Originally Posted by chevymeister

Wall of text is wall of text. Btw, love your sig.

I don't even care about voicing my opinion anymore. Anything you do will not stop the grand of things. They happen one way or another. The one with the money wins. There are tons of bad things happening right now such as the vaccination money grab. Why focus on all of it if you are powerless against it.

Originally Posted by Ruei

... wow. There's so much nerdrage in this thread I don't even know where to start.

Originally Posted by acadiancrusader

people, you need to understand who apple's market is... it's not any of you in here!

Originally Posted by Mygaffer

ACTA is a very scary treaty that if ratified becomes US law. How many of us here want that? I know I don't and I'll be communicating that to my elected officials.

Originally Posted by Retrospekt

Did you try and make the worst analogy possible?

Originally Posted by dejanh

I think this is part of the solution. Another part is to really educate people that these things are happening and that every individual is accountable for the eventual outcome. Furthermore, those same individuals need to understand the impact and implications on their individual lives of treaties such as ACTA. Luckily dialogue in our countries can be very powerful, as long as it is executed properly and the message is communicated clearly. Yes, the special interests will always try to put public relations experts (i.e., spin doctors) on things to make everything sound in favor of their argument, but by educating people on these issues we enable them to see the sub-context and properly evaluate the situation as well as course of action required to create change.

Originally Posted by dejanh

I think this is part of the solution. Another part is to really educate people that these things are happening and that every individual is accountable for the eventual outcome. Furthermore, those same individuals need to understand the impact and implications on their individual lives of treaties such as ACTA. Luckily dialogue in our countries can be very powerful, as long as it is executed properly and the message is communicated clearly. Yes, the special interests will always try to put public relations experts (i.e., spin doctors) on things to make everything sound in favor of their argument, but by educating people on these issues we enable them to see the sub-context and properly evaluate the situation as well as course of action required to create change.

Originally Posted by dejanh

This agreement has long been in the works, in the back rooms of course out of the eye of the public. I have known of it at least for the last 2-3 years, well before the new American presidency was in place. Quite possibly it was in the works even before that. In any circumstance, I think people are missing the point of how many extremely serious implications this agreement actually has outside of the scope of just Internet piracy and privacy. I am all for stopping internet piracy, but in the right way. Unfortunately, ACTA aims to both effectively transfer judicial powers into the hands of the corporations and to increase government oversight over expression and behavior of pretty much every individual out there.

Passing this agreement would equate to giving up your rights of freedom of speech as the broad reaching scope of the agreement can be easily interpreted to effectively restrict any and all types of behaviors, such as completely silencing independent news outlets, information exchange, and individual opinions. It is rather unnerving how the powers that are in fact know that as long as they disguise this agreement well and keep quiet about it most people will never know or take interest in it until it has become universal law and then the masses will just have to adopt and adapt. It is really time for people to look around what is happening and start voicing their opinions on this and other issues plaguing our society today. Not doing so will invite increasing numbers of repressive measures being passed in silence until we as a society have been deprived of every basic right but to work and eat.

I know that this will probably fall on def ears once again, but I really hope that the moderators of OCN take this seriously and decide not to shut this topic down. They shut it down and in fact outright removed it several years ago, they have done so yesterday, and I truly hope that they do not do the same today. Yes, it is a political problem, but this media is the only media that we have to rally and express our opinions. If you shut us down and shut us out as well there is really no hope that any of us will be able to genuinely speak up against these and other controversial societal reforms. Finally, I just want to urge all of those that would take this kind of stuff as "conspiracy theories" to understand that this is not speculative. ACTA is real, and it is here to stay unless we stop it. At the very least we should minimize the chances of it being adopted as is and/or force it to evolve in line with our freedom of speech and other basic human rights, rights to privacy, and rule of law.

Originally Posted by 003

Quit being a troll.