EU Defeats ACTA

Wednesday, July 4, 2012 by Common Dreams

European Parliament votes against controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

ACTA, the controversial online piracy treaty, was dealt a blow on Wednesday when the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject it.

The European Parliament voted 478 to 39 against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which was drawn up in secret and had been protested by hundreds of thousands across the EU who saw the treaty as an infringement on internet freedom.

President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz welcomed the decision and stated that "ACTA is the wrong solution to fight online piracy." He said that the treaty negotiations had lacked transparency and acknowledged the massive public mobilizations against the treaty.

"The majority of the parliament is of the opinion that ACTA is too vague - leaving room for abuses and raising concerns about its impact on privacy and civil liberties, on innovation, creativity and the free flow of information," wrote Schulz.

"We have to take all possible measures to fight piracy, but this should never be done at the cost of what has made the internet one of the most revolutionary technologies in history: the EP wants the web to remain free and open," he added.

Civil liberties advocates including Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye also welcomed the decision. "The European Parliament vote is a triumph of democracy over special interests and shady back-room deals. This is a significant victory for digital rights, and it's thanks to the tireless work of activists and grass roots organizations, including the Pirate Party world wide. Without this opposition, our representatives would have waved this agreement through. It is now clear that it is becoming increasingly politically poisonous to be 'anti-internet'," Kaye said.

With this vote, there is no possibility of EU ratification, leaving the future of the treaty uncertain.

ACTA: An International SOPA

By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

While the Internet community came out in force to protest the free speech and privacy threats posed by the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an international trade agreement with the same stated goals—and potentially greater threats—was being negotiated behind closed doors. While the First Amendment can be served by intellectual property protections that incentivize content creation, IP laws can easily be misused. Like PIPA and SOPA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (“ACTA”) is another misguided and overbroad attempt to crack down on counterfeiting and piracy over the Internet. There has been excellent analysis of the issue by sources including EFF, Tech Dirt and Ars Technica, but we have also been watching this issue and wanted to summarize what’s at stake.

While many of the worst provisions of ACTA were ultimately watered down (mainly due to pressure from outside groups reacting to leaked drafts), many issues remain, both procedural and substantive. There are four primary problems with ACTA.

1. Tying Congress’s Hands on Copyright Law

     While supporters of ACTA insist it does not change U.S. law (were it technically to change existing law, it would require Senate ratification) opponents have different concerns—namely, that it will reinforce current copyright laws in an area that is changing rapidly and many believe should be updated. Opponents fear that signing the agreement will make it unnecessarily more difficult for Congress to update copyright laws while staying compliant with our new “international obligations.”

2. Lack of accountability

     Unlike PIPA and SOPA, ACTA would establish a new international body to enforce certain IP rules. This body would be made up of unelected members acting outside the purview of any current international institution. So, while SOPA and PIPA at least would have been enforced by U.S. agencies and subject to constitutional checks and balances, ACTA could be used for worldwide crackdowns on Internet activity by a coordinated authority that could work at cross-purposes with the laws and policies of the participating countries.

3. Negotiated in secret

     Despite the fact that such world-wide e-regulation has the potential to impact everyone with a computer, ACTA was negotiated in secret by a small, exclusive group of countries and a few private companies. The first the public heard about the talks was when WikiLeaks released a discussion document in May 2008. Both Presidents Bush and Obama rejected calls from advocates and members of Congress to make ACTA negotiations public, claiming that such disclosure would cause “damage to the national security.” However, a 2009 FOIA request found that the draft had been shared with Google, eBay, Dell, Intel, the Business Software Alliance, News Corporation, Sony Pictures, Time Warner, the Motion Picture Association of America, and Verizon under a nondisclosure agreement. Once the agreement was finalized it was posted to the United States Trade Representative’s website here.

4. Evading Senate approval

     To keep the negotiations secret and avoid having to obtain the Senate’s approval, the president is claiming that ACTA was negotiated within his presidential powers as a “sole executive agreement.” A sole executive agreement is one that the president may enter if the terms will not change U.S. law. However, the extent of the president’s authority to completely bypass Congressional approval and enter into a sole executive agreement is controversial. Earlier this month 50 leading U.S. legal scholars sent a letter to members of the Senate Finance Committee stating,

     the Administration currently lacks a means to constitutionally enter ACTA without ex post Congressional approval. The present issue reaches far beyond the topical matters covered by ACTA, into the fundamental Constitutional issue of separation of powers. If Congress allows the executive to claim that ACTA was authorized by language that clearly does not authorize the agreement, it will be ceding unprecedented power to the executive."

     Senator Wyden (D-OR) has also questioned the president’s authority to treat ACTA as a sole agreement. “There are questions of constitutional authority surrounding whether the administration can enter into this agreement without Congress’s approval,” he said. “Either way, when international accords, like ACTA, are conceived and constructed under a cloak of secrecy it is hard to argue that they represent the broad interests of the general public. The controversy over ACTA should surprise no one.”

     Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) warned participants at the World Economic Forum that ACTA was more dangerous than SOPA and PIPA and.then called into question the president’s authority to negotiate the agreement. He said, “It’s not coming to me for a vote. It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.”

International opposition
To date the United States, the European Union (and 22 of its member states), Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea have all signed ACTA but none have formally ratified the agreement yet.

At the grassroots and at the highest levels of government, ACTA has sparked protests. In Poland, tens of thousands of people protested across the nation and activists attacked government websites when that country signed the agreement in January. Members of the Polish Parliament wore Guy Fawkes masks to demonstrate their disapproval. Since then, protests have been organized throughout Europe including in Sweden, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, and the United Kingdom. Notably, Kader Arif, the first "rapporteur" for ACTA in the EU parliament (the member who prepares the official recommendation to the parliament on a legislative proposal), quit his role in disgust, stating,

I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organizations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.

This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.

