The site also show the latest news, and events in the village and is a must for anyone who live in the village.

You essentially pirated off other’s ideas and influences to form your own, and now you want to copyright that concept as well. Chances are someone thought of it before you, and wasn’t a complete copyright whore.

Thank you for contacting Andrew about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Andrew is not on the committee that specialises in these issues, but has been following developments closely along with his group colleagues, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE).

He recognises that some of ACTA’s aims are valid, but also has real concerns that – as with so much legislation in this area – its implications for privacy and freedom may be more serious than is currently understood, and is seeking greater assurance on these points.

Throughout negotiations on ACTA the ALDE group has called for greater transparency and tabled a resolution in September 2010 asking the Commission for all relevant studies and impact assessments before signing the agreement. ALDE colleagues have sponsored many of the Parliamentary questions on this matter.

Negotiations were finalised in November 2010 and the relevant parties are now in the process of ratifying the Agreement through their internal procedures. In the EU this means that both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers must give their approval. The Council adopted a decision on December 17th authorising the signature of ACTA, and the text now passes to the European Parliament for ratification. The International Trade Committee (INTA) and the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) have already asked the Parliament’s Legal Services for advice on the agreement, and then the INTA Committee will produce a report with input in the form of opinions from the Development Committee (DEVE), the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE) and the JURI Committee.

On 24 November 2010 the European Parliament adopted a Resolution in which we called on the Commission to confirm that ACTA’s implementation will have no impact on fundamental rights and data protection. MEPs welcomed the Commission’s confirmation that the ACTA provisions will be fully in line with EU law and that neither personal searches nor the so-called ‘three strikes and out’ procedure will be introduced. The Parliament also emphasised that any decision taken by the Commission as part of the ACTA Committee must not unilaterally change the agreement’s content, and that therefore any proposed change must be approved by the Parliament and the Council.

ALDE will finalise its decision on whether to support the agreement or not once the legal advice and INTA committee report are available and only if concerns about interference with internet freedoms and other civil liberties can be assuaged. Until then it is not possible to have a fully informed opinion.

In the meantime I attach a couple of interim briefing documents I have received on the issue, which are designed to address some of the specific criticisms that have been levelled at these proposals.

Thank you once again for contacting Andrew about this issue. I hope this response has been helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Kilian Bourke

Assistant to
Andrew Duff
Liberal Democrat MEP for the East of England

Thank you for you email about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). ACTA is a draft pluri-lateral agreement, which aims to provide a high-level international framework that strengthens global enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) through international co-operation.  ACTA hopes to provide a more effective legal framework to combat the counterfeiting and piracy, by large scale criminal organisations that threaten IPR owners, legal businesses and the development of the world economy to the value of more than £162 billion. As stated in the ECR led European Parliament Resolution of November 2010 “the fight against counterfeiting – which is a worldwide phenomenon – requires stronger international cooperation among the major world players”. So far Australia, Canada, Japan, Republic of Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States have signed the agreement and in Tokyo on the 26th January, the EU and 22 of its Member States, including the UK, also signed the agreement.

ACTA aims to improve standards on how to tackle large-scale infringements of IPR and to improve the enforcement of existing laws. The EU and UK have been clear that ACTA should not create new legislation and that the agreement should be consistent with the existing WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. The UK is firmly opposed to ACTA creating of new criminal offences at an UK or EU level.

During the initial stages of negotiations, there were deep concerns over the lack of transparency being exercised by the negotiating countries. The Conservative Group in the European Parliament repeatedly questioned this approach and voiced its concerns over key areas including, but not limited to, the observance of fundamental rights, privacy and data protection, respect for the important role of free Internet, the importance of safeguarding the role of service providers and the need to safeguard access to medicines.

In a number of parliamentary questions  to European Commission, the UK Conservative spokesperson on ACTA, Dr Kamall, expressed concerns over ACTA and called, among other things, for the Commission to be more transparent and open in its negotiations with other stakeholders. Dr Kamall  also asked the European Commission to confirm that ACTA is compatible with EU treaties and he asked  the European Parliament’s legal services whether the European Court of  Justice  could rule in the future that adaptations in existing EU legislation would be required if a plaintiff were to bring a case.

