I could see this easily being used as a tool for police harassment and a run-around normal seizure rules. Cop: âWell, she had VLC on her laptop when we pull her over. We HAD to destroy it by law.â And itâs also not a stretch to see illegal searches being run on computers for evidence in the name of checking for âillegalâ software at border check-points.
These would be pretty extreme and dystopian circumstances that probably wouldnât come to pass for the majority of the US population if the TPP passes. But, I wouldnât be surprised if a few unlucky people at the end of the bell-curve get screwed in the future.
Brave new world, makes me proud to be a human beingâŚ
For the while at least the development of VLC is not at risk - the organisation is based in France. But as TTP is used as blueprint for the EU/US TTIP Iâm sceptical about the future of many open source projects.
The TTIP demo in Berlin last saturday was impressive - between 150000 (police) and about 250000 (organisers) participants. Our government is in panic mode, hopefully a good sign.
An interesting analogy occurred to me: they say when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Similarly, it seems like weâre setting up a situation in which only bad guys have data security, including the government. This absolutely guarantees that crooked cops can act with impunity. What could possibly go wrong?
Seriously, VLC? The program I use exclusively to watch Disney DVDs that I purchased from this region because I like open source and Windows Media Player is garbage?
Wow, thatâs great news.
So if these programs are found backed up on Dropbox or Google Drive will they have to destroy those servers? Because that would be cool to watch.
But howâŚis this in the governments interests? Any governmentâŚ?
The free Linux pdf viewer has a check box âIgnore DRMâ Libre Office can turn off protection on Word and Excel documents.
On the plus side, the more laws like this are enacted, the more I seem like an edgy cyber-hacker to my friends and family.
Well, you see the corporations paid for this service by lobbying. This is why they wanted those tax breaks: take a % of the tax break and spend directly on lobbying efforts to get the government services that they really want. The legislators getting paid also make out much better than having those tax dollars pass through the IRS and the Treasury department first.
Bizarre, baroque, barbaric.
ham-fisted. I imagine them sending off the final draft like this.
Most prosecutions in the UK under the extreme pornography law are âconsolation prosecutionsâ. The cops couldnât find any evidence of the thing they wanted to prosecute the person for, so tried them for pron instead. Police everywhere are like that. Every failed drug bust that doesnât lead to asset forfeiture is going to lead to laptop shredding if the US implements this.
The TTP is global poison. Sign it and be remembered as the enemy of humanity.
So⌠all general purpose computers that run VLC?
ETA:
Oops! @doctorow points that out in the article. Damnit Abe! READ!
Maybe this will finally silence all those âI donât have anything to hideâ plebes.
I thought the idea was that weâd be so happy about the TPP requirements for environmental protection and fair labor treatment that we wouldnât notice that weâd given away our computing rights to the corporate entertainment axis.
However, itâs being reported that the environmental and labor practice regs arenât any good either, so maybe I was wrong about thatâŚ
Doesnât everyone have a internet computer and a non-internet computer.
Yes, we can all afford to have two computers and to be able to give one of them up at any time. Also, none of us do any kind of art or academic process that involves the use or re-use of images that might be (inappropriately) DRMed and so would never need to have one computer that did everything and held our working data. (also, everyone is brilliant at running backups and testing that they worked.)
If you choose to use a tool that can potentially be used for illegal purposes, youâre just asking for trouble.
/s
Your VLC installation is no more evidence of criminality than a hammer in the house.
This kind of treaty should be illegal