Arif’s successor, David Martin, recommended against adoption of the agreement, fearing unintended consequences and overbroad enforcement (though he also asked the parliament to consider a replacement).

Post-ACTA: The Trans-Pacific Partnership
Since ACTA’s completion we have learned that part of a new massive trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), aims "to ensure an effective and balanced approach to intellectual property rights among the TPP countries.” Talks on the TPP are currently being held between nine Pacific Rim countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. Like ACTA all negotiations are being conducted behind closed doors with details shared only with Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITAC). The U.S. ITAC is called ITAC 15 and includes top executives from AT&T, Verizon, the RIAA, the pharmaceutical lobby, and Cisco. All anyone else knows about the agreement comes from a leak of the "intellectual property chapter" that surfaced about a year ago. EFF’s international IP director, Gwen Hinze, told Ars Technica, “I would say it’s ACTA-plus, not ACTA redux,” Secret international trade agreements negotiated between only government and industry is not a trend we want to see catch on.

Healthy democracies depend on transparency and public debate. Good policies are created through the input of experts, advocates, industry, policy makers, and citizens. Circumventing basic checks and balances to fast-track policies that have already been defeated by the public—often called “policy laundering”— is not how representative democracy is supposed to work. Many fear that agreements made in ACTA and TPP will put our civil liberties at risk. At the very least, the president should allow a free and open debate on the measures.

Search engines are pressured to doctor results to favor copyright industries

By Muriel Kane - RAW Story
Sunday, March 4, 2012

There has been a great deal of concern recently over proposed legislation and treaties — such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and TPP — that would hand the copyright industries what are widely seen as unwarranted powers to go after allegedly infringing websites.

According to TechDirt’s Glyn Moody, however, informal deals struck between governments and corporations could be just as harmful — and the British government is currently engaged in just such an effort.

Moody, the author of Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, writes that “with the implicit threat that tough legislation will be brought in if voluntary agreements aren’t drawn up promptly enough, governments are using this technique to avoid even the minimal scrutiny that consultations on proposed new laws would permit.”

He points to a post by James Firth which reveals that “the UK government and in particular Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, is pressuring search engines to police search results in a way that goes well beyond notice and take-down.”

What the British government is after amounts to the artificial promotion of “approved” online music and film services, combined with a blacklist of websites accused of infringement which would be completely excluded from search results.

As Moody notes, a system of this sort could easily lead to the censorship of a great deal of legitimate content with no oversight or appeal. So far, the search engine companies appear reluctant to go along with doctoring search results to favor a single industry’s economic interests, especially since it could lead them to incur charges of colluding in anti-competitive behavior. However, they may be willing to go along with an advertising blacklist, which would be less extreme but no less high-handed.

“Legislation, with full consultation from all parties, is a far better way of proceeding,” Moody concludes. “After all, it’s why we have a legislative process with checks and balances in the first place — to craft a solution that is both workable and fair. The new fashion for backroom agreements among a small group of unelected insiders is nothing less than an attack on that process, and hence on democracy itself.”

EU suspends ACTA ratification, refers treaty to court

RT | 22 February, 2012

The EU has suspended the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and referred the text to the European Court of Justice to investigate possible rights breaches.

The European Commission decided on Wednesday to ask the EU's top court "to clarify that the ACTA agreement and its implementation must be fully compatible with freedom of expression and freedom of the internet."

The ACTA debate "must be based upon facts and not upon the misinformation or rumor that has dominated social media sites and blogs," says EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Guch. The EU will not ratify the international treaty until the court delivers its ruling, he added.

De Guch insists the treaty will change nothing in the bloc, but help protect the creative economy.

European countries were quick to sign US- and Japan-lobbied ACTA agreement in Tokyo just a month ago. Ratification of the controversial agreement, however, is not going so smoothly.

ACTA faced fierce opposition by the Europeans, who saw it as an anti-democratic move. People took their anger to the streets in a synchronized protest, saying it violates their rights. About 200 cities participated in an anti-ACTA march on February 11.

The initial goal authorities pursued was to protect intellectual property and copyright, but human rights activists fought to prove its bias in favor of those in power. They argue it violates freedom of expression on the internet and allows unprecedented control of people’s personal information and privacy.

Some critics have been saying ACTA is a somewhat-disguised  SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act).

ACTA has so far been signed by the EU as a bloc, 22 EU members as individual states, and also by the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea and some other countries. The total number of signatories to the treaty is 31.

The European Parliament is set to vote on ACTA in June. In parallel, the accord has to be ratified by all the 27 EU member states. Germany, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Estonia and Slovakia have not put individual signatures under the treaty as such and, in the wake of the mass anti-ACTA protests in Europe, are not eager to proceed with it.Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Latvia suspended the ratification process, while Poland on the second thought refused to ratify the accord all together.

Wednesday's decision means ACTA's ratification in the EU could be delayed for months.

Rob Beschizza, the managing director of online magazine and group blog Boing Boing, says nothing can stop Internet file swapping.

“What the industry needs to do when it considers how it makes entertainment products – music, movies and so on – available, is make it so that people can easily buy them. People don’t want to be thieves. They don’t want to take things they are not entitled to,” he told RT.

Beschizza believes that legislative initiatives like ACTA never do anything to stop piracy.

“The way the Internet works [is], as long as two computers can connect to each other, people are going to find a way to share files. The Internet works by copying data,” he said. “So what we foresee is when these laws are passed, there’ll be all this social harm and there’ll be no actual prevention of piracy.”

List of countries willing to ratify ACTA shrinks daily

Thursday, February 16, 2012 by Common Dreams

'I Don’t Know Why I Signed': ACTA Support Tanks

Support for the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) continues to wane this week as the Netherlands have imposed delays on ratification, joining the list of countries that have begun to back down on the agreement.

Last weekend saw tens of thousands of protesters across Europe in opposition to the agreement. In response to these protests, now the Netherlands have joined a growing list of countries including Germany, Poland, and Bulgaria who have recently taken steps to delay or reject ACTA.

