exploremusic

What you’re about to read is not something cooked up by some whacko group of conspiracy theorists.

Agents from countries around the world — the U.S., the U.K., the EU, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Mexico, Morocco and, yes, Canada — are secretly drafting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Despite the cone of silence demanded by the Obama administration for “national security” reasons, some details on ACTA have leaked out.

• ISPs will be turned into copyright cops and be required by law to filter out anything they think might be pirated material. This will mean monitoring sites that offer user-created material. Given the enormity and complexity of that requirement, consider the chill that will cast over music sites, even perfectly legal ones. Could many of them be forced out of business? What about bands who give away music?

• If you’re accused three times (just accused, not convicted) by your ISP of using their pipes for illegally downloading copyrighted material like music, your household will be banned from the Internet for a year and forced to pay a fine. Little Susie thrice caught with her hand in the BitTorrent jar? The whole family will suffer.

Read the rest of my article here.

Part Two