Ars Technica's a... really big site. It wouldn't surprise me if they're high on the search results.
The article is mainly suggesting that you keep your complaints to the actual facts.
But misinformation only makes it easy for ACTA supporters to marginalize the opposition as irrelevant fanatics.
If you suggest that there's something wrong with it, you'd better make sure that that something is actually there, otherwise next week they can just turn around and tell everyone that you're distorting the truth for your own purposes. At that point, you've probably lost.
I found this comment interesting:
Originally posted by rabish12
Originally posted by vishnu
Some people seem to be confused about the difference between a treaty and a law. Broad/ambiguous language in a treaty mostly means it is toothless - a good thing if you don't like the content of the treaty. That is exactly the opposite of a law, where broad/ambiguous language is a recipe for all kinds of trouble.
When the author talks about what the treaty requires please remember that context. Nations still need to pass actual laws for anything more they want to do. The ambiguous language in the treaty in no way gives rights holders or law enforcement powers to do anything. What it does is give nations that don't feel like being dicks the ability to not be dicks.
Thank you for being one of the few sane people here. The ambiguous things in ACTA aren't things that give the member countries more power to pass laws like this, they're things that the member countries could pass laws on WITH OR WITHOUT the agreement. If it doesn't say that countries are required to search iPods at the border but doesn't explicitly say that they shouldn't do so, it does NOTHING related to that subject. At all.
ACTA's a bit of a mess, but arguing using misinformation gets us nowhere. The SOPA protest was powerful because it was driven by facts, and that allowed larger organizations to associate themselves with it without sacrificing their dignity and general image. If ACTA's opposition ends up being too strongly aligned with insanity like this... well, that opposition could very well become powerless against it.
It sounds plausible (countries don't need to pass treaties saying "you can write speeding tickets for your own citizens", they do for "you can write speeding tickets for your neighbor's citizens"), but I'm very much not an expert on international law.
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