UPI reports:

The Netherlands this week imposed delays on the ratification of the ACTA international anti-piracy agreement, which critics claim threatens Internet freedoms. 

Opponents say the draft Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement puts users' privacy at risk while the European Commission contends the measure doesn't change existing data protection laws and is needed to mount a long-term global fight against copyright theft. 

Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have already delayed the international trade agreement's ratification process, citing the same privacy concerns highlighted during a wave of anti-ACTA protests throughout Europe last week. 

The Netherlands joined that group Tuesday, when the Dutch lower house of Parliament backed a motion from the Green Left party calling on the Netherlands to refrain from signing onto ACTA, Radio Netherlands reported. [...] 

Dunja Mijatovic, media freedom representative for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Tuesday urged the European Parliament to reject ACTA, which it is considering for ratification. 

"In my role as the OSCE representative on Freedom of the Media, I am mandated to observe media freedom developments in the OSCE participating states and am concerned that the present agreement on ACTA might have a detrimental effect on freedom of expression and a free flow of information in the digital age," Mijatovic said in Vienna.

RT reports:

As European parliaments reject the Anti-Counterfeiting trade Agreement on human rights grounds, some are asking why it was signed in the first place. 

It looks like some of the countries who signed ACTA in Tokyo on January 26 are already having second thoughts. 

“I don’t know why I signed ACTA”, former Romanian prime minister Emil Boc said on February 6. 

“We made insufficient consultations before signing the agreement in late January," said Polish PM Donald Tusk on February 3, implying that his government had not taken steps to fully "ensure it was entirely safe for Polish citizens.” 

A few days later Slovenia's foreign minister, who signed the agreement on behalf of her country, apologized for doing so: "Quite simply, I did not clearly connect the agreement I had been instructed to sign with the agreement that, according to my own civic conviction, limits and withholds freedom of engagement on the largest and most significant network in human history, and thus limits particularly the future of our children."

International agreement cements frequently-abused U.S. copyright law

By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

With the latest round of anti-piracy bills now soundly defeated, many activists and lawmakers have begun thinking about ways that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) may be changed to remediate portions that have been abused by copyright holders.

Only, they’ve discovered that it may be too late.

The Obama administration signed off on an international agreement late last year called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Act (ACTA) that effectively exports much of the DMCA to Europe, Japan, Australia and other developed nations, and most likely cements those laws in place as-is here at home. Though negotiated in out of public view, as all U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) agreements are, portions of ACTA’s early form became public after anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks released a trove of U.S. diplomatic cables referring to the talks.

Those cables showed a vastly different — and much more objectionable — agreement than what President Barack Obama eventually signed in 2011. Nonetheless, anti-ACTA activists have tried to generate mass opposition to the treaty by comparing it to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), in an apparent effort to energize the same Internet users that were so successful in defeating those bills last month. But their arguments, largely based on conjecture and hyperbole, may ultimately hurt opponents of ACTA more than they help, allowing the Obama administration to reject lawmakers who call for reforms, like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).

As ACTA exists today, the administration insists that it does not make any alterations to U.S. law and does not introduce any new concepts for countries that have signed on, which is why the USTR and the Obama administration treated it as an “executive agreement” and did not send it to the U.S. Senate for ratification. Such executive agreements, though controversial, are not unheard of. The president does have the authority to enter into international agreements if it does not alter U.S. law, because such an agreement does not meet the technical definition of a treaty.

Instead of mirroring SOPA/PIPA, ACTA appears to primarilly formalize language from a number of existing bilateral free trade agreements, all of which have included intellectual property enforcement requirements.

The current copyright enforcement regime, codified under the DMCA, has been greatly abused in the U.S. because of the number of pitfalls that were not foreseen by lawmakers who crafted the legislation in the mid-90s. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a technology policy group, has a list of DMCA abuses where copyright holders have been empowered by the law to prevent the publication of damaging information, bully competition out of the market, limit consumer choices, hinder scientific research, censor media outlets, modify or delete user-submitted multimedia on the Internet and discourage technological innovation.

“Years of experience with the ‘anti-circumvention’ provisions of the DMCA demonstrate that the statute reaches too far, chilling a wide variety of legitimate activities in ways Congress did not intend,” the EFF explained. “As an increasing number of copyright works are wrapped in technological protection measures, it is likely that the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions will be applied in further unforeseen contexts, hindering the legitimate activities of innovators, researchers, the press, and the public at large.”

Although it’s not technically a treaty in the strictest sense because it doesn’t require changes to current law, any future legislative changes to the DCMA that counter provisions in ACTA could run into roadblocks. Once ACTA enters into force, any changes to U.S. copyright enforcement law could well run afoul of ACTA, forcing a future Administration to either withdraw from ACTA, renegotiate parts of the treaty to remain in compliance or risk sanctions from the other parties to the agreement. For its part, the Obama administration has insisted that ACTA does not tie the hands of Congress, but a future administration may read the text differently.

“The theory is that ‘foreign affairs’ is, in Article II of the Constitution, a power specifically allocated to the President — and, therefore, since ACTA is an issue under ‘foreign affairs’ it should be viewed as a Sole Executive Agreement that does not need Congressional approval,” Michael Burke, a Washington, D.C. attorney who specializes in international law, explained to Raw Story. “Both the Constitution and relevant Supreme Court cases are clear that the President, sometimes, has ‘sole’ and ‘plenary’ authority on foreign relations/foreign affairs.”

“However,” Burke added, “others feel that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution — that allocates to Congress the power to regulate trade among nations-means that ACTA should not be considered a Sole Executive Agreement but a treaty subject to review and vote by the Senate.” That’s led the president’s critics to latch on to claims that he’s superseded his constitutional authority.

