, there's no content to steal...

You're totally missing the point, D, and I can't believe you actually need the explanation of an obvious fact. Nobody is advocating in favor of piracy and stealing, got it? But neither governments nor corporations should be allowed to spy on EVERYONE just to catch a few bad guys. You wouldn't want the police to come to your house whenever their fancy strikes, without a warrant, would you? Just to look through your stuff to make sure everything is a-ok? You wouldn't want your phone company spying on your phone calls for no reason, or the post office opening your letters, would you? Well, this is what ACTA is mandating - that the ISPs monitor where you go on the net, and what you look at, and what you download.

Piracy is an excuse to pass the legislation.

If file sharing is the REAL issue why not pass a law specific to that, then take down all torrent sites and implement huge penaties for anybody caught downloading copyright content. Make a few well publicised examples of repeat offenders and bobs your uncle, i guarantee the torrent issue will virtually come to a halt over night.

But they wont do that becuase what they really want is to censor the internet so you and I cant access YouTube videos of US Police pepper spraying innocent protestors, or Wikileaks leaking the facts that government officials are corrupt. Even Wikipedia will be affected, theres lots of anti establishment content in Wikipedia.

Im really worried about this.

good idea. Microsoft have been doing it for years. It is really risky using snide Microsoft software in Poland if you are a firm.

all the torrent sites are up and running and I may or may have not downloaded something last night and it worked fine and dandy

I suspect that the US government is looking at China with its terribly restricted internet access and how the country functions well
and want to implement something similar in the land of the free

as you know I have a lot of business partners in China and whenever I send them links of interesting stuff, they cannot access them

Torrents are great, especially for Brits living in Poland with all the hassle of decent TV. If you wanted to you can easily download entire seasons of HBO dramas, all the latest films etc...Its like having your very own huge free media store right in your front room. Its even quicker in most cases to download an entire album rather than go and look through your CD collection to find the actual original.

Cant say im even in favour of addressing the torrent/illegal download problem.

Lots of people say that torrenting "kills jobs"

I don't really think this is true. It's like when people said that taping songs off the radio, or coping something on to VHS would kill the industry1 MP3s were going to kill the music industry not long ago! I mean libraries were meant to kill authors FFS! It's a tired argument hashed out by companies that refuse to update their outdated business model. They are lies, and it's about time that people stopped listening to them.

Most artists tied in to big record companies don't really see a lot of profit from releasing albums any-more, most of their money comes from gigs, and merchandise. And the music companies make quite a lot of their money pedalling music videos to TV companies, and places like Youtube actively promote album sales. Either way, they are still making billions in profit.

It's the same with TV and films. DVD sales count for far less than they do for selling a series to the TV networks, and often torrentlng actually encourages the purchase of films and TV series, as does music.

How many people in the UK would have had access to something like "The Wire" without torrents? Not many, I can assure you. And how copies of The Wire were bought on DVD without it ever airing in the UK? Tens of thousands.

How many people are opened up to smaller independent films on sites like Youtube? With ACTA, I think the quality of films would drop, as we would only hear about the films with the biggest budgets (ie crap), and be done for copyright infringement for even uploading a small clip of a new, exciting indie film we just found.

Are TV companies really losing money if I watch re-runs of (for example) Masterchef Australia, considering you can't buy it anywhere, and the TV companies in Europe are not showing it?

I think torrentlng and file sharing is a very complex issue, which HAS NOT been looked into adequately by DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED BODIES.

So why an undemocratically elected lobby is pushing this through, when the real issues haven't been discussed yet, I don't know.

What's more worrying is that ACTA will affect the real world. It will limit our access to generic medicines. It also treads into the dark waters of political suppression of information.

This thing could very realistically KILL people.

how do you feel that ACTA will result in governments insisting that physicians insist on prescribing the original Rx when there is a perfectly legal and viable generic available?

particularly at a time when there is no money about

Maybe the content companies have got outdated business models but it's difficult in any industry to build a new business model based on giving away your product for free. I don't know much about ACTA and I can't be bothered to learn about it but I'm not sure any media group is making good profits at the moment except iTunes.

And therein lies the problem. If you can't be bothered to learn about it, how can you form an opinion? A quick Google will show you how well media making profits are at the moment:

Walt Disney made a 40% profit on the year before in 2010. The Q4 profit of 2011 for NBC was 38% higher than the last year. Time Warner profits jumped 22% in 2010.

So please, do a little research before you start talking about how media companies "aren't making a good profit". I'll be very VERY interested to see the 2011 end of year figures.


