Bill S.978

[Dollop of Mayo]

Oh dear, Streaming Media Prohibition.

We'll all be going down to the Cyber Speakeasy and the E-Mafia will rule the information highway with their illicit shipments of Let's Plays.

[kilon]

Nothing's gonna happen.
At least for LP's. Streaming games could be something else, but I;m no big fan of streams anyway.

[Willhart]

More information here.

Bill S.978: The End of Let's Plays and Gaming Streams?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib7-vSrp6y8

[kilon]

yeah. My bad.

But whatever, this bill still isn't going to get through worded like it is now.

[limepie20]

this bill still isn't going to get through worded like it is now.

[Aposke]

This one, however, will be.
ACTA is a multinational trade agreement that is supposed to strengthen the rights of copyright holders all over the world. It aims to establish a new, international legal framework which would be completely independent from any single country's judicial system and would handle mostly cases about copyright infringement, whether on a big, economic basis or individual piracy.
The negotiations are and have been made under extreme secrecy and were closed to the public. Organizations like Monsanto and Sony have been reported to have taken part in negotiation rounds as well.
It promotes stronger border controls:

Newspapers reported that the draft agreement would empower security officials at airports and other international borders to conduct random ex officio searches of laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for illegally downloaded or "ripped" music and movies. Travellers with infringing content would be subject to a fine and may have their devices confiscated or destroyed.

As well as the prosecution of individuals who infringe copyright or even try to break copyright protection systems (i.e. DRM):

Section 4 on "Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement in the Digital Environment" is meant to address "some of the special challenges that new technologies pose for enforcement of intellectual property rights." Amongst others the negotiations for this section include discussion about the "availability of remedies" in relation to "infringing material online, including limitations on the application of those remedies to online service providers" and "the circumvention of technological protection measures".

If this bill gets passed, the consequences would affect large parts of the internet as we know it. The Free Software Foundation warns that

ACTA would also require that existing ISPs no longer host free software that can access copyrighted media; this would substantially affect many sites that offer free software or host software projects such as SourceForge.

Furthermore, it would greatly limit the abilities of human aid organizations to bring cheap supplementation meds to african hospitals because the export of those "counterfeited goods" would be made illegal.

There's much, much more to criticize about ACTA, but these are the first things that came to my mind right now.
Worst thing about all this:
It's nearly worldwide.
As of now, the US, Canada, the EU, Australia, China and India are part of the ACTA treaty.
If this bill gets passed, we won't only have to worry about things like video streams on Youtube, it'll allow a non-governmental, international and not democratically authorized group of organizations, corporations and politicians to control large parts of the internet.
This is what we need to worry about.

[Argumentable]

How many times am I gonna see this

[Dan]

.

[Davybot]

How many times am I gonna see this

This. I've seen like seven or eight people who keep talking about this, and I know its pretty threatening to video game community, but its getting annoying as hell seeing this every where.

[Dan]

.

[Aposke]

Then don't post in the thread; just because you've seen it everywhere doesn't mean everyone else has too and the OP made this thread to piss everyone off

I think he was talking about ACTA here, it's actually been posted about a million times everywhere by now. However, it is of huge importance for the internet community so it's important to remind people that it's there and that it's a great potential threat to big parts of the Internet such as Open Source and Creative Commons.
Also posting this in case anyone wants to speak up against ACTA. If you live in the US, you can contact your member of senate here about the problem, if you live in the EU, there's this handy site which helps you find the numbers of your country's MEPs.
This is a rough guide on how to call your MEP. (I did it too with some members of our "Socialist"-Democratic Party, 5 of 6 actually responded to my call in person!)

tl;dr
Political activism WHOO!

[morsel/morceau]

I'm sure telling your senator how strongly you feel will matter

Top recipients for ALL supporting interest groups

• Sen. Harry Reid [D, NV] $2,335,183
  Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY] $2,016,955
  Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY] $1,650,251

Top recipients for ALL opposing interest groups

• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY] $2,200
  Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY] $600
  Sen. Barbara Boxer [D, CA] $500

[Aposke]

Heck, I know corruption like this happens alot everywhere. However, not all politicians are corrupt and would accept money for voting yes/no on a given topic. I think it IS important to grab hold of all the democratic rights that you, as a citizen, still have in these countries, before someone goes ahead and starts destroying those too, because, you know, people aren't interested. That's what many politicians here in Europe say on the topic of "establishing more democracy". There's "no need" for it because people aren't participating enough as it is anyways.

But if there's no need to improve on the Status Quo, then it's only a small step towards "there's no need to care too much about our current standards". And then, a treaty written mostly by copyright shareholders and lobbyists comes around and attempts to deconstruct something that hasn't been cared about too much during the last years anyways.

[Davybot]

Then don't post in the thread; just because you've seen it everywhere doesn't mean everyone else has too and the OP made this thread to piss everyone off

I think he was talking about ACTA here, it's actually been posted about a million times everywhere by now. However, it is of huge importance for the internet community so it's important to remind people that it's there and that it's a great potential threat to big parts of the Internet such as Open Source and Creative Commons.

Yeah, I was thinking of the wrong thing when writing that, sorry there. *quietly walks away*

[Aposke]

This is why cloud services on the internet suck by the way.

[GanonTEK]

I don't want LPs to die ._.

[Dollop of Mayo]

There will always be another way. If LPs get shut down on Youtube there will be a dedicated site for LPs put up somewhere else. And when that goes down another, and another.

It will be incredibly difficult to police these things. As of May 2011 it has been stated by Youtube that 48 hours of video goes up every MINUTE on the site. Obviously some things are easy enough to catch; just take down all the videos with titles and preview screens that have copyrighted material in them. But for the rest? Unless there are super-sophisticated programs out there that can find this shit, I'd imagine you'd have to hire scads of people to literally watch Youtube videos all day and catch the copyright shit. One person working one 8 hour shift can go through 17% of all videos put up in one minute on Youtube.

[Dan]

.

[Dollop of Mayo]

And it will be called the Cool Guy's Clubhouse, No Girls Allowed

[kilon]

And the people LPing the newer games are in greater danger anyway. The companys really don't care about games older than roughly 5 years (apart from games like WoW) or even hacks.

But since 90% of the 'modern game LPers' suck anyway, I don't mind them getting the hell out of here.
Those other 10% find a way back.