In its earliest forms, anti-ACTA activists wouldn’t have been wrong in their assertions: ACTA previously contained SOPA-like provisions that would disconnect repeat copyright offenders from the Internet, DNS blockades for rogue websites and liability provisions that would make network administrators and website owners responsible for the actions of their users. Sources say, and cables show, those provisions were fought tooth-and-nail behind the scenes and ultimately dropped from the final version, though they’ve already reappeared in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential treaty which enters its 11th round of negotiations in March.

While ACTA is not a backdoor to imposing SOPA/PIPA on an unwilling populace, as some have claimed, it is broadly representative of the American entertainment industry’s long-term investment in using the American government to help it impost new copyright regimes abroad. Further evidence of that long-term goal can be found in U.S. diplomatic cables leaked last year.

ACTA is not likely to have immediate effects in the States, as part of the U.S.’s overall international copyright enforcement strategy, but it does give the Administration yet another tool in its arsenal to pursue sanctions against nations it deems insufficiently committed to protecting the U.S. entertainment industry’s profits.

For example, the U.S. keeps a list of countries that skirt these requirements, targeting them with economic pressure to force compliance. Already, Spain was the most recent to face such pressure, which was revealed in December after a U.S. diplomat’s letter was leaked to the media. Because of U.S. pressure, Spain’s new administration adopted intellectual property laws similar to SOPA, even after the previous administration refused.

Under ACTA, U.S. power to force compliance onto countries with more liberal fair use and less onerous enforcement policies will simply grow.

ACTA--The Underlying Trap to Control the Web

ACTA: The Seldom Heard of International Treaty That Could Affect Internet Freedom

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by Common Dreams
US among countries that have already signed ACTA


While there was  to online anti-piracy bills -- SOPA in the House and the PIPA in the Senate -- ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, has received scant media attention yet poses a tremendous threat to online freedom.

RT reports on how the ACTA treaty will work:

Under this new treaty, Internet Service Providers will police all data passing through them, making them legally responsible for what their users do online. And should you do something considered "breach of copyright" like, for instance, getting a tattoo of a brand logo, taking a photo and posting it somewhere, you may be disconnected from the Internet, fined or even jailed.

This, of course, threatens the entire founding idea of the Internet – the free sharing of information. But ACTA doesn't stop there. It goes beyond the Internet, bearing down on generic drugs and food patents. If passed, ACTA will enforce a global standard for seed patenting, which would wipe out independent, local farmers and make the world completely dependent on the patent owners (read "big corporations") for supplies.

TheRevolutionIsNow offers this video analysis of the treaty:

While protests were able to pressure officials from moving forward with the SOPA and PIPA bills, President Obama already signed ACTA months ago. The International Business Times reports:

ACTA, on the other hand, was already signed by the United States on Oct. 11, 2011, and Obama was not required to attain the approval of any outside authority to do so: not the Congress, not the Supreme Court, and not the American public.

Now that it has been signed, the legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government also have little ability to challenge or amend the treaty, and Americans will be subject to a whole new scheme of laws, restrictions and regulations that could have them facing fines or jail through a process that would likely exist entirely outside the scope of the American justice system.

And Wired.co.uk reports:

It has been negotiated, mostly in secret, between various countries and the EU over the last four years. Many states have already signed up for Acta, well before the widespread web furore over Sopa. So far, Canada, Japan, Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US have all signed up to Acta. The European Union, Mexico and Switzerland have supported the treaty and shown a commitment to signing it in the future. Acta was slipped through the European Council in an agriculture and fisheries meeting in December. Some of its more aggressive language has been removed from more recent iterations of the treaty, particularly concerning "disconnection of internet access". It is expected to be signed by the EU on Thursday, before the European Parliament has a chance to vote on it.

Echoing protests last week when many sites "went black" in protest of SOPA and PIPA,Agence France-Presse reports that close to 100 websites in Poland went black Tuesday in protest of their country's plan to sign ACTA.

So who supports this far-reaching treaty? Wired.co.uk reports:

Acta is supported by major copyright holders including pharmaceutical companies, movies studios and record labels. Lobbying organisations include GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Monsanto Company, Time Warner, Sony, Verizon, The Walt Disney Company, the Motion Picture Association of America, News Corporation, and Viacom. It looks like the European Commission supports it but the European Parliament are unanimously against it.

How Hollywood’s Own Reality Undermines Its Position on Internet Policy

Credibility Lost

by RICHARD FORNO

The furor over the latest legislative proposals to address online copyright infringement in the United States have cast the major American intellectual property companies – most notably, the entertainment industry — in a very negative light within the global Internet user community.  I join with technologists, scholars, and industry observers who are amazed at the level of concentrated outcry over a single technology policy issue and hope it represents a more civic-minded Internet population when it comes to matters affecting Internet users both in the United States and around the world.

Much of the controversy surrounding The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) [1] and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) [2] pertains to how they were drafted and their potential adverse consequences to the Internet itself, if not society generally. While a prolonged analysis or description of these proposals are beyond the scope of this article – but can be found quite easily online – they represent the latest attempts by the intellectual property (IP) industry (although ‘cartel’ might be a  more appropriate term) to further extend its reach into cyberspace to enact what it believes are necessary measures to protect its copyrighted property such as movies, music, and software.  Unfortunately, these legislative proposals were conceived and developed primarily by industry lobbyists with little input from Internet engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, or other subject matter experts who understand the technical, legal, and social consequences should these proposals, as written, become law.  The secrecy surrounding the drafting of SOPA and PIPA are reminiscent of how these same industry organisations were adamant that the international  development of 2011′s controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) occur in secret with little if any public consultation, comment, or discussion.[3]

