How do you know though? You can't even see the text of the treaty.
actually you can, here's a pdf:
http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/assets/pdfs/acta-crc_apr15-2011_eng.pdfI decided to do some more research on the matter before responding though. Since its always better to be aware of a bevy of opinions and thoughts on a topic before forming an opinion.
Basically ACTA could be interpreted very badly, or very benignly, depending on how you interpet many portions of it. It's a rather vague treaty actually. The fact that normally, vague clauses and disagreements are meant to be interpreted in the context of the cataloged negotiations leading to the treaty, is a bit disconcerting. Because those negotiations have not been made public, and in fact are uncharacteristically secretive.
I'm apposed to ACTA. I think it's bad. But at this point I'm apposed to any and all copyright law making, as I do not view the copyright holding cartels, nor the politicians they openly bribe, as being even remotely trustworthy. I don't personally think that ACTA is as draconian and insane as SOPA, but I doubt that it's 'good' in any sense of the word. I'm sure that in some way or another, it's related to protecting the interests of a dying monopoly, at the expense of civil liberties and free market enterprise... based simply on the fact that the MPAA & friends support it.
Unfortunately it's become like a game of whack-a-mole. Knock down SOPA & PIPA, and you have ACTA come along out of the shadows, then you have ACTA's much meaner and larger evil twin TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement) is in negotiations now, looming behind ACTA. And on the heels of SOPA and PIPA comes the PCIP (Protect Childr3n from Internet Pornographers Act), which from early reports has little to do with childr3n actually, and may in fact just be akin to SOPA/PIPA but with a name designed to create more public sympathy. And in canada there's the C-11 bill, which is basically SOPA's canadian offspring.
The bottom line is that the movie, television, and music industries are becoming dinosaurs as the wheels of society and time roll onward. This has happened to everything from steam engines, to vacuum tubes, to payphones. It's nothing new to industry. But these cartels are so wealthy, and so powerfully connected in politics, that they are basically fighting to fundamentally restructure the playing field so that they don't go extinct, and they can hold onto their monopolized market. at any cost.
It's not the first time something like that has happened either. In new york for example, you can't get a garbage disposal in your sink, because the mob runs the waste management, and they don't want to lose out on having plenty of trash to pick up. so they bribe local politicians to pass laws, and voila, their market is protected from innovation/competition. That's exactly what the MPAA/RIAA/sony/viacom/disney/etc are doing. Except their market isn't trash, they're fighting for absolute control over any and all forms of mass market tools (particularly the one they don't already completely control, the internet).
The movies and tv and music industries are losing money, and their sales are in fact down. but the actual percentage of that which is caused by piracy is tiny. The real problem they face, is that society doesn't care to be their captive audience anymore. Promising young bands are self-promoting on the internet instead of signing with a record label. Upstart film school grads are creating websites and stealing thousands of viewers away from the tv, instead of going to work for the networks. With modern technology in cameras and computers, independent filmmakers can produce reasonably high production value movies without selling out to hollywood. People can play an MMORPG to wind down on a friday night, instead of watching a sitcom. And if you're the one making the sitcom, and charging Chevrolet and Colgate a million dollars a spot for comercial advertising... that's a problem.
Piracy isn't killing the movie or music or tv industry. Even by the supposed numbers the MPAA and RIAA put out, piracy doesn't account for very much of the decline of consumption. And their figures are based on the insane idea that every pirated item would have been bought at full price by everyone who shares it. And even with that sort of crazed logic, it still doesn't account for the bulk of their losses or decline of market. They're losing to 'change'. And they don't like it. And they are willing to kick the teeth out of personal freedoms and civil liberties, and destroy any fair or competitive marketplace, in order to protect their empire.
Y Combinator, a business startup investment group, says in a short essay called "Kill Hollywood":
Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline. But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.
They go on to outline that Hollywood's behavior is like that of a wounded animal, and that supplanting the current media super-giant corporations may be the investment choice of the future. But not only is there basic financial cause for alternative entertainment formats to start circling like ravens, but also concern that the wounded animal may damage the economy, and society/humanitarian interests in it's angst. So not only is there meat to be had, but an open encouragement for entrepreneurs to be aggressive in bringing the beast down quickly before it F's up the world.
On Reddit now, there's a subforum called Kill Hollywood. And already some early talks on some ideas of both actively pursuing the creation of legislation which would protect people against the neverending barrage of SOPA's & PIPA's... but also on trying to directly harm hollywood by way of concentrated boycotts. Sort of a shot across the bow of the media industry, and a reminder of who ultimately signs their paychecks (you know, the people they want to sue). One such proposal being the idea of a "Black March" (sort of a spinoff of the Black Friday nickname for the internet blackout on the 18th of Jan to protest sopa/pipa). Black March is proposed as a month of people not using netflix, itunes, going to movies, or turning on their tv. I find it unlikely that such a boycott would be successful, but I'm game... hey i'll get to see sunlight, get some exercise, and maybe figure out what my neighbors look like, it might be fun
