http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterf...Trade_Agreement

What are your opinions? I think it would suck if this got pushed through. The internet(s) is(are) the last bastion of real freedom, and this action would start dismantling it.

Any ideas or opinions?

hoooooly buckets...Big Brother much? I honestly don't care for myself, I don't have anything illegal on any device of mine, but hot dang, that would be a giant pain.

they kind of have to do something like that though, if they expect to enforce copyright laws at all. I dunno, I'm abstaining from the vote

That pretty much sucks.

Soooo... does that mean I have to stop using limewire? :unsure:

Oh, the Bush administration and killing freedoms. Honestly, people who make copyrights have enough money anyway, so why give them more?

Yeah, it really sucks. Everyone should write their congresspeople, though it's being decided at G8 this year.

guess I'm more or less alone on my high road. stealing is stealing. justifications are nice, but they really don't change the fact that it's wrong in the first place

So basically your online business becomes the governments business for the sake of copyright laws...

Sounds like a maaaajor pain if that goes through, though the interwebs are kind of a breeding ground for illegal activity... Not that high schools are any better, but at least that's plausible.

I can't imagine the amount of manpower they would need to sweep the internet like that, not to mention enforcing it among civilians too.

The other countries will probably see it as a reasonable and/or good idea, but completely implausible to actually enforce unless we have a huge improvement in AI technology between now and july.

Yeah, everyone's got their way of looking at the world. It's why most people can't get along.

From what I understand, it's legal to download roms, music, etc if you already own it. So, would the government be allowed to search your house on the assumption that you don't own what you're downloading? For my part, I mostly download SNES games I already own (not for morality purposes, I just don't want to lug my SNES to college and you can play some ZSNES games online). And if I download Fire Emblem 9's soundtrack, is it really illegal? After all, I actually own the game CD, which has a built in soundtrack (I just can't rip it off there because it's a GCN disc). Are you presumed guilty for downloading anything?

A couple other things:

Well, if this is a good description it won't matter much. Just stash your stuff on an external hardrive for fucks sake. Also, doesn't say anything about ROMs which is all I care about being able to download :) (I can use pandora and last.fm type stuff for music).