Apparently, developing laws to protect intellectual property on the Internet are exempt from Washington’s alleged desire for greater transparency in the policymaking process. It also represents a shift in how technology issues previously were dealt with in the earlier days of the Internet — i.e., involving all stakeholders in a public forum to reach a mutual consensus on a given matter.  Such one-sided practices can lead to proposals like SOPA and PIPA, which indeed may endanger the effective and secure operation of the Internet, harm innocent Internet users, establish a “shoot first” policy based on accusation not proof, and potentially present assorted constitutional concerns over due process and online freedom of expression.  [4]

Concerns over the technical and legal ramifications of SOPA and PIPA were voiced publicly by companies like Google and Facebook and a veritable Who’s Who of Internet Engineering[5]. These concerns subsequently were marginalised or ignored[6] by American legislators wanting to enact them into law quickly while minimising public discussion about their potential consequences.  In response, the Great SOPA Blackout of January 18^th, 2012 was launched by major Internet companies, prominent Web sites, and individual luminaries to protest and raise public awareness of these proposals, building upon the successful online protest the prior month against Internet company GoDaddy.Com, a longtime SOPA supporter.[7]  The significant public attention brought to these proposals during the January 18^th Blackout forced legislators to realise these proposals might be a political problem for them; even before the one-day protest ended, politicians began scrambling to distance themselves from these proposals, including several of their original sponsors.[8][9][10]  Political support turned so quickly against SOPA and PIPA that the president of the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) publicly threatened to cut off campaign support for politicians who didn’t support its legislative desires once it was known that Congressional leaders and the Obama Administration had removed those proposals from active consideration in their current form.[11]

That said, the enforcement of copyright on the Net is an ongoing concern for Hollywood and represents an significant, if not apocalyptic, problem to the entertainment industry, as evidenced in recent years:

• 2005: MPAA claims $6.1 billion in losses due to “continued camcordering” of movies in theaters. [12]

• 2005: US Chamber of Commerce reports 750,000 jobs lost due to online ‘piracy.’[13]

• 2006:  A study based on Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) data from the Institute for Policy Innovation claims the US economy loses $20.5 billon a year from movie ‘piracy.’[14]

• 2011: In a letter to the New York Times, the US Chamber of Commerce’s Mark Elliot says online ‘piracy’ threatens more than 19 million American jobs.[15]

Clearly, the entertainment industry is suffering tremendous financial losses due to online theft.  More frightening, the potential job losses have increased from 750,000 in 2005 to more than 19 million in 2011. This stark news suggests there must be severe financial and employment losses for the entertainment industry resulting from the online ‘piracy’ of its products. These statistics and predictions must be true — after all, these are ‘industry numbers’ being reported!

Interestingly, despite this gloomy news, the MPAA reported that “global box office receipts reached an all time high” of $29.9 billion in 2010 — and soon after announced new statistics showing how movie ‘piracy’ is killing its industry and destroying jobs. [16]

MPAA can’t have it both ways. Either it is losing money and laying people off due to ‘piracy’ or it’s making profits hand-over-fist and keeping its industry very much alive and profitable. Either way, it’s offered up some very misleading statements about its profitability and well-being in the face of an alleged epidemic of online theft that only draconian measures like SOPA or PIPA can address.

Similar antics were used by the MPAA’s musical counterpart, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) over the years to describe its alleged financial woes due to online theft.  In the case of music, iTunes destroyed the decades-old concept of “album sales” — yet recording industry statements and news articles continued to suggest that “declining album sales” was a direct consequence of the online ‘piracy’ problem rather than acknowledging that increasing number of customers now purchased individual tracks from iTunes instead of full albums. [17][18]

Nevertheless, these manipulated statistics are invoked by the entertainment industry at every opportunity to justify and perpetuate attacks on technology, customers, and the Internet itself while ignoring societal evolution and the evolving expectations of its customers.  I do not dispute that the theft of copyrighted materials on the Internet is a problem and needs to be addressed, but we must be mindful of the statistics presented by the entertainment industry on this issue and not blindly accept their view as reflective of reality. Unfortunately, like all pieces of propaganda, repeat it often enough and the audience will believe it’s true.

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”  So let’s dig a bit deeper into the statistics routinely cited by the entertainment industry as it plays the victim of ‘piracy’ in the eyes of legislators and the media to determine if these indeed are facts or merely fantasy:

• 2010: The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) releases a study that, while confirming online copyright infringement indeed is a problem, cast serious doubts on the intellectual property industry’s ‘piracy’ statistics. It also concludes that measuring the impact of ‘piracy’ with any degree of meaningful accuracy may be impossible.[19]

• 2011: A ‘piracy investigator’ working for the entertainment industry describes how the entertainment industry worked to boost its piracy statistics to gain stronger media and political interest in its efforts.[20]

• 2012: Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute notes that the statistics associated with online ‘piracy’ are flawed if not something purely in the fantasies of lobbyists and their paid-for legislators.[21]

In short, great doubts are, and should be, cast upon the statistics used by the entertainment industry regarding ‘piracy’ and the theft of its products.  Therefore, in negotiating with the entertainment industry, lawmakers must be prudently critical in their analysis and due diligence of the facts presented — or, as the late Ronald Reagan famously said, “trust, but verify.”

Sadly, these very metrics, flawed or fixed as they are, continue to define the entertainment industry’s vision of reality and are used by its Congressional lobbyists to garner support for more far-reaching mechanisms to control the flow of information — theirs or anyone else’s — on the Internet in the name of countering ‘piracy.’  After all, the flurry of widespread public criticism of SOPA was dismissed by lead SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith as “not based in reality”; in other words, the reality conveniently contrived by the entertainment industry lobbyists and subsequently believed as absolute truth by Congress.[22]  Such sentiment, if not simply an excessive sense of self-entitlement, also helps explain why members of the entertainment industry have sued foreign governments that do not enact legislation favourable to them immediately upon request.[23]

