ninme

Freedom of religion over at Wheat & Weeds, and curtsy to her too for Freedom of speech:

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:

• That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

Etc, etc, etc. At least that last one is called the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” instead of “Internet Freedom of Speech and Trade Agreement” or something.

Favourite comment (so far):

Look folks, if this copyright treaty means protecting Mickey Mouse from unauthorized reproductions, then it’s a small price to pay to forever risk losing access to civic participation, health information, education, registration and renewal of government documents, global communication, access to government, weather and traffic, emergency service information, freedom of speech and assembly….

And, while we’re at it, I suppose they could have called this the Freedom of Livelihood Retention Emergency Retention Act:

WSJ – California Stealin’<br/> Sacramento demands a loan from taxpayers.

To help close yet another gaping budget deficit, now estimated to be $7 billion this year and reach as high as $20 billion next, Sacramento lawmakers have authorized a 10% increase in the amount of taxes withheld from worker paychecks starting November 1 and through 2010. The extra withholding tax will reduce Californians’ take-home pay by about $1.7 billion for the year. But the lawmakers say this isn’t a tax increase. OK, how about calling it a compulsory interest-free loan from taxpayers to the state?…

And we almost hate to ask: What happens come April if the state doesn’t have enough money to pay the tax refunds it owes its citizens? Will taxpayers get IOUs the way state contractors did last year when Sacramento ran out of money?