Head of Mozilla Says ACTA Is 'A Bad Way To Develop Internet Policy'

from the lizard-wrangler-speaks dept

One telling sign of the widespread concern about SOPA/PIPA was that the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, which oversees the open source Firefox and Thunderbird projects, abandoned its non-interventionist policy, and came out strongly against the bills. It first signed a joint letter sent to the key sponsors of both bills, and then modified its home page, pointing to further information about SOPA. That, in its turn, linked to a post entitled “PIPA/SOPA and Why You Should Care,” written by Mitchell Baker, the Chair of the Mozilla Foundation.

Baker has now written another, entitled “ACTA is a Bad Way To Develop Internet Policy“, which explicitly links ACTA and SOPA/PIPA:

One aspect of the controversy about ACTA is the closed process where only a tiny subset of people affected by the law were allowed to participate. Another great controversy is about the actual content of ACTA. We know that the goal of stopping unauthorized access to digital content can lead to very dangerous results. The proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation in the U.S made this abundantly clear. This is an area where even good intentions can lead to imbalanced and dangerous results.

The post is fairly restrained, and basically recommends that people should find out more about ACTA and “make their voice heard.” But it’s a further indication that people from all sectors are waking up to the problems with ACTA, just as they did with SOPA/PIPA.

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Companies: mozilla

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Comments on “Head of Mozilla Says ACTA Is 'A Bad Way To Develop Internet Policy'”

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22 Comments
TtfnJohn (profile) says:

The best thing happening here is that ACTA is finally getting the attention it deserves and did from the start. I get very nervous when negotiators get together in private to discuss things like this with no one outside the “select” group taking part and nothing happening in public.

With some luck (and good planning) perhaps this will swing a spotlight over to TPP which is just as bad, perhaps worse. Though we won’t know until we ever get to see the complete text of that proposed treaty.

Anonymous Coward says:

We all know the truth...

It never ceases to amaze me how much web surfing copyright extremists attribute to piracy. Do you think people just constantly look for that stuff and ignore the rest of the Internet? I mean, REALLY?

I hate to break it to you, but the stuff Big Media puts out isn’t even remotely that entertaining. Legitimate usage of the Internet is much more fun.

LaughingMan says:

to the fools who think anti-ACTA=pro-piracy

I for one DO NOT condone piracy. However, the measures proposed in the ACTA bill go too far. It would basically throw any give American citizen’s rights out the window if another country that signed decided to investigate them, whether they have a valid case or not. Yes! copyright protection is important, but not at the price of freedom. Don’t get led by the nose… Do your homework.

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