[clug] Against US-AU FTA Intellectual Property Clauses

Jepri jepri at webone.com.au
Fri Apr 9 04:23:23 GMT 2004


Darren Freeman wrote:

> If I've said something stupid, then I probably don't want to hear
> it right now given the number of recipients ;) But post it anyway.
> 

It's a good bit of demagogery, so it'll probably get forwarded a lot.

In true demagogue style though, you don't give us a link to the 
agreement(http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/text/index.html), 
so that we can draw informed conclusions.  I guess that you were hoping 
that nobody will bother to check your statements and see how inaccurate 
your rant is.

For instance, reverse engineering will be allowed for the purposes of 
interoperability, security and for removing spyware from programs!

All laid out in 17.4.7.e, should you care to check that I'm not 
deliberately misleading anyone 
(http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/text/17_IP.pdf).

The Australian government will also have the ability to declare 
non-profit libraries COMPLETELY EXEMPT from the bad things in your post. 
  If they do so, every open-source programmer will just have to join the 
about-to-be-formed GNU Non-Profit Software Library, and they will be 
safe. (17.4.8.a).

But let's not let facts get in the way of the really good panic we've 
got going here.

Aaagh!  The sky is falling!  Aaagh!  Aaagh!  ASIO is reading my mail 
because only I know the truth!  Aaagh aaagh aagh!  My toes are plotting 
to kill me while I'm asleep!

FFS people, I've seen posts on Slashdot that were more accurate and 
reasoned than this (OK, I've seen worse posts as well).

No wonder people think that we are freaks.  Not only do we go crazy 
about things that nobody cares about, we get it wrong too!




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