Cory Doctorow looks at the “too sensitive to expose to public view” Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and finds it awful:
ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
Clueless, but powerful . . . meet powerless, but distributed. Combatants, take your corners.
Update: Your kids could go to jail for non-commercial file sharing.
