Personal Luggage *Will* be Subject to ACTA

One of the fairy tales being told about the oppressive ACTA is that it's only going to apply to large-scale criminal offenders, and that the Little People like you and me don't need to worry our pretty heads. But that's a lie, as this fascinating blog post has discovered:

It was very interesting to talk to Mr. Velasco. He said the negotiations could be understood, in a very very simplified way, as you basically could get cheap cars in exchange for IPR enforecement laws.

Interestingly enough, his materials published on the interenet also provided some kind of explanation to why people are afraid of having their iPods searched. Under "What is new" in a presentation about Enforcement of IPR Mr. Velasco says:

[it] "No longer excludes from the scope of the regulation counterfeit or pirated goods in a traveler's personal baggage where such goods are suspected to be part of a larger-scale traffic."

But don't put any great hopes in that fig-leaf "where such goods are suspected to be part of a larger-scale traffic": you can bet that once customs officials have the power to search through your laptop or MP3 player, they damn well will.

After all, potentially a *single* unauthorised copy can be used to spawn thousands of copies that would certainly constitute "larger-scale traffic"; so surely that means that all it takes is for a sufficiently suspicious customs official to "suspect" that single copies on an MP3 player might be part of larger-scale traffic - and then Robert is your father's Brother.

Make no mistake: if ACTA is agreed in its current form, it will impact every one of us directly - and direly.

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No EU Snooping, Danke

Heise online reports on a very bad idea:

If things go the way the Conservative British MEP Christopher Heaton-Harris wants them to, internet providers will be much more closely involved in the battle against copyright infringements. He has introduced a proposal in the European Parliament under which access providers would not only have to install filters on the network side, in order to prevent misuse of their networks for the theft of intellectual property, but would also be obliged to close down Internet access to clients who "repeatedly or substantially" infringe copyright. Content that infringes others' rights would moreover have to be blocked by providers.

As to why it's a bad idea, here's what I've just sent to all my MEPs using the indispensable WriteToThem site:

First, it won't work. Users will simply encrypt their files before sending them, making them completely opaque to content filters. The power of computers is such that this is an easy operation to carry out, and it will become the norm if the above proposal is enacted. Breaking that encryption, by contrast, is very hard, and access providers will be unable to do this in order to inspect the contents.

Secondly, the proposal requires access providers to examine the full traffic flows of everyone. The scope for abuse is enormous. Most people do not encrypt sensitive information that they include in emails, for example. Sometimes Web transmissions are not properly encrypted, allowing sensitive information such as credit card details or health information to be read. If this proposal were enacted, and access providers were required to monitor all traffic, it would be tempting – and easy – for criminals to infiltrate such companies and extract sensitive data.

Finally, there is a deeper discussion needed about whether sharing copyright material is actually bad for the owners of that material. There is growing evidence that people who download such material go on to make more content purchases than those who do not. This is not really surprising: the downloaded materials are effectively free publicity, and a way to discover new content of interest. When people have the chance to sample and explore new content, they end up buying things that they would never have thought of purchasing, bringing more money to the content owners. It might be that the content industries should really be encouraging this kind of free marketing: more research is needed at the very least.

If you feel strongly about this - and you should - perhaps you'd like to write a quick note to your MEPs.

What's the Opposite of Openness?

Not simply being closed, but something like this:

If I make a computer security mistake — in a book, for a consulting client, at BT — it’s a mistake. It might be expensive, but I learn from it and move on. As a criminal, a mistake likely means jail time — time I can’t spend earning my criminal living. For this reason, it’s hard to improve as a criminal. And this is why there are more criminal masterminds in the movies than in real life.

BTW, this interview with security god Bruce Schneier is just amazing - not least because it goes on for ever. Luckily, you just can't have too much of Brucie.