Therefore, how can anyone take seriously the claims of Hollywood over its declared losses to ‘piracy’?  Not only do the entertainment industry’s statements about ‘piracy’s’ debilitating effects on its profitability conflict with its proclamations about strong annual sales, but it’s been caught basing its actions on a misconstrued sense of reality and groupthink reinforced by an ongoing inability to work with those whose views differ or raise concerns about its agenda. But Congressional lawmakers routinely believe the entertainment industry’s claims and cater to its needs, because they appreciate the flow of money received by enacting legislation favourable to those supporting their political campaigns. [24]

Interestingly, either through a superb act of irony or willful ignorance, the entertainment industry (and Congress) fails to note that the very technologies it lobbies (or votes) against are the ones that continue to make it so profitable over time.  Technological innovations such as the VCR, DVR, iTunes, NetFlix, and yet-to-be-discovered (or invented) services all contribute to the long-term success of the entertainment industry by allowing customers to enjoy entertainment products in a manner conducive to and consistent with the modern age and societal expectations.  For example, the launch of iTunes as the de facto Internet site to purchase music was a direct response to the rampant theft of music over the Internet in the late 1990s when Napster, GnuTella, Limewire, and other services met an emerging customer need (portabilityof a purchased music to multiple devices and over the Internet) that the recording industry chose to ignore. iTunes transformed that mostly criminal venture – obtaining and sharing music over the Internet – into the recording industry’s standard, if not preferred, method of distributing commercial music to customers.

Unfortunately. any new technology in the hands of average customers absolutely terrifies the entertainment industry. An insane fear of ‘piracy’ and zealous desire to protect its digital products at all costs have contributed to the imposition of restrictive technology controls, laws, and legislative proposals that created the uproar we see currently over SOPA and PIPA. Similar efforts over time explain why customers couldn’t easily duplicate VHS tapes in the 1980s, or DVDs in the 1990s, and are forced to watch un-skippable FBI “Anti Piracy Warnings” on DVDs and Blu-Rays in the 2000s.  It’s why you hear terms like ‘safe harbour’, ‘circumvention’, HDMI, HDCP, DRM, TCP, CSS, TPM, ‘analog holes’, ‘broadcast flags’, and things called ‘content protection’ inflicted upon our computers, monitors, video cards, iPods, cell phones, home theater systems, movies, music, and other digital products we might place on our various ‘authorised devices.’ It’s why since 2005 you risk arrest on federal felony charges if you take a photos or quick movie clips of a relative in a movie theater and happen to also catch a film playing in the background.[25] Why? Because you might be a criminal looking to steal digital content.  Even if you’re not, you might be. But that chance that you might be a criminal means everyone must be considered and treated as one, too — and why every new piece of consumer technology is considered by the entertainment industry as a potential Weapon of Mass Infringement. [26]   Remember that in 1982 the former MPAA president famously equated the VCR to the Boston Strangler [27] in terms of endangering the future success of the film industry; yet despite the proliferation of VCRs, DVRs, and streaming video services in the years since, that same industry reported record profits in 2010!

Effectively working together to counter online copyright infringement requires trust — trust in the data presented, and trust in the trustworthiness of those you are working with. Sadly, the entertainment industry repeatedly demonstrates it is not to be trusted — and the flawed statistics endlessly cited to further its agenda confirms this belief, as does its repeated inability to work with people and groups whose views differ from their own.  Those working to develop lasting solutions to the very real problem of contemporary copyright infringement must strive towards a mutually acceptable resolution to this problem and realise that a winner-take-all scorched-earth outcome may not be an appropriate solution. Legislation and treaties regarding copyright enforcement that raise serious concerns about Internet security, stability, and constitutionality (i.e., SOPA, PIPA, ACTA) must not be developed in secret by a committee of selected lobbyists but rather in full view of the public and with input from qualified external subject matter experts representing all sides of the issue.  Finally, to reach such a solution, the entertainment industry must abolish its practice of treating its paying customers as potential criminals and overcome its paranoia about technologies that it doesn’t yet control or influence heavily[28][29].

Unlike Silicon Valley, Hollywood considers ‘innovation’ as the process of lobbying for newer and more stringent controls over information and the flow of information in modern society. By clinging to its own version of reality, the entertainment industry demonstrates that it prefers to inflict lasting damage on the rest of the world to protect its antiquated Industrial Age business models rather than evolve with the modern world and so-called Information Age. Moreover, I posit that the entertainment industry’s ongoing and frequently controversial efforts to deal with what it purports to be an apocalyptic threat of ‘piracy’ merely are attempts to justify its legitimacy and self-perceived relevance in a world where the capabilities of quality production, marketing, and distribution of entertainment and other digital products now exist in the hands of Every Man[30][31] and not exclusively One Man[32][33].

Sources.[1] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261[2] http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/text[3] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/report-acta-secrecy-is-all-the-united-states-fault.ars[4] https://www.eff.org/document/law-professors-letter-sopa[5] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa[6] http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/01/04/smith-says-reddit-sopa-protestors-are-039not-legitimate-or-large-number039 [7] http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57349913-281/godaddy-bows-to-boycott-now-opposes-sopa-copyright-bill/[8] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71697.html[9] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57362990-501465/sopa-is-dead-smith-pulls-bill/[10]  http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/harry-reid-pipa-sopa-mpaa-blackout-283549[11] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120120/14472117492/mpaa-directly-publicly-threatens-politicians-who-arent-corrupt-enough-to-stay-bought.shtml[12] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/pirates-of-the-canadians/article735563/singlepage/#articlecontent[13] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10213367-38.html[14] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5395218.stm[15] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/opinion/rogue-web-sites.html[16]http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/03/mpaa_box_office_bragging.html[17] http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/01/the-itunes-effect-and-the-futu.html[18]http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/[19] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/us-government-finally-admits-most-piracy-estimates-are-bogus.ars(The GAO Report is @ http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423)[20] http://torrentfreak.com/private-anti-piracy-investigator-spills-the-beans-111003/[21] http://www.itworld.com/security/242587/best-evidence-showing-we-need-sopa-based-govt-studies-never-existed[22] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120105/04462117287/rep-lamar-smith-decides-lying-about-insulting-dismissing-opposition-to-sopa-is-winning-strategy.shtml[23]http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120112/09203917388/insane-entitlement-emi-sues-irish-govt-not-passing-sopa-like-censorship-law.shtml[24] http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/205491-consumer-group-accuses-hollywood-of-threatening-politicians[25] http://consumerist.com/2009/12/charged-with-felony-after-taping-4-minutes-of-new-moon.html[26] http://www.mpaa.org/contentprotection/camcorder-laws[27] http://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm[28] http://www.dvdforum.org/about-mission.htm[29] http://www.digital-cp.com/about_dcp[30] http://www.apple.com/[31] http://www.youtube.com/[32] http://www.riaa.com/[33] http://www.mpaa.org/

