Negotiations between ISP and copyright owners

According to the French PCINpact, some classified negotiations are being held with the support of European Commission between Internet Service Providers and copyright owners. It is possible that much stricter rules of internet usage will be introduced for all EU countries with the omission of all democracy rules. Companies like IFPI, ETNO, EuroIspa, Vivendi, Virgin Media, BT, Ofcom and also Amazon, Google, and Yahoo! are part of this action.

What do they want?

Apparently, copyrights holders wish for monitoring and filtering of internet traffic. All websites that will be marked to hold illegal material (or the ones that are a middleman) should be cut off (if they are in EU) or access to those sites will be denied.

Another plan is to closely watch every internet user, just in case illegal actions are performed. It is like in everyday life there would be a policeman following our every step and watching our every move. Just in case we would do something illegal.

The result?

Once the new law is introduced a lot of people in EU would receive letters with a warning (or bill) like French internet users because of their HADOPI initiative.

The Impact of Hadopi and MegaUpload Closure on VPNLifeguard Downloads

VPNLifeguard recently published some interesting stats that show an important increase of the application downloads related to the introduction of  Hadopi in 2010 and the recent MegaUpload closure.

What is VPNLifeguard

VPNLifeguard is a free application that makes sure your computer does not access the Internet when your VPN connection drops. Thus it prevents unsecured connections after your VPN disconnects. The application is very useful for browsing or goes behind a P2P VPN without being exposed during disconnection issues.

Advantages of VPNLifeguard

• It’s free!
• Blocks P2P traffic in case of disconnection of the VPN
• Protects browsers (and other apps) for possible disconnection of your VPN
• Supports VPN protocols (PPTP – L2TP) that appear in the “network connections” for Windows.
• Automatically reconnects the apps

VPNLifeguard stats

The stats published by VPN Lifeguard show that both Hadopi and the closure of Megaupload increased the number of downloads. This is the case for VPN Lifeguard and it’s probably the case for the major VPN services list.

All these anti-piracy actions are more and more driving the Internet users towards anonymity (hide IP) applications. Recently, TorrentFreak reported that 15% of US file-sharers are using a VPN or a proxy service. I’m sure that this number will heavily increase in the next months both in the US and Europe.

What do you think about the new possible law? Do you think it will be adopted? Do you use VPN to protect your privacy and anonymity from your ISP? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been under my radar while I wrote about SOPA a few weeks back. While the Stop Online Piracy Act hasn’t been covered on the major news those last couple of days, it doesn’t mean it’s over yet. But as the public were still focused on SOPA, and mainly by the MegaUpload and Anonymous attacks, another treaty was slowly moving forward under the name of ACTA, which stands for “ Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”.

Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is already signed

As opposed to SOPA that was still to be voted at the US parliament, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement trade agreement has already been signed by few countries. In October 2011, the following countries have already signed this ACTA agreement: Japan, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

Then, while people still recovered from new year’s eve, in January 2012,  additional countries jumped into the bandwagon of signing that Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement agreement. The European Commission members of the following countries have then shown the support to ACTA: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom.

At the European Union commission, it’s not yet signed per se since the ACTA still has to be ratified by the European Parliament.

But why is ACTA so criticized?

The same arguments that were used against SOPA come back here: Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is seen as a threat to freedom on the internet. But to summarise it, ACTA’s goals are to enforce copyright and tackle counterfeited goods.

As it was with SOPA, the reasons behind setting-up ACTA are genuine: there are losses due to copyright infringement as well as counterfeit. But here again, as the debate is brought to the internet, the anti-ACTA are arguing that it’s another threat to internet freedom.

The main difference with SOPA is that some countries have already signed the agreement. Notwithstanding the fact that it’s a trade treaty, major concerns from Anti-ACTA is that this hasn’t been democratically been debated before being signed.

Not directly related to Internet and piracy

In fact, Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is not only related to internet and piracy, since Wikipedia quotes its objectives as  “The agreement aims to establish an international legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet, and would create a new governing body outside existing forums, such as the World Trade Organisation, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, or the United Nations.” . Now the question is: like SOPA who mainly targeted internet piracy, will the fact that ACTA covers more non-internet related items (generic medicines as well as counterfeit goods) dilute the act so that it will see less activism against it over the internet?

As you may guess, behind Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement stands legitimate companies that suffer from counterfeit and piracy acts. There’s a huge difference here, however: it’s not only about the internet anymore even though most arguments are mentioning the fact that ACTA is threatening the freedom that has always been associated to the Internet.

There’s still a lot of legal discussions as well as major interests at stake here. As a simple user and internet user, do you think Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is something you should care/worry about?