The Internet is without a doubt a driving force of communication and innovation and its openness must be protected. Together with an obligation to protect creative users and citizens from criminal activities, we, as parliamentarians, will have the opportunity and duty to establish whether or not this agreement does in fact ensure these rights and freedoms.

Please be assured that the Conservative delegation, and its representatives of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee, will carefully consider all of the commitments and consequences of this agreement in the interest of civil liberties and the fight against piracy.

Yours sincerely
Robert Sturdy MEP

It has long since know that the UK is the lapdog of the US, the US sneezes, the UK catches a cold. But dear oh dear.

So we have this site RnBXclusive.com which has been sized by the UK for violation of copyright laws. So, we have a few questions about this and what the hell the UK think they’re playing at.

First, if you go to the site, you are greeted with one of the funniest web pages I have seen in a long time, granted its better than the FBI’s standard image they paste onto your screen, but my god its hilarious. First of all its not even valid HTML, just by seeing it in your browser its lopsided and generally crap.

Then we have the ominous ‘warning’. “SOCA has taken control of this domain name. The individuals behind this website have been arrested for fraud,” reads a message on the site’s home page. You can SOCA my dick. Now according to what we have been told previously, the US has exclusive control over .com, .org, and other global TLD’s, so the seizure of a .com domain must mean some collaboration with the US. There are some rumours floating around about the domain was hosted with GoDaddy, and that GoDaddy seized the domain without a warrent, which raises more questions.

But the general attitude that we can seize a domain first and ask questions later, is just downright out of order but it goes against the fundamental rights of this country, “Innocent until proven guilty” the government are always happy to tell us that law applies on the web, and it fucking applies for them as well.

“The Majority of music files made available via this site were stolen from artists” – Once again, Copying does not constitute stealing. Its does not constitute counterfeiting either, To counterfeit means to illegally imitate something.
people sharing data  is not counterfeiting, unless of course they where imitating someone who was also sharing for free.

Then followed by the wondrous message “ If you have downloaded music using this website you may have committed a criminal offence which carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and an unlimited fine under UK law.  ” So apparently, downloading a couple of songs, in the eyes of SOCA, is comparable to murder. 10 years in prison for downloading a couple of songs, come on, the people in the London Riots got WAY less than that.

We then come to possibly my favourite part of the page.

So here SOCA has had there whack at intimidating the users of RnBXclusive.com and, to the casual non-savvy downloader, this might be quite scary. But fear not, this is a pile of fail. This is a simple script designed to take the header of your Browser and display it back to you, they have about as much information about you, as any other website does. And hey, you can muck about with it, as I did here. Apparently SOCA is going to use the IP 1.3.3.7 to track me down.

“SOCA has the capability to monitor and investigate you, and can inform your internet service provider of these infringements.” Cool beans, If your ‘intimitating webpage’ was a pile of fail, id like to see you bypass Tor.

“You may be liable for prosecution and the fact that you have received this message does not preclude you from prosecution.”

“As a result of illegal downloads young, emerging artists may have had their careers damaged. If you have illegally downloaded music you will have damaged the future of the music industry. ” – Hmm? I actually believe the purpose of this site was to PROMOTE young, emerging artists.

In a nut-shell, this is all bollocks.

Mr J Addicott U Mad Bro?

I am writing to you to inform you of my concerns of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ‘ACTA’ as well as other forms
of legislation pushing for the censorship of the Internet in the name of corporate interestes, currently going through the
European Parliament.

I understand that you may or may not be in a position to vote on such matters in the European Parliament, but I urge you to
forward my views onto the appropriate member of parliament, and, if such a debate in occur in the House of Commons, to oppose
it.

Currently over the past 6 months we have seen various copyright monopolists, mainly from the United States putting increasing
pressure on European countries to pass dreconian laws to censor its peoples’ communications for the finacial gain of coporations.