ACTA text shows US caved in on Internet provisions/Kiss says "Sue EVERYBODY!" (3 articles)

By Nate Anderson | Ars Technica

Talk about a cave-in. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been three years in the making, and at one point included language advocating "three strikes" regimes, ordering ISPs to develop anti-piracy plans, promoting tough DRM anticircumvention language, setting up a "takedown" notification system, and "secondary liability" for device makers. Europeans were demanding protection for their geographic marks (Champagne, etc). Other countries wanted patents in the mix.


That's all gone in today's release of the "near-final" ACTA text (PDF). US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, whose office negotiated the US side of the deal, issued astatement this morning about the "tremendous progress in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy," but the real story here is the tremendous climbdown by US negotiators, who have largely failed in their attempts to push the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) onto the rest of the world.

Apparently, a face-saving agreement is better than no agreement at all—but even the neutered ACTA we see today could run into problems. Mexico's Senate yesterday approved a nonbinding resolution asking for the country to suspend participation in ACTA, while key members of the European Parliament have also expressed skepticism about the deal.

Even Public Knowledge, a DC advocacy group that has long opposed ACTA, said today that the new text is "a qualified victory for those who want to protect the digital rights of consumers around the world. Some of the most egregious provisions from earlier drafts have been removed on topics ranging from digital protection measures to the liability of intermediaries like Internet Service Providers and search engines."

Let's see what's left.

Internet piracy. In earlier drafts, ISPs were told that they must have a policy for disconnecting repeat infringers (something already in the DMCA) in order to steer clear of liability, and disconnecting users after "three strikes" was held up as a model. All of this is gone, reduced to a mere footnote saying that countries can do what they want to limit ISP liability.

French group La Quadrature du Net remains unhappy about wording that "seeks to extend the scope of the 'digital chapter' to criminalize 'unlawful uses of means of widespread distribution.'" But that wording says nothing about "criminalizing" anything (the "enforcement" here refers to both civil and criminal enforcement, as the previous paragraph in the text makes clear). And the specific phrase "including the unlawful use of means of widespread distribution for infringing purposes" is one of the few in the document set off by a highlight and italics, which is to say that it has not been agreed upon.

Cooperation. Instead, ACTA signatories agree to "promote cooperative efforts within the business community to effectively address copyright or related rights infringement while preserving legitimate competition and consistent with each Party’s law, preserving fundamental principles such as freedom of expression, fair process, and privacy." This has the potential to be worrying—will governments push ISPs to start disconnecting users without any judicial oversight? But it's also remarkably vague in what it requires, a far cry from the detailed ISP provisions in previous ACTA drafts.

The RIAA has already sent out a statement confirming that it likes this bit a lot, since "it is estimated that as much as 95 percent of global Internet traffic in music is illegal."

IP lookups. Each country does need to provide some way for rightsholders to turn an IP address into a name. Many countries have this already; in the US, it's a subpoena, while a "Norwich Pharmacal Order" in the UK accomplishes the same thing.

DRM. The tough rules against DRM have been watered down. ACTA signatories have to outlaw DRM circumvention, but there's a huge caveat; this only applies to DRM which restricts acts not authorized by rightsholders "or permitted by law." That last caveat is huge, and aligns ACTA more with the older WIPO Internet Treaties than with the DMCA. This language would appear to allow DRM circumvention when the resulting use is a legal one.

Sadly, when it comes to tools for doing the circumventing, these are broadly banned, even where some limited uses might be legal. This appears to set up a situation in which an ACTA signatory could allow people to bypass DRM to make backups or exercise fair use rights, but could not allow distribution of the tools to help them do it.

Patents. Patents appear to be gone from much of the treaty (with the US pushing hard to keep them out of the "civil enforcement" section as well, though this remains contentious).

Geographic indicators. Europe has already indicated that it may not support ACTA if its precious food marks are not protected worldwide (something that would force Wisconsin-produced "Parmesan" to change its name, for instance, since Parmiggiano-Reggiano is a protected geographic mark.) The new text does not mention such marks specifically, though Sean Flynn of American University worries that they could be snuck in through an ambiguous phrase in the border seizure section.

iPod searches at the border? The "de minimis" provision remains. ACTA countries can "exclude from the application of this Section small quantities of goods of a non-commercial nature contained in travelers’ personal luggage."

Green destruction. When customs officials do seize loads of counterfeit T-shirts, say, they can't just remove the labels and let the items enter the commerce stream. Instead, the good should be destroyed. When that happens, the bonfire must be a "green" one, as "the destruction of goods infringing intellectual property rights shall be done consistently with each Party’s laws and regulations on environmental matters."

Camcording. Even the MPAA's beloved camcording rule, which has been in ACTA drafts for a long while, could be in trouble. The draft text makes clear that some countries still believe that criminalizing theater cammers should be optional, and the parties have yet to reach an agreement.

Cave-in

As Canadian law professor Michael Geist puts it, "one of the biggest stories over the three year negotiation of ACTA has been the willingness of the US to cave on the Internet provisions... The draft released today is a far cry from that proposal with the intermediary liability provisions largely removed and the DMCA digital lock provisions much closer to the [existing] WIPO Internet treaty model.