I hope this is a rhetorical question. Obviously I am mighty peeved about the whole thing. It may well be the death knell for the European countries' national healthcare programmes.

if the patent for an Rx expires, you can make a generic version, if it hasn't, you can't

it is really simple and I cannot begin to think why you consider this to be dangerous for a nation's healthcare program
in order to insist on more generics being prescribed, each healthcare entity needs to beef up its national formulary

I am starting to feel concerned as perhaps I have overlooked something, so if you know of concrete reasons why generics are under threat, please let me know

The real thing that's under threat is India's pharma industry - all based on reverse engineering drugs and producing insanely cheap copies for distribution elsewhere.

No issue for Europe - these knock off drugs don't get sold here anyway. In fact, it's arguable that it's great for Europe - less generic ripoffs on the market means European pharma companies can sell more, creating more jobs in Europe to support their sales. As for generic drug sales in Europe - they will only, as now, get sold when the patent expires. What's new there?

this is what I thought

now if you are getting snide drugs delivered to you in the US, then you a reason to worry
however in fairness I would be far more worried about what was inside the bargain bucket medication you
bought on the internet

fair enough, Torrent and Ranbaxy are fairly kosher but there are some really nasty copies out there
which are just plain nasty

This is Oxfam's view on what would happen with this agreement in place. An impact on developing countries with developing healthcare systems, denied cheap, generic drugs.


It would be devastating to everyone. It would mean that drugs new will be put on hold even before the mega-pharmaceuticals battle it out in the courts to deicide who's "idea" the drug was. In the mean time, it denies drugs to the (usually poorest) people who need it the most. Like I said, lives will be lost.


Not with ACTA in place you can't.

This is from infojustice.org/archives/5719


Great... let's lock up the doctors too!

There isn't a facepalm big enough in the world for this "treaty".

D, you're being clueless again. Generics are not ripoffs, they're perfectly legal (for now) and safe. You can only patent an invention or a design for so long, afterwards it becomes available to everyone.

Theoretically, you couldn't even try to recreate at home a dish you had at a restaurant, because it would be the chef's intellectual property. Essentially, protection of intellectual property becomes supreme to every other right under ACTA, which is completely absurd.

He's the ultimate hypocrite.

Don't forget that this American-South African-Jewish-Germanic-Polish (or whatever he considers himself today) pûrnographer has called for:

(a) white women to be REQUIRED to marry blacks (therefore supporting the enforced consummation of those marriages, i.e., supporting the rape of white women) and

(b) looks forward to, and encourages, a future when everyone will be mixed-race, i.e., a future without whites.

That's far more racist than saying that you do not want non-white immigration to white countries.

Of course there are racists on here, but few have ever called for the eradication of any race, or that another race's women should be required to marry/have sex with whites against their will.

Back on topic: as others have discussed, the ACTA is clearly about controlling freedom of speech, and ensuring that multinationals retain control of everyone and everything, from music downloads to generic drugs.

It particularly angers me when I hear music companies whining about the money they lose. Funny how few of them seem to worry about offering contracts which ensure that musicians make hardly any money, even if they sell hundreds of thousands of records, because all the money goes to some fat suit-wearing comb-over-wearing "A&R man" - the history of popular music is full of such rip-offs, yet all they do is complain about how little money they earn. independedt/digital releases threaten these cartels, so they get upset and call for anything which affects their business to be banned.

For years, music fans have had to put up with changes in format - shellac, tapes, vinyl, CDs, Minidiscs, then digital downloads. The real issue here is that once you have an MP3 copy of a record, you probably won't have to buy it again. Now, wouldn't it be convenient if they could make MP3s and conversion software illegal, to prevent us from keeping our music in this format forever (and therefore have no need to ever buy it again)? That's the sort of thing this act really aims to do - to control what we think, and how we spend our money, to make sure that vested interests keep on getting the cash, and keep us on a leash.

We should be proud of the protestors, especially as over here, everyone will just sit on their fat arses watching Jeremy Kyle until it's too late!

I was wondering how they crashed the Gov site and its just been confirmed it was the old 'ping of death'. Gotta love that sh1t.

They are ripoffs when they're made in some dodgy Indian lab while the drug is still patented. Given that the pharmaceutical companies pour big bucks into Europe (one of the biggest employers of IT staff in Poznan are Hoffman-La Roche - do you want to see those companies start to reduce their operations because some Indians are stealing all their patents?

European generic drugs are totally different, and they aren't under threat by ACTA.


And in India, they couldn't care less about whether it's still patented or not.


That's an interesting interpretation. Fair use laws pretty much ensure that such nonsense can never be prosecuted - but it certainly stops someone from ripping off the hard work that went into the recipe.

Sorry, but try making valid criticisms next time. European health care isn't under threat by ACTA, but the livelihood of dodgy Indians with no scruples certainly is. And - quite honestly - who gives a toss about them?