Currently ACTA is being discussed in private by non-elected representatives, meaning that not only is it incredibly hard to find out
what is in the agreement in the first place, but most importantly, the fact that they are non-elected means that they can bypass
our democratic process, whcih should be of the upmost concern to anyone.

Two YouTube video’s were made breifly highlighting what ACTA will attempt to do:

As you can see ACTA goes much further than just censoring the Internet, companies can ban drugs that could save lives, and seeds
that could feed thousand risk being withdrawn in the name of patents.

Since then people have protested such treaties online, and the fact the UK has already signed ACTA provoked more controversy.
Although the agreement has been signed, there will be a vote in June 2012 to say Yes or No this this treaty, I ungre you to vote
NO.

In light of negative media and a general opposition to the agreement around the world, the European Commission released a statement
attempting to clam the situation and gain peoples’ agreement on the situation, yet the expose ACTA for what it truly is.
This article breaks down and examines the statement:

http://falkvinge.net/2012/02/03/european-commission-slip-reveals-censorship-in-acta/

And this article speaks even further about ACTA:

http://falkvinge.net/2012/01/28/the-only-thing-you-need-to-know-about-acta/

As you can see ACTA is a gross violation of our basic Human Rights all in the name of making profits for large corporations,
this law is being discussed in private and allows the Entertainment idstrusy to censor one of the most important tools we have
in the digital age for their own financial gain.

These corporations have shown they are desperate to get these laws passed, pumping billions of dollars into lobbying these laws
through parliament, over the past 6 months we have seen the RIAA and the MPAA pushing many of the laws into parliament across
the world, and if it fails, trying to push another, slightly altered one.
In light on the recent shutdown and arrest of many website owners around the globe, even here in the UK Richard O’dwyer, who
has not violated any laws in this country, faces going to prision without even violating the law.

In these current times basic human rights are being traded for the financial interests of large corporations, and I urge you
to oppose it.

Sincerly,

[ Your Name ].

The first two points: “ACTA ensures people everywhere can continue to share non-pirated material and information on the web. ACTA does not restrict freedom of the internet. ACTA will not censor or shut down websites.”

With a generally read through we can get a jist of what they’re hinting at, they’re saying that the web will stay the same right? Nope, worded the the usual politicians way, there is one word here that speaks out “non-pirated”

“Non-pirated”. Everybody will be free to share “non-pirated” material. All of a sudden, there is a qualifier  to what information we are allowed to share over the internet; a qualifier which has never been there before. We have always been able to send whatever we like, and possibly answer for it afterwards.

This is very, very serious. What they’re telling us here is that we will only be able to use the internet for Government Approved communications; the government takes itself the right to determine what the net is usable for and what it isn’t usable for. To 250 million Europeans who share culture and don’t see anything wrong with defying an immoral monopoly, this is an arrogant slap in the face, but it’s more  than that and worse  than that.

And it is that “non-pirated” that shows ACTA for what it truly is, a censorship tool, and not just a censorship tool, and tool that will allow the entertainment industry to censor an entire population for their own financial gain. Now I dont know about you, but when toothpaste sale go down, we dont pass laws that make it illegal to not use a certain brand of toothpaste, or raid peoples’ house for not brushing their teeth, so why should the entertainment industry be protected by law? “Our Jobs depend on it” – What tripe, not only do you make huge profits you wish to peddle so sob story to make more.

My official response to the “our jobs depend on it” is that if your job is dependant on revoking basic human rights just because people dont respect “Intellectual Property” then your job is meaningless.

Now I understand there are many things you’re not allowed to share in terms of information. Military secrets, medical journals, ongoing criminal investigations, just to name a few. All of these have always been possible to share on the net, but if caught doing so, you can be hauled off to court for it. After.  The postal service has always still been usable  to share this information. The keyword here ‘After‘, ACTA censors the internet that stops it from being put there in the first place.

And yet, the one single thing listed as impossible to share over the net is violations of the copyright monopoly. If the Commission really was referring to things that you were legally  unable to share, you’d expect military secrets to come first, followed by governmental hush-hushy documents. But no.