"Taken together, the Internet chapter must be seen as failure by the US, which clearly envisioned using ACTA to export its DMCA-style approach."

But there are plenty of other opportunities for mischief, especially when it comes to technical details or to items like statutory damages and how they might be calculated. This is especially true since ACTA negotiators have shown the usual preference for exporting intellectual property protections while leaving limitations and fair uses up for grabs.

With no more negotiating sessions scheduled, this is close to a final draft, and something like it will probably be adopted unless countries start pulling out of the agreement altogether.

***

MPAA loves ACTA, but European Parliament "alarmed" by it

By Nate Anderson

The motion picture business likes (PDF) the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). After a few tough years of record-setting box office receipts, the industry welcomes new legal enforcement tools that will "protect the jobs of the millions of men and women working in film and other creative industries."

But the European Parliament isn't convinced yet. After all, there's not even a text to view. And despite official statements expressing peace, love, and harmony, it's clear that ACTA hasn't actually been finalized and that some real issues still remain.

So the news that negotiators have packed it in and will host no more meetings didn't sit very well with Parliament, which worries that an incomplete deal is being passed off as final and will soon be shoved down its throat. To keep its collective throat clear of ACTA-sized obstructions, key members of Parliament have taken preemptive measures.

According to Euractiv, MEPs including Parliamentary Vice President Stavros Lambrinidis, are "alarmed" and have drafted a letter to the European Commission, which handled the negotiations.

"If the agreement is indeed concluded, we demand from the Commission to present the final text of the negotiation to the European Parliament as soon as it is procedurally possible," said the letter, which also called on the EU not to apply anything in ACTA "before the European Parliament has the chance to express its informed opinion on the issue."

That opinion could be a cantankerous one. Parliament has shown repeated irritation at being kept in the dark about ACTA negotiations. A group of MEPs asked ACTA negotiators to meet with them last month in Tokyo, but the Japanese government declined to arrange the meeting, citing scheduling concerns. And MEPs have shown concern over the Internet portions of ACTA, along with patent issues that could create problems for access to medicines.

We'll know more about ACTA, and its reception, on October 7, when both US and EU negotiators will provide briefings and (apparently) the text of the deal.

***

KISS frontman on P2P: "Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars."

By Matthew Lasar | Last updated about 16 hours ago

The bassist and businessman behind the legendary rock band KISS was on hand at the MIPCOM convention in Cannes, France on Tuesday. And Gene Simmons had a message for aspiring entertainers everywhere: sue first, think later.

"Make sure your brand is protected," Simmons warned during a panel discussion. "Make sure there are no incursions. Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don't let anybody cross that line."

And that includes all those naughty girls and boys with their BitTorrent and Limewire kits. Double for them, in fact.

"The music industry was asleep at the wheel," Simmons complained, "and didn't have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we're left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. There's no industry."

"No industry" hasn't stopped Simmons from cashing in big; he was at the Cannes event to promote his TV show, Gene Simmons' Family Jewels, now celebrating its 100th episode. From KISS and the TV series, Simmons' enterprise has managed to spin off three thousand products, he bragged.

"Everything from KISS condoms to KISS caskets," Simmons disclosed. "We'll get you coming and we'll get you going. We literally have everything from KISS Hi-Def television sets that are about to come on the market to KISS Motorcycles. Well, it's Planet KISS. Oh, I've already trademarked that, I forgot that."

Business is my crack

But back to that "sue every fresh faced, freckle faced" college kid business. We're talking about something close to 60 million P2P downloaders of all ages by the middle of the last decade. And during the height of the Recording Industry Association of America's file-sharing lawsuits, the trade association admitted that these actions were a total money pit. One estimate suggests that RIAA paid its lawyers more than $16 million in 2008 and recouped a paltry $391,000 in infringement settlements (the RIAA pointed out later that its bills for legal work included all sorts of non-P2P work, however).

The RIAA filed 18,000 to 20,000 legal actions; multiply that by every last American P2P user and the bill would be astonishing. The only two cases to proceed through a trial to a verdict have now been tied up in retrials and appeals, a ferociously expensive and laborious process that simply doesn't scale well.

No worries, says Simmons, who obviously sees himself as quite the wheeler-dealer. "Business is my crack," he declared. "That's what motivates me. Getting up every day and doing deals." And so he offered parables to back his logic.

The captain and the fox

"There's a ship that goes across the water," Simmons explained. "The captain is up there and some guy comes up in a sailor suit and says 'Captain! Captain! We have a hole'."

"Well, how big is the hole?" the captain asks.

"Well it's only yea big," the 'guy in the sailor suit' (presumably a sailor) replies. "We'll probably only get in a whole day a glass of water."

"Well," Simmons concluded, "this moron is either going to say don't worry about it, or he's going to plug up that hole then and there." Otherwise: "By the end of that journey that ship will sink."

In case this story didn't clinch the point for Simmons' audience, he rolled out the sad tale of the farmer and the fox.

Once upon a time, he explained, there was a farmer, who noticed that a baby fox was taking an egg from the chicken coop.

The farmer couldn't kill it; the fox was too cute.

"But that little fox went back with a free egg," Simmons warned, "and told all the other little foxes about it, and then the foxes overran the farm, killed all the chickens, took all the eggs, and didn't pay for it."

"Now the farmer lost his farm. His wife divorced him and went with another farmer who was smarter. The kids ran off because the spineless farmer didn't have enough sense to kill the fox. The trucks that delivered the chickens—they're all out of business. The stores that sold them—they're out of business."

"Why?" Simmons declared. "Because of one goddamn cute little fox. So don't let any cute little foxes get near your henhouse!"

And if they do, sue the bastards.

***

(Yeah, screw you, Gene! Asshole! When was the last time you were even reloevant?--jef)