Michael Geist's magisterial ten-minute ACTA takedown

Michael Geist sez, "As protests in Europe against ACTA have grown, skeptics have argued that most criticisms are based on misunderstandings or incorrect information about the treaty. This week, the European Parliament held its first public workshop on ACTA. I appeared on the lead panel and received ten minutes to demonstrate why the agreement raises major concerns on process, substance, and likely effectiveness."

Michael Geist at the European Parliament INTA Workshop on ACTA 01.03.2012 (Thanks, Michael!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: acta • censorship • Copyfight • corporatism • corruption • law • video • youtube

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Paul Renault

Darn! I’m interested in the line of questions asked after his presentation.

There’s on link in the comments on http://www.michaelgeist.ca, but it’s failing. Originating IP?
http://twitter.com/eclipticart Thü

The link does work for me.

Very good how he does deconstruct ACTA from law perspective. But how is it possible that any politician is considering ACTA after all? I mean it does not need much thinking and anyone should come to the conclusion: 1.) The law can not probably be used to safe companies or industries who are in a misery because of their own faults. 2.) The law can not be used to alter market rules in favour of an industry who is not needed any more. 3.) Rather then saving industries and their profits, Artists must be saved from being used by those industries.
- toyg
  
  1) so we can’t, like, bail out companies? Seems to work for banks and car manufacturers… State intervention in the economy can be justified in many cases; it just so happens that this isn’t one of them. The “content industry” should not be bailed out because it was established in order to exploit market conditions that don’t exist anymore (high distribution costs for content). It has no future because we can’t “unlearn” technology, that cat is out of the bag. No amount of laws or public money will change that.
  2) see previous point.
  3) I completely agree with you.
http://www.ideapete.com/ pete baston

Go Mike – that was indeed awesome – lets see the rebuttal
https://profiles.google.com/103717480520264040783 overkill

http://events.europarl.europa.eu/ <– rest of the video
David Jansson

There isn’t a way to watch the full video on Ubuntu, I mamaged to get it running in VLC but for some reason it defaults back to German, which i can’t understand.