The MPAA representatives asked ACTA negotiators in Mexico to use the treaty for blocking Mexico’s and other countries access to websites like WikiLeaks, calling them “damaging”.
The Motion Picture Association of America is trying to push forward with another policy agenda, linking websites that can’t make much harm (non-commercial peer-to-peer services) with websites profiting from pirated goods. Besides, services like WikiLeaks are also there in a batch, as they are believed to be used for playing a kind of national security card.
The anti-piracy outfits like MPAA have always been trying to present the problem of unauthorized file-sharing much worse than it really is. However, it appeared to be much harder within the last years, because the industry enjoyed record-breaking revenues every year, watching worldwide ticket sales up by 30% for the last 5 years. Now, to convince others that some services pose a threat while they really don’t, they decided to link them with the services that do.
The MPAA is now reported to try and use this trick during the ongoing ACTA negotiations. Last week its representatives arrived at Mexico’s Ministry of the Economy for the information meeting and asked the negotiators if the Agreement can be used to cut off access in Mexico and other countries to the services MPAA called “damaging,” including WikiLeaks. The reason for the Association to call WikiLeaks damaging is hiding behind the ongoing conflict between the American military and the online service in question over the leak of secret papers from Pentagon related to the Afghanistan war.
So, if the outfit can get such tame websites to interests of the US, why doesn’t it focus at the websites that are really damaging? Considering the MPAA has already succeeded in convincing some of the country’s politicians that non-commercial digital piracy is the same as a commercial one, it seems it would be quite easy for it to declare that BitTorrent websites are also dangerous and should all be blocked.
As for the ACTA’s secretive negotiations, they have been almost devoid of contribution from the elected officials. Besides, some countries seem willing to wrap up the process as quickly as they only can, regardless of the apparent lack of transparency.
At the moment, the supposedly final round of negotiations on ACTA has already started in Tokyo and will continue to the